SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE

A core group of radical protesters who led the violent siege of Hong Kong's legislature on Monday were willing to die for their cause as martyrs, according to SCMP.

Approximately ten 'diehards' with a 'bring it on' attitude had no qualms about facing police batons, rubber bullets or worse, as they broke into and trashed the Legislative Council building.

"The protesters at the front were willing to sacrifice themselves. They turned so violent, hoping police would use aggressive force against them or shoot them with rubber bullets or beanbag rounds," said SCMP's source, adding "If the individuals were badly injured or even killed, all the blame would have been placed on police so as to spark global condemnation, and eventually bring the whole administration down."

SOURCE: TELESURENGLISH.NET

Social leader Tatiana Paola Posso Espitia, 35, was shot twice in the head Wednesday morning in front of her house in El Copey located in the Department of Cesar when two men on motorcycles fired at the activist and fled the scene.

The assassination occurred just as Espitia’s taxi driver, Wilson Ortega Palomino, arrived at her home to take the social leader to work, according to local media reports. The bad timing resulted in Ortega also being shot four times by the hitmen. He is in critical condition at a nearby hospital.

The National Network for Democracy and Peace in Colombia published a communique on its Twitter account firmly condemning the murder.

“Posso Espitia was a social activist committed to humanitarian aid, helping vulnerable people and victims of the armed conflict that continue to affect Colombia,” said the report.

SOURCE: NYTIMES.COM
GENEVA — Venezuelan special forces have carried out thousands of extrajudicial killings in the past 18 months and then manipulated crime scenes to make it look as if the victims had been resisting arrest, the United Nations said on Thursday in a report detailing wide-ranging government abuses targeting political opponents.

Special Action Forces described by witnesses as “death squads” killed 5,287 people in 2018 and another 1,569 by mid-May of this year, in what are officially termed by the Venezuelan government “Operations for the Liberation of the People,” United Nations investigators reported.

Laying out a detailed description of a lawless system of oppression, the report says the actual number of deaths could be much higher. It cites accounts by independent groups who report more than 9,000 killings for “resistance to authority” over the same period.

SOURCE: JUSTICE.GOV

A Key Biscayne, Florida, resident and the former CEO and Chairman of a now-bankrupt multinational pharmaceutical company was sentenced to 30 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release yesterday for his role his role in a $100 million scheme to defraud Westernbank of Puerto Rico (Westernbank). The losses triggered a series of events leading to Westernbank’s insolvency and ultimate collapse.

Jack Kachkar, 56, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Donald L. Graham of the Southern District of Florida, who also presided over the trial in this case. Judge Graham also ordered the defendant to pay $103,490,005 in restitution to the FDIC, as receiver for Westernbank. Kachkar was convicted on Feb. 4, 2019, after a three-week trial, of eight counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution.

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR

Commander of the Iranian Army’s Khatam Al-Anbiya Air Defence Base, Brigadier General Alireza Sabahi Fard, has warned the United States that Iran owns a “unique secret weapon” which it would use against US forces if they make any “wrong moves”.

Addressing a forum in Iranian capital Tehran yesterday, Fard claimed that Iran’s “deterrence and unique secret weapons have stopped the filthy enemy 200 miles away [from the Iranian border] in the Strait of Hormuz,” Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported.

“The enemy knows very well that it should not test Iran’s combat readiness, as its first mistake will be its last,” Fard added.

The grandson of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela has condemned attempts by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) to shut down London’s Palestine Expo event, at which he is slated to speak this weekend.

A statement issued today by Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela and the Royal House of Mandela read: “We wish to express our outrage and disgust at the intimidation tactics of the U.K. Lawyers for Israel. We say to them and all who seek to deny our basic human rights such as freedom of expression – hands off BDS, hands off Palestine Expo.”

The statement came after it was revealed that UKLFI – a pro-Israel legal group – has made several attempts to cancel Palestine Expo, which will take place at the Olympia London this weekend. UKLFI claimed that the organisers of the Palestine Expo – UK-based NGO Friends of Al-Aqsa – are “major promoters” of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“The purpose of a military conquest is to take control of foreign economies, to take control of their land and impose tribute. The genius of the World Bank was to recognize that it’s not necessary to occupy a country in order to impose tribute, or to take over its industry, agriculture and land. Instead of bullets, it uses financial maneuvering. As long as other countries play an artificial economic game that U.S. diplomacy can control, finance is able to achieve today what used to require bombing and loss of life by soldiers.”

