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New Post has been published on https://bloornews.com/blog-toronto/theres-no-way-books-can-be-banned-in-canada-just-for-criticizing-trudeau-it-sounds-too-crazy/

There’s no way books can be banned in Canada just for criticizing Trudeau. It sounds too crazy

I’m here this morning at the Federal Court of Canada.

“Ezra Levant is a human rights activist, journalist and founder of Rebel News Network. He is the author of multiple best-selling books including Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oilsands, The Libranos: What the media won’t tell you about Justin Trudeau’s corruption, and most recently China Virus: How Justin Trudeau’s Pro-Communist Ideology Is Putting Canadians in Danger.”

For the next eight hours, Ezra Levant (Rebel News) will be on trial for writing a book called The Libranos.

There is an army of lawyers here from the Trudeau government. If they win, they will set a terrible precedent, making it illegal to publish books critical of politicians without first “registering” those books with the government.

Here’s a quick recap: In the 2019 Canadian election, there were 24 books published about Justin Trudeau.

23 of those books were pro-Trudeau or neutral. And then there was my book, “The Libranos: What the Media Won’t Tell You About Justin Trudeau’s Corruption”.

That enraged Trudeau — especially when it became a best seller. So Elections Canada assigned more than a dozen staff to investigate me and prosecute me. They’ve been hounding me for four years. They have already fined me thousands of dollars. And I’ve had to spend $100,000 in legal fees.

But I’ve appealed to the Federal Court. And today is the day that political freedom — and the right to criticize the government — lives or dies.

You might be thinking, “There’s no way books can be banned in Canada just for criticizing Trudeau. It sounds too crazy.”

Let me quote from an official notice I received from the “Manager of the Compliance Unit” of Elections Canada’s censorship branch:

the book title’s reference to “Librano$“, which was clearly designed to create an association between the name of a registered party and The Sopranos, a mafia-themed television show, and to link the party to corruption… drawings of the show’s characters were replaced with drawings of the leader and other public figures of the party.

Seriously. Trudeau’s staff are now deciding what words and even what pictures we can use to criticize Trudeau. He really meant it when he said China’s dictatorship is the country he most admires.

Speaking of which, Elections Canada hasn’t lifted a finger to stop Communist China from interfering in our elections. They’re too busy prosecuting my book.

You might recall that they specially hired two 30-year veterans of the RCMP to go after me — one of whom specialized in counter-terrorism.

Those senior cops interrogated me for an hour. I’ll never forget it: one of their most bizarre questions was to ask me why I didn’t register my book with the government before I published it. I secretly recorded that interrogation — you can watch it here if you haven’t seen it before.

Here’s their theory: they claim that because my book criticized Trudeau, it was campaign propaganda and had to be registered with the government. Even though Canada’s election laws specifically exempt books and the promotion of books. But Trudeau doesn’t care — he is trying to censor the Internet, so obviously he wouldn’t hesitate to censor an old-fashioned book.

I note that not a single journalism organization or civil liberties group has said a word to support me. Amnesty International, PEN Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association — not one of them has even issued a statement, let alone intervened in court. They don’t believe in freedom anymore — but I do.

https://www.thelibranos.com/

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She Is Breaking Glass Ceilings in Space, but Facing Sexism on Earth

Sanitary pads and makeup: A Chinese astronaut’s six-month stay aboard the country’s space station has revealed conflicted cultural values toward gender.

Col. Wang Yaping is a pilot in the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force. She is a space veteran, now making her second trip into orbit. She is set in the coming weeks to be the first Chinese woman to walk in space as China’s space station glides around Earth at 17,100 miles per hour.And yet, as she began a six-month mission last week at the core of China’s ambitious space program,official and news media attention fixated as much on the comparative physiology of men and women, menstruation cycles, and the 5-year-old daughter she has left behind, as they did on her accomplishments. (No one asked about the children of her two male colleagues.)

Shortly before the launch, Pang Zhihao, an official with the China National Space Administration, let it be known that a cargo capsule had supplied the orbiting space station with sanitary napkins and cosmetics.

“Female astronauts may be in better condition after putting on makeup,” he said in remarks shown on CCTV, the state television network.

At 41, Colonel Wang is a model of gender equality in a country where Mao Zedong famously said that “women hold up half the sky,” and the object of an undercurrent of sexism and condescension that courses through Chinese society, business and politics.

The 25-member Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, the country’s ruling political body, includes only one woman, Sun Chunlan. Discrimination remains rampant in the workplace, where women are recruited for their looks and dismissed or demoted when they become pregnant.

A nascent #MeToo movement in China has faced pushback in the courts and from state censors online. A Chinese gold medalist in the shot put at the Tokyo Olympics in August was harangued on air for her “masculine” appearance, as well as her plans for marriage and family.

“A major power like China gives women the chance to go to space,” said Lu Pin, an activist who founded an online forum in China, Feminist Voices, that has since been purged from the internet by the authorities. “On the other hand, it still tells everyone that, even if you are a woman who has become an astronaut, you still have to play a traditional female role.”In China today, it is rare for women outside the entertainment industry to reach such public prominence as Colonel Wang.

When they do manage to break barriers, their accomplishments are often viewed through the prism of gender.

Colonel Wang’s mission has been treated in official statements and state media as a novelty, even though China sent its first women into space nearly a decade ago. The Soviet Union sent the first woman into orbit in 1963: Valentina Tereshkova, who spent three days in space and remains the only woman to fly solo. The first American woman, Sally Ride, went up in 1983.

The reaction in China echoes what those earlier trailblazers faced. Dr. Ride fielded condescending questions about menstruation, motherhood and whether she intended to wear a bra in orbit. “It’s too bad our society isn’t further along,” she said then.

In a short television report showing her training for the upcoming spacewalk, Colonel Wang exuded similar confidence, saying she hoped the mission aboard the new space station, called Tiangong, would be “more brilliant because of me.” She also hinted at the hurdles she had to overcome.

“For me, being an astronaut is not a profession, but a career, and it is such a career that I have an ardent love for,” she said. “This love is enough for me to overcome all difficulties, to overcome all barriers and even to sacrifice my own life.”

via The New York Times

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Headlines

Where reopening is working (NYT) Across much of the United States and Europe, the coronavirus has been spreading less rapidly than many people feared. Over the past six weeks—as communities have started to reopen, Americans have flocked to beaches and lakes and European schools have reopened—but the number of new cases has continued falling in many places. Across the Northeast and Midwest of the U.S., they’re down more than 50 percent, and often much more, since May 1. Nationwide, weekly deaths have fallen for six weeks in a row. And Europe “seems to have turned a corner,” Caitlin Rivers of Johns Hopkins University says. How could this be? Public health experts gave two main answers. One, the virus spreads much less easily outdoors than indoors. “Summer—being outside, warmer weather, humidity—seems to help, and we may have underestimated how much it’s helped,” Ashish Jha, the incoming dean of Brown University School of Public Health, told me. Two, many people are taking more precautions than they were in February and March. They’re wearing masks, remaining six feet apart and being careful about what they touch. The combination appears to have eliminated most “superspreader events,” like parties, concerts and restaurant meals, where multiple people get sick. Such events may account for 80 percent of all transmissions, research suggests.

Beleaguered and besieged, police try to come to grips with a nation’s anger (Washington Post) The crowds have thinned and the smoke has cleared, with more than a week of nationwide protests leaving in their wake a nation increasingly resolved to change a broken law enforcement system. But they also have left police officers badly shaken, and in some cases physically bruised. Nationwide, police leaders say the rank and file are struggling to come to grips with the level of animus they encountered on the streets, as epithets, bricks and bottles all came hurtling their way. Police have been targets of protest many times before, of course. But never quite like this. “I’ve had members say they feel like a Vietnam veteran returning home to a country that hates them,” said Robert Harris, a Los Angeles police officer and director of the force’s police union. “It’s not that our members expect thank-yous. It’s the difficulty in knowing that the protesters want to be treated with equality and fairness and respect, and what they’re protesting for isn’t afforded to the officers themselves.” “The morale is low,” he said. “They’ve taken quite a beating.”

Federal Debt Tops $26 Trillion for First Time; Jumps $2 Trillion in Just 63 Days (CNS News) The debt of the federal government topped $26 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, when it climbed from $25,960,547,920,986.11 to $26,003,751,512,344.91, according to data released today by the Treasury Department. The federal debt had topped $24 trillion for the first time on April 7, 2020.

A Single Session of Exercise Alters 9,815 Molecules in Our Blood (NYT) When we exercise, the levels of thousands of substances in our bloodstream rise and drop, according to an eye-opening new study of the immediate, interior impacts of working out. The study is the most comprehensive cataloging to date of the molecular changes that occur during and after exercise and underscores how consequential activity—and inactivity—may be for our bodies and health. Over all, the researchers were taken aback by the magnitude of the changes in people’s molecular profiles after exercise, according to Dr. Michael Snyder, the chair of the genetics department at Stanford University and senior author of the study. “I had thought, it’s only about nine minutes of exercise, how much is going to change? A lot, as it turns out.”

