Many Youtubers are having their comments ghost banned (shadow banned) because they are getting lost in the spam filter, or are deliberately being tagged as spam by trolls who leave hateful comments, and then remove legitimate responses.

There should be no limit to how often youtubers can comment, and there needs to be a simple system to make sure that users are not being unfairly banned. A simple process for users to be able to appeal and re-instate their ghost ban needs to be introduced. There needs to be a clear warning to the user that they have been ghost banned, why specifically they have been banned, as well as clear procedures for how they can appeal, or what they need to do in order to avoid being banned in future. It is highly deceptive to ban a user without informing them, and providing no useful procedure for the user to appeal.

News from Oregon that Governor Kate Brown is on board with a bill which would establish "universal" invasive home visits by state employees to all households with newborns is causing shockwaves throughout the nation.

While the proposed legislation, known as Senate Bill 526, remains in a nascent form with very few published details, it has nonetheless generated great excitement among progressive statists while sending chills down the spines of parents and families who fear increased government interference in their private lives.

The controversial bill directs the Oregon Health Authority “to study home visiting by licensed health care providers.” It has also been given “emergency” status, meaning that action must be taken before the end of this year.

Being someone who believes strongly in the Constitutional principles that this nation was founded upon, it truly pains me to have to pen this article. However, I will gladly endure the discomfort if my words motivate even one person to pick up a pen, or perhaps a camera, and get into the fight for this nation’s very survival.

As we witness daily, the forces of evil have seemingly been “poured out” onto earth like some sort of Biblical plague. To say that madness reigns does not fully illuminate the true nature of the trouble that we are currently in as a nation. The word dystopia immediately comes to mind.

At a tense moment of a number of heightened geopolitical standoffs in hot spots where Russia and the west have competing aims, Russian bombers are reportedly cruising over skies near Canada. This comes just as UN Security Council talks are underway over Venezuela at UN headquarters in New York, and at a time when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is in Washington DC for talks with US leaders.

Venezuela's top military attaché at the Washington D.C. Embassy has broken with the Nicolás Maduro regime Saturday, and has urged other members of the Venezuelan armed forces to recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate interim president, according to the Miami Herald.

As the Venezuelan defense attaché in the United States, I do not recognize Mr. Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela," Silva told el Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview from Washington.

"My message to all armed forces members, to everyone who carries a gun, is to please let’s not attack the people. We are also part of the people, and we’ve had enough of supporting a government that has betrayed the most basic principles and sold itself to other countries," added Silva.

As the Venezuelan defense attaché in the United States, I do not recognize Mr. Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela," Silva told el Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview from Washington.

Venezuela's foreign minister has blasted a European ultimatum to hold elections within eight days as 'childlike'.

Jorge Arreaza insisted that Nicolas Maduro remained the legitimate president despite pressure from Britain, France, Spain, Germany and the US.

'Europe is giving us eight days? Where do you get that you have the power to establish a deadline or an ultimatum to a sovereign people,' Arreaza told the Security Council. 'It's almost childlike.'

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on allies to 'pick a side' on Venezuela, and described its President Nicolas Maduro as part of an 'illegitimate mafia state' responsible for the country's economic collapse.

Pompeo was addressing the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Saturday, which met at his request after Washington and a string of countries in the region recognized Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido as head of state.

Pompeo urging the U.N council to back Guaido and called for free and fair elections as soon as possible, adding that Maduro must step down.

'Now it is time for every other nation to pick a side. No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you're in league with Maduro and his mayhem,' Pompeo told the council.

India and Pakistan have been engaged in a long-standing conflict, with continuous mutual accusations of ceasefire violations along the de facto border in Kashmir, which has been a flashpoint of tension between the two countries for over six decades.

Pakistani coast guards reportedly entered the Indian territorial waters in Arabian Sea, near the International Maritime Boundary Line, and opened fire on two boats with Indian fishermen.

The guards allegedly seized the fishermen’s belongings, capturing as many as 12 people – although they released them later, ABP Live reported.

Fishermen Narrowly Escape Split Second Before Catastrophe (VIDEO)
Relations between the two neighbouring countries have historically been tense, but hit a new low after India accused Pakistan of harbouring gunmen who killed 19 Indian soldiers in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir in September 2016. Islamabad has, however, denied the accusations.

YouTube claims it will stop recommending conspiracy videos.

Following complaints over the number of unwelcome videos appearing in recommendations, the Google-owned site says it plans to try and banish them.

It says 'borderline' videos that come close to violating community guidelines or those which 'misinform users in a harmful way.' will now be excluded.

Since the decision of the Trump administration on Wednesday to recognize a member of the Venezuelan opposition, Juan Guaidó, as an unelected “interim president,” the situation in the South American country has become increasingly tense, with efforts to force the current government of Venezuela — led by Nicolás Maduro — out of power having grown in intensity over the past few days.