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR

Iran’s Foreign Ministry yesterday urged the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to form a fact-finding committee to probe the issue of four diplomats kidnapped in Lebanon in 1982, Iranian news agencies reported.

“As has been announced several times over the past years, evidence shows that the kidnapped diplomats in Lebanon were delivered to the Israeli Zionist forces and then they were transferred to the occupied lands and they are now held in prison by this illegitimate regime,” a statement said.

It added: “Given the fact that Lebanon was under the US-backed Israeli occupation at that time, the Islamic Republic of Iran holds the Zionist regime and its supporters legally and politically responsible for the abduction and the terrorist action.”

Friday marked the 37th anniversary of the disappearance of diplomats identified as Seyyed Mohsen Mousavi, Ahmad Motevasselian, Kazem Akhavan and Taqi Rastegar Moqaddam.

If you thought Google was only censoring political content, think again. Just like I warned in a previous Natural News article, Google is now censoring all content about organics, homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic, herbs, nutrition and supplements.

Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo, has put together a damning collecting of evidence proving that Google is maliciously altering search suggestions to try to destroy natural health and naturopathy. It’s all part of Google’s total collapse into pure evil that has also seen Google censoring all conservative, Christian or pro-Trump content.

The National Security Agency collected records about U.S. calls and text messages that it wasn’t authorized to obtain last year, in a second such incident, renewing privacy concerns surrounding the agency’s maligned phone-surveillance program, according to government documents and people familiar with the matter.

The previously undisclosed error, which took place last October, occurred several months after the NSA said it had purged hundreds of millions of metadata records it had amassed since 2015 due to a separate overcollection episode. Metadata include the numbers and time stamps of a call or text message but not the contents of the conversation.

The American Civil Liberties Union obtained the documents, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit involving the surveillance program. They are heavily redacted internal NSA memos that discuss oversight of intelligence-collection activities.

On 15th June, the New York Times reported that Washington was “stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir Putin”. The article enraged President Donald Trump, who took to Twitter to attack the outlet, calling the “not true” story “a virtual act of treason by a once great paper”.

“Anything goes with our corrupt news media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” he fulminated.

In response, the paper’s public relations account said accusing the press of treason was “dangerous”, and claimed its reporters had “described the article to the government before publication”.

NATO defense ministers will hold talks on Wednesday over their next move if Russia doesn't destroy a new missile system that could allow for short-notice nuclear attacks throughout Europe, which the United States has said violates the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), according to Reuters.

"We call on Russia to take the responsible path, but we have seen no indication that Russia intends to do so," said Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a news conference, adding "We will need to respond."

While he declined to go into further detail, diplomats have said their defense ministers will consider allowing more flights over Europe by nuclear-capable US warplanes, as well as more military training and the strategic repositioning of US sea-based missiles.

The dispute has deepened a fissure in East-West ties that severely deteriorated after Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its involvement in Syria. -Reuters

The bitter biddy brigade over at knitting super-site Ravelry.com have their pussy-hats in a twist over President Trump, and have taken action ahead of the 2020 election by banning all support for Trump and his administration from their platform.

In a Saturday announcement, the "Facebook of knitting" said "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy," adding "Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."

A new undercover exposé by Project Veritas reveals that the company is programming its machine learning algorithms in order to avoid the "next Trump situation."

"We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again," said longtime Google employee and head of "Responsible Innovation," Jen Gennai.

"We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?" she added.

To be sure, Thursday was meant to be the start of the US-Iran War which hawks have been trying to piece together for generations. Trump ordered the attack, but ultimately, called it off a mere 10 minutes from a strike.

What had been a subject of debate was now USA Today accusing Trump of “not following through.” As concerning as blundering into a huge war in the Middle East had been, the new talking point was Trump showing weakness, and per Kori Schake of the Atlantic, damaging “America’s credibility.”

