Archive for January, 2019

TBR News January 11, 2019

Jan 11 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 11, 2019:”The increasing mass anti-government movement in France, the Yellow Vests, have smashed their way into a government ministry in Paris, burned official cars, chased police and minsters to safer places, halted rail and road traffic, caused havoc with national banks and in general, have seriously threatened the sitting government. This movement, which is obviously growing in size and determination, is determined to bring down the Macron government but interestingly enough, is not covered in the main line American media. Why is this? Simply because those in current control do not wish to agitate an American public that is growing increasingly angry with the erratic and damaging reign of President Trump. Loyal supporters of the President, fearful of impeachment, are now approaching the more fanatical right wing and Evangelical Chistiain groups to join forces and take to the streets in defense of the President. There is a round robin document being sent around to these militants that explains that mob fury will convince the laggard Americans that Trump is indeed the ruler. We are trying to get our hands on this so we can publish it.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 11
  • Brought to Jesus’: the evangelical grip on the Trump administration
  • What are the End Days? A study in deception
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

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TBR News January 10, 2019

Jan 10 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 10, 2019:”There stands our President,insulting everyone who dares to disagree with him, threatens to cancel food stamps, medical assistance and even social security unless the nation bow down to his magnificence and worship his glory. He must go, of course, but in the process of removing him from high office, there will be more threats and childish outbursts until one day, an artery will explode and God will have taken pity on the Republi

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 10
  • Trump storms out of talks on shutdown, bemoans ‘total waste of time’
  • The Guardian view on Trump and the wall: useful for him, not for the US
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • French protesters want to set off bank run with withdrawals

 

815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 10

November 15, 2018

by Daniel Dale Washington Bureau Chief

Toronto Star

WASHINGTON—It took Donald Trump until the 286th day of his presidency to make 815 false claims.

He just made another 815 false claims in a month.

In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him — an outrageous barrage of serial dishonesty in which he obliterated all of his old records.

How bad have these recent weeks been?

  • Trump made 664 false claims in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.
  • Trump averaged 26.3 false claims per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.
  • Trump made more false claims in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).
  • The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.

As always, Trump was being more frequently dishonest in part because he was simply speaking more. He had three campaign rallies on Nov. 5, the day before he set the record, and eight more rallies over the previous five days.

But it was not only quantity. Trump packed his rally speeches with big new lies, repeatedly reciting wildly inaccurate claims about migrants, Democrats’ views on immigration and health care, and his own record. Unlike many of his lies, lots of these ones were written into the text of his speeches.

Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.

If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.

  • Oct 22, 2018

“And we passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor, instead of waiting on line for one month, two months, three months, four months. And having a simple illness corrected, you’d have people that stand in line so long they would have a simple problem, and by the time they got to see a doctor, they were terminally ill. Terminally ill. So now they have to wait on line. These are our great people. If our veterans have to wait online, they go out and they see a private doctor. We pay the bill. And we get them fixed up.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was passed and created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, modified

“African-American, Hispanic American, Asian-American unemployment has reached the lowest level ever recorded in our country’s history.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Trump was correct about African-Americans and Hispanics, incorrect about Asians. The Asian-American unemployment rate briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May — a low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 — but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for September, was 3.5 per cent. (It fell to 3.2 per cent for October.) This was higher than the rate in Obama’s last full month in office — 2.8 per cent in December 2016 — and in multiple months of George W. Bush’s second term.

“Remember the previous administration? I won’t be specific, but let’s say the head of the previous administration — does anybody know who I’m talking about? Remember he said, ‘You can’t have manufacturing jobs in this country. You’d need a magic wand,’ remember the famous — well, I guess we found the magic wand.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: The economy added 416,000 manufacturing jobs between Jan. 2017 and Oct. 2018. (It’s 446,000 manufacturing jobs if, like Trump, you start the month of the election, Nov. 2016.) Regardless, Obama never said “you can’t have manufacturing jobs in this country” when he made this “magic wand” comment. Rather, at a televised PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana in 2016, Obama said that certain manufacturing jobs “are just not going to come back” — but also boasted that some manufacturers are indeed “coming back to the United States,” that “we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than any time since the 1990s,” and that “we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we’ve had in most of our history.” Obama did mock Trump for Trump’s campaign claims that he was going to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to Mexico, saying: “And when somebody says — like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for — that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.” But, again, Obama made clear that he was talking about a certain segment of manufacturing jobs, not all of them.

“We’ve added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: The economy added 416,000 manufacturing jobs between Jan. 2017 and Oct. 2018. (It’s 446,000 manufacturing jobs if, like Trump, you start counting the month of the election, Nov. 2016, even though Obama was still in office until late January 2017.)

“In less than two years’ time, we have created over 4.2 million new jobs…They said that was impossible.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Experts did not say it would be impossible to create 4.2 million jobs over this period. (Trump is counting the final months of the Obama era as his own.) Over the previous 22-month period, under Obama, 4.7 million jobs were added.

“And, yeah, and we’re getting the wall finished, because it’s a very important element of what we need. Even the Democrats are seeing it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: It is possible that Trump knows a Democrat or two who supports his border wall, but Democratic Party as a whole is overwhelmingly opposed.

“The casualties of the Democrats’ open border crusade…”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Democrats do not want open borders. Most of them support a less aggressive immigration policy than the one Trump advocates, but they are not calling for people to be able to walk across from Mexico unbothered.

“And then you have chain migration. A guy comes in, as an example, West Side Highway in Manhattan. That’s where I am. Beautiful park, beautiful highway. This animal is driving a car down and he decides he’s going to make a right, right into the park where everyone is working out, exercising, running, bicycling. And he knocks everything down, including kills eight people. And badly wounds — you ever notice they never talk about the people that are wounded, where they lose their arms, and their legs, and their lives can never be the same? They never talk. They say eight people died. They don’t talk about the 12 people that lost something so important. These are people that are in a park where they go to exercise so they can be in perfect shape. And they go home months later without their legs, without their arms. Because this animal going at a very fast speed just decided he’s going to make a right into the park and run people over. So he has 22 people that came in, because he’s here. So he’s here. It’s called chain, a chain, nice name, chain migration. He’s here. His mother comes with him, his father then comes, his uncle, his aunt, his brother, his nephew, his sister, 22 people. No jobs. Just 22 people. No more chain migration. No more chain migration. That’s why the Democrats want to give illegal aliens free welfare and the right to vote.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: There is no evidence that Sayfullo Saipov, the alleged perpetrator of the terror attack in 2017 on Manhattan’s West Side Highway, brought 22 relatives into the U.S. through “chain migration.” Even Trump’s own aides have declined to endorse this claim, and even anti-immigration advocates say it is wildly improbable that one man with a green card could have sponsored 22 people.

“And that’s why the Democrats all support catch and release. That’s why they support visa lottery. You know what visa lottery? Countries put name in a batch and you pick them. You pick them. You keep picking them. And then then you got nothing but problems, because you think those countries are putting their finest? I don’t think so. It’s a great way to dispose of their problems. Visa lottery.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “put” anyone in the lottery, much less put in their “problem” citizens to dump them on the United States. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.

“It’s called catch and release. You know what catch and release is, right? You got these great people from Border Patrol. These are great people, ICE, Border Patrol. These are incredible people. Tough job. They catch them and then they release them. And they say you have to come back for a court case. They just put their foot over immediately. They touch our land. You have to come back in two years for a court case. Well, number one, they never come back. Three per cent. And I don’t believe the ‘three.’”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: There is no basis for Trump’s claim that only “3 per cent” of people released for an immigration hearing show up to court. The Justice Department says 72 per cent of people showed up for their immigration court hearings in 2017. For asylum seekers in particular, it was 89 per cent. There is no group for which it was even close to 3 per cent. A 2017 report released by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates a hard line on illegal immigration, concluded that 37 per cent of people who were free pending trial did not show up for hearings over the past two decades. The author of the report, a former immigration judge, said the number was 39 per cent in 2016. In other words, even according to vehement opponents of illegal immigration, most unauthorized immigrants are indeed showing up for court.

“As we speak, the Democrat Party is openly encouraging millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders, and overwhelm our nation.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: There is no basis for this claim.

“They want to be able to vote. They want to be able to vote. Oh, don’t worry about it. They want to be able to vote. The illegals — and by the way, I hate to tell you, you go to California, you go — they vote anyway. They vote anyway. And they’re not supposed to. And every time I say it, the fake news says, oh, they said — they got so many people voting illegally in this country, it’s a disgrace, OK? It’s a disgrace.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: There is no evidence of widespread illegal voting by anyone, let alone by unauthorized immigrants.

“And Republicans will always protect Americans with pre-existing conditions. We protect you. Pre-existing conditions. Right?”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: This claim is belied by Republicans’ actions. The party has tried repeatedly during Trump’s presidency to replace Obamacare with a law that would give insurers more freedom to discriminate against people with pre-existing health conditions. As part of a Republican lawsuit to try to get Obamacare struck down, Trump’s administration is formally arguing that the law’s protections for pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional and should be voided. Trump has not said what he would like to replace these protections with.

“Democrats in Congress have already signed up for a socialist takeover of health care that would eliminate the private insurance of more than 15 million Texans. The Democrat plan would destroy Medicare and terminate Medicare Advantage for 1.4 million Texas seniors who depend on it. Republicans want to protect Medicare for our great seniors who have earned it and who have paid for it for a long time.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Democrats’ “Medicare for all” proposals tend to be vague, but they would not take Medicare health insurance away from seniors. Rather, they would extend similar government-provided health insurance to younger people as well, and they would give current Medicare recipients additional coverage for things like vision and dental services.