United will require passengers to complete health assessments before they fly (Washington Post) United Airlines on Wednesday became at least the second U.S. carrier to ask travelers to answer questions about their health status before they fly, part of a strategy to ease the minds of travelers concerned about flying in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. United’s “Ready-to-Fly” checklist will ask travelers to confirm that they have not experienced any coronavirus-related symptoms in the 14 previous days or been in close contact with any individual who has tested positive during the same time period. It also will require passengers to verify that they are aware of the airline’s policy requiring face coverings when aboard an airplane.

Are religious communities reviving the revival? Outdoor worship is a US tradition (Religion News Service) Religious communities have been forced to find alternative ways to worship together during the coronavirus pandemic. For some that has meant going online, but others have turned to a distinctly non-digital practice steeped in this history of the American religious experience: outdoor worship. Prayer sessions in parking lots and services in green spaces formed part of an improvised response to the lockdown by religious leaders and they may now be part of the plan as the United States emerges from the crisis. Indeed, a team of clergy and scientists have issued a new guide suggesting, among other recommendations, that baptisms could take place in “flowing streams, lakes or in beach settings.” So are brick-and-mortar houses of worship essential? It is a question that states and courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have asked in considering the extent to which states can or should place restrictions on meetings in religious buildings. Religious communities, too, have reflected on whether the term “church” describes a building or a community. While white evangelical Protestants have been some of the more vocal protesters of government restrictions on houses of worship during the pandemic, they actually have a long history of embracing outdoor worship in services and revivals.

Watch kids near water (NYT) This year, with outings to the community pool, day camps and pool parties still on hold, kids cooped up at home will be eager to get in the water as the weather warms. Experts worry that parents are stretched too thin to provide the required supervision, leading to an increase in child drownings this summer. As of mid-May, both Florida and Texas—the top two states for child drownings in pools and spas—are already seeing higher numbers than last year. If you have toddlers and you think you don’t have to worry because you don’t have a real pool—just one of those little plastic or inflatable baby pools—you still have a hazard sitting in your yard. Little kids can drown in less than two inches of water. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, drowning is the leading cause of injury death in children ages 1 to 4, and nearly 70 percent of the time, it happens when children aren’t supposed to be in the pool.

Zoom censors video talks on Hong Kong and Tiananmen, drawing criticism (Washington Post) Several prominent critics of the Chinese government, including protest leaders in Hong Kong and pro-democracy activists in the United States, have accused Zoom of shutting their accounts and severing live events in recent weeks under pressure from Beijing. The three incidents are reviving concerns about the fast-growing Silicon Valley company’s susceptibility to Chinese government influence weeks after the firm began facing scrutiny over security, including its routing of data through China. Coming in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the episode also highlights the world’s dependency on services such as Zoom and their ability to control speech. Zoom on Thursday acknowledged that “a few recent meetings” related to China have been disrupted. In each instance, event organizers told The Washington Post that they relied on Zoom in lieu of in-person events because of social distancing and travel restrictions. And each of the Zoom accounts and events was created and hosted outside mainland China but appeared to be quashed under Chinese government pressure after publicly advertised.

EU pushes back on Beijing (Foreign Policy) China’s aggressive diplomacy in Europe is now causing serious pushback. The European Union, normally reluctant to speak out against Beijing, has accused the government of running “targeted influence operations and disinformation campaigns in the EU, its neighborhood, and globally,” along with Russia. The move may be a response to earlier criticism that the EU softened a report on the same topic. Meanwhile, Britain’s swerve away from China has been fast, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson proposing a D-10 alliance of democracies—the existing G-7, plus South Korea, India, and Australia—to build 5G networks free of Chinese influence. The Hong Kong crisis has further soured U.K.-Chinese relations, with Beijing warning that it may pull out a British nuclear power construction deal. Since the original nuclear deal was widely seen as a disaster in the U.K., this doesn’t give Beijing much leverage.

Poland troop plan falters (Foreign Policy) After U.S. President Donald Trump said he would remove 9,500 troops from Germany, plans to relocate troops further east in Poland have fallen into disarray, Reuters reports. A plan announced in June of last year to send 1,000 U.S. troops to Poland permanently has been held up over disputes over how much of the bill Poland would cover, where to station the troops, and whether they would gain legal immunity while stationed there.

Lack of beds slows Delhi’s virus fight (AP) In New Delhi, a sprawling capital region of 46 million and home to some of India’s highest concentration of hospitals, a pregnant woman’s death after a frantic hunt for a sickbed was a worrying sign about the country’s ability to cope with a wave of new coronavirus cases. “She kept begging us to save her life, but we couldn’t do anything,” Shailendra Kumar said, after driving his sister-in-law, Neelam, and her husband for hours, only to be turned away at eight public and private hospitals. Two and a half months of nationwide lockdown kept numbers of infections relatively low in India. But with restrictions easing in recent weeks, cases have shot up, rising by a record of nearly 10,000 on Thursday, raising questions about whether authorities have done enough to avert catastrophe. Half of Delhi’s 8,200 hospital beds dedicated to COVID-19 patients are already full and officials are projecting more than half a million cases in the city alone by July 31.

Chinese recovery (Foreign Policy) Some data indicates that the speed of economic recovery in China may be faster than feared, with oil use already back to 90 percent of pre-coronavirus levels. Domestic demand for consumer goods is strong, but a lack of global demand is hamstringing Chinese manufacturers: Reopened factories are struggling to find customers.

Floyd killing finds echoes of abuse in South Africa, Kenya (AP) Collins Khosa was killed by law enforcement officers in a poor township in Johannesburg over a cup of beer left in his yard. The 40-year-old black man was choked, slammed against a wall, beaten, kicked and hit with the butt of a rifle by the soldiers as police watched, his family says. Two months later, South Africans staged a march against police brutality. But it was mostly about the killing of George Floyd in the United States, with the case of Khosa, who died on April 10, raised only briefly. Despite racial reconciliation that emerged after the end of the apartheid system, poor and black South Africans still fall victim to security forces that now are mostly black. The country is plagued by violent crime, and police often are accused of resorting to heavy-handed tactics. Journalist Daneel Knoetze, who looked into police brutality in South Africa between 2012 and 2019, found that there were more than 42,000 criminal complaints against police, which included more than 2,800 killings—more than one a day. There were more than 27,000 cases of alleged assault by police, many classified as torture, and victims were “overwhelmingly” poor and black, he said. And in Kenya, the police force has for two decades been ranked the country’s most corrupt institution. It’s also Kenya’s most deadly, killing far more people than criminals do, according to human rights groups.

[orbemnews]