America can, after all, usually be counted on to react hastily, and stumble into what are in retrospect unfortunate wars. That Trump managed to just barely avoid the siren’s song of war was outside the expectation of American allies, and now they don’t know what to think. NBC News was quick to accuse Trump of “indecision” and declared it would “embolden Iran.”

SOURCE: RT

Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Sunday toured the West Bank with John Bolton, said he will listen to US peace proposals – but added that “any future agreement” with Palestine must guarantee an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley.
Footage posted on Sunday showed Israel’s prime minister and the US national security adviser overlooking the Israeli-occupied area from an aircraft and on the ground, with Netanyahu seen giving Bolton an excursion.

Speaking English on camera standing next to Bolton, the PM rammed the message home that Israel will not be leaving the area under any deal, saying it ensures “the minimal strategic depth and strategic height for the defense of our country.”

Netanyahu was also adamant that the Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley “guarantees stability and security for the entire region,” and that the IDF leaving the occupied Palestinian lands would result in “war and terror.”

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE

The former president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and giant pedophile Jacob Schwartz is suing New York City for pack pay, claiming that he was unfairly compensated for overtime.

Schwartz, 31, recently pleaded guilty to possessing a large trove of child porn on his laptop, according to Fox News. The former Department of Design and Construction employee was arrested in 2017 after police found over 3,000 images of child pornography and 89 videos. Some of the victims were as young as 6 months old.

Schwartz is demanding $18,000 - claiming that for the two years he was working for the city at $66,000 per year he was usually paid "comp time" instead of time and a half when working over 40 hours in a week.

SOURCE: NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK

Another pivotal battle is being fought over Hong Kong between Beijing and political forces backed by the special administrative region’s former British colonial masters.

At the heart of the battle is a proposed law that will allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China, Taiwan or Macau.

The BBC in its article, “Hong Kong lawmakers fight over extradition law,” would claim:

Critics believe the proposed switch to the extradition law would erode Hong Kong’s freedoms.

By “critics,” the BBC is referring to US and British-backed opposition, with the article specifically linking recent protests against the proposed law to the US-funded “Umbrella Movement” demonstrations in 2014.

The slow, incremental erosion of Western influence in Hong Kong and elsewhere across Asia-Pacific appears to be ending what has been centuries of European and then American primacy over the region.

SOURCE: INTELNEWS.ORG
It is not at all clear that the Islamic State and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claimed responsibility of the Sri Lanka bombings in April, had foreknowledge of the attacks, according to a top official. The militant Sunni group claimed it was behind the nine suicide blasts that targeted Catholic churches and five-star hotels in Sri Lanka’s western and eastern coastal regions on April 21. The near-simultaneous bombings killed 258 people and injured over 500. They are believed to constitute the bloodiest terrorist attack in the country’s history. Interestingly, many questioned the authenticity of the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility, which came a full two days following the deadly blasts. The group typically issues statements immediately following attacks by its followers around the world. The 48-hour delay in the case of the Sri Lanka bombings, therefore, was deemed “uncharacteristic” by some experts.

SOURCE: ZERO HEDGE

Google's Chrome is essentially spy software according to Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler, who spent a week analyzing the popular browser and concluded that it "looks a lot like surveillance software."

Fowler has since switched to Mozilla's Firefox because of its default privacy settings, and says that it was easier than one might imagine.

My tests of Chrome vs. Firefox unearthed a personal data caper of absurd proportions. In a week of Web surfing on my desktop, I discovered 11,189 requests for tracker “cookies” that Chrome would have ushered right onto my computer but were automatically blocked by Firefox. These little files are the hooks that data firms, including Google itself, use to follow what websites you visit so they can build profiles of your interests, income and personality.

SOURCE: ECONOMIC POLICY JOURNAL

Earlier today, George Soros, the chair and founder of the Open Society Foundations, was presented with the globalist (in the worst sense of the term) Joseph A. Schumpeter Award for innovative achievements in the field of business, economics, or economic policy, at a ceremony at the National Bank of Austria, in Vienna.

The award was presented by Ewald Nowotny, the bank’s governor and president of the Vienna Schumpeter Society, who cited Soros’s “commitment to freedom and the promotion of the pursuit of knowledge.”