“I also want to recognize your outstanding Republican Congressman, including Chairman Kevin Brady, what a guy. Where is he? What a guy. You talk about help with taxes. And so, Kevin, we’re putting in next week the 10 per cent reduction in middle-income taxes, right, next week? OK.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: We do not usually fact-check promises of future action, but there was no sign that Republicans were actually pursuing an additional 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class; Trump suddenly introduced this claim two weeks before the election, with no details attached. We will amend this item if he proves serious.

“And another tall guy (John Cornyn), who is an incredible senator, he represents you so well. He’s always fighting for you. And he was the one that asked Dianne Feinstein, ‘Did you leak?’ Remember? And she went, ‘Oh.’ So he was the one. He said, looks over to her, remember? During the hearings? Those horrible hearings, where they were so nasty and horrible, to a great gentleman who’s going to go down as one of our greatest Supreme Court justices ever? He goes out and he goes — he’s on the committee. And he goes, ‘Did you leak?’ And she went, ‘Oh, what, no, no, no, I don’t — wait a minute, let me check. Did we leak? No, you — no, we didn’t leak. Oh. No.’ That was the worst body language. She was so guilty of leaking. She leaked. John Cornyn was great.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Trump did not accurately recount the answer Feinstein gave when Republican Sen. John Cornyn pressed her, at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on the leaking of Christine Blasey Ford’s letter accusing judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Feinstein didn’t say “Well, what, what, what? No, I didn’t do it. Did we leak? Did we leak? No. No. No, we didn’t.” She vehemently said she did not leak the letter; asked if her staff leaked it, she said, “Oh, I don’t believe my staff would leak it. I have not asked that question directly, but I do not believe they would.” When Cornyn followed up, she said, “The answer is no. The staff said they did not.”

“In Texas, the United States Coast Guard saved 16,000 lives.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Trump’s figure is an exaggeration. The Coast Guard told the Star that they rescued 11,022 people during their response to Hurricane Harvey.

“And, by the way, I want China to do well, but they went down 32 per cent over the last six months and we went way up. And since our election, we’ve gone up almost 50 per cent.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Trump was even less specific here than usual, but he usually makes this claim about the countries’ stock markets. U.S. markets were up much less than 50 per cent over the previous six months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were both up about 3 per cent,

“And, by the way, I want China to do well, but they went down 32 per cent over the last six months and we went way up.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Trump was even less specific here than usual, but he usually makes this claim about the countries’ stock markets. China’s markets had not dropped 32 per cent. Shanghai’s SSE Composite Index was actually down about 13 per cent over the six months dating back from the week Trump spoke. Shenzhen ‘s SZSE Component Index was down about 27 per cent.

“And a sad thing happened last week. Because Elizabeth Warren was exposed as being a total fraud. And I can no longer call her Pocahontas, because she has no Indian blood! I can’t call her… I can’t call her Pocahontas. She doesn’t qualify. She has — I’ve been saying for a long time. I’ve been saying it for a year-and-a-half, I said I have more Indian blood than she has, and I have none. I have none. But I have more than she has. But I can’t use the name Pocahontas anymore. But if you don’t mind, I will anyway. Is that OK? We got to keep her down.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: A Stanford University professor who conducted a DNA test on Warren concluded that “the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor” six to 10 generations in the past. The analysis found that almost all of Warren’s ancestors were European, and many Native Americans reject the suggestion that a distant Native ancestor can qualify a person as any part Native. But it is not true that Warren “has no Indian blood.”

“And if Ted doesn’t win, your Second Amendment is going to be in trouble. Big trouble. Remember that.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: This is a wild exaggeration. The Second Amendment to the Constitution would not be endangered by a Democratic senator being elected, though Beto O’Rourke is a staunch advocate of gun control measures.

“He (Beto O’Rourke) got an F from the NRA, one of the few. You know — you know what an F means? An F means he wants to take away your guns, OK? That’s what it means. I never even heard of an F. I never heard. Louie, did you ever hear of an F?”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: More than a “few” lawmakers have received F grades from the National Rifle Association, the gun lobby group. According to a Washington Post analysis of the grades, well over half of Democratic lawmakers received F grades in 2017. Also, it is not true that Trump has “never even heard of an F.” At a rally two weeks prior in Topeka, Kansas, he commented on the F grade of Democratic governor candidate Laura Kelly — and also claimed that time that he had never heard of an F.

“With Texas leading the way, think of this one, the United States is now — this happened over the last very short period of time — the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. Thank you. That’s pretty good. That’s big stuff. We’re the number-one energy producer in the world.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: The U.S. Energy Information Administration said in 2017 that 2016 was the fifth straight year the U.S. had been the “world’s top producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons.” It was crude oil in particular in which the U.S. recently became number-one in the world, according to the EIA, which made the estimate in September.

“On day one, I approved the Keystone and the Dakota Access pipeline, 48,000 jobs, day one. Day one. Think of that, day one. They spent years and years trying to get these pipelines built.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Trump did not approve either pipeline in anywhere close to his first day of office. He issued executive orders four days into his presidency to advance the two pipelines, but they did not grant final approval then. Trump actually approved Keystone XL two months into his presidency; the government announced the approval of the Dakota Access pipeline three weeks into his presidency.

“We’ve saved your family farms, ranches, and small businesses from the estate tax, also known as the death tax. So most of you love your children. Some of you don’t…But for those of you that really would like your small businesses, your farms, your ranches left to your children instead of now having your children go out when you kick the bucket, a sad day, and about two or three days later, they’re happy as hell. No, forget it. [Laughter] Instead of have them — instead on having them go out and borrow a tremendous amount of money to pay the estate tax, they don’t have to borrow anything. There’s no tax. There’s no tax. So you’ll be able to — to me, that’s a very important thing. Nobody even talks about it. That was in our — that was in our tax cuts. So a lot of small business, a lot of farms, ranches, and there will be no tax. So that’s great for your children. Only if you love them. Only if you love them.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Trump did not eliminate the estate tax. His tax law merely raised the threshold at which it must be paid. Also, it is highly misleading to suggest that the estate tax is a major burden on family farms and small businesses: very few of them were paying the tax even before Trump’s tax law was passed. According to the Tax Policy Center, a mere 80 farms and small businesses were among the 5,460 estates likely to pay the estate tax in 2017, before Trump’s tax law. The Center wrote on its website: “The Tax Policy Center estimates that small farms and businesses will pay $30 million in estate tax in 2017, fifteen hundredths of 1 of the total estate tax revenue.”

 

“Republicans passed the biggest tax cut and reform in history with massive tax cuts for the middle class. And now we’re adding 10 per cent to those numbers.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: We do not usually fact-check promises of future action, but there was no sign that Republicans were actually pursuing an additional 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class; Trump suddenly introduced this claim two weeks before the election, with no details attached. We will amend this item if he proves serious.

“And, you know, what’s happening right now, as a large group of people — they call it a caravan. Do you know how the caravan started? Does everybody know what this means? I think the Democrats had something to do with it. And now they’re saying, I think we made a big mistake. Because people are seeing how bad it is, how pathetic it is, how bad our laws are, they made a big mistake. So as the caravan — and, look, that is an assault on our country.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: There is no evidence Democrats had anything to do with the formation of a caravan of migrants from Latin America.

“So we started the wall. They’ve got $1.6 billion. We got another $1.6 billion. We have a third $1.6 billion. I want to do it fast.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent. In these comments, Trump also added a third “$1.6 billion” that does not exist.

“We have a 3.7 per cent unemployment. It’s the lowest it’s been in more than 50 years.” And: ““The unemployment rate just fell to the lowest level in more than 50 years. Five-oh.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: The unemployment rate, 3.7 per cent, is the lowest in 49 years, since 1969. We would not count this as false if Trump rounded to “50 years,” but “more than” 50 years is objectively false.

“You know, explain that to me. They’re for open borders, which means crime, and for massive tax cuts.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Democrats do not want open borders. Most of them support a less aggressive immigration policy than the one Trump advocates, but they are not calling for people to be able to walk across from Mexico unbothered.

“In fact, I just left Kevin Brady. By the way, how good is Kevin Brady? He’s here. We’re going to be putting in a 10 per cent tax cut for middle-income families. It’s going to be put in next week, 10 per cent tax cut. Kevin Brady is working on it. We’ve been working on it for a few months, a 10 per cent brand-new — and that is in addition to the big tax cuts that you’ve already gotten. But this one is for middle income. This is — no business. Business is now good. They’re coming back. The jobs are coming back. The plants and factories are coming back like never before. They’re all coming back. This is for middle-income people, all middle-income people, a big tax, 10 per cent. We’ll be putting it in next week. Now, if the Democrats take over — I can’t speak, I’m sorry. Instead of a tax cut, you’re going to have a big, beautiful tax raise. You don’t want that.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: We do not usually fact-check promises of future action, but there was no sign that Republicans were actually pursuing an additional 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class; Trump suddenly introduced this claim two weeks before the election, with no details attached. We will amend this item if he proves serious.

“Do we have a great country or what? Great country. Hello, Houston. I’m thrilled to be back. Well, you treated me very well during a certain election two years ago. With all my friends from the Lone Star State, a special, special place, thank you very much for being here. This is some record crowd. And they just told me we broke the record, but we could really break it if we could get all the people that are outside in here. We’d break it by three times. But it’s true what they say: Everything in Texas is just bigger. Right? It’s bigger.” And: “If you’d like to leave now, go ahead. Anybody want to leave, go vote, come back. Get behind about 50,000 people outside. Who we love. And we put big screens out for them. Let’s wave to them. Wave! But I will say, you got a better location. Your location’s better.”

Source: Campaign rally in Houston, Texas

in fact: Trump had a capacity crowd at Houston’s Toyota Center, which has a capacity of 19,000 for basketball. It is not clear what “record” he was talking about. Regardless, he would not break any record “by three times” if he could count the people standing outside during the speech, and there were not “50,000 people outside.” Houston’s police chief, Art Acevedo, said there were about 3,000 people outside watching.