Fox News Intensifies Its Pro-Trump Politics as Dissenters Depart Fox News once devoted its 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. time slots to relatively straightforward newscasts. Now those hours are filled by opinion shows led by hosts who denounce Democrats and defend the worldview of former President Donald J. Trump. For seven years, Juan Williams was the lone liberal voice on “The Five,” the network’s popular afternoon chat show. On Wednesday, he announced that he was leaving the program, after months of harsh on-air blowback from his conservative co-hosts. Many Fox News viewers cheered his exit on social media. Donna Brazile, the former Democratic Party chairwoman, was hired by Fox News with great fanfare in 2019 as a dissenting voice for its political coverage. She criticized Mr. Trump and spoke passionately about the Black Lives Matter movement, which other hosts on the network often demonized. Ms. Brazile has now left Fox News; last week, she quietly started a new job at ABC. Onscreen and off, in ways subtle and overt, Fox News has adapted to the post-Trump era by moving in a single direction: Trumpward. The network has rewarded pro-Trump pundits like Greg Gutfeld and Dan Bongino with prize time slots. Some opinion hosts who ventured on-air criticism of the former president have been replaced. And within the Fox News reporting ranks, journalists have privately expressed concern that the network is less committed to straight-ahead news coverage than it was in the past. The shifts at Fox News, which is controlled by the father-and-son moguls Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, have come in the wake of what amounted to an existential moment for a cable channel that is home to Trump cheerleaders like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham: the 2020 election. Fox News’s ratings fell sharply after the network made an early call on election night that Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee, would carry Arizona and later declared him the winner, even as Mr. Trump advanced lies about fraud. With viewers in revolt, the network moved out dissenting voices and put a new emphasis on hard-line right-wing commentary. In January, the network fired its veteran politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, who had been an onscreen face of the early call in Arizona for Mr. Biden. This month, it brought on a new editor in the Washington bureau: Kerri Kupec, a former spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s attorney general William P. Barr. She had no journalistic experience. Financially, the Murdochs’ formula has produced results: After a rare loss to archrivals CNN and MSNBC in January, Fox News’s ratings strength has recovered; the channel is again the Nielsen leader in cable news. In May, Fox News is on track to more than double CNN’s prime-time viewership. Its new opinion shows at 7 and 11 — with segments that lament “cancel culture” and attack Mr. Biden — are attracting bigger audiences than the newscasts they replaced. And the niche right-wing network Newsmax has failed to sustain its postelection audience gains. In some ways, the Murdochs are making a rational business decision by following the conservatives who have made up the heart of the Fox News audience; recent surveys show that more than three-quarters of Republicans want Mr. Trump to run in 2024. But under Roger Ailes, the network’s founder, who shaped its look and feel, Fox News elevated liberal foils like Alan Colmes, a Democrat who shared equal billing in prime time with Mr. Hannity until the end of 2008, and moderates like Mr. Williams. Roger Ailes, the founder of Fox News, wanted some unpredictability among commentators.Credit…Andrew Toth/FilmMagic “Roger’s view was you had to have some unpredictability and you had to challenge the audience; you couldn’t just be reading Republican talking points every night,” said Susan R. Estrich, a Democratic lawyer and former commentator on Fox News who negotiated Mr. Ailes’s exit from the network amid his sexual misconduct scandal. Today in Business Updated  May 28, 2021, 12:54 p.m. ET Ms. Estrich recalled that Mr. Ailes had defended Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host, when Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, attacked her in misogynist terms. Now, she said, “instead of trying to broaden their audience, Fox News is narrowing it and digging in.” Partisanship plays well on cable news, an insight not lost on programmers at other networks who are chasing fatigued viewers. Liberal-leaning MSNBC expanded the show hosted by the anti-Trump commentator Nicolle Wallace; it also replaced the moderate Chris Matthews at 7 p.m. with the partisan commentator Joy Reid. Last week, CNN dropped one of its chief conservative commentators, Rick Santorum, after he was criticized for remarks about Native Americans. Ms. Brazile said she had left Fox News of her own accord. “Fox never censored my views in any way,” she wrote in an email. “Everyone treated me courteously as a colleague.” Ms. Brazile added: “I believe it’s important for all media to expose their audiences to both progressive and conservative viewpoints. With the election and President Biden’s first 100 days behind us, I’ve accomplished what I wanted at Fox News.” Mr. Williams will remain at Fox News as a senior political analyst; the network said in a statement that he had requested to be closer to his family in Washington rather than commute to New York, where “The Five” is taped. Fox News said another liberal host would replace him. Among those in contention is a newly hired contributor to the Fox stable, the former Democratic congressman Harold Ford Jr. Mr. Williams departed after a harder edge had crept into his exchanges with colleagues like Mr. Gutfeld and Jesse Watters. “The Five” had long been a venue for heated, if friendly debate, but Mr. Williams was repeatedly mocked and shouted down when he accused Mr. Trump of lying about the election and fueling the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Mr. Williams also noted, on-air, a Fox News report about Mr. Biden that falsely claimed he wanted to restrict Americans’ consumption of hamburgers. (Fox News later issued a correction.) Greg Gutfeld, an on-air antagonist to Mr. Williams on “The Five,” now has his own nightly show, “Gutfeld!”Credit…Fox News His prime antagonist, Mr. Gutfeld, started an 11 p.m. show last month that is meant to compete with late-night fare like “The Daily Show.” “Gutfeld!” has attracted a bigger viewership than the previous 11 p.m. offering, a newscast anchored by Shannon Bream that was shifted to midnight. Fox News is still determining a permanent host for its new 7 p.m. opinion hour, which is now a reliable venue for pro-Trump commentary. It was where Tucker Carlson, the network’s 8 p.m. host, made his remarks about white replacement theory that prompted an outcry from the Anti-Defamation League. A pro-Trump drift at Fox News is not new: George Will, a traditional conservative who opposed Mr. Trump’s candidacy, lost his contributor contract in 2017. Shepard Smith, a news anchor who was tough on Mr. Trump, left in 2019. Some Fox News journalists, though, say privately that they are increasingly concerned with the network’s direction. Kristin Fisher, one of the network’s rising stars in Washington and a White House correspondent, left Fox News last month despite the network’s effort to keep her. She had faced criticism from viewers in November after a segment in which she aggressively debunked lies about election fraud advanced by Mr. Trump’s lawyers. The longtime Washington bureau chief, Bill Sammon, resigned in January after internal criticism over his handling of election coverage, around the time that Mr. Stirewalt was fired. (Mr. Stirewalt was let go along with roughly 20 digital journalists at Fox News, which the network attributed to a realignment of “business and reporting structure to meet the demands of this new era.”) Mr. Sammon has effectively been replaced by Doug Rohrbeck, a producer with extensive news experience on Bret Baier’s newscast and Chris Wallace’s Sunday show. Still, some Fox journalists were surprised when the network hired Ms. Kupec, the former Barr spokeswoman, to work under Mr. Rohrbeck. (In 2019, CNN hired Sarah Isgur, the spokeswoman for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as a political editor. After protests from staff, she was shifted to an on-air role and later left the network.) Fox News says its news coverage remains robust. Mr. Baier, its chief political anchor, announced in May that he had extended his contract through 2025. He regularly lands newsy interviews; a recent conversation with Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming grew testy when she faulted Fox News for perpetuating Mr. Trump’s lies about the election and Mr. Baier responded that he had made clear to viewers that Mr. Biden was the legitimate victor. Fox News has a smaller international footprint than rivals like CNN, but it maintains several foreign bureaus and has had reporters in Israel covering the recent violence there. On Wednesday, the network announced an expansion of Fox News International, a streaming service available in 37 countries in Asia and Europe. Despite continuing criticism from liberals, Fox News remains a financial juggernaut for the Murdoch empire; it is expected to earn record advertising revenues this year, the network said. Even as its programming decisions seem aimed at attracting Trump supporters, Fox News does face one roadblock: Mr. Trump. The former president has maintained his stinging criticism of Fox News, which, he has claimed, betrayed him by calling the election for Mr. Biden. On Friday, after criticism from Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, Mr. Trump wrote that “Fox totally lost its way and became a much different place” after the Murdochs appointed Mr. Ryan to the Fox Corporation board. “Fox will never be the same!” Mr. Trump wrote. Source link Orbem News #Depart #Dissenters #Fox #Intensifies #news #Politics #proTrump