Despite the enormous pressure his government faces from both local and international sources, Maduro has managed to maintain his position thanks to a combination of factors. These include the loyalty of the country’s well-armed military, in addition to popular support from Venezuelans who recently voted for Maduro, as well as Venezuelans who may not like Maduro but prefer him to a politician hand-picked and foisted upon them by the United States.

The researchers who reported that Israeli software was used to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s inner circle before his gruesome death are being targeted in turn by international undercover operatives, The Associated Press has found.

Twice in the past two months, men masquerading as socially conscious investors have lured members of the Citizen Lab internet watchdog group to meetings at luxury hotels to quiz them for hours about their work exposing Israeli surveillance and the details of their personal lives. In both cases, the researchers believe they were secretly recorded.

Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert described the stunts as “a new low.”

“We condemn these sinister, underhanded activities in the strongest possible terms,” he said in a statement Friday. “Such a deceitful attack on an academic group like the Citizen Lab is an attack on academic freedom everywhere.”

A mob of angry civilians has attacked a Turkish military camp near the Iraqi city of Dohuk, burning equipment and vehicles. The incident comes in response to the deaths of civilians during Turkish airstrikes, local media reports.
The incident occurred in northern Iraq on Saturday, when a large mob of civilians attacked a Turkish military encampment located in the predominantly-Kurdish region of Dohuk.

Footage from the scene which surfaced online shows civilians at the military encampment with Turkish military vehicles and tents burning in the background. At least one person died and 10 were reportedly wounded during the incident. It remains unclear if the Turkish Army sustained any casualties - servicemen are nowhere to be seen in the footage.

As global business leaders gather this week in the rarefied, snowy mountaintop resort of Davos they’re said to be fretting about how to reinvigorate the international economy.

What these elites should be doing, if they had any genuine interest in solving economic problems, is to spend less time in an exclusive Swiss resort and more time down on the streets and fields where most of humanity struggle to get by.

In a massive move to expose the Food and Drug Administration’s loyalty to big pharma, a top official from within the agency has come forward with damning claims. The FDA has succumb to Big Pharma’s influence and is approving deadly drugs to benefit their industry backers.

Dr. Raeford Brown, who is chair of the FDA’s committee to review various opioid based drugs before approving them, blew the whistle in an interview with the Guardian this week.

Brown told the Guardian that there is a “war” inside the FDA in regard to approving opioids. Brown said the agency has “failed to learn the lessons” of the recent epidemic which now claims tens of thousands of lives each year—around 150 deaths every single day.

Brown’s interview comes on the heals of the FDA approving a horrifyingly strong drug that is 1,000 times stronger than morphine and 10 times stronger than the incredibly deadly drug fentanyl.

"The U.S. had been planning this coup in Venezuela. It was the Trump administration that told the little-known opposition leader Juan Guaidó to declare himself (unelected) 'president.'"

As U.S. lawmakers, civil society leaders, and Latin America experts continue to warn against American intervention in Venezuela's internal political affairs, the Wall Street Journal on Friday confirmed suspicions that opposition leader Juan Guaido's move to declare himself "interim president" of Venezuela this week was highly coordinated with the Trump White House and Republican lawmakers.

"The U.S. is not just 'behind' this coup; the U.S. is openly leading the coup."
—Ben Norton, The Real News

Former U.S. diplomat Elliott Abrams will lead U.S. efforts on Venezuela, where Washington has recognized an opposition leader as the legitimate president, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday.

“Elliott will be a true asset to our mission to help the Venezuelan people fully restore democracy and prosperity to their country,” Pompeo said in announcing Abrams’ appointment.

He said Abrams would accompany him to the United Nations on Saturday for a Security Council meeting on Venezuela where the U.S. will press other countries to support opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim head of state.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has told the media that the national oil company NIOC struck light sweet oil in a hitherto untapped oil region.
“This is the first time we’ve reached oil in the Abadan region,” Zanganeh said, adding that the grade was very light and sweet, but giving no details regarding the amount of reserves contained in the reservoir.

Iran has continued to pursue new oil production opportunities despite US sanctions that have reduced its crude oil exports significantly although probably not as significantly, to date, as planned. As of December, Iran was shipping some 1.3 million bpd abroad, the International Energy Agency said in its latest Oil Market Report.

The United Nations Human Rights Office announced yesterday it is beginning an investigation into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In a statement, the UN said that an independent panel would seek to establish “the nature and extent of states’ and individuals’ responsibilities for the killing”.

The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, said she would travel to Turkey next week to head an “independent international inquiry” into Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October.

British barrister Helena Kennedy and Duarte Nuno Vieira, a pathology expert and professor at the department of legal and forensic medicine at Coimbra University, Portugal, are among the team. Along with Callamard, they are to visit Turkey between 28 January and 3 February and plan to report to the UN Human Rights Council in June.