“And the pre-existing conditions, and all the other things, we’re with 100 per cent.”

Source: Interview with ABC13 in Houston, Texas

in fact: This claim is belied by Republicans’ actions. The party has tried repeatedly during Trump’s presidency to replace Obamacare with a law that would give insurers more freedom to discriminate against people with pre-existing health conditions. As part of a Republican lawsuit to try to get Obamacare struck down, Trump’s administration is formally arguing that the law’s protections for pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional and should be voided. Trump has not said what he would like to replace these protections with.

“We’re building the wall, we’re built — we should be able to build it faster, but we the Democrats are doing everything they can to obstruct and not give us the money to do the wall, even though we’ve started a very big chunk of it. “

Source: Interview with ABC13 in Houston, Texas

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction.

Question: “Hey, Mr. President, you said Californians were rioting over the sanctuary cities. Where?” Trump: “You shouldn’t have — take a look. They want to get out of sanctuary cities. Many places in California want to get out of sanctuary cities.” Question: “But that’s not rioting, sir, right?” Trump: “Yeah, it is rioting in some cases.”

Source: Exchange with reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: There were no riots by California opponents of sanctuary cities.

Question: “You said that you wanted tax cuts by November 1st. Congress isn’t even in session. How is that possible?” Trump: “No, we’re going to be passing — no, no. We’re putting in a resolution sometime in the next week, or week and a half, two weeks.” Question: “A resolution where?” Trump: “We’re going to put in — we’re giving a middle-income tax reduction of about 10 per cent. We’re doing it now for middle-income people. This is not for business; this is for middle. That’s on top of the tax decrease that we’ve already given them.” Question: “Are you signing an executive order for that?” Trump: “No. No. No. I’m going through Congress.” Question: “But Congress isn’t in session though.” Trump: “We won’t have time to do the vote. We’ll do the vote later.” Question: “Congress is out.” Trump: “We’ll do the vote after the election.”

Source: Exchange with reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: We do not usually fact-check promises of future action, but, as this exchange made clear, there was no sign that Republicans were actually pursuing an additional 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class; Trump suddenly introduced this claim two weeks before the election, with no details attached, and seemed to have no idea how such a tax cut might get passed. We will amend this item if he proves serious.

“I don’t want to lose all of that investment that’s being made in our country by Saudi Arabia). I don’t want to lose a million jobs. I don’t want to lose a $110 billion in terms of investment. But it’s really $450 billion if you include other than military. So that’s very important. But we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

Source: Exchange with reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: There is no basis for the claim that Saudi Arabia’s business deals with the U.S. will produce “a million jobs.” (The White House did not respond to a request for an explanation from U.S. website Axios.) As we explained in the previous fact check, there is no basis for the claim that there are “$450 billion” in total orders or “$110 billion” in military orders. Trump has increased his jobs estimates from “over 40,000” jobs in March to “450,000 jobs” on Oct. 13 to 500,000 jobs on Oct. 17 to 600,000 jobs on Oct. 19, the day he also introduced the “over a million jobs” claim. Reuters reported: “An internal document seen by Reuters from Lockheed Martin forecasts fewer than 1,000 positions would be created by the defense contractor, which could potentially deliver around $28 billion of goods in the deal. Lockheed instead predicts the deal could create nearly 10,000 new jobs in Saudi Arabia, while keeping up to 18,000 existing U.S. workers busy if the whole package comes together — an outcome experts say is unlikely.”

“I don’t want to lose all of that investment that’s being made in our country by Saudi Arabia). I don’t want to lose a million jobs. I don’t want to lose a $110 billion in terms of investment. But it’s really $450 billion if you include other than military. So that’s very important. But we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

Source: Exchange with reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: There is no basis for either the claim that the U.S. has $450 billion in business orders from Saudi Arabia or that it has $110 billion in military-related orders from Saudi Arabia. The White House has not explained what Trump has talking about; PolitiFact reported: “Hossein Askari, a business professor at George Washington University, analyzes international trade in the Middle East. He knows of no tally of contracts to back up Trump’s assertion. ‘There is absolutely no such number that could support the $450 billion,’ Askari said.” As for the $110 billion figure, the Associated Press wrote: “Trump’s wrong to suggest that he has $110 billion in military orders from Saudi Arabia. A far smaller amount in sales has actually been signed…Details of the $110 billion arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017, have been sketchy. At the time the Trump administration provided only a broad description of the defense equipment that would be sold. There was no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much…The Pentagon said this month that Saudi Arabia has signed ‘letters of offer and acceptance’ for only $14.5 billion in sales, including helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and training. Those letters, issued after the U.S. government has approved a proposed sale, specify its terms…Trump’s repeated claims that he’s signed $110 billion worth of new arms sales to Riyadh are ‘just not true,’ said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official.”

“Well, you’re going to have to see that (unknown Middle Easterners in the caravan of migrants). I have reports. And they have a lot of everybody in that group.” And: “You know what you should do, Jon? Go into the middle of the caravan, take your cameras, and search. Okay? Search.” And: “Take your — Jon, take your camera, go into the middle, and search. You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything.”

Source: Exchange with reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: There was no evidence of Middle Easterners in the migrant caravan.

Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in.”

Source: Twitter

in fact: There was no evidence of “unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan of migrants, who were overwhelmingly from Latin America. Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence and other administration officials provided no corroboration for the claim.

 

Trump storms out of talks on shutdown, bemoans ‘total waste of time’

January 9, 2019

by Richard Cowan and  Alexandra Alper

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump stormed out of talks with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday over funding for a border wall with Mexico and reopening the government, complaining the meeting in the White House was “a total waste of time.”

On the 19th day of a partial government shutdown caused by the dispute over the wall, a short meeting that included Trump, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi ended in acrimony with no sign of a resolution.

Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier?” Trump wrote. “Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!”

Exasperated Democrats called Trump’s behavior a “temper tantrum” and said the meeting broke down when they refused to commit to funding his proposed southern border wall. Trump’s desire for a wall between the United States and Mexico was a central theme of his 2016 presidential campaign.

Schumer told reporters that Trump asked Pelosi if she would fund his wall. “She said no. And he just got up and said: ‘Then we have nothing to discuss,’ and he just walked out.”

“Again, we saw a temper tantrum because he couldn’t get his way,” Schumer added. “That is sad and unfortunate. We want to come to an agreement. We believe in border security. We have different views.”

The breakdown in talks could strengthen the possibility that Trump will declare a national emergency to build a wall on the southern border if no deal with Congress can be reached on his request for $5.7 billion for the project.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump said he had the authority to declare a national emergency that would let him pay for the wall with military funds. Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that Trump is still considering that option.

Asked what Trump had gained by walking out of the talks, Pence said: “I think the president made his position very clear today: that there will be no deal without a wall.”

Shortly after the White House meeting broke up, the Democratic-majority House of Representatives voted to pass legislation to end a partial shutdown of the Treasury Department and some other agencies that have been closed since Dec. 22, without money for the wall.

But there was no indication that the Senate, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, would allow a vote on the bill.

Democrats are eager to force Republicans to choose between funding the Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service – at a time when it should be gearing up to issue tax refunds to millions of Americans – and voting to keep it partially shuttered.

In a countermove, the Trump administration said that even without a new shot of funding, the IRS would somehow make sure those refund checks get sent.

Trump attended a lunch meeting of Senate Republicans on Wednesday and emerged to declare unwavering support for the tough stance he has taken on funds for the wall.

Asked if he got the impression in the meeting that the shutdown would end soon, Republican Senator Tim Scott said: “I did not. I think we’re going to be here a while.”

DEMOCRATIC TACTICS

Pelosi plans more votes this week that one-by-one would provide money to operate departments ranging from Homeland Security and Justice to State, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor.

Able to get the bills through the House because of the Democratic majority, Pelosi is hoping some Senate Republicans back her up and abandon Trump’s wall gambit.

The political maneuvering comes amid a rising public backlash over the suspension of government activities that has resulted in the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Other “essential” employees are being required to report to work, but without pay for the time being.

On Thursday, Trump travels to the border to highlight what he calls an immigration “crisis.”

With tempers running high over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion just for this year to fund wall construction, there are doubts Pelosi’s plan will succeed in forcing the Senate to act.

McConnell has not budged from his hard line of refusing to bring up any government funding bill without Trump’s backing even as a few members of his caucus have called for an end to the standoff.

The funding fight stems from Congress’ inability to complete work by a deadline last September on funding all government agencies. It did, however, appropriate money for about 75 percent of the government on time – mainly military and health-related programs.

U.S. airport security workers and air traffic controllers working without pay have warned that security and safety could be compromised if the shutdown continues, but the Trump administration said staffing is adequate and travelers have not faced unusual delays.

Union officials said some TSA officers have already quit because of the shutdown and many are considering quitting.

Ratings agency Fitch warned that it could cut the U.S. triple-A sovereign debt credit rating later this year if the shutdown proves prolonged and Congress fails to raise the legal limit on the national debt in a timely manner.

Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Roberta Rampton, David Morgan and Susan Heavey in Washington and Helen Reid in London; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney

 

The Guardian view on Trump and the wall: useful for him, not for the US

Editorial

The promise to ‘build the wall’ worked for Trump as a candidate, and he continues to use it as president. Americans are paying the price with what has become the second longest government shutdown

January 9, 2019

His “big, beautiful wall” is no closer to reality than it was then, but he continues to relish its powers. It is clear that it will not be paid for by Mexico, as once promised, and will not do what he says it will to protect the United States. But in his highly performative presidency, Mr Trump values its symbolic importance. Unlike that other mantra – “Lock her up!” – its potency is undiminished by his victory. It allows him to present himself as the eternal insurgent, battling for change against the establishment.