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Criminal Syndicates, Not Politics, Drives Middle East Wars In 2015, I address a security conference in Damascus on the issue of organized crime syndicates and their relationship to the post 9/11 wars and so-called “Arab Spring.” Even in Damascus, efforts were made to stop the presentation forcing me to go directly to Syria’s Minister of Justice, Dr. Najm Hamad al Ahmad, using terse tones. Dr. Najm ordered the conference extended at my request. With regional security officials and media present, US Army Colonel James Hanke (retired) and I addressed the conclave with Dr. Najm at my side. The effect was startling, and there are reasons for this. No one every speaks the truth, not in public. There were repercussions from this, a poisoning attempt, an attempt to plant a kilo of heroin in our hotel room in Lebanon, a plot foiled by Veterans Today financial editor Mike Harris. That story hasn’t ended but, worse still, it is no longer told, even in Syria. Let us review that message and see how it applies today. Syria Currently, Syria is being looted by US backed Kurds who have ethnically cleansed and seized not hundreds but thousands of square miles of oil and gas fields, fertile farmlands, and billions of dollars of industrial and commercial resources. Before that, Syria was looted openly by Turkish organized crime, something I reviewed in detail with the Syrian government, not just endless antiquities sold in London and New York, but entire factories, machine tools, copper pipes from schools, anything that could be uprooted from areas supposedly under the control of ISIS and al Qaeda or the supposed Free Syrian Army, were stolen. Heavy equipment was brought into Syria, lines of trucks, even teams of engineers, across a carefully guarded border, under the watchful eye of Turkish security services full partnered with organized crime cartels we traced to Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and across Europe and into the United States. In addition, thousands of oil trucks were brought into the region, mostly from the United States. Used tanker trucks were being bought wholesale across the US and loaded on transports at the Port of Houston, shipped to Turkey and, from there, transited to Iraq and Syria to steal oil. Previous oil thefts, mostly by the US, had been done using the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, looting Iraq’s Kirkuk oil field, largest in the world, of up to $.5 trillion in oil during and after the US occupation of Iraq, mostly by Exxon and British Petroleum, aided by corrupt US officials. Alex Powers, a Veterans Today bureau chief, served as assistant to Paul Bremer, us appointed “Governor of Iraq” who allegedly oversaw this process. I met with Iraqi officials, while representing the United Nations, over this issue as well, during this period, from my office in Erbil. Everything was known. The reason we mention this is that there would have been no looting of Syrian oil, something moving into high gear at this writing with theft of Syrian oil at the highest levels ever, without the precedent set by the US and Britain in Iraq from 2005 onward. The theft of Syrian oil that began in 2012, hauled mostly by American trucks delivered into Syria and Iraq though Turkey, coincided, of course, with the renewed looting of the Kirkuk oil fields, North and Northeast of Baghdad. Problem is, when this oil was stolen from Iraq, the only road systems that would deliver this to refineries and the world market, and endless stream of thousands of trucks, was through the city of Erbil itself, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government, then into ISIS held Mosul and from there, north past a Turkish held region inside Iraq and right into Turkey herself. What am I saying here? ISIS, powerful Turkish organizations and the government of the KRG in Iraq were fully partnered with their massive theft of resources taking place with the tacit approval of the US and British military. This of course means the entire “coalition” effort against ISIS was fake, fake then and fake now. ISIS was funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, openly aided by the Israeli Air Force and facilitated by many governments, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain and more, many more. Why? Our hypothesis shows the long partnership between multi-generational organized crime and governments, some controlled, some partnered with, that stage terrorism and organize wars as a backdrop for criminal activities. Iraq This isn’t politics, its organized crime, a mafia operating inside the Kurdish region, working in concert with the Turkish mafia, who has long partnered with what is called the “Kosher Nostra,” the “oligarchs” who run much of the world’s organized crime from Trump Towers in New York, from the City of London, where they own banks, from Ukraine and across the world. The government in Baghdad, with US cash flowing into key Sunni politicians, remained divided and helpless. I met with security officials in Baghdad in January 2014 to discuss the threat of ISIS. Several I spoke with assured me ISIS was easy to use and control. Months later, most of those I had spoken with had been beheaded. No one was prepared for the level of oil theft planned under ISIS. Until stopped by Russian aerospace forces, this stream of trucks stealing oil from Syria and Iraq, was so large it would have been visible using only the naked eye from the surface of the moon, and by small telescope from Mars yet the endless fleet of American surveillance drones saw nothing. Why? American lawmakers were receiving their share, paid into their campaign funds though dummy corporations allowed by a highly controversial Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2005) and through accounts in the Cayman Islands under the auspices of a former American presidential candidate. In 2012, a former FBI agent brought me the files on these payoffs and submitted to a video debriefing outlining billions paid to US officials. That video was erased from YouTube but still exists on Vimeo. It was offered to Mueller investigators during an interview at FBI headquarters. They did not accept for reasons unknown. The same “ratline” used to launder funds to pay off congress also launders cash from the drug cartels of Mexico and Columbia as well, directly into the US political system and a manages a flow of cash from Afghanistan as well. Afghanistan When the US took over that nation beginning in late 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld presented evidence that al Qaeda had vast underground cities across Afghanistan, housing tens of thousands of terrorists. He presented his evidence on MSNBD to anchor Tim Russert. The video of this farce is here. Of course, the dozens of bases never existed, but America’s transition of Afghanistan from a drug free nation to a nation of addicts, a nation that is the world’s largest producer of processed heroin, that exists to this day. In a 2009 interview with a former Seal Team commander and regional director for not “a” but “the” largest American contractor in the region at the time, I was told the US was using Global Hawk long range drones, like the one Iran shot down in July 2019 over the Straits of Hormuz, to move heroin to Europe and the US. Veterans Today editors Colonel James Hanke and Mike Harris were with me during that exchange. The money trail for this heroin led not only through Mexico and the Cayman Islands to key US officials but through Switzerland as well and paid officials in Afghanistan, former officials in Pakistan, key members of Israel’s Likudist party and funded extremist organizations across Europe. The United States The recent Epstein scandal in the US has had some startling repercussions as well. With the wealth of allegations, yet unproven, supposedly tying large numbers of American officials to a child sex ring run by a foreign intelligence agency, a very real issue of Epstein’s mysterious wealth has revealed useful information. Tracing his key financial backer, we stumbled upon a longtime partnership with the Gambino crime family of New York, and from there, developed inexorable ties to historical figure Meyer Lansky. A fascinating background piece published by MintpressNews outlines the American roots of the organized crime network that highly informed sources say is manifested in ISIS and some of the right wing movements in Europe as well. The article cites how Prohibition, a law enacted in the US in 1919, led to a major Canadian smuggling operation, bringing liquor into the US. The massive funding from this linked the Canadian crime family, the Bronfmans, to “Murder Incorporated’s” Meyer Lansky and allegedly ties them both to FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover and CIA founder Alan Dulles, making both organizations, at some level at least, rooted in the Kosher Nostra and possibly tying them to the assassination of John and Robert Kennedy and certainly tying them to Iran Contra and the massive criminal conspiracy that swept the American government under President Reagan. That trail, from the 1920s, leads to Roy Cohn, former legal council for alleged sex blackmail victim and “red baiter” Senator Joseph McCarthy. By the late 1960s, disgraced Cohn had moved into a powerful New York law firm, aided by former CIA director Alan Dulles. Note that it was Dulles, who John Kennedy fired as CIA director, who headed the Warren Commission which investigated Kennedy’s murder. In 1975, the House Select Committee on Assassinations officially discarded the Warren Commission report citing that John Kennedy was killed by “person or persons unknown,” something now censored from American history. From MintPress: “The Roy Cohn Machine Roy Cohn was only at the beginning of his career when he waded his way into the underground sexual blackmail ring apparently led by Lewis Rosenstiel. Indeed, when Cohn first met Hoover, he was only 23 years old. Over the next three decades or so, before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1986 at the age of 56, Cohn built a well-oiled machine, largely through his close friendships with some of the country’s most influential figures. Among Cohn’s friends were top media personalities like Barbara Walters, former CIA directors, Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy, media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman, numerous celebrities, prominent lawyers like Alan Dershowitz, top figures in the Catholic Church and leading Jewish organizations like B’nai B’rith and the World Jewish Congress. Many of the same names that surrounded Cohn until death in the late 1980s would later come to surround Jeffrey Epstein, with their names later appearing in Epstein’s now-infamous “little black book”. While President Trump is clearly connected to both Epstein and Cohn, Cohn’s network also extends to former President Bill Clinton, whose friend and longtime political advisor, Richard “Dirty Dick” Morris, was Cohn’s cousin and close associate. Morris was also close to Clinton’s former communications director, George Stephanopoulos, who is also associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Yet, these were only Cohn’s connections to respectable members of the establishment. He was also known for his deep connections to the mob and gained prominence largely for his ability to connect key figures in the criminal underworld to respected influential figures acceptable to the public sphere. Ultimately, as New York attorney John Klotz stated, Cohn’s most powerful tool was blackmail, which he used against friend and foe, gangster or public official alike. How much of that blackmail he acquired through his sexual blackmail operation will likely never be known.” Roy Cohn, of course, was Donald Trump’s mentor, constant companion and legal representative until Cohn’s death. Conclusion It is clear that the political processes of the United States, Great Britain and Israel are interlocked under the control of multi-generational organized crime. It is also clear that security agencies of these nations have chosen to seek funding through illegal arms and narcotics sales and that activities of these agencies have become inconsistent with their appointed tasks. You see, if seeking “black funding” is allowed, and it is, without limit, then security agencies, even military commands and, as it follows, governments, become criminal organizations. Their actions, psychological warfare, massive “lie machines,” to cover their activities, endless corruption, complicity in war for profit, false flag terrorism, manipulation of world markets, rigging elections, even rewriting history, must be considered as factual and real. Failure to do so, blinds and cripples any government, any organization, any people who attempt to resist. Then, worse, so much worse, a reexamination of history in this light then questions everything, events, wars, historical figures, is any of it real?

[coin-river-blog]

January 18, 2019 10:18 PM

In today’s core devs call, Vitalik Buterin and Danny Ryan discussed how the coming proof-of-stake beacon can be used to finalize the existing proof-of-work chain.

On Friday's core devs call, Danny Ryan and Vitalik Buterin discussed the tentative plan to use the proof-of-stake, Casper FFG-implemented beacon chain as a finality gadget for the existing proof-of-work (PoW) chain.

(Note: If a block has the property of finality, that makes it immune to reversion in the case of a 51 percent attack.)

Buterin explained that using the beacon chain for finality on the Ethereum 1.0 chain "would essentially give [the PoW chain] the same security properties that the original pre-beacon chain Hybrid Casper FFG was going to give."

When asked to estimate an expected timeline for rollout, Buterin did not offer a specific date, but said, "Before sharding and before state execution stuff." In terms of the Serenity rollout, that translates to somewhere after Phase 0 and Phase 1. Though, he added, "It would be part of the beacon chain code immediately. It's just that no one would necessarily listen to it immediately."

Ryan added, "We would want to see stability on the beacon chain, and kind of the increased security there," before actually using the beacon chain for block finality. Even once the gadget's security and stability is proven, it would still ultimately be up to clients and validators whether they choose to make use of the finality gadget.