“We are honoring George Soros with the Schumpeter Prize for making the world more open, more just and more equitable for all,” he said.

Past insider globalist recipients of the award have included former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, the former president of the European Commission Romano Prodi, and current president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi

SOURCE: JOAQUIN FLORES VIA THE STRATEGIC CULTURE FOUNDATION
They say hindsight is 20/20, and nothing exemplifies that more than the kind of post-mortem that can be done on the failed attempt by the US to overthrow the government of Venezuela. Working through the lack of options that the US has in terms of regime-change in Venezuela, should lead towards a higher degree of investor confidence in the Bolivarian Republic.

We understand that there are ultimately only three ways to attack a target state until it collapses:

Supporting an internal coup/revolution or terrorism;

Economic embargo perhaps leading to or justified by 1, and;

Military invasion justified by the government’s reaction to 1

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Tensions in the Persian Gulf are reaching a point of no return. In recent weeks, six oil tankers have been subjected to Israeli sabotage disguised to look like Iranian attacks to induce the United States to take military action against the Islamic Republic. Some days ago Iran rightfully shot out of the sky a US Drone. In Yemen, the Houthis have finally started responding with cruise and ballistic missiles to the Saudis’ indiscriminate attacks, causing damage to the Saudi international airport of Abha, as well as blocking, through explosive drones, Saudi oil transportation from east to west through one of the largest pipelines in the world.

The tech entrepreneur Ross McNutt wants to spend three years recording outdoor human movements in a major U.S. city, KMOX news radio reports.

If that sounds too dystopian to be real, you’re behind the times. McNutt, who runs Persistent Surveillance Systems, was inspired by his stint in the Air Force tracking Iraqi insurgents. He tested mass-surveillance technology over Compton, California, in 2012. In 2016, the company flew over Baltimore, feeding information to police for months (without telling city leaders or residents) while demonstrating how the technology works to the FBI and Secret Service.

The goal is noble: to reduce violent crime.

SOURCE: FOX NEWS

The Oregon state Senate closed Saturday after a “possible militia threat” from a right-wing group -- amid a broader drama over a walkout by Republican lawmakers over looming climate change legislation.

Right-wing groups posted their support for the 12 rebel Republicans on Friday, including one group -- the Oregon Three Percenters -- who joined in an armed takeover of a wildlife refuge in 2016.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for Senate President Peter Courtney told The Associated Press that the Oregon state police “recommended that the Capitol be closed tomorrow due to a possible militia threat.”

Oregon State Police, in a statement, said it has been "monitoring information throughout the day that indicates the safety of legislators, staff and citizen visitors could be compromised if certain threatened behaviors were realized."

The most recent manifestation of this can be seen in the Philippines where Manila has accused media front Rappler, founded by long-time CNN bureau chief Maria Ressa, and others of representing foreign interests and conspiring with foreign intelligence agencies in direct violation of the nation's constitution.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in its defense of Rappler would claim:

First were the politically motivated state charges that funding provided to the news website Rappler by a U.S. philanthropic foundation represented a violation of constitutional provisions barring foreign control or ownership of Philippine media.

SOURCE: THEGUARDIAN.COM

Day after day, the memos flashing across screens in an Oklahoma courtroom have jarred with the family-friendly public image of Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical giant best known for baby powder and Band-Aid.

In one missive, a sales representative dismissed a doctor’s fears that patients might become addicted to the company’s opioid painkillers by telling him those who didn’t die probably wouldn’t get hooked. Another proposes targeting sales of the powerfully addictive drugs at those most at risk: men under 40.

As the state of Oklahoma’s multibillion-dollar lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson has unfolded over the past month, the company has struggled to explain marketing strategies its accusers say dangerously misrepresented the risk of opioid addiction to doctors, manipulated medical research, and helped drive an epidemic that has claimed 400,000 lives over the past two decades.

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
The United States yesterday added Saudi Arabia to a blacklist of countries that do not play a sufficient role in fighting human trafficking.

According to the US’ annual report on human trafficking, Saudi Arabia has failed to prevent large scale violations committed against its foreign labour force, Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star reported.