This explains the second-longest government shutdown in the US, as Mr Trump demands a $5.7bn downpayment on a pointless and very expensive project. With 800,000 federal employees facing the prospect of their first missed paycheck, growing public discontent about the impact, and no sign that the Democrats will offer him a route out, Mr Trump may be beginning to regret his televised declaration that he would be proud to shut down the government for border security: 47% of voters blame him for the impasse, and only 33% blame the Democrats.

His first Oval Office address on Tuesday is unlikely to shift this. While it invoked the full authority of the presidency, it fitted ill with his style, which may explain Mr Trump’s reluctance to deliver it. (He also seems unenthusiastic about the border trip planned for Thursday.) Though his words at times echoed the hateful rhetoric of his inaugural speech, even his demand to know “How much more American blood must we shed?” seemed oddly half-hearted in delivery. He paid unconvincing lip service to the humanitarian crisis he created.

There were more distortions and lies. In contrast to the administration’s claims, most drugs are smuggled through legal ports of entry; migration continues to fall; and unauthorised migrants are no more likely to commit criminal acts than others, and may be less so. But to Mr Trump, what matters is not whether words are true but whether they are compelling – and 86% of Republicans back the wall. Some around him believe he is wedded to realising it, or some version of it that he can claim as a victory, because of its talismanic qualities. Others believe that the fight itself is the thing. Either way, there is the alarming prospect that he might invoke a national emergency, allowing him to use Pentagon resources for the project. Legal challenges would be almost guaranteed, but if courts blocked his progress he would still be able to position himself as the doughty fighter for the people.

His rallies rang to renewed chants of “Build that wall!” as the midterms approached last year, and his claims about a migrant “caravan” were given undue credence – but only went so far in holding back the Democratic advance. His base alone cannot win him a second term. It is true that the Democrats’ recapture of the House gives Mr Trump an opposition to run against. But their response to the shutdown is a reminder that the election left them not only stronger in legislative terms, but also emboldened to face down the president – dismissing his “temper tantrum” – and to try to make the political weather. Some Republicans have voiced potential support for Democrats’ plans to reopen parts of government.

Yet however this ends, Mr Trump may feel the wall is as useful as ever. His remarks in 2016 made it clear that it was as much about tactics as his strategy of fostering fear and division. It is to be invoked in times of need. Those have arrived. Mr Trump looks increasingly anxious for a deal in the trade war he started with China. Above all, Robert Mueller’s investigation moves closer and looms larger. On the same day that the president spoke, we learned that Mr Mueller has accused his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, of sharing polling data with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies. Is it any surprise that Mr Trump would rather discuss the border? The wall does not have to be real to be useful: the only question is whether its magic is gradually wearing off

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

January 9, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas  in 1993  when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.

 

Conversation No. 38

Date: Friday, September 27, 1996

Commenced: 11:05 AM CST

Concluded: 11:21 AM CST

RTC: Gregory, I see that the material you got from God knows where about the Clintons is causing real havoc here. Were you aware of that?

GD: One has hopes, Robert, hopes. What kind of havoc?

RTC: Well, it might be a well-kept secret but it turns out to be perfectly true. It’s gotten all over the place. I had two people call me to give me disjointed reports. People can read a simple sentence and then mix it all up when they try to repeat it.

GD: I know. In the main, camels are smarter and they smell better. I hope the Clinton’s like my little sendings. I did the same thing to Cranston 1  earlier on.

RTC: I recall you discussing this with me. You know, I have gotten so disillusioned with some of these people that I really ought to dig into things and send my more material. By the way, did you get the Angleton papers?

GD: Oh, I did but I didn’t want to discuss them on the phone. My God, Angleton was tapping all the phones there, wasn’t he?

RTC: Oh he did. Jim was convinced that everyone was spying on him and in the end, what with tapping the phones of the DCI, the President and God alone know how many bankers, stock brokers, poor Ollie North and so on he had so much data he got a bit out of his head.

GD: Such criminals they are. Thieving, lying, corrupt assholes, all of them. We trust these bank CEOs and heads of major companies, not to mention our top leadership, that I am certain if I released all of Angleton’s material, there would be great trouble. We would see the heads of the Federal Reserve running for Rio before the storm of public opinion. The public, myself included, thinks the Fed is a government operation while it is not.  Private.operation all the way

RTC: Yes, and run by the Jews for the Jews. The famous Bank of New York is a Jewish operation who works with the Russian Mafia to launder money. The FBI knows all about this but Clinton says hands off.

GD: No doubt his wife is behind that. I think her background needs to be exposed.

RTC: And how could you do that? The press would never handle it so you would have to send out thousands of letters. That takes time and costs money. No one really cares here, at least in public. Bus, as I say, your little surprises have stirred up real comment. Of course, it will never go any further than the cocktail circuit.

GD: No, but in your city, that rules, doesn’t it?

RTC: Oh, it does, it truly does. Given your particular talents, Gregory, I don’t doubt that you could start a war if you got loose on the cocktail circuit. Inside the Beltway, everyone wants to be in the know so if they hear some malicious gossip, they will tell their friends that a certain top government official casually told them this. This place is a pressure cooker, filled with liars, babblers and deadbeats. When I say you could raise hell here, of course, I do not include you in any of the above categories.

GD: No, no offense. Are the Kimmel types still calling you about how evil I am?

RTC: I think once they discovered that I passed their names and telephone number on to you, it all stopped. Kimmel himself is horrified that I talk to you and he told Bill that he was afraid I might say or do something you could run with. If they only knew. I know Trento has made a deal with Langley that when I am dead and gone, he will get all my papers…and of course give them what they don’t want out. Joe will be satisfied with some useless cruimbe. But when he finds out all the important material is gone with the wind, I imagine he will get on the horn down there and there will by attempts to find out what you have. They know what you will do with it.

GD: What did General Sherman say? Publish and be damned? Something like that. I kept some of this material in footlockers in my bedroom until common sense dictated that I ought to find a safer place for it.

RTC: And what if someone breaks in? Unofficially, that is.

GD: Why I would kill them very dead, Robert. And after I took a sharp axe to their head, I would put a knife in their lifeless hands, call the police and tell them I caught a burglar who tried to kill me. I suppose his friends down the street would find it expedient to drive off. If I did that, I would frisk the stiff and remove any identification. Maybe that way he’d find himself a cheap wooden box out in potter’s field.

RTC: Think of the family. Whatever happened to the breadwinner?

GD: Well, they can comfort themselves with the thought that he is feeding the environment. Helping the worms feed and the grass grow. One time when I became aware that someone was getting into my place and drinking my really good brandy, I poured some old Mr. Boston swill into a good bottle and added some rat poison. Came back from a trip and found vomit and shit all over the entrance hall but no perp. Probably died outside.

RTC: Old Rough on Rats! Terrible, Gregory. I remember that. ‘They Die Outside’ was the motto.

GD: In this case, he probably did but I never heard a word.

RTC: One would think that he didn’t get far.

GD: Agreed. Maybe his friends came and got him. Must have stunk up the car something terrible. Anyway, my brandy was safe. Croton oil is even better. They usually don’t die but there is nothing like a prolapsed rectum to keep a man on his toes.

RTC: (Laughter) No, I suppose not.

GD: I remember once my idiot sister was dating a policeman and I did not like him in our house. Used to give me a hard time and ate up all the candy from the coffee table. I bought a box of Awful Fresh MacFarlane’s soft mints, injected a mixture of croton oil and peppermint extract into all of them and left them in the dish. Bugger gobbled all of them down and then rushed to the back bathroom where it sounded like a drunken hippo thrashing around in a mud flat. After the ambulance came, I replaced the loaded mints with real ones and the next day when his friends came over, they found wonderful, fresh and harmless candy. Of course he never came over to the house again.

RTC: I would think that was wise of him.

GD: My idiot sister told me that he carried one of those tiny liferings around for months. I imagine his anus looked like the sun setting over some tropical island. Flaming red.

RTC: I hope your sister didn’t eat any.

GD: No, that was safe. Booze, yes, but not candy. They probably figured he had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Say, I just remembered a lovely joke I played on my favorite Chop Suey emporium. I got a friend of mine, dressed him up in a coverall and had him walk in the front door of a local Chinese eatery with a live cat in a cage. Through the dining room and right into the kitchen. Of course out the back door before the kitchen staff could grab the cat for the Sunday special. I am told a number of people left at once and never came back. The place closed down about a month later.

RTC: (Laughter)  A man of creative action.

GD: Sometimes. If I couldn’t laugh at the cesspit, I might go mad. Or I could go to the Jockey Club and stuff a wiggling cockroach into the Caesar salad. Well, back to reading the Bible to the cats, Robert.

(Concluded 11:21 AM CST)

 

1 Alan MacGregor Cranston June 19, 1914 – December 31, 2000 was an American journalist and Democratic Senator from California. Cranston, a supporter of world government, attending the 1945 Dublin Declaration, and later became president of the World Federalist Association in 1948. He was reprimanded by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics for “improper conduct” on November 20, 1991 after he accepted $1 million in campaign contributions from the Lincoln Savings head, Charles Keating. Keating had wanted federal regulators to stop “hounding” his savings and loan association. The committee deemed Cranston’s misconduct the worst among the Keating Five.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

 

French protesters want to set off bank run with withdrawals

January 9, 2019

AP

PARIS (AP) — Activists from a French protest movement encouraged supporters Wednesday to set off a bank run by emptying their accounts, while the government urged citizens to express their discontent in a national debate instead of weekly demonstrations disrupting the streets of Paris.

Activists from the yellow vest movement, which started with protests over fuel tax increases, recommended the massive cash withdrawals on social media. One protester, Maxime Nicolle called it the “tax collector’s referendum.”

“We are going to get our bread back … You’re making money with our dough, and we’re fed up,” Nicolle said in a video message.