Implementing a finality gadget to the PoW chain could do something to assure those in the ecosystem who are concerned that the hash power of ASIC mining rigs leaves the network more vulnerable to 51 percent attacks. Though, it should be noted that while finality achieves increased security against block reversion attacks, it does nothing to address the ability of a 51 percent attacker to censor the creation of new blocks.

Back in December, Alexander Herrmann, veteran Ethereum researcher currently working for Gnosis, posted a proposal on Ethresear.ch to use the beacon chain for Ethereum 1.0 block finality. Herrmann's proposal suggests that so long as Phase 0 beacon chain clients adhere to some fairly basic/unobstructive specifications, all that would be necessary on the PoW chain is a modification of the fork-choice rule to communicate with the beacon chain.

Alison is an editor and occasional writer for ETHNews. She has a master’s in English from the University of Wyoming. She lives with her pooch in Reno. Her favorite things to do include binge listening to podcasts, getting her chuckles via dog memes, and spending as much time outside as possible.

ETHNews is committed to its Editorial Policy

Like what you read? Follow us on Twitter @ETHNews_ to receive the latest Ethereum 1.0, Serenity or other Ethereum ecosystem news.

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[lucyoccupy]

MILLION A WEEK CLUB - YRTW 15! BOB NICHOLS CENSORED ON FB FOR SHARING FREE GOVERNMENT DATA!

MILLION A WEEK CLUB – YRTW 15! BOB NICHOLS CENSORED ON FB FOR SHARING FREE GOVERNMENT DATA!

  GET EMAIL UPDATES   tinyurl.com/kudosBobNichols

MILLION A WEEK CLUB – YRTW 15

Facing a Dying Nation

By Bob Nichols April 28, 2018

Are you in a city that gets a Million Counts of Radiation a Week? First, how on earth are you going to find out? Folks, that is a secret, isn’t it? This is a Bad situation for all exposed to the Rad. Now included, for the 15th Week of 2018 just passed, all cities…

[tvguidancecounselor]

TV Guidance Counselor Episode 381: Russ Woody

Today Ken welcomes TV veteran and author of the new book "Tuesdays with Ted", Russ Woody.

Ken and Russ discuss Burbank, wildfires, worshiping television, Ted Danson, Becker, Cheers, seeing the top of your head, Dick Van Dyke, Working at MTM, Newhart, St. Elsewhere, comedy vs. drama, Barney Miller, multi-cam sitcoms, how hard it is to tell a story in 19 minutes, bad people on TV, Cybill, Roseanne, Cosby, insane stand up comedians, how remarkable it is that anything good ever gets made in Hollywood, Green Acres, Tom Poston, Absolutely Fabulous, The Royle Family, US remakes of UK shows, network censors, Jacob's Ladder, Norsemen, Liam Neeson's improv, Toast of London, working in a writers' room, navigating personalities, Dabney Coleman, Slap Maxwell Story, winning people over, living with depression and anxiety, empathy, perspectives, the solitary nature of writing, Murphy Brown, being perfect like an orange, Jay Tarses, mentors, George Clooney, sticking up for people because you can, treating people right, cost benefit analysis, Ken's respect for Bonnie Hunt and a P.A. who's never had a tomato.

[digitalmark18-blog]

CHRISTIAN LAUNCHES NEW SOCIAL MEDIA & SEARCH SITES

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/christian-launches-new-social-media-search-sites/

CHRISTIAN LAUNCHES NEW SOCIAL MEDIA & SEARCH SITES

Once Steven Andrew saw Facebook block millions of people from his posts, he decided to use his Silicon Valley leadership skills to start a new social network where you can speak freely about life, liberty and happiness. The new site, USA.Life, is pro-America and pro-Christian.

USA.Life is the answer to Facebook and Twitter censoring Christians, conservatives and liberty.

Millions of conservative messages censored

Andrew said Facebook lied to Congress about being “a platform for all ideas,” since they block Christians and conservatives. “Facebook censors 99% of my reach, which means 5 million people are missing per month from my account alone,” he said.

USA.Life is needed now, because “Big Tech censorship affects people’s finances, lives and relationships; what they are doing is unAmerican,” Andrew said.

Crowdfunding campaign started

Andrew set up a crowdfunding page to fund the completion of the project. He provides an assessment of risks and answers frequently asked questions. The campaign has already exceeded $205,000, but he needs help with people giving today and sharing about this new site.

“Freedom and privacy could be lost forever without USA.Life. However, we can save the Internet if 58,000 people give $10, or if 5,800 supporters donate $100. If people and churches want liberty, they need USA.Life,” Andrew said.

New members are joining every day by signing up for a free account. Users get access to preferred usernames and project updates by joining now.

5 star reviews

“People are excited and give outstanding reviews,” Andrew said.

The many positive comments include:

Arthur in Kimberly, Idaho: “Will save America.”

Jennifer in Concord, California: “Will give us freedom and privacy.”

USA.Life is for all who love liberty.

“Most of the enthusiasm comes from Christians, conservatives, families, pro-lifers, pastors, homeschoolers, constitutionalists and traditional marriage supporters, who have been Big Tech’s target for massive blocking. People across the world are joining,” he said.

Andrew is also building a search engine, 1776Free. He calls it “America’s new search engine,” and he is working to provide better results than Google. Users will get life-changing Christian and conservative sites and real news that have been hidden. Many churches, blogs and news sites will see a significant traffic increase, without Google’s censorship, he said.

Thank you gifts

Special rewards are given to supporters:

$10: Gives you a keepsake American Hero postcard, for saving the Internet.

$25: Lists your name in the credits section of the computer code and gives you a memorable PDF you can print and frame. Plus the American Hero postcard.

$100: Gives you a collector’s T-shirt plus the pro-version for one year of both USA.Life and 1776Free. And all other rewards.Your name, loved one or business will be on the founders wall, permanent on both USA.Life and 1776Free.com, for giving $1,000 to $25,000. Plus you get all the other rewards.For even larger gifts, your name or business will be displayed on every page of both USA.Life and 1776Free permanently in a special credits section, when giving $100,000 or more. Additionally, you get the other rewards!Andrew hears from people who understand the importance and urgency for the new sites.

“A lady was very happy to give $10 to save freedom. And a patriotic veteran said if he was a millionaire he would give a million dollars. He gave $1,000. Every gift, small or large, that people are giving today will make a difference,” Andrew said.

Andrew shows the distribution of the funds in a financial chart.

Andrew passionately believes, like the Founders, that liberty is granted by God. In addition to being a Christian leader, he has extensive business and technical leadership experience with Fortune 500 companies and start ups, including Cisco, Stanford, Sega and Better Homes and Gardens, where he has successfully led and provided strategy for multi-million dollar initiatives.

Click to learn more.

For full reward descriptions, see the USA.Life crowdfunding page.

Source: https://www.wnd.com/2018/09/christian-launches-new-social-media-search-sites/

[dragnews]

Netflix turns to Bollywood to script India growth story

(Reuters) – Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) premiered its first original series in India in a sheen of Bollywood glitter on Wednesday, upping the stakes in its battle with streaming rival Amazon Prime (AMZN.O) for a chunk of the country’s more than 1 billion potential viewers.

FILE PHOTO: The Netflix logo is pictured on a television in this illustration photograph taken in Encinitas, California, U.S., January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

The success of original U.S. shows like “House of Cards,” “Orange is the New Black” and “Stranger Things” has been at the heart of Netflix’s seduction of 125 million subscribers globally.

But like other U.S. entertainment firms, it has identified the need to create local content as important in winning viewers in some of the big emerging markets which are likely to dominate growth over the next decade.

A Hindi-language thriller set in Mumbai, “Sacred Games” launches less than a month after the success of its Indian film “Lust Stories” and comes at a time when fellow U.S. heavyweights Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) and Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) are vying for control of Indian pay TV network Tata Sky as part of their fight for Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (FOXA.O).

Both “Lust Stories” and “Sacred Games” seek to marry the Western styles and values that exposure to Netflix and Amazon has brought to younger Indians with the rich and varied output of the country’s massive domestic film industry.

Netflix is spending $8 billion this year on original content and has said that figure will rise as it seeks to cement its position at the head of the streaming industry globally. The company’s international streaming revenue grew over 58 percent last year, according to latest filings. With China’s heavily censored market proving a hard nut to crack, India is at the heart of that growth. Netflix plans to release another three original shows there this year compared to Amazon’s planned 10 while both have also been battling to sign some of the country’s leading stand-ups for specials.

An action-driven police procedural that will also be familiar to foreign viewers, “Sacred Games” is anchored by Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan as a policeman with 25 days to head off a terrorist threat to Mumbai. It is directed by Bollywood veteran Anurag Kashyap and also stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte.

“Sacred Games” outlines the life of a police officer, Sartaj Singh, tipped by an anonymous call one morning promising him an opportunity to capture the powerful criminal Ganesh Gaitonde.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that there is a lot more at stake in the game than initially seemed.