The US also accused Cuba of human trafficking under the guise of a program to send doctors abroad, pointing out that similar action has been taken against 22 countries.

US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said of the countries named in the report: “If you don’t stand up to trafficking, America will stand up to you.”

'HE WAS MURDERED'
Morsi's death was mourned by many people around the world, including in Turkey, where mosques held special prayers on Tuesday, while leaders in Malaysia and Qatar were among those offering tributes.

However, the reaction has been largely muted in many capitals.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a key ally of Morsi, said this week that the Egyptian government should be tried in international courts for the death of the former president.

"Mohamed Morsi flailed on the courtroom floor for 20 minutes and the authorities did not help him. This is why I say Morsi did not die, he was murdered," Erdogan told supporters on Wednesday at an election rally in Istanbul.

"We, as Turkey, will follow this issue and do everything possible for Egypt to be tried in international courts for Morsi's death," he said, calling on the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to take action towards this end.

SOURCE: BUSINESSINSIDER.COM
United States Cyber Command on Thursday reportedly launched an operation against an Iranian spy group with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, despite President Donald Trump's last-minute scrapping of a direct military strike, former intelligence officials said in a Yahoo News report.

The Iranian group is believed to have supported the limpet mine attacks against two tanker ships earlier last week, which resulted in the US increasing its military posture against the country. The group reportedly tracked and targeted both military and civilian vessels sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Amazon.com Inc is exploring using drones not just to deliver packages but also to provide surveillance as a service to its customers, according to a patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The delivery drones can be used to record video of consented user’s property to gather data that can be analyzed to look out, say for example, a broken window, or a fire or if a garage door was left open during the day, the patent described.

According to the patent, the surveillance function of the drone can be limited through geo-fencing, a technology used to draw a virtual boundary around the property under surveillance. Any image or data that the drone captures outside the geo-fence would be obscured or removed.

The application for the patent was filed by the e-commerce giant in 2015 and granted on June 4.

FOR OVER 17 years, Moath al-Alwi has been held at Guantánamo Bay without charge. A Yemeni citizen, al-Alwi is one of Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners,” those whom the U.S. government has not charged with a crime but is unwilling to release. On June 10, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in his case, the latest setback in al-Alwi’s long effort to obtain due process rights. Even though the court wouldn’t take al-Alwi up, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote that it would only be a matter of time before the court had to grapple with the forever prisoners and the scope of the government’s power to hold them.

The Supreme Court rejection — and Breyer’s comments — briefly brought al-Alwi’s case back to national attention. Little noted, however, were the eyebrow-raising assertions that the government has made in this case about its powers to indefinitely detain not just al-Alwi, but anyone — including U.S. citizens.

A brief refresher is needed for those new to the story. In April 2017 Judge Collyer wrote a highly critical FISA Court opinion following discoveries by Director Admiral Rogers of government contractors accessing the NSA database, and extracting illegal search results from the electronic records of every American.

The scale of abuse was incredible [SEE HERE] and the surveillance issues had been covered up for years. Collyer cited the Obama administration as having “an institutional lack of candor” in their responses to her and the FISA court. The judge focused her criticism after a review of the period 2012 through April 2016.

Using the non-compliant admissions by NSA Director Mike Rogers and the results of the compliance audit, Judge Collyer used the period of November 2015 through April 2016 to gauge the scale of abuse at 85 percent. Eighty-five percent of all database search queries were unlawful

Professor Seif Da'na discusses the circumstances under which former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi collapsed and died and the Egyptian government's fear of an uprising

By ROSS IBBETSON FOR MAILONLINE

The US Navy says mines used to carry out a Gulf tanker attack 'bear a striking resemblance' to those used by Iran, as investigators retrieve fingerprints from the ship.

The Navy today displayed limpet mine fragments and a magnet removed from a Japanese vessel, one of two oil tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman last Thursday.

'The limpet mine that was used in the attack is distinguishable and also strikingly bearing a resemblance to Iranian mines that have already been publicly displayed in Iranian military parades,' said Commander Sean Kido at the Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), near the Fujairah port in the UAE.