The movement’s adherents said they hoped the banking action will force the French government to heed their demands, especially giving citizens the right to propose and vote on new laws.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe gave details Wednesday of a “big debate” the government plans to start next week in all the regions of France.

“We want it to be rich, impartial and fruitful,” Philippe said.

The debates will focus on four main topics: climate change, democratic issues, taxes and public services, the prime minister said. Anyone can propose a local event and an internet platform will provide another venue for discussion, he said.

President Emmanuel Macron proposed the debate as a way for the government to hear and to respond to the movement’s central complaints.

Macron also announced 10 billion euros ($11.5 billion) worth of measures to boost the purchasing power of French households.

About 200 protesters, including trade union members and participants in the yellow vest movement, gathered Wednesday in Creteil, a Paris suburb as Macron visited a handball facility dedicated to handball gymnasium.

Police officers used tear gas to keep the crowd at a distance from the French leader.

The yellow vest movement was named after the fluorescent garments French motorists must carry so they are visible if they need to get out of their vehicles in a place that could be unsafe.

The protests started in November to oppose fuel tax hikes and have expanded into broader public rejections of Macron’s economic policies, deemed to favor the rich.

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TBR News January 9, 2019

Jan 09 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 9, 2019:”We are surrounded by legions of the True Believers, eagerly reading the more obscure sites on the Internet and quivering with delight as they discover the Real Truth.

True, Fat Jones has been downgraded but how could anyone with an IQ larger than their hat size start their day until they had learned what Real Truths he had revealed?

  • Sandy Hook a movie production?
  • A giant city under the Antarctic ice?
  • New Orleans an optical illusion?
  • 911 actually caused by mutant rats planting Thermeete bombs in the upper lavatories while the Illuminati observed from a hovering helicopter?
  • The Pentagon actually hit by a Bulgarian missile fired from an Israeli submarine?
  • Legions of thought-control devices hidden in public library books and designed to make library visitors ignore the giant Pandas in flowing gowns meeting in the unisex lavatories while plotting the capture of Washington?
  • And we learn that sea levels are not rising but all the land is sinking and that the Loch Ness monster was seen (by Scientists!) in Lake Erie where it attacked a tourist boat full of nuns.
  • The Templars, who actually own the Federal Reserve and the Bank of America, are running Goldman Sachs with 18 foot high unisex robots.
  • And as the cherry on the sundae, the three hundred and sixty two mummies with heads sixteen feet long and clawed hands with twenty three hooked fingers discovered by more Scientists, hidden deep in Peruvian caves along with ancient Coke bottles and badly faded holograms of Marylin Monroe making love to a Giant Panda.
  • And as a finale, the tons of mysterious white powder being dumped on downtown Dubuque, Iowa and designed to influence its inhabitants to buy boxes of gluten-free shoe polish from local stores.

One shoud not ignore all these Real Facts at their peril and mock not the Revealers lest your ear wax explodes out of control.

In the midst of life we are in peanut butter (or something that looks just like it)

Donald Trump says it does not taste the same either but he keeps tubs of it under his bed in the White House for late evening snacks.

He likes the corn found in it.

 

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 9
  • Donald Trump fuels immigration fears in TV address on ‘border crisis’
  • There Is a Real Border Crisis. A Wall Would Only Make It Worse.
  • Government shutdown: Is there a crisis on the US-Mexico border?
  • Trump Foreign Policy for 2019
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

Continue Reading »

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TBR News January 8, 2019

Jan 08 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 8, 2019:” The U.S. has been placing economic sanctions on Iran and this is damaging their economy. Their response? They have threatened to close the international waterway, the Straits of Hormuz! Since almost all Iranian oil, on which they depend for a significant part of their national income, comes from selling, and shipping, oil, this is mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. This false bravado is also designed to build public morale in Iran with national elections looming.

This threat, and the subsequent threat to attack an American Navy aircraft carrier carry with them the danger that a rigged Gulf of Tonkin incident can be arraigned to supply a legitimate motive for the U.S. Navy to take “retaliatory measures” against Iran. In the mountains on Iran’s western border on the Gulf are numerous missile bases, constructed with aid of the Russians. Recently, Russia made a deal with the United States, In return for allowing Russian naval units to berth in and protect Syrian gulf ports, they gave the Americans all the coordinates of their missile sites! In the event of a “hostile act” on the part of Iran (Perhaps a small military type MTB wearing an Iranian flag, would lunch relatively small surface-to-surface at some large American ship. There would be explosions and, out of necessity, American deaths. Shocked headlines in the CIA-controlled New York Times and Washington Post and a stunned Congress would demand revenge.  Then our Naval units would attack the missile bases and turn them into large, rubble-filled holes and our next target would be far to the north in Tehran. Our military is stretched too thin to become involved in yet another political war but the Navy and Air Force have been unscathed and would do the attacking. Naturally, the Israeli units would be unable to assist this effort to save them from possible attack because they were too busy protecting the Sacred Motherland to get killed elsewhere and, even worse, to lose expensive aircraft to air defense missiles.

What is causing a deliberate escalation of this project is multifaceted in nature. China does a good deal of oil business with Iran. China has reached a trade volume of 53 billion dollars with Iran and also has a treaty to manage an aslect of the South Pars oil fields. China has been threatening our allies lately, hacking into sensitive governmental computers sites and threatening us with dire fiscal problems because they own so much of our Treasury notes and intercepted messaging indicates China is trying to forge more important ties with Tehran, just short of an open military or other alliance that would upset the balance of power. Tehran and North Korea have also had other missile-oriented dealings such as, 4000 km ranged Musudan missiles which are similar to Taepodong – 1 and Taepodong – 2 missiles. Iran now has the ability to mass produce aversive balllistic missile systems with the technical aid of both North Korea, China and Russia. The North Koreans, and their Pakistani friends, are now lower down the list of supporters but China is coming to the fore   Using technical assistance as noted at this time Iran has build and can build intercontinental ballistic missiles that now have a range of more than 5500 km.”

 

 

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 8
  • Democrats touring border warn Trump against diverting funds for wall
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • 1.4 Million Floridians Get Their Voting Rights Back Today, Whether Republicans Like It or Not

 

 

815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 8

November 15, 2018

by Daniel Dale Washington Bureau Chief

Toronto Star

WASHINGTON—It took Donald Trump until the 286th day of his presidency to make 815 false claims.

He just made another 815 false claims in a month.

In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him — an outrageous barrage of serial dishonesty in which he obliterated all of his old records.

How bad have these recent weeks been?

  • Trump made 664 false claims in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.
  • Trump averaged 26.3 false claims per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.
  • Trump made more false claims in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).
  • The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.

As always, Trump was being more frequently dishonest in part because he was simply speaking more. He had three campaign rallies on Nov. 5, the day before he set the record, and eight more rallies over the previous five days.

But it was not only quantity. Trump packed his rally speeches with big new lies, repeatedly reciting wildly inaccurate claims about migrants, Democrats’ views on immigration and health care, and his own record. Unlike many of his lies, lots of these ones were written into the text of his speeches.

Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.

If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.

 

Oct 19, 2018

“Even Supreme Court, we picked two, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Two. Many presidents never pick any. They never get that great opportunity.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Only four presidents haven’t had a chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice. Two of them, Zachary Taylor and William Henry Harrison, died early in their time in office.

“We will protect Medicare and Social Security. And Democrats will destroy them both, and you know it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: There is simply no basis for the claim that Democrats will destroy Medicare and Social Security.

“I withdrew the United States from the horrible one-sided Iran nuclear deal. A disaster. And you remember the day before I came into office, it looked like Iran was just going to take over the Middle East. There was no stopping them. Guess what? They’re struggling right now. They’re really struggling. They’re having riots every weekend. They are struggling right now.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Iran is not having “riots every weekend.” It has had sporadic protests this year. Hussein Banai, a professor who studies Iran at the international studies school at Indiana University, said in an email: “This is another falsehood by Trump. There have been strikes by syndicates and labor organizations here and there over the course of the last 2-3 years, but not riots. And certainly not every weekend.”

“I withdrew the United States from the horrible one-sided Iran nuclear deal. A disaster. And you remember the day before I came into office, it looked like Iran was just going to take over the Middle East. There was no stopping them. Guess what? They’re struggling right now.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: It is an exaggeration to claim “it looked like Iran was just going to take over the Middle East. There was no stopping them.” Hussein Banai, a professor who studies Iran at the international studies school at Indiana University, said in an email: “The claim that Iran was on the verge of taking over the Middle East prior to Trump taking office is utterly false. In fact, quite the opposite was the case, as the Sunni-majority Arab states in the region — most vocally led by Saudi Arabia and with the expressed support of the US and Israel — had already begun to curb Iran’s influence in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. There is no question that the perception of many of Iran’s rivals in the region after the nuclear deal was that the Islamic Republic had emerged with a stronger geopolitical hand. But the reality was that Iran had merely emerged from nearly 40 years of isolation from which many of these rivals had benefited. So, I would say that the major grievance at the time was that the Obama administration had allowed for the Islamic Republic to become a ‘normal’ country. The issue was never Iran’s military might — its defense expenditures and capabilities are dwarfed by those of Israel and Saudi Arabia — but the fact that it was on the verge of a major economic boom in a post-sanctions world.”

“African-American and Asian-American unemployment have reached their lowest rates ever recorded in the history of our country.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: The unemployment rate for African-Americans was indeed at a record low, at least for the period since the government began releasing data for this group in the 1970s. The Asian-American unemployment rate, however, was not close to a record. It briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May — A low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 — but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for September, was 3.5 per cent. This was higher than the rate in Obama’s last full month in office — 2.8 per cent in December 2016 — and in multiple months of George W. Bush’s second term.

“How about in California, where illegal immigrants took over the town council, and now the town council is run by illegal immigrants in the town! I mean, is this even believable? You tell this stuff. It is sick!”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Unauthorized immigrants have not taken over any town council in any town. In late September, California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have allowed unauthorized immigrants and other non-citizens to sit on state and local boards and commissions.