The film’s stars and directors, all well known veterans of India’s huge Bollywood film system, greeted more than 250 specially invited Netflix fans and celebrities outside tech capital Bengaluru’s Forum Mall for the premiere.

Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Writng by Patrick Graham; Editing by Phil Berlowitz

The post Netflix turns to Bollywood to script India growth story appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2ucsc8b via Today News

[mystlnewsonline]

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/nbcs-holt-says-he-approached-north-korea-with-eyes-open/74308/

NBC's Holt says he approached North Korea with eyes open

NEW YORK/January 25, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) — NBC News anchor Lester Holt learned while going through customs in North Korea that his request to visit the heavily-fortified border with South Korea had been denied, and he was headed to a ski resort instead.

His schedule was not his own, and Holt is only the latest journalist to learn the price of peeking into one of the world’s most restrictive societies. Holt’s first trip to North Korea was timely, with international tensions high and NBC weeks away from broadcasting the Winter Olympics from South Korea. But Holt and NBC also faced criticism for presenting an air-brushed view of the dictatorship.

“I absolutely think the trip was worth it,” the NBC “Nightly News” anchor said. “We talk about this place, we hear the bellicose language from its leader and we hear the reaction from our country. It’s important to get on the ground. You go to a place like North Korea with your eyes wide open.”

Holt’s reports began Saturday and continued after he returned to the U.S. on Tuesday — and there was a marked change in tone after he got home.

Critics like former Fox News commentator Eric Bolling tweeted disgust with Holt’s on-air comment on Monday that he had been treated with respect by the North Koreans. The New York Post, in an editorial, said that “we’re still trying to figure out why NBC ‘Nightly News’ and Lester Holt decided to shill for North Korea’s dictatorship.”

It was clear even from Holt’s early reporting that he was being shown only what the regime wanted him to see. While at the ski resort, he said on Sunday’s “Today” show that “what you’re seeing here certainly flies in the face of a country that’s undergoing crippling sanctions and that may be part of the reason we were invited to see this.”

Still, he watched his words. Holt operated under the assumption that everything that was said, including internal editorial discussions among NBC colleagues, was being monitored while he was still in their country, he said.

“I don’t want to say we censor ourselves, but you have to be mindful of the fact that you’re continuing the trip there,” he said. “You’re considerably more free when you’re out of there in how you frame certain things.”

In his report Tuesday after returning home, Holt said that he hadn’t seen many cars on the road and that while the ski resort was a source of pride for the North Koreans, it appeared to only be open to the nation’s elite. He made note of apparent poverty in rural areas when he was on the road, including the preponderance of manual labor, but his NBC camera operators were told to delete video it had taken.

The Tuesday report was coupled with an interview with a former North Korean turned dissident and now in hiding for fear of assassination — one that surely wouldn’t have aired while he was still in the country.

“As a reporter, you always want more,” he said. “We want to be able to control where we go, who we can’t talk to, and we weren’t able to. That’s frustrating, but it wasn’t like we didn’t know that going in.”

Network news crews need to carefully weigh the value of such trips, particularly when money is tight, said Tom Nagorski, executive vice president of the Asia Society and a longtime executive at ABC News, where he was involved in planning the network’s overseas coverage. Ultimately, when you’re seeking a depth of understanding, there’s no substitute for traveling to the country and seeing the people, even if the picture is incomplete, he said.

The true value comes in multiple trips to a country like North Korea, when a reporter becomes attuned to subtle changes in how people act and even what they wear, he said. He noted recent reporting by ABC News’ Bob Woodruff that illustrated his depth of knowledge about the country.

Even when she traveled to restricted areas in North Korea, Myanmar and China, veteran Boston Globe reporter Indira Lakshmanan said she soaked up valuable information. It’s important for journalists to be up front about the limits they were placed under so viewers or readers can keep the information in context, said Lakshmanan, an analyst for the Poynter Institute.

“Reporting under the strictures of a repressive regime is often the only legal and safe way into a place,” she said.

Holt believes the ski resort was selected so North Koreans could show that the country wasn’t as backward as depicted. While there, he also met with sports representatives to talk about the country’s participation in the Olympics and had a meeting with a top government official that he said turned into a lecture.

Holt, who said he learned three weeks ago that a longstanding request to get in the country had been approved, suggested the North Koreans were motivated “by a sense that they want to move past the nuclear issue, and to declare that ‘we are a nuclear nation, deal with it, and we want relations on another level now.'”

He said that it was interesting to hear the voice of the people. “Even though you know you’re not sure that you’re hearing their true voice, it’s certainly the voice of the country.”

By Associated Press, published on STL.NEWS by St. Louis Media, LLC (J.S)

[bitcoin24on]

#bitcoin #invest #money ||||

On this day nine years ago, quietly, bitcoin and its blockchain network were birthed with block zero, the Genesis Block. Without government permission or wealthy backers, it has generated a quarter trillion in value. In combination with the resultant industry it spawned, comprising thousands of alternatives, cryptocurrency is a seven hundred billion dollar market. Nearly a decade on its creator still remains unknown. More than half a million mined blocks later, enthusiasts can only imagine what is to come in bitcoin’s next nine years.    

Also read: 2017: The Year of Altcoins, Forks, and Five Digit Bitcoin Prices

Zero

Pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, perhaps one person, maybe a group, set loose a hinge of human history: the blockchain database and its resultant cryptographic currency, bitcoin. The first block, block zero, and its fifty bitcoin reward, now worth over 700,000 USD as of this writing, was locked, unable to be transacted, and for all time. Saturday, January 3, 2009 at 6:15pm, the Genesis Block also contained, smuggled in the code, text from the morning’s Times of London, a cultural timestamp and allusion to what bitcoin was meant to explicitly address: yet another taxpayer bailout of legacy banking screamed in a below-the-fold headline.

MAY 22, 2010 COMMENTER LASZLO CONFIRMS PURCHASE OF A PIZZA FOR 10,000 BITCOIN

  The Great Recession metastasized from the world’s reserve currency, the United States, to all first world nations, and quickly. Shakey investment vehicles, largely in real estate financing with risks insured by governments, proved a moral hazard, taking down the Royal Bank of Scotland, Alliance & Leicester, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Freddie and Fannie, among many others.

At least a few people appeared ready for something radical, something different, when it came to organizing one half of all transactions. Money, a main measure of wealth, had been nationalized, tethered to instruments of coercion, of force. The issue in the first decade of the 21st century was divorcing money and state, getting around governments and their incessant push to monitor and control and inflate.

JANUARY 28TH, 2011 WITH BLOCK 105,000 GENERATED JUST OVER A QUARTER OF ALL BITCOIN TO BE MINED ARE IN CIRCULATION

  Bitcoin, or something like it, might just be an answer. Despite previous attempts at competing currencies to government money, there was always a central point of failure, a place in its distribution or creation where it became exposed, fragile. Gold, certainly not new, was easily confiscated. Digital cash companies had offices, a creator or head, and were intimidated out of existence. Still others were litigiously hammered by government minders, dragging proponents into court, threatening livelihoods with jail time.

Hard-coded in its origin and open source, bitcoin could be run by anyone. In fact the more people who ran its software, the better. The more nodes in existence, the less points at which the network could be shut down. Passing the mathematical bits back and forth, capping their generation at 21 million units, would become a snap, easy and deflationary. As far as anyone has been able to determine, all of this was done by one person until a little more than a year after creating and maintaining bitcoin, he vanished. By either laws of self-preservation or wanting to obey the logic bitcoin demanded, Satoshi Nakamoto’s disappearing act meant the last limit to anti-fragility was lifted. No one was in control.

Trillion in 2018

Without a patent, no incorporation to limit liability, no billionaire genius bankrolling the project, lacking a visionary CEO spouting words of wisdom, swanky marketing budgets were nonexistent, and exactly no government backing, bitcoin has amassed a quarter trillion in market capitalization. Combined with its spawn, the thousand-plus alternative coins and variations on bitcoin’s theme are approaching seven hundred billion dollars in value. It’s probably not out of the question to assume the trillion dollar mark will be met in 2018.

MAY 8TH, 2012 SATOSHI DICE RESPONSIBLE FOR OVER HALF OF ALL BLOCKCHAIN TRANSACTIONS

  Often overlooked is the transfer of wealth. For sure, much of it could be chimera due to, ironically, the very same issue that gave it a reason to exist in the first place: easy government money sloshing about, distorting valuations. Putting that aside for the moment, consider what bitcoin could mean to millions who have just begun investing.

Previously, all real money had been made. Slobs and regular Joes could open a brokerage account, be fee’d to death, and hope for beating inflation, maybe. Onboarding rules. Taxes. Regulations. All of it combined to insulate Wall Street from competition by ordinary people with a little cash. Bitcoin changed that, potentially.