Callamard said that the findings will be raised at the UN rights office on 19 June.

Thousands of impoverished Gazans received $100 payments from Qatar on Saturday, the AFP news agency reported, after the Gulf state brought in over nine million dollars in aid funds for the Palestinian territory.

Hundreds of people queued at post offices in the Gaza Strip to each collect a $100 bill.

Palestinian media earlier quoted the Qatari ambassador to Gaza as saying the money would go to Gaza's poor.

"The Qatari grant for needy families will enter Gaza Saturday and be distributed ... to 94,000 families," Mohammed al-Emadi was quoted as saying.

Half the funds would be distributed Saturday and the rest Sunday, he said, with each family receiving $100.

Emadi was not immediately available to confirm the arrangement.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that families in Gaza would receive $400 in total, paid in four monthly instalments.

Putting a new face to the Venezuelan opposition then immediately allowed for all sorts of anti-Maduro actors use Guaidó as their man to rally around.

So now that there is a new imperial point-man inside Venezuela the real question is, what happens next?

There are two likely outcomes to the rise of Guaidó, one of which is contingent on him succeeding and the other which would be another complete failure for the imperialists.

Guaidó launches his campaign today following several days or organizing protesters at rallies in Caracas. The protests have already started to turn violent as of this writing with at least four dead and the opposition calling for the military to “rise up” against the Bolivarian government.

From 2017, the Trump Administration has been angling for regime change in Venezuela. Back during his tenure as CIA Director, Mike Pompeo was talking about trying to orchestrate such a “transition” of power.

This week, President Maduro’s power began to face a serious challenge. Following calls from Pompeo’s State Department, opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president. The hawkish parts of the Trump Administration are only too eager to embrace this, and are looking to aggressively back the change.

Backing Guaido means open efforts to undermine Maduro, and that seems to be the near-term direction for the administration. John Bolton says that the main focus right now is on figuring out a way to ensure that all money from Venezuelan oil exports goes directly to Guaido. Bolton said this was only consistent with US recognition of him as the legitimate government of Venezuela.

Russia warned that the attempted US coup attempt, which was later backed by the right-wing governments of Brazil, Colombia, and Canada, would result in bloodshed if further actions were taken. Kremlin spokesmen Dmitry Peskov stated said outside interference in the country were “unacceptable” and that talk of US military actions was “dangerous”.

Educated at the CIA-infested George Washington University, Guaido only became president of the National Assembly of Venezuela on January 5th. He immediately claimed that Maduro was not Venezuela’s President and worked to incite rebellion within the military.

Maria Iris Varela Rangel, a leader in Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Tweeted of the sedition, “Guaido: I have already gotten your jail cell ready with the right uniform, and I hope you name your cabinet quickly to know who will keep you company, you stupid kid”.

The phrase “axis of evil” proved so enticing that Undersecretary of State John Bolton used it two months later in a speech entitled "Beyond the Axis of Evil." He included three more countries – Cuba, Libya and Syria because they were "state sponsors of terrorism that are pursuing or who have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or have the capability to do so in violation of their treaty obligations.” The nice thing about an Axis of Evil List is that you can make up the criteria as you go along so you can always add more evildoers.

Iraq was removed from the playing field in March 2003 while Libya had to wait for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be dealt with, but North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Iran are still around.

The US has ordered all “non-essential” diplomats and embassy staff to leave Venezuela “for security reasons” after Nicolas Maduro cut diplomatic ties with Washington over its recognition of an opposition leader as president.
The State Department has also warned US citizens in Venezuela that they should “strongly consider” leaving the country, after Maduro said the US should pull their staff out of Caracas “if they had any sense.”

The Trump administration initially rejected Maduro’s ultimatum, claiming he lacks the authority to make such a decision after the US recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as acting head of state. Guaido, head of the National Assembly, proclaimed himself the rightful president and swore himself in on Wednesday, in a move which was immediately supported by Washington and its allies.

U.S. citizen Marzieh Hashemi, an anchor on Iran’s English-language service Press TV, has been released without charge after being illegally detained for ten days by the FBI.

Hashemi was arrested earlier this month while boarding an internal U.S. flight from St. Louis to Denver where she had been filming a documentary on the Black Lives Matter movement. The 59-year-old African American is a convert to Islam and has been living in Iran for the past several years.

Her arrest prompted protests across the world after it emerged she had not been charged with a crime, as well as reports that she had been denied Halal food and had her hijab forcibly removed while in detention.

“Marzieh and her family will not allow this to be swept under the carpet,” the woman’s family said in a statement shortly after her release. They “still have serious grievances [and] they want assurances that this won’t happen to any Muslim – or any other person – ever again.”

While the month-long government shutdown has had a range of lamentable consequences – ranging from the eviction of low-income citizens receiving housing assistance to the trashing of national parks – we’re not sure that this consequence of the drying-up of federal funds will leave many of our readers in tears.