He added that fingerprints retrieved from the stricken Japanese vessel would be used to mount a criminal case.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) is introducing legislation to clamp down on free expression online, under the pretense of fighting tech-company "bias" against Republicans.

Hawley's solution is to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a measure that prevents individual users of internet platforms and the companies that run them from being treated as legally indistinguishable from one another. Without it, digital companies and the users of their products (i.e., all of us) could be sued in civil court or subject to state criminal prosecution over content and messages created and published by others.

State attorneys general have been howling about Section 230 for more than a decade because it means that only the federal government can criminally prosecute internet intermediaries. Thus, state prosecutors don't have the opportunity to seize assets and bring in big financial settlements themselves.

SOURCE: MINT PRESS
HODEIDA, YEMEN — News that a U.S. government drone was shot down over Yemen’s port city of Hodeida has provoked anger among local residents, who say it is clear evidence of direct U.S. involvement in a war which has resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, and has left almost 25 million people in need of aid.

On Sunday, Lieutenant Colonel Earl Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), said in a statement that on June 6 Houthi fighters shot down a U.S. government MQ-9 Reaper drone using an SA-6 surface-to-air missile, adding that the altitude at which the drone was shot down “indicated an improvement over previous Houthi capability.”

SOURCE: RT
Terrorist groups exploit the internet for hacking and global outreach, the impact of which could soon become no less dangerous than that of weapons of mass destruction, a senior Russian security official warned.

The rapid development of technology allows terrorists to “even more actively” use the internet for “recruitment, attracting funds, hacking and other cybercrimes,” the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Yury Kokov, said at a security-themed event in the city of Ufa in central Russia.

The official said the internet has become the “main mechanism” for various extremists to “control their scattered forces and resources,” while there are currently around 30,000 “extremist and terrorist websites” online.

This allows us to conclude that an age of technological and digital terrorism is approaching. In terms of consequences, [this type of terrorism] may be comparable to the weapons of mass destruction in the nearest future.

Spain's far right party, Vox-es, has demanded an explanation from Youtube, as to why their account was suspended "without any explanation."

There isn’t much to report that I haven’t already reported. What goes on is more of the same but the attitude seems to have changed. A new development is the Global Eye-Roll and at this rate it may turn into an Olympic sport before long.

While most of us are aware of the massive U.S. intelligence network, we rarely see exactly how much this network costs taxpayers. In this posting, I want to look at the budget for the Department of Defense's Military Intelligence Program or MIP as well as the National Intelligence Program or NIP. Fortunately, in a June 2018 Congressional Research Service report on intelligence community spending, Micheal DeVine provides us with a detailed look at spending on both the National Intelligence Program and the Military Intelligence program so that we can put the budget requests for fiscal 2020 into context.

Everyone right of center is now at risk of progressive de-platforming. Breaking up the social media monopolies may be the only fix.

SOURCE: CONSORTIUMNEWS.COM

The FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s “conclusion” to blame Russia for hacking DNC servers, though the private firm never produced a final report and the FBI never asked them to, as Ray McGovern explains.

By Ray McGovern

The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness.

The filing was in response to a motion by Stone’s lawyers asking for “unredacted reports” from CrowdStrike in an effort to get the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. “The government … does not possess the information the defendant seeks,” the filing says.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE
Iran certainly isn't planning on backing down in the face of Washington's accusations about the country's role in last week's tanker bombings, and as a result, the possibility of a boots-on-the-ground military conflict in the Islamic Republic cannot yet be ruled out. Making an already tense situation infinitely more precarious, Iran on Monday reminded the world that it's preparing to violate the terms of the Iran deal during the next ten days.

By increasing its stockpiles of enriched uranium, Iran is bound to elicit accusations that it's once again working on a nuclear bomb.Tehran has always maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but American neocons like John Bolton have warned that this was merely a ruse, and that Iran could target American allies like Israel with a missile.

Israel has been granted protection from its critics by the state of Florida in recent amendments to the Florida Educational Equality Act (FEEA), which includes provisions that suppresses free speech. Under new definitions of anti-Semitism adopted by the American state, limits have been placed on discussions of the plight of the Palestinian people and underscoring the brutality of Israel’s occupation.