“The Democrats don’t care that a flood of illegal immigration is going to totally bankrupt our country. Because all the Democrats want is power. And don’t forget: everybody that comes across the border, for the most part, they’re going to vote Democrat. They’re not voting Republican. They’re going to vote Democrat. So nobody said they’re stupid. But it’s bad for our country. But they’re going to vote Democrat. No matter what we do, they will be voting Democrat. And they understand that. That’s why Democrats support programs like catch-and-release. That’s why Democrats want to give illegal aliens free welfare, free health care, and free education. Give them a driver’s license.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Illegal immigrants can’t vote. It is possible that some of them will eventually gain citizenship and voting rights years down the road as part of a hypothetical future immigration reform law, but it is not true that illegal immigrants are going to vote for Democrats “no matter what we do.”

“The Democrats don’t care about what their extremist immigration agenda will do to your communities, your hospitals. How about your hospitals? They’re being overrun. Your schools! California, they want to give you free education, free health care, open borders. I mean, we’re going to have 10 million people move to California. This is the craziest thing. So here’s what we do. Let’s get these people out of there. There’s something wrong. They’re cuckoo.” And: “And now they have a man running for governor who wants to actually let the entire world pour into a state, give them free welfare, free education, free licenses, free everything. And they have no money. And they have no money. And they owe a fortune. Other than that, it’s a great idea.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Democratic California governor candidate Gavin Newsom is not proposing “open borders” or to “actually let the entire world pour into” the state.

“And catch-and-release. How about that? That’s my favorite. Catch. You catch a damned killer, you catch a bad hombre. You catch a bad one. You take the name. And we’re supposed to bring them to court, but we have hundreds of thousands of people. And it’s all my fault. You know why? Because we, I, you, all together, we’ve made this country so strong economically so good, jobs, everything, that everybody wants to come in, so it’s my fault. But you know what? We’re not letting them in. We only are going to let people in based on merit. We need people to come in based on merit. So you have catch-and-release. They put one foot. They don’t need two. One foot! We have the greatest people, ICE, Border Patrol, law enforcement. And the law doesn’t allow us to throw them the hell out. We have to take ’em. We have to write them up, and then we say come back in three years for a court case. In the meantime, they’re released into our society. And you know what the percentage of people that come back for the case? Three percent. No, you’re wrong. He said zero. You were slightly off. Three percent. Three percent show up three years, four years, five years later. It’s a disgrace.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Trump’s percentage was not even close to accurate. The Justice Department says 72 per cent of people showed up for their immigration court hearings in 2017. For asylum seekers in particular, it was 89 per cent. There is no group for which it was even close to 3 per cent.

“Chain migration, you come over, and then they have — we had a guy on the West Side Highway. He goes down the highway, he’s going 60, 70 miles an hour, radical Islam, terrible. Makes a right turn into a park, kills nine people, badly injures — nobody ever talks about. People that are running along the beautiful Hudson River, because they want to stay in shape. They end up going home six months later with no legs, with no arms. Because of people like this, sick people. These are sick people. And these allowed — this guy had 22 people. He brought in his mother, his father, his brother, his sisters, his aunts, his uncles. Because of Democrats’ policy. That’s called chain migration. It’s a chain. Sounds so good.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: There is no evidence that Sayfullo Saipov, the alleged perpetrator of the terror attack in 2017 on Manhattan’s West Side Highway, brought 22 relatives into the U.S. through “chain migration.” Even Trump’s own aides have declined to endorse this claim, and even anti-immigration advocates say it is wildly improbable that one man with a green card could have sponsored 22 people.

“Chain migration, you come over, and then they have — we had a guy on the West Side Highway. He goes down the highway, he’s going 60, 70 miles an hour, radical Islam, terrible. Makes a right turn into a park, kills nine people, badly injures — nobody ever talks about.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Eight people were killed in this 2017 terror attack, not nine.

“Think of visa lottery. They pick names out of a hat, visa lottery. Think about it. Do you think that this country, whichever country it is, are they going to put you — are they going to put their finest in there? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “put” anyone in the lottery. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.

“They will fight to the death because they don’t want us to have the wall. But we’ve started the wall anyway, and we’re going to get that done. We’re going to get it done.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent.

“The new platform of the Democrat Party is radical socialism and open borders. As we speak, the Democrat Party is openly inviting millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders, and overwhelm our nation. Other than that, the Democrats are doing a great job, right?”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Democrats do not want “open borders” and have issued no such invitation to lawbreakers.

“It is amazing how you can delete 33,000 e-mails after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress and our Justice Department doesn’t do anything about it. It is pretty amazing. Our Justice Department. Headed by many people from the Obama administration.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: The Justice Department is headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump appointee. Below him is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, another Trump appointee. Below him are a bunch of other Trump appointees. While the department also has career civil servants who worked under Obama and previous presidents, it is certainly not “headed” by “people from the Obama administration.”

“Republicans want to protect Medicare for our great seniors, who have earned it and they’ve paid for it. And Republicans will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. They’re trying to put a false narrative out there. And if there is a Republican out there that doesn’t, let me know. I’ll — believe me, him or her, we’ll talk them into it. We’re going to protect pre-existing conditions.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Republicans in Congress, and Trump, repeatedly tried to pass Obamacare repeal bills that would have scrapped or weakened protections for people with pre-existing health conditions, with no plan to replace them. As part of a current Republican lawsuit to try to get the Affordable Care Act struck down, Trump’s administration is arguing that the pre-existing protections are unconstitutional and should be voided. Trump has still not said what he would like to replace these protections with.

“She’s being protected by the fake news back there. Boy, that’s a lot — look at all the people. It’s like the Academy Awards — look at this. That’s a lot of stuff. You think this happens to the average president? No way. And every single time, I hope you’re enjoying yourselves. You can turn the cameras back on them. I won’t say anything bad, I promise. Now, when they think I’m ready to say something bad, all those red lights go off.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Media outlets do not turn off their cameras when Trump is “ready to say something bad.”

“You know another thing we did for — I like a lot of people in Arizona, small businesses, farmers. You don’t have estate tax. No more estate tax. So if you love your children — which is a question — you may not like ’em, in which case don’t listen to me — if you don’t like ’em, don’t leave them the farm. But if you love ’em, you’ll love Trump, because you don’t have to pay estate tax, OK? That’s a big thing.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Trump did not eliminate the estate tax. His tax law merely raised the threshold at which it must be paid. Also, it is highly misleading to suggest that the estate tax is a major burden on family farms and small businesses: very few of them were paying the tax even before Trump’s tax law was passed. According to the Tax Policy Center, a mere 80 farms and small businesses were among the 5,460 estates likely to pay the estate tax in 2017, before Trump’s tax law. The Center wrote on its website: “The Tax Policy Center estimates that small farms and businesses will pay $30 million in estate tax in 2017, fifteen hundredths of 1 of the total estate tax revenue.”

“The wall is under construction. We’re building the wall, $1.6 billion, another $1.6 billion, another $1.6 billion. I want to build it all at one time. We can do it in one year. And you see what’s happening.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent. In these comments, Trump also added a third “$1.6 billion” that does not exist.

“It’s going to be a mess. Democrats want to raise your taxes, impose socialism on our country, turn us into a Venezuela. Turn us into another Venezuela, take away your health care, destroy your Second Amendment, and Democrats want to throw your borders wide open to deadly drugs and ruthless gangs. Come on in, everybody. Come on in. Come on in, everybody.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: Democrats do not plan to “throw your borders wide open” and invite in gangs. None of them are proposing Venezuela-style socialism. They do not propose to take away health care.

“You know, we can no longer say Pocahontas, because she has no Indian blood. We can no longer call her Pocahontas. I don’t know what I’m going to do. We’ll have to come up with another name for her. Elizabeth Warren, a very boring name, we’re going to have to come up with another name. I can’t use the word Pocahontas anymore. There’s no Indian blood! I always said, I have more Indian blood than she has and I have none. I have none. That is more than true. I don’t know. We’ll have to come up with another name.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: A Stanford University professor who conducted a DNA test on Warren concluded that “the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor” six to 10 generations in the past. The analysis found that almost all of Warren’s ancestors were European, and many Native Americans reject the suggestion that a distant Native ancestor can qualify a person as any part Native. But it is not true that “there’s no Indian blood.”

“Remember you weren’t going to have any manufacturing jobs anymore, right? I said, you mean we’re not going to make things anymore? Six hundred thousand new manufacturing jobs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: This was a reference, though less explicit than usual, to Trump’s usual claim that Obama said there would be no more manufacturing jobs anymore. Obama did not say that. Rather, at a televised PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana in 2016, Obama said that certain manufacturing jobs “are just not going to come back” — but also boasted that some manufacturers are indeed “coming back to the United States,” that “we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than any time since the 1990s,” and that “we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we’ve had in most of our history.” Obama did mock Trump for Trump’s campaign claims that he was going to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to Mexico, saying: “And when somebody says — like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for — that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.” But, again, Obama made clear that he was talking about a certain segment of manufacturing jobs, not all of them.

“Remember you weren’t going to have any manufacturing jobs anymore, right? I said, you mean we’re not going to make things anymore? Six hundred thousand new manufacturing jobs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Mesa, Arizona

in fact: The economy added 378,000 manufacturing jobs between January 2017, the month Trump took office, and September 2018, the most recent month for which there was data at the time Trump spoke.

“And they broke right through, and they broke through the fences. And Mexico is now really fighting. A very tough situation. Mexican soldiers have been hurt — badly hurt, in a couple of cases.”

Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base

in fact: Mexico did not deploy its military to deal with the caravan of migrants making its way to the United States. Some of the migrants clashed with Mexican police.