On Monday, the union representing FBI agents complained that the partial shutdown has prevented them from paying off snitches, buying drugs while undercover, and renewing their own security clearances necessary to prevent being locked out of federal databases.

Ireland has advanced a bill which will prevent the sale of goods from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The lower house of the Irish parliament – the Dail – yesterday voted in favour of a bill which will ban the purchase of all goods and services from Israel’s West Bank settlements, which are considered illegal under international law. The bill was previously passed through the parliament’s upper house – the Seanad – before proceeding to the lower house and receiving a 78-45 majority in favour, Al Jazeera explained.

The bill – officially known as the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill – still needs to pass several more stages before being signed into Irish law, but it is expected to progress given its broad base of support from Irish opposition parties.

Microsoft has just unveiled its plans to partner up with NewsGuard, a “startup” company bent on censoring the world wide web, disguised as an app that helps users weed out “fake news.” Now, instead of being an app that users can choose to download, Microsoft will be incorporating the technology as an integrated feature of their mobile web browser, Edge. If you use your cellphone to surf the web, Edge might not be the best choice — unless you enjoy being spoon-fed leftist propaganda by a neocon corporation that is tied to Monsanto.

As if the blatant censorship of conservatives across social media wasn’t bad enough, Microsoft and NewsGuard are now conspiring to suppress all kinds of information, ranging from conservative news organizations to scientific literature exposing the dangers of GMOs.

We must learn the lessons of the past and not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups—as we have in Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Thursday. "The United States has a long history of inappropriately intervening in Latin American countries; we must not go down that road again."

Amid warnings that the Trump administration is actively seeking to topple the elected government of President Nicolas Maduro, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday spoke out against the U.S. government's "long history of intervening inappropriately in Latin America" even as he criticized Maduro for his violent crackdown on opposition protesters and violations of the country's constitution.

Liberal billionaire and renowned political meddler George Soros has labeled Chinese leader Xi Jinping ‘the most dangerous opponent of open societies.’ China says it’s a gross distortion not even worthy of a rebuttal.
Speaking at the Davos economic forum in Switzerland, Soros attacked China’s “social credit” system and technological advances, saying artificial intelligence and machine learning, put “in the hands of repressive regimes,” are a “mortal danger facing open societies.”

“China isn’t the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it’s undoubtedly the wealthiest, strongest and most-developed in machine learning and artificial intelligence,” said Soros, known for using his money to organize and support movements against the governments he deems oppressive.

The “main source of hope” against Xi are the Chinese people, whose aspirations, according to Soros, are sharply distinct from the regime’s.

Beijing brushed off Soros’ attack.

When people get excited about police wearing body cameras and their potential to accurately document the situation, it is important to remember that the video will only exist if the person wearing that camera allows it to. Highlighting this point is the recent case out of Miami in which a police officer was recorded covering his body camera as he and his fellow officers waylaid a suspect.

Despite happening close to two years ago, the public is only just now seeing the brutal and corrupt arrest of Ravon Boyd.

In May of 2017, Boyd was suspected of robbery when he fled from police. When officers finally found him, he was hiding in an alley, cornered with nowhere to go.

As police approached Boyd, as the video clearly shows, Boyd put his hands in the air, got down on the pavement with his face toward the ground, and outstretched his hands in front of him. He had effectively surrendered and was allowing police to take him in.

People have become totally obsessed with their own beliefs, opinions and biases that their behavior is going completely unexamined. Their reactions to the latest news item are automatic and predictable. The late iconoclast Terence McKenna pointed out that obsessive and unexamined behavior in pursuit of familiar stimulus (such as what we see with each moment of media outrage) is what drug addiction is about.

McKenna went a step further to say that television was the greatest drug ever introduced into society. What else could persuade people spend an average of 5-7 hours a day sitting in front of the TV? All the while consuming, in hypnotic states of mind, the scientifically crafted messages of corporate and government propagandists?

Here, McKenna expounds on the idea that television is a drug that is having negative consequences on individuals and on society at large:

The murder rate in Mexico is now so high it has altered the overall life expectancy of men living there. By analyzing cause-of-death data from the Mexican Institute of Statistics, researchers have discovered the staggering impact homicide is having on the nation—with the murder rate between 2005 and 2015 rising by 53 percent compared to the decade before.

A team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found that in the state of Chihuahua, 8,943 men between the ages of 15 and 50 were killed over 2010 and 2011. That’s nearly three times the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2006.

Life expectancy in Mexico has steadily increased since the 1940s. However, recent data indicates it has started to stagnate.

Once, the newspapers competed, leaders had differing views, the pundits argued, the parties called for various actions. They vied for our pennies and votes and tried to convince us. Not any more. Now they know better what’s good for us. They do not care about circulation, they do not have to sell newspapers, for the advertisements are paid for by the rich, anyway. Once, minorities had been excluded from discussion; now, it is majority that is banned.