MARCH 23RD, 2013 BITCOIN MARKET CAPITALIZATION TOTALS ONE BILLION

  Anyone could receive or earn or buy bitcoin. And the value of that token, coin, payment system would rise. And rise. Crashes? Sure. But its price resilience has ushered in a new era of wealth for a great number of people who never otherwise could have participated. Wall Street, legacy money, was initially kept out due to their regulatory burdens, their protecting of themselves, their arrogance and natural sheep-like behavior. For maybe the first time in recorded financial history, small money was ahead of big money.

The implications of block zero go much further than the above. More remains to be written and studied, obviously. But taking a minute to appreciate participation in an honest-to-goodness historical moment might allow enthusiasts, veterans and newbies alike, to appreciate being active participants.

At what point did you discover bitcoin? Tell us in the comment section below! 

Images via Pixabay.

Express yourself freely at Bitcoin.com’s user forums. We don’t censor on political grounds. Check forum.Bitcoin.com.

The post We’ve Come A Long Way – Bitcoin Block Zero Was Born Nine Years Ago Today appeared first on Bitcoin News.

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[politicalfilth-blog]

WTH Really Happened: Dtube, Trump, FDA Studies, China, U.S. Petrodollar, Cops with Arrest Quotas and More.

We Are Change

Welcome back beautiful and amazing human beings.

If you’re disenfranchised by Google and YouTube like I am with all of the latest privacy concerns. Including their connections from the CIA and their building A.I. machines. They seemingly they want to dominate the world. You can watch my latest video on dtube.video below. Dtube is a decentralized cryptocurrency backed social media network that doesn’t censor or hinder anyone questioning the status quo.

DTube Video Link: bit.ly/2w8A4q9

It seems like the news is mainly dominated by natural disasters right now especially with Hurricane Irma devastating Caribbean islands and flattening homes as I write this. It’s making its way towards Florida and wildfires are devastating the west coast at the same time.

Since we’re seeing an oversaturation of news coverage on national disasters I wanted to make this video about the end of the US petrodollar, the poisoning of our food, and water supplies. Also, there is great news for the military-industrial complex and a stunning move by the FDA that soon may cure PTSD with ecstasy. We’re also going to get into the bigger truths of the Utah nurse arrest. Plus a lot more.

Let’s start today with some great news for the military-industrial complex as Donald Trump has just announced that he will sell South Korea billions of dollars in weapons loosening the restrictions on South Korea’s maximum payload for missiles. Which will lead of course to more U.S. arms sales, one of the biggest growing profitable businesses in the United States.

We’re also learning today that a lot of these great military contractors are getting access to Donald Trump through a secret Golf Club membership. Through his private club, a new list reveals the lobbyists and CEOs are paying millions to get gain access to the US president. Yeah, that is not a surprise, that’s how business is done here in the United States. This is why Donald Trump got rid of all the outsiders in his administration and replaced them with just the corporatists. People from Goldman Sachs, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and I could go on and on. We have been seeing the effects of that with Donald Trump ramping up defense spending while other less profitable ventures well yeah they’re not that interesting.

This latest economic boom for military contractors comes mainly due to the most recent news of North Korea. Which as we uncovered in this YouTube channel you’re not getting the full truth about. The fact that North Korea wants to negotiate on nuclear weapons, but the mainstream media does not find that important to tell you.

I mean it’s pretty clear right now to anyone paying attention especially if you’ve been following American foreign policy that the main thing that’s keeping the U.S. Empire alive is military supremacy.

The there is the U.S. petrodollar which the United States defends at any cost. Just ask the people of say Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, China, Russia, and others. For some reason, those countries are seen as a threat, or they’re invaded and destroyed from the inside. This petrodollar hegemony should be a well-known fact since it’s the main reason the United States is the foremost superpower in the world. Everyone is trading in U.S. dollars, especially for oil.

The latest head-butting between the United States and China especially with Donald Trump threatening the countries who do business with North Korea. Which is mostly China. We have seen a very significant move away from the dollar in China. Just days ago China launched a plan for crude oil future contracts priced in Yuan and convertible into gold. In what analysts say could be a game-changer for the industry.

The article that broke this story stated, “China, sees new world order with oil benchmark backed by gold.” China who is the world’s biggest oil importer allows Russia and Iran to circumvent US sanctions by trading in the Yuan which they could turn into gold.

This could reset the world’s reserve currency system and is a major game changer that directly cuts out the US dollar. We have already seen the economic effects of this news with the US dollar falling shortly after this announcement.

China is showing the United States that they mean business they will not allow the U.S. to invade North Korea. This is just an escalation of conflicts that have been happening between the United States and China for many years. China has just held a military exercise to fend off a “surprise attack” along the North Korean border. Demonstrating their military prowess and of course more saber rattling.

We’ve been covering the U.S. Petrodollar for a very long time since it’s key to understanding U.S. foreign policy and it’s not what the mainstream media tells you to believe. We made a full comprehensive video some time ago talking about when the Chinese decided to have their currency the Yuan backed by gold. We saw this as an escalation of this bigger economic war that’s happening. Now that countries have decided to trade oil with that currency the bigger question has to be asked; will this bring an end to the U.S. petrodollar.

After researching this, I don’t think can happen quite yet. Not unless the Chinese can establish a better relationship with Saudi Arabia and break the U.S.-Saudi alliance. An association that has been working in cooperation with each other ever since Henry Kissinger was able to work out a deal with them about trading and selling oil only in the US dollar. I would expect some economic hit on the U.S. dollar and its purchasing power.

Now moving forward in rather hopeful, happy, and positive news an oh no sorry. We’re learning that in the United Kingdom traces of 123 pesticides including those linked to cancer, hormone disruption, and damage to brain development have been found in fresh produce supplied to primary schoolchildren. Produced delivered through a government scheme aimed at promoting healthy eating habits.

Ever since factory farming was introduced to the world, we see more pesticides used in our fruits and vegetables which are a way for a lot of these big farming companies to make more profit. Having less food waste because less food is being eaten away by bugs. In exchange for that, there are some damaging effects.

Yeah, that’s not good news. At least we have water, right? Nope as we’re just finding out from a new study that tested tap water all around the world. It’s showing how billions of people globally are drinking water contaminated by plastic particles. With 83 percent of samples found to be polluted. The United States has the highest contamination rate at 94% with synthetic fibers found in tap water. They tested at sites including Congress buildings, the EPA, Trump Tower, and other locations. Plastic and water create an estrogen mimicker and other hazardous damaging effects on the human body.

Now some good news. If you have some post-traumatic stress disorder, like from your food and water supply being poisoned as people argue over statues and other meaningless mimicking things that do not affect your life. The FDA just granted a breakthrough status for ecstasy for its effects on post-traumatic stress disorder. Ecstasy was used by the FDA in trial runs on roughly 200 to 300 patients with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. The results showed a remarkable improvement in most patients with 61% reporting no PTSD symptoms after two months, and 68% of the patients being PTSD free after a year. The FDA is proceeding with a third breakthrough trial run that may make it legal to have medical ecstasy to fix and cure post-traumatic stress disorder on the market.

However, I don’t trust the FDA since you know they’re okay with the party drug ecstasy but not marijuana for some reason. They still deny medical marijuana to US veterans. Even with government studies showing how legal marijuana is reducing the number of teens using it. That probably has no connection at all to the prison industrial complex being a big business in some states arresting people for using the plant.

Which brings us a very nice segue of the Utah nurse that was recently arrested because she refused police officers request to draw blood from a patient without a warrant and the patient’s consent. She, of course, was assaulted and arrested for following the law. We have just learned from a whistleblower police officer what could is likely the cause and motivation for this false arrest.

The police officers in Salt Lake City Utah are ordered to make five arrests a day. This policy is a very personal issue for me especially living in New York City where I see this unwritten quota on police officers to write tickets and arrest people. This leads to gross violations and misconduct by police officers for trivial crimes. I have seen people here in New York City get tickets for many trivial reasons. Including in the subways for having a coffee or walking too fast there. People also get arrested for riding there bike on the sidewalk or entering Central Park at midnight.

This policy pisses me off because as we know the job of a police officer is already extremely difficult. They deal with some of the worst aspects of our society but establishing quotas only makes things worse. It should be obvious there is a direct correlation with revenue for the state and putting people in jail.

So here we have another booming business inside of the United States. We have more people incarcerated here than anywhere else in the world. This is likely why the police officer who violated the law most likely won’t be facing any charges. Hospitals like have begun setting up policies where they ban police officers from direct contact with nurses.

So yeah that’s the news for the day I hope you found it useful to be informed about this stuff. If you did, please subscribe and stay tuned. We’re going to be covering more important stories here on youtube.com/wearechange. We are a fully independent news organization that’s run by you and your donations. Without you dudes and dudettes here contributing I would not be able to do this job. Even though this job is difficult, I appreciate the opportunity to be here for you. That’s why I always end my broadcast by saying I love you. Thank you.