The bill is likely to open the door for criminal charges to be levelled against human rights activists and critics that advocate a single democratic state in which Israeli Jews, Palestinians and all others are granted full, equal rights. Supporters of the Palestine cause face the prospect of being silenced on the grounds that calls for equality under a single democratic state is deemed to be an attempt to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination and that such a call for non-discrimination questions Israel’s right to exist.

Mike Adams’ 3 million person Facebook account for Natural News was taken down earlier this week.

Now perhaps subscribers understand why we’ve been putting such strong emphasis on health stories in the last year.

We saw this coming a year ago – and now it’s here.

EVERYTHING that is in opposition to Big Pharma is going to be under aggressive attack.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE
On Sunday, more than 2 million Hong Kongers, more than one-quarter of the city-state's population, took to the streets in what were the biggest marches in Hong Kong since the dawn of Chinese rule. Even after City Executive Carrie Lam 'indefinitely' dropped the hated extradition bill that had catalyzed the protest movement on Saturday, a march planned for Sunday went ahead anyway. It was the biggest march yet, a sign that a popular mandate to oust Lam and secure the release of all of those arrested during the marches - the movement's two biggest remaining demands - was strong.

Calm returned to the city on Monday, though small bands of students continued to protest, while workers engaged in scattered strikes.

Hong Kong markets rewarded the city executive for withdrawing the extradition bill, with the Hang Seng index outperforming broader Asian benchmarks. Homebuilder shares, which sold off sharply during Wednesday's violent protests, led the rebound.

SOURCE: CAMPUS REFORM
Facebook is partnering with the University of California-Berkeley, Cornell University, and the University of Maryland to identify fake news.
The tech giant is investing $7.5 million into projects at the three schools, according to a UC Berkeley news release. The two Berkeley professors who will work with Facebook are Hany Farid and Alexe Efros, who are both part of UC-Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

Farid has been a longtime critic of social media companies and the danger that doctored videos and images pose online. The professor has commented on this subject for CNN and admitted to the school that he is “skeptical” of the new partnership with Facebook.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT UK
EU foreign ministers remained unconvinced by US allegations that Iran was behind last week’s attack on two Gulf tankers as they arrived at a meeting on Monday.

There was strong support among EU countries for an independent UN investigation and calls for more evidence – with the UK relatively isolating in its support the Trump administration’s line.

One foreign minister invoked the spectre of US misuse of intelligence over Iraq as a reason for scepticism, as representatives of the 28 countries arrived at the council meeting.

The ministers will discuss the incident in the Gulf of Oman over lunch, with Sudan, trade policy with Cuba, and the situation in Venezuela also on the main agenda.

Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, said the EU states “continue to gather information” while Dutch foreign minister Stef Blok said the Netherlands was “interested in any clarifications that can be made available”.

An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement.

The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong as a source - probably the principal source - of organs for forced organ harvesting”.

“The conclusion shows that very many people have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason, that more may suffer in similar ways and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, for the time being, running a country with one of the oldest civilisations known to modern man.”

He added: “There is no evidence of the practice having been stopped and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing.”

SOURCE: BIG LEAGUE POLITICS
One of America’s biggest opioid manufacturers is set to pay a massive federal penalty after getting nailed for bribing doctors to prescribe their dangerous and highly addictive fentanyl painkillers. The distribution scheme of Insys Therapeutics, that pushed potent opiates into the hands of patients that did not need them, has been described as a driving force behind America’s ongoing public health epidemic stemming from use of the drugs.

Insys, an Arizona company that reported almost $150 million in revenue in 2017, contracted doctors who agreed to prescribe their drugs for sham speeches. In reality, the doctors were getting paid for issuing prescriptions of Subsys, the company’s fentanyl-based painkiller medication.

Congress wants the Pentagon to hold the Saudi-led coalition accountable for paying off the last of its overdue refueling bills for the Yemen war.

The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, released today, calls on Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan to notify Congress each month of any outstanding bills for the $299 million cost of the three-year refueling mission until the federal government is repaid in full.

The Pentagon refueled warplanes for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates starting in March 2015. The assistance ended in November 2018, when both sides agreed to terminate the mission as Congress pressed to end US support for the Yemen campaign.