There is not a single newspaper in the US that supports the views of the US President. Nobody defended him when he was accused, brazenly, in-your-face, of being a Russian agent. Nobody supported him when he called to bring the troops home from Syria. Nobody came to his aid when he mulled parting with NATO. There are tens of millions of men and women who voted for him, but he has only his Twitter account at his disposal.

As the international community splits along governments who continue to back embattled Venezuelan ruler Nicolas Maduro and governments, led by the US, who have officially recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate head of state, Reuters reported that a group of Russian mercenaries with ties to the Kremlin have been sent to Venezuela to provide security for Maduro as he struggles with the biggest threat to his rule in his six years in power.

On January 10—Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for his second term as president of Venezuela. “I tell the people,” Maduro said, “this presidential sash is yours. The power of this sash is yours. It does not belong to the oligarchy or to imperialism. It belongs to the sovereign people of Venezuela.”

These two terms—oligarchy and imperialism—define the problems faced by Maduro’s new government.

Pressure on Venezuela has been intense. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the overthrow of the Bolivarian government, led by Maduro. Sanctions have been ratcheted up. Economic warfare has become normal. Threats of a military invasion are in the air.

Lima Group

Venezuela is a prime target because of its world’s largest oil reserves. US dark forces want Big Oil controlling them.

They want fascist tyranny replacing Bolivarian social democracy. They’re waging longstanding political, economic, financial, and sanctions war on the country – military intervention an option if current tactics fail.

Previous US coup d’etat attempts failed. Another slow-motion one is underway. On Tuesday, Mike Pence encouraged the toppling of democratically reelected Maduro.

He turned truth on its head calling him a “usurper,” a “dictator with no legitimate claim to power,” falsely adding “(h)e has never won the presidency in a free and fair election, and has maintained his grip of power by imprisoning anyone who dares to oppose him.”

More than 100 Central American migrants were caught on camera illegally scaling the US-Mexico border wall in Arizona, just one week after 376 migrants tunneled through to the US near the same location.

Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents "apprehended a group of 110+ Central Americans who illegally scaled the wall with the assistance of a smuggler with a ladder," tweeted the Agency on Monday.

In the video, a procession of people can be seen slinking over the 21-foot wall and dropping to the ground, after which a person can be seen running further into Mexico while carrying a ladder. Of note, Trump's long-promised border wall - now to be made out of steel beams with 13-inch spikes on top, would be around 30 feet tall should it ever be built.

Back in March, we asked a simple question: Can Russia & China Rescue Venezuela?

Realistically, and in retrospect, the answer was always no, but the reason we asked the question was simple: both China and Russia have extended massive credits to Caracas, and Maduro's regime in particular. As such, letting the country “die” was never an option that either Beijing or Moscow would gladly accept; neither was it an option to allow a transition in Venezuela's top power echelons, one which replaces the pro-Russia and China Maduro regime, with another regime which would, supposedly, be supported and endorsed by the US, and thus jeopardize Venezuela's obligations to the two nations.

And, as we also said last March, "chances are that Washington is aware of the role that China and Russia play there. Otherwise [Washington] would have already gone ahead with the broad oil sanctions, despite potential headaches for U.S. refineries."

As it became clear during the 2016 US election that Donald Trump had a mountain of support underneath him, nervous Democrats connected to the Hillary Clinton camp reached out to US officials over a half-dozen times, "each tapping a political connection to get suspect evidence into FBI counterintelligence agents' hands," according to The Hill's John Solomon, citing internal documents and testimonies he has reviewed, along with interviews Solomon conducted.

Each contact by a Clinton crony was unsolicited, according to Solomon's FBI sources, in what they described as a "classic case of information saturation" meant to inject toxic and unverified opposition research into the agency's counterintelligence apparatus that should have known better than to eventually bite.

I do not for one second doubt that Americans are feeling more stressed and suffering more health-degrading symptoms as a result than they were prior to Trump’s election. But Pacific Standard and its “growing body of research” ignore the most obvious and significant culprit behind this phenomenon which is tearing people’s health to shreds: the mass media which has been deliberately fanning the flames of Trump panic.

The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just published a sarcasm-laden piece documenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia’s natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing.

The federal government, even though caught “suborning perjury,” will appeal the dismissal of a case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons and supporters over the 2014 armed standoff with Bureau of Land Management agents.

That’s according to Bundy’s lawyer, former Department of Justice attorney Larry Klayman, who pointed out to the government, apparently to no avail, the “gross injustice” of the case.

Klayman said on Wednesday: “The Department of Justice, which has sadly become known as the ‘Department of Injustice,’ is going ahead by with its appeal of the dismissal of the indictment a year ago, characteristically ‘circling the wagons’ to cover the dishonest and unethical tracks of Steven Mahre, Dan Schiess and other prosecutors in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada.