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The post WTH Really Happened: Dtube, Trump, FDA Studies, China, U.S. Petrodollar, Cops with Arrest Quotas and More. appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/wth-really-happened-dtube-trump-fda-studies-china-u-s-petrodollar-cops-arrest-quotas/

[newstfionline]

Gulf Arabs vs. Qatar: Why all the fuss over Al Jazeera?

Taylor Luck, CS Monitor, July 7, 2017

AMMAN, JORDAN--Amid all the talk of Qatar’s alleged support for terrorism, at the core of the Gulf Arab countries’ ongoing blockade of the oil- and gas-rich emirate is one major source of contention: Al Jazeera.

A central demand of the Gulf states lead by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates--relayed by mediator Kuwait and allegedly leaked by Qatar--is for the Gulf country to “close Al Jazeera network and its affiliates.” Other key demands: downgrading ties with Iran and closing a Turkish military base in Doha.

Why the intense focus on the pan-Arab TV network?

Funded and launched through loans and grants from the Qatari government, even those who are not critics say it is at times hard to determine where Doha-based Al Jazeera ends and Qatar’s interests begin. However, network officials say they have had complete editorial freedom over the past two decades.

Despite its more recent, brief foray into the American cable news market, Al Jazeera’s reputation in the West is still colored by the aftermath of 9/11, when the network’s inclusive coverage was seen as providing a platform for leaders of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, particularly Osama bin Laden.

But Al Jazeera was and is controversial in the Arab world for a much different reason. When launched in 1996, the network was seen as a revolutionary force bucking a largely conservative and autocratic status quo.

In an era in which state-run media dominated the Arab world, Al Jazeera for the first time broadcast differing views and opinions, and raised political awareness.

Today, experts say states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are exerting all their diplomatic and economic might to bring an end to Al Jazeera in a vain bid to close its Pandora’s box of democratic and liberal social values.

When Al Jazeera formed in 1996, the media landscape in the Arab world was bleak.

State-run TV stations that broadcast propaganda and the regimes’ version of events were the only accessible news. Opposition parties, unionists, analysts, and even average citizens who dared to contradict the official party line on everything from the Palestinians to bread prices were banned.

“Arab TV did not even have live interviews--state TV could trust their anchors, but they couldn’t even trust interviewees to carry the party line,” says Daoud Kuttab, a veteran Palestinian journalist and executive board member of the International Press Institute, a Vienna-based organization that advocates for press freedom.

The monopoly on information served autocratic Arab regimes, none more so than Gulf Arab countries, which used state-run newspapers, broadcasters, and clerics to dictate positions on social issues, discourage dissent, and cement the leaders’ image as benevolent rulers.

But when staffers of the recently shuttered BBC Arabic Television launched Al Jazeera, the old rules of Arab media were thrown out.

Opposition politicians were allowed to speak. Everyday citizens, and their economic and political struggles, were highlighted. Analysts say it shook the Gulf states to their core.

“These regimes are not elected, they fear anything that relaxes their grip on power, and they have the media under tight control--Al Jazeera blew that all away,” says Hugh Miles, editor of Arab Digest.org and author of “Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World.”

“It is a direct existential threat to their system.”

Program presenters and their guests openly discussed democracy, human rights, corruption, and citizens’ rights--what many call a “political awakening” in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Under its motto, “the opinion and the other opinion,” Al Jazeera expanded its approach to international affairs, exposing the Arab public for the first time to competing views on issues across the world. For every Osama bin Laden video tape, there was a rival Northern Alliance fighter. It interviewed Hamas spokesmen and Israeli generals. For every fiery cleric there was a secularist, or even an atheist.

“We never knew there was an opposition in Libya, we didn’t know there were Kurds in Syria or heard from Shiites--all these minority and opposition groups that were gagged were given a voice,” Mr. Kuttab says.

By including a diverse array of voices, the network highlighted the contradictions in Gulf states’ foreign policy--often tied to their major ally, the US, and unpopular with Arab publics--such as toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq war.

The station’s willingness to bring in different voices led Arab governments to label the station alternatively as a tool of the CIA, a Mossad creation, a propaganda arm for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, or an Al Qaeda mouthpiece.

Al Jazeera’s focus on the political opposition also gave a substantial platform to Islamists, who for decades had been marginalized and pressured by Arab regimes.

The station gave particular space for the Muslim Brotherhood, which called for political openings in the region. The Brotherhood was identified by Gulf regimes as the greatest threat to their Arab allies and the only true opposition force that could one day challenge their rule at home.

These fears would only grow following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, during which Al Jazeera was criticized for devoting a substantial amount of positive coverage to the post-revolution Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and to the Islamists in Tunisia and Libya--putting Qatar at odds with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

“Officials in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would prefer that clerics from groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood not have any Arab media outlet which can serve as their platform to deliver messages to citizens not only of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also the greater Arab world,” Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of the DC-based Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy, says via email.

Although Al Jazeera host and benefactor Qatar follows a conservative interpretation of Sunni Islam, Al Jazeera has provided airtime for diverse views, encouraging debates on theological and practical daily issues.

The airing of differing views on Islam has been a blow to Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, which rely on their control of the religious establishment to cement their legitimacy--using an army of paid clerics to sell their policies and praise their leadership.

Friday sermons in Saudi Arabia have been used to promote its catastrophic war in Yemen, stir up sectarian hatred of Iran, and to ensure fealty to kings and princes.

“Al Jazeera makes these regimes look stupid, it undoes all their work by getting on sheikhs that are more individually minded and democratically inclined,” says Mr. Miles, the editor and author.

“They are attacking their religious legitimacy, which is extremely sensitive.”

Al Jazeera has addressed social issues and taboos often discussed in heated debates at home but never broadcast on-air: honor killings, the plight of migrant workers, suicide bombings, sexual harassment.

“We opened a huge debate and exposed a lot of contradictions in the well-established orthodoxy of traditional organizations, including political and religious groups,” says Wadah Khanfar, former director general of Al Jazeera from 2003 to 2011.

“Al Jazeera not only confronted governments, but religious authorities and social structures to address the issue of women’s place in society, our relationship with the West, and other matters which are preventing our society from progressing to democratic states.”

It has yet to be seen if the Gulf Arabs’ campaign can succeed in censoring Al Jazeera or shutting it down altogether. Previous attempts to launch competing networks, such as Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya, have failed to rival Al Jazeera’s reach. Meanwhile, a generation of social media activists and citizen journalists, taking their cue from Al Jazeera, continue to work through sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

“The factors which made Al Jazeera so popular among Arabs years ago will not disappear,” says the Gulf State Analytics’ Mr. Cafiero, “raising questions about how much Riyadh and Abu Dhabi could even achieve politically from successfully pressuring Doha.”

[lucyoccupy]

MILLION A WEEK CLUB - YOUR RAD THIS WEEK 11, 12, 13, 14 - Get Email Updates and Fight Censorship!

MILLION A WEEK CLUB – YOUR RAD THIS WEEK 11, 12, 13, 14 – Get Email Updates and Fight Censorship!

“The United States is a very radioactive country.” https://videopress.com/embed/oQsKk5Nw?hd=0&autoPlay=0&permalink=0&loop=0 “Are you in a city that gets a Million Counts of Radiation a Week?”

      WHEN YOU ARE CENSORED, I AM CENSORED; WHEN I AM CENSORED, YOU ARE CENSORED. WHEN THEY ARE CENSORED, WE ARE CENSORED. FIGHT BACK! SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE. MILLION A WEEK CLUB – YOUR RAD THIS WEEK email…

[tvguidancecounselor]

TV Guidance Counselor Episode 381: Russ Woody

Today Ken welcomes TV veteran and author of the new book "Tuesdays with Ted", Russ Woody.

Ken and Russ discuss Burbank, wildfires, worshiping television, Ted Danson, Becker, Cheers, seeing the top of your head, Dick Van Dyke, Working at MTM, Newhart, St. Elsewhere, comedy vs. drama, Barney Miller, multi-cam sitcoms, how hard it is to tell a story in 19 minutes, bad people on TV, Cybill, Roseanne, Cosby, insane stand up comedians, how remarkable it is that anything good ever gets made in Hollywood, Green Acres, Tom Poston, Absolutely Fabulous, The Royle Family, US remakes of UK shows, network censors, Jacob's Ladder, Norsemen, Liam Neeson's improv, Toast of London, working in a writers' room, navigating personalities, Dabney Coleman, Slap Maxwell Story, winning people over, living with depression and anxiety, empathy, perspectives, the solitary nature of writing, Murphy Brown, being perfect like an orange, Jay Tarses, mentors, George Clooney, sticking up for people because you can, treating people right, cost benefit analysis, Ken's respect for Bonnie Hunt and a P.A. who's never had a tomato.

Check out this episode!