He said the prosecutors “were previously caught lying to the court, suborning perjury, threatening whistleblower Larry Wooten and, put simply, committing crimes.”

With negotiations behind the partial government shutdown showing no signs of a breakthrough, an estimated 800,000 government employees are set to miss a second paycheck on Friday.

Roughly 420,000 federal employees are working without pay, while around 380,000 have been furloughed amid the longest shutdown in US history, according to CNBC.

With negotiations behind the partial government shutdown showing no signs of a breakthrough, an estimated 800,000 government employees are set to miss a second paycheck on Friday.

Roughly 420,000 federal employees are working without pay, while around 380,000 have been furloughed amid the longest shutdown in US history, according to CNBC.

Chinese military forces have deployed multiple units armed with anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles that can destroy scores of American satellites, according to a Pentagon intelligence report.

The new report by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, known as NASIC, revealed that People's Liberation Army units have begun training with the satellite-killing missiles.

The report warns that China, along with Russia, has developed an array of space arms designed to challenge U.S. space superiority. The report was made public last month.

The report for first time reveals that Chinese military units already are conducting training for space attacks with anti-satellites missiles. Russia also is developing a new anti-satellite missile the report said.

The government shutdown is just providing more evidence that the government itself is unnecessary. Private companies in the Yellowstone area are voluntarily paying to keep the park clean without federal funding.

According to Reason, nearly three weeks into the government shutdown, some of America’s national parks are starting to get a bit rank. Access to the parks (which are supposedly “owned” by the people who think they are the government) is free since there are no employees to collect the typical $35-per-vehicle entrance fee. But that comes with the trade-off of there being no employees to empty trash bins or clean toilets either.

The collapse of the prior 'deescalation' agreement comes at a time when the White House has vowed to stick to the planned US pullout, however, this could be yet a another major development to complicate or delay any possible withdrawal timeline. FT described current Turkish-Russian talks in Moscow as follows:

Russia has accused Turkey of failing to live up to a promise to clear Syria’s Idlib of extremist militant groups and admitted that a landmark ceasefire agreement made last September had failed. Ahead of crunch talks between the leaders of the two countries in Moscow on Wednesday, Russia’s foreign ministry said the Islamist extremist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had “full control” of Syria’s last remaining major opposition stronghold. The damning assessment came four months after Moscow agreed to postpone a planned military assault on the city in exchange for a promise from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to clear it of militants.

Corporate and neocon-backed startup NewsGuard is one step closer to its vision of bringing its “unreliable” news rater to every screen after Microsoft makes it an integral part of its Edge mobile browser.
Rather than having to download an app as before, Edge users on Android and Apple devices can now just click one button to enable its “green-red rating signal if a website is trying to get it right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods or propaganda.”

Among the green-rated websites: Voice of America, CNN, Buzzfeed, the Guardian, New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as left-leaning upstarts such as Vice News and Refinery 29. Ones that are given the red warning label of “failing to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability”: RT and Sputnik (obviously enough) and the right-wing Daily Mail, Breitbart and the Drudge Report, in addition to hundreds of other non-mainstream news websites such as Wikileaks.

The president of Venezuela's National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, took an oath as interim president on Wednesday, amid nationwide marches in opposition to President Nicolás Maduro.

The United States in an official statement on Wednesday recognized Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela.

Maduro was sworn in for a second six-year term earlier this month, but his election was declared illegitimate by most of the international community, including the United States, the European Union and the Organization of American States.

The federal government has forcibly seized, shackled, and kept imprisoned an American citizen who has not even been charged with a crime. They have incarcerated the 59-year-old grandmother for over a week and say they will continue to do so for an unquantified period of time into the future.

For several days the government refused to admit it had taken the woman from the St. Louis airport as she was on her way to visit a sick brother.

For 48 hours, authorities refused to allow her to contact her family, and refused to tell anyone, including mainstream news media like the Associated Press, CNN, and Fox News where they were holding her.

Finally, a judge, who perhaps remembered what the United States Constitution requires, partially unsealed the court records, and the government’s official rationale became public: she had been forcibly taken away, shackled, and imprisoned because she was, they said, a “witness.” To a still-unspecified crime.

Get ready, folks, because the government— helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—is embarking on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

Russia has urged Israel to stop its "spontaneous" airstrikes on Syria, days after the Israeli military carried out fresh strikes against targets near the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Israel has repeatedly attacked Syrian government positions under the pretext that its attacking Iranian military advisers, who are in the country on a request from President Bashar al-Assad to assist the Syrian Army in their fight against foreign-backed terrorists.

"The practice of spontaneous strikes on the territory of a sovereign state, in this case Syria, must end," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, according to Russia's TASS state news agency.

Zakharova (pictured below) said such moves by Tel Aviv only fueled tensions in the region and harmed the long-term interests of all regional players, including Israel itself.

TENSIONS between Iran and Israel are "escalating and intensifying" after Israel struck Iranian targets this week, a former Pentagon official has warned.

World War 3: 'Rapid military escalation' occurring between Iran and Israel
TENSIONS between Iran and Israel are "escalating and intensifying" after Israel struck Iranian targets this week, a former Pentagon official has warned.

World War 3 fears were sparked this week after Israel hit the Syrian capital of Damascus early on Monday as part of its increasingly open assault on Iran's presence there. In response, Iran issued a chilling message to arch-enemy Israel – warning it is “impatient” and ready to confront and destroy the nation in a statement issued just hours after Israel launched the air raids in Syria.

n a 357-22 vote on Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass the NATO Support Act, which expressed Congressional support for the alliance and forbids any funding for any move by the US to withdraw from NATO.

One of the first bills pushed through the new Democratic-majority House, the vote saw every single voting Democrat, 208 of them, voting in favor. Only 22 Republicans voted against the bill. 54 representatives didn’t vote at all.

That reflects the scramble to get this vote quickly into the books and passed. Indeed, the bill went so fast from introduction to passage that the text of the bill was not even available on the Congressional website yet.

The bill is intended as a companion to a bipartisan Senate version which would forbid any effort by the president to withdraw from NATO without Senate approval. It does not appear the House version provides a mechanism for approval, however, instead just making staying in NATO an absolute requirement.

So what is DIP financing? How can a company that is about to default on all its debts and obligations even qualify for an additional $5.5 billion in debt? And why would banks be nuts enough to do it?

These are very timely questions, as a coming wave of bankruptcy filings by over-indebted Corporate America is shaping up on the horizon. Bankruptcy is a profit opportunity for an industry specialized in it. This includes the biggest banks, bankruptcy lawyers, restructuring advisory firms, and others. They’re already licking their chops.

So here we go, step by step, using PG&E’s disclosure as guideposts.

COLLATERAL FOR DIP LOANS: EVERYTHING AHEAD OF EVERYONE ELSE.
In its SEC disclosure, PG&E said that borrowings under DIP financing “would be senior secured obligations of the Utility, secured by substantially all of the Utility’s assets and entitled to superpriority administrative expense claim status in the Utility’s bankruptcy case.”

Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari said that it was time that the United Nations Security Council took action to stop constant Israeli attacks on Syrian territory, adding that Damascus might exercise its right to self-defence and respond to the Israeli attack on Damascus Airport with a symmetric strike on Tel Aviv Airport.

"Isn't it is the right time for this council to take the necessary measures to stop the repeated Israeli aggression against the territories of my country or should we attract the attention of the war makers in this council be exercising our legitimate right for self-defence and respond to the Israeli aggression against the Damascus International Airport by launching an aggression against Tel Aviv Airport?" Jaafari said speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

Michigan became the second state in the country to roll-out the world's first digital license plate.

According to an article in the Car Connection the state of Michigan just approved Reviver Auto's digital license plates called the "Rplate."

Reviver Auto boasts that a total of five states have already approved their digital license plates.

"Our innovative, multi-functional digital license plate, the Rplate Pro, will be on the road in California, Florida, Arizona and Texas in 2018."

George Orwell could never have dreamed of a world where license plates became a tool for more government surveillance.

Digital license plates are a privacy nightmare for motorists.

No longer will law enforcement have to run your license plate to see if you paid your taxes and insurance. Because now your license plate will display a big "X" notifying everyone that you are a violator.

Digital license plates are the epitome of Big Brother surveillance

One of the reasons identify theft is considered by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to be the crime of the century is because of the IRS. The Internal Revenue Service makes growing demands for information about people’s businesses and private lives every day. There is no such thing as personal privacy these days. That the IRS sends citizens a so-called “Privacy Act Notice” in all its mailings is a farce. The IRS lays claim to your data without court authority more so than any other government agency. And to make matters worse, they share the data with any other federal, state or local government agency claiming an interest, including foreign governments.

A river of data

The United States has confirmed that its envoy met the Taliban in Qatar as Washington seeks to negotiate an end to the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Zalmay Khalilzad, US special representative on Afghan reconciliation, on Tuesday met Taliban representatives in the Qatari capital Doha, the US State Department said.

"We can confirm that Special Representative Khalilzad and an inter-agency team are in Doha today talking with representatives of the Taliban," a State Department spokeswoman said, adding that the talks were taking place over two days.

The Taliban and the US envoys have officially met four times since July, in an attempt to find a negotiated settlement to the war in the embattled country.

However, Wednesdays comments mark the first time the US State Department has confirmed his meetings directly.

The meeting came even though the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack on Tuesday against an Afghan intelligence base in central Wardak province.

SOURCE: THEMINDUNLEASHED.COM
After WikiLeaks documents provided irrefutable evidence that the Democratic National Committee had violated its charter by rigging its primary for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders, what should have happened is this:

The DNC apologizing profusely to the public for violating the promises it had made to the electorate.
Massive, sweeping changes to bring transparency and public accountability to the DNC’s inner workings, including a complete overhaul of staff and leadership.
If at all possible, a complete do-over of the primary vote.
A dedication to attacking Trump’s right-wing policies from the left, showing the public that a progressive approach works better than a conservative one.

As more and more people shake themselves free from the taboo against the medical and recreational use of cannabis, one would think that the mainstream media would similarly shift with the cultural winds and begin to show more flexibility toward the plant.

In the case of CBS, this doesn’t seem to be an option.

The network’s stance was made clear when they rejected a commercial promoting the numerous medicinal and health benefits of cannabis during this year’s Super Bowl, when an estimated 100 million viewers will attentively watch not only the Big Game and Halftime Show, but also eagerly gape at the commercials that run during the game.

As is tradition, many of the ads will be for alcoholic beverages that viewers often binge-drinkthroughout the day. But ads for medical marijuana to treat glaucoma or improve the quality of life for suffering U.S. military veterans? Now that’s going too far – or so CBS executives say.

The “People’s Court” of China’s Hebei province has introduced a new app which identifies and even maps the location of people dodging their debts to help create a “socially credible environment,” state media reports.
The program has been described as “a map of deadbeat debtors,” revealing their financial information and exact location to nearby peers. The app brings snitching on your neighbors into the 21st century, making it simple and convenient to report those with outstanding financial obligations to the authorities.

According to ChinaDaily, a news service run by the Communist Party of China, the app will show if someone with bad credit is within 500 meters, making it easier for citizens to “whistle-blow on debtors capable of paying their debts.”

A straight line can be drawn between today’s political hysteria and the 1970s era of right-wing Soviet hysteria as Russia stands accused of “meddling” in American democracy. The merits of those charges have been discussed in depth elsewhere. According to the dean of American intelligence scholars Loch K. Johnson as reported in the New York Times, the United States has done extensive meddling in other nation’s elections.

The government shutdown, now in its 32nd day and being the longest ever in U.S. history, has caused massive media coverage on Transportation Security Agency (TSA) employees and their fate due to the shutdown. This is precisely because the TSA could bring the country to a virtual standstill, and thus has more power than most to end the shutdown by pressure.

Over this holiday weekend, sick call-ins for TSA employees not getting paid during the shutdown hit 10 percent,suggesting that the problem could spiral out of hand, despite the Agency’s insistence to the contrary.

There’s plenty of reason for the public sympathy with the TSA, despite the grueling process they put travelers through at the airport. Still, you won’t find this same level of human interest stories about judges, lawyers or other federal workers affected by shutdown.

Part of the reason may be the fact that TSA employees are the worst paid, or maybe because the agency exists because of the 9/11 attacks.

Venezuela’s government said on Monday it had suppressed a military revolt after a group of officers stole weapons and kidnapped several officials, as a video posted online showed a sergeant demanding the removal of President Nicolas Maduro.

Some two dozen officers attacked a National Guard outpost in the Caracas neighborhood of Cotiza, a kilometer (0.6 mile) from the presidential Miraflores palace, where they met “firm resistance,” the government said. Witnesses reported hearing gunshots at about 3 a.m. (0700 GMT).

Protesters later burned trash and a car outside the outpost, where the 25 officers were arrested, in a sign of growing tensions following Maduro’s inauguration to a second term that governments around the world have called illegitimate.

Despite claiming that their Sunday night airstrikes against Syria were exclusively targeting Iran’s Quds Force, Israeli airstrikes against Syria appear to have almost exclusively hit Syrian military targets, particularly the nation’s air defenses around Damascus airport.

Israeli strikes destroyed eight Syrian air defense batteries, and killed at least 11 troops in the strikes. The batteries were mostly aging Soviet designs, the sort Syria has traditionally favored for targeting incoming Israeli missiles.

The Syrian systems had some success, too, with Russia reporting that the Syrians had successfully intercepted more than 30 Israeli missiles during the attack. Conspicuously absent from the engagement, however, were the Russian S-300 systems recently provided to Syria.

The CEO of a U.S.-based global investment firm said Tuesday that POTUS Donald Trump’s tariff regime against China is having the desired effect of both slowing Beijing’s economy while “holding a gun to the head” of a county that is used to enormous economic growth.

On Monday, the Chinese government announced in response to its slowest economic growth since 1990 that it was willing to spend as much as $1 trillion to close the yawning trade deficit with the United States, something that provides the Trump administration with a huge amount of new leverage with which to win concessions with Beijing over the imbalance, Fox Business reported.

Dow futures down 450 points accelerating on US-China trade talks headlines...

The question is - will they close below? Or will a well-timed quote from Trump or Mnuchin about how well things are going spark another buying panic for the algos?