“And we also gave something very important, and that was a pay increase — the first in 10 years. A nice, substantial pay increase to the people that deserve it so badly.”

Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base

in fact: Military Times reported when Trump first started making such claims: “In fact, troops have seen a pay raise of at least 1 per cent every year for more than 30 years.” Trump’s increase for 2019, 2.6 per cent, is the largest in nine years – since the 3.4 per cent increase under Obama in 2010.

“So I could sit down with Democrats and work this thing out in one hour. And we need a wall. We have to have a wall. We’re building a wall now, but we should build it very fast. We should build it — frankly, we should build it even higher, because these people — incredible. They can scale them; they can do things you wouldn’t believe. But we have a wall, it’s going up.”

Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent.

“We have the visa lottery, where we take people by lottery from countries. Now, just — you know, from a business standpoint, do you think they’re giving us their finest? We get some real beauties out of the lottery. These countries — I mean, they’re not stupid. They give us people that they don’t want. And we have to take them.”

Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base

in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “give” anyone to the lottery; there is no conspiracy in which foreign governments dump unsavoury citizens into the lottery to get rid of them. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.

“The last thing I want to do is say we’re not going to supply you with that, and therefore we’re going to cut — I guess, if you add the whole thing up, because just for the military was 600,000 jobs. So now if you’re talking about — that was $110 billion — you know, you’re talking about over a million jobs. You know, I’d rather keep the million jobs, and I’d rather find another solution.”

Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base

in fact: There is no basis for the claim that Saudi Arabia’s business deals with the U.S. will produce “600,000 jobs” or “over a million jobs.” (The White House did not respond to a request for an explanation from U.S. website Axios.) As we explained in the previous fact check, there is no basis for the claim that there are “$450 billion” in total orders or “$110 billion” in military orders. Trump has increased his jobs estimates from “over 40,000” jobs in March to “450,000 jobs” on Oct. 13 to 500,000 jobs on Oct. 17 to 600,000 jobs on Oct. 19, the day he also introduced the “over a million jobs” claim. Reuters reported: “An internal document seen by Reuters from Lockheed Martin forecasts fewer than 1,000 positions would be created by the defense contractor, which could potentially deliver around $28 billion of goods in the deal. Lockheed instead predicts the deal could create nearly 10,000 new jobs in Saudi Arabia, while keeping up to 18,000 existing U.S. workers busy if the whole package comes together — an outcome experts say is unlikely.”

“And, you know, we’re talking about something right now, where a particular country ordered — you’ll never guess who this is — about $110 billion worth of equipment. And I assume you’d like to keep those orders probably.” And: “We have a tremendous order. Probably the people around this table have the vast percentage of the $110 billion order from Saudi. We have $450 billion. But on defense, we have $110 billion. And I would say, almost 100 percent of it would be sitting right around this table with the great companies. Raytheon is here, too. Just great companies.” And: “But I would prefer that we don’t use, as retribution, cancelling $110 billion worth of work, which means 600,000 jobs. I know it sounds easy and it sounds good, and a lot people have said, ‘Oh, let’s just not sell them a $110 billion order.’ I guess you take it a step further, ‘Let’s not sell them $450 billion,’ which is the largest order in the history of our country. I went there to get that order. Saudi Arabia was my first stop. And everyone thought that was unusual. But I said, I want to order – ‘I want you to order a tremendous amount of stuff.’ Right? Everything. Your stuff and everybody’s stuff. And Wilbur was there. They ordered $450 billion. There’s never been anything like it, or close. The last thing I want to do is say we’re not going to supply you with that, and therefore we’re going to cut — I guess, if you add the whole thing up, because just for the military was 600,000 jobs. So now if you’re talking about — that was $110 billion — you know, you’re talking about over a million jobs. You know, I’d rather keep the million jobs, and I’d rather find another solution.”

Source: Defense roundtable at Luke Air Force Base

in fact: There is no basis for either the claim that the U.S. has $450 billion in business orders from Saudi Arabia or that it has $110 billion in military-related orders from Saudi Arabia. The White House has not explained what Trump has talking about; PolitiFact reported: “Hossein Askari, a business professor at George Washington University, analyzes international trade in the Middle East. He knows of no tally of contracts to back up Trump’s assertion. ‘There is absolutely no such number that could support the $450 billion,’ Askari said.” As for the $110 billion figure, the Associated Press wrote: “Trump’s wrong to suggest that he has $110 billion in military orders from Saudi Arabia. A far smaller amount in sales has actually been signed…Details of the $110 billion arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017, have been sketchy. At the time the Trump administration provided only a broad description of the defense equipment that would be sold. There was no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much…The Pentagon said this month that Saudi Arabia has signed ‘letters of offer and acceptance’ for only $14.5 billion in sales, including helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and training. Those letters, issued after the U.S. government has approved a proposed sale, specify its terms…Trump’s repeated claims that he’s signed $110 billion worth of new arms sales to Riyadh are ‘just not true,’ said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official.”

 

“And, you know, the Democrats in 2006, they voted for a border wall. They all believed in a border wall, and they voted for it.”

Source: Interview with One America News

in fact: Some Democrats, not all, voted for the Secure Fence Act in 2006. As the name suggests, it was a law for border fencing, not the kind of giant concrete wall Trump is proposing.

“So, we’ve already started the wall. We have a billion-six, another billion-six, and a third billion-six coming, but we want to do it all at one time. We want to get it built immediately, so we don’t have the problems that we have for many, many years.” And: “But the border wall’s already started, and in fact, now we say, finish the wall, finish the wall, because we’ve got big sections in San Diego and lots of other areas.”

Source: Interview with One America News

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent. In these comments, Trump also added a third “$1.6 billion” that does not exist.

“Catch and release. Visa lottery, where we take people through a lottery system, and you know who’s going into the lottery. They’re not giving us their finest.”

Source: Interview with One America News

in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “give” anyone to the lottery; there is no conspiracy in which foreign governments dump unsavoury citizens into the lottery to get rid of them. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.

 

“But, we’re — we’re having — we’re having tremendous outpouring of love and energy and everything else that you want. So I think we’re going to do very well. I think we’re going to do extremely well with the Senate. We have races that we weren’t even going to contest, numerous of them, as you know, and now we’re actually leading in many of those races. These were spots, I won’t use names. but these were spots that we weren’t really looking to fight, because we thought they wouldn’t, you know, be won. I think that Justice Kavanaugh had a big impact.”

Source: Interview with One America News

in fact: This is an exaggeration. Republicans had improved in the polls in some Senate races, but they did not take the lead in any races the party wasn’t even going to contest.

“We’re right now the largest supplier of energy in the world — we are, the United States. And it happened, I hate to tell you, over the last 18 months.”

Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights

in fact: The U.S. Energy Information Administration said in 2017 that 2016 was the fifth straight year the U.S. had been the “world’s top producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons.”

 

Question: “Mr. President, today, the Justice Department unleashed — unsealed an indictment against a Russian national who was accused of trying to influence the election in 2018.” Trump: “It had nothing to do with my campaign. You know, all of the hackers and all of the — everybody that you see, it had nothing to do with my campaign. If they’re hackers, a lot of them probably like Hillary Clinton better than me. Now they do. Now they do.”

Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights

in fact: U.S. prosecutors have presented evidence that the Russian government directed an extensive hacking operation designed to benefit Trump. There is no evidence that “a lot” of the hackers preferred Clinton.

“But a lot of people have gathered (in the migrant caravan). And a lot of people are looking at Democrats — ‘Why did they gather?’ You know, there’s a lot of information that is being — hopefully you people are looking — but how come this happened. Because people are saying there’s a lot of money being passed around so that this would normally hit just before election. “

Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights

in fact: There is no basis for Trump’s suggestion that Democrats had anything to do with the formation of the migrant caravan from Latin America or that people in the caravan were being paid to try to get to the U.S. before the election. There is no chance they will indeed arrive by Election Day; contrary to Trump’s repeated suggestions, they would not be able to vote even if they did.

 

“President Obama was contacted by the FBI in September, long before the election in November. And they told him there may be meddling by the Russians. And he did nothing about it because he thought Hillary Clinton would win. He did nothing. He didn’t do — he didn’t lift a finger; he didn’t spend a dime.”

Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights

in fact: While Obama has been widely faulted, including by many Democrats, for not responding more aggressively when he was informed of the reported Russian interference in the 2016 election, it is not true that he “didn’t lift a finger” in response. In October 2016, a month before the election, the administration issued an extraordinary statement attributing the election interference to “Russia’s senior-most officials.” According to a comprehensive Washington Post story, Obama and his officials also delivered a series of warnings to Russia: CIA director John Brennan warned his Russian counterpart in August 2016; “a month later, Obama confronted Putin directly during a meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China”; national security adviser Susan Rice summoned the Russian ambassador to the White House in October “and handed him a message to relay to Putin”; “then, on Oct. 31, the administration delivered a final pre-election message via a secure channel to Moscow originally created to avert a nuclear exchange.” Obama reportedly also sought to get Republicans and Democrats to sign on to a joint statement denouncing the Russian interference; former Obama officials have alleged that Republican leaders refused to agree to participate.

“And I think I’ll have a very similar attitude on this. I think — you know, we have — Congress is very much involved. I will, in this case, make certain recommendations. We have $450 billion worth of things ordered from a very rich country — Saudi Arabia. Six-hundred thousand jobs; maybe more than that.”

Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights

in fact: There is no basis for the claim that Saudi Arabia’s business deals with the U.S. will produce “600,000 jobs.” (The White House did not respond to a request for an explanation from U.S. website Axios.) As we explained in the previous fact check, there is no basis for the claim that there are “$450 billion” in total orders or “$110 billion” in military orders. Trump has increased his jobs estimates from “over 40,000” jobs in March to “450,000 jobs” on Oct. 13 to 500,000 jobs on Oct. 17 to 600,000 jobs on Oct. 19, the day he also introduced the “over a million jobs” claim. Reuters reported: “An internal document seen by Reuters from Lockheed Martin forecasts fewer than 1,000 positions would be created by the defense contractor, which could potentially deliver around $28 billion of goods in the deal. Lockheed instead predicts the deal could create nearly 10,000 new jobs in Saudi Arabia, while keeping up to 18,000 existing U.S. workers busy if the whole package comes together — an outcome experts say is unlikely.”

“And I think I’ll have a very similar attitude on this. I think — you know, we have — Congress is very much involved. I will, in this case, make certain recommendations. We have $450 billion worth of things ordered from a very rich country — Saudi Arabia. Six-hundred thousand jobs; maybe more than that.” And: “I did this; I went to Saudi Arabia first. And a large part of the reason was they agreed to do this; they agreed to spend $450 billion on buying and investing in the United States.”

Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights

in fact: There is no basis for the claim that the U.S. has $450 billion in business orders from Saudi Arabia. The White House has not explained what Trump has talking about; PolitiFact reported: “Hossein Askari, a business professor at George Washington University, analyzes international trade in the Middle East. He knows of no tally of contracts to back up Trump’s assertion. ‘There is absolutely no such number that could support the $450 billion,’ Askari said.”

“So this is a big day for the Central Valley, California. And I want to thank everybody for being here. This is a vital action. In my opinion, it’s vital to improve access to water in the American West. What’s happened there is disgraceful. They’ve taken it away. There’s so much water, they don’t know what to do with it, and they send it out to sea.” And: “And I said, ‘I’ve never seen anything — what do they do?’ ‘They route it into the Pacific Ocean.’ And I say, ‘Why do they do that?’ And the reason — I don’t even want to discuss it, it’s so ridiculous.” And: “So you have tremendous land. And, literally, I have heard, in terms of the land itself, it’s as good as it gets anywhere in the world for farming. But they cut off, artificially — I mean, the water used to come down. They cut it off artificially.”

Source: Remarks at signing of memo on water rights

in fact: California’s water is not being “sent” out to sea or artificially diverted away from agricultural users; the water naturally flows to the sea, and some of it is diverted to agricultural users. In other words, Trump was suggesting that California was artificially diverting water — “they’ve taken it away” — by allowing it to flow where it naturally flows. “Water in California naturally flows to the sea, the Pacific Ocean. Water diverted from these flows is used extensively for agriculture and cities,” said professor Jay R. Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California – Davis.

 

Democrats touring border warn Trump against diverting funds for wall

January 7, 2019

by Julio-Cesar Chavez

Reuters

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (Reuters) – A Congressional delegation of Democrats touring a Border Patrol facility in New Mexico on Monday warned President Donald Trump against circumventing Congress and diverting already appropriated money toward building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“He can expect a strong and swift challenge from all of us and other members of Congress, and from the American people,” said U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro, when asked about Trump’s planned address to the nation and his visit to the border on Thursday.

Castro, a Democrat from San Antonio, is leading a Congressional delegation visiting the Border Patrol facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico to investigate the death of 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo, the second child to die in December after being apprehended crossing the border illegally.

Democrats, who now control the U.S. House of Representatives, have rejected the Republican president’s demand for $5.7 billion to help build a wall. Without a deal on that sticking point, talks to fund the government – now in the 17th day of a shutdown – have stalled.

Trump has vowed not to back off his 2016 campaign promise to build a wall that he believes will stem illegal immigration and drug trafficking. He promised during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused to do so.

Democrats in Congress say a wall would be expensive, inefficient and immoral

In New Mexico, Border Patrol agents walked the Congressional delegation through the holding areas of the Alamogordo station, which Representative Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, said were “miraculously” empty.

Castro said the Border Patrol did not provide a report about Gomez’s death nor did they tour the hospital where he was treated for a cold and then released with a prescription for antibiotics and ibuprofen. The boy died shortly after his release.

“We know that CBP is woefully under equipped in terms of its standards of medical care, but we also need to find out whether the doctors in the hospital – how responsible they were in terms of that case,” Castro said.

The Border Patrol itself has said their facilities are not properly equipped to hold families, Castro said. “I think all of us who look at what they have here believe that that is true.”

U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, said the area where Gomez and his father turned themselves over to Border Patrol is on American soil and already fenced.

“The wall only pushes people out to more dangerous, treacherous crossings, creating even more death,” she said.

Illegal crossings at the southern border have dropped dramatically since the late 1970s, but in recent years more Central American families and unaccompanied children are migrating to the United States. Many are released after turning themselves into border agents and requesting asylum, a legal process that can take years to resolve in U.S. immigration courts.

Reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez; Writing by Bill Tarrant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

January 8, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

 

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas  in 1993  when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.

 

Conversation No. 37

Date:  Tuesday, September 17, 1996

Commenced: 11:35 AM CST

Concluded: 11:55 AM CST

GD: Good afternoon to you, Robert.

RTC: The same, Gregory. How is your son?

GD: Hiding out from his last girlfriend. Apparently, he was careless and now she’s in a family way, as they used to say. This is a constantly recurring theme here.

RTC: Children are either a great pleasure or a great trial.

GD: Yes, I know. My oldest son is the former and my younger one is the latter. Knocked-up brainless females whimpering on the front porch while he hides in the loo or bill collectors sending death threats. I pay his for his car payment, he spends it and then wants more.

RTC: It’s none of my business, Gregory, but do you give it to him?

GD: Usually.

RTC: And the women?

GD: Well, I don’t give it to them. He’s already beaten me to it. He prefers them to be single mothers, desperate, rather ugly and always very stupid. One was deaf, one had an idiot child and another one used drugs. He wouldn’t dare bring them home so I know nothing about the latest one until she turns up on the porch, whining. I do feel sorry for them but I refuse to pay for abortions because I am opposed to abortions. They weep and he whines. I told him that we needed to fix him to stop this but nothing will stop the lies, stories, and spending of my money. He makes plenty of money of his own but always seems to run out of it. The oldest one runs a huge computer service in Germany and always wants to send me money instead of the other way around. Three lovely grandchildren. I would hate to see what the youngest one would produce. Swift would have been in transports of delight and the Yahoos would have been replaced.

RTC: How ever do you deal with pregnant and abandoned girl friends?

GD: With patience, Robert, with patience. I convince them that they would not have been happy with him. I imply he is gay or that he really liked to boff sheep. Things like that. I convince them that they could do better trolling a homeless shelter. I do not let them in the house, ever. Fortunately, all of them are well over twenty-one so I don’t have to worry about a visit from the police and DNA tests. He seems to like single mothers pushing thirty and very desperate. Oh, yes, and he loves to take them to look at houses and visit furniture stores. Builds up the hopes and then into the sack, unprotected and eager. He hates children and they tell me how much little this or that just loves him. Cruel to both of them.  When my father died, we found a thick stack of high-quality credit cards hidden in his shaving kit. My God, nearly a hundred thousands of dollars on them. His wife was in a nursing home and before that, was very rich. He died before he could get to them but I wasn’t so unfortunate. My God, he went crazy. Of course I had to sign them but off we went to Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean and everywhere but Canada. They would arrest me over that counterfeiting business if they caught me in Canada. And clothes. Jesus, he has enough in his closets to clothe the homeless of three states.

RTC: And yourself? Not that I mean to pry….

GD: No, I am aware. I have a huge library, a great collection of classical music and some nice china, silver and other things. He goes for what he can eat, drink or screw but I have other goals.

RTC: Ah, when we get old…

GD: No, it isn’t that. I never was one for whoring around. Long after the memories of that messy night in the phone booth or the drunken dinner at some Mexican bistro, I have some Lully to come back to or perhaps return to Gibbons. Well, some day, he’ll find someone more vicious and desperate than he is and legions of the gulled will have their revenge.

RTC: Any grandchildren by him?

GD: No, thank God. He always manages to find money for an abortion. You know, I do get rather tired of the tear jerkers on the porch but I really do feel sorry for them. Frankly, he was the last chance before gravity takes hold of their chubby bodies and the best they can do is to chase after the plumbers or the gardeners. I feel sorry for the children, Robert, I really do, but I dare not get too involved with his messes. I told him once that God would punish him but he only laughed, A good vasectomy can cure a lot of evils but maybe they should start at one ear and run around to the other. Ah well, his mother doesn’t want him back but the dog likes him.

RTC: Why don’t you marry him off to some vicious little Filipino bitch and she’ll make his life hell. A friend of mine was in the Navy and made that error.

GD: The Pubic Bay Beauties? Oh yes. I used to live in San Francisco and saw some of them, purple eye shadow and green nail polish and all, right up close. As angry as I get with him, I don’t think I would wish that fate on him. You know, one of those sluts winds up and you can hear her ten blocks away with the window closed. Wants to move all the family in with you and starts looking like a reject from Mustang Ranch. Well, if I’m lucky, he’ll meet up with one with a well-muscled brother.

RTC: Is he gay?

GD: No, I meant a brother that would beat the crap out of him. Of course, he might like that but then I’d have to pay to have his back stitched up. You can’t win, Robert. We all have our crosses to bear but why is mine made of concrete? By the way, do you know what Jesus’ companion at the crucifixion said to him?

RTC: No but perhaps you’ll enlighten me.

GD: ‘Hey, Jesus, I can see your house from up here!’

RTC: Not nice, Gregory,  But entertaining.  How’s your girl friend?

GD: I sent you pictures, didn’t I? Very well. My son hates her. She’s makes his punchboards look like the south end of north bound horses and she’s much smarter than he is. I intend to put her through college and then I suppose she’ll find something better to do but hanging around me won’t do her any good. Of course I told her about some of my little games and she howled with laughter. Someone in town saw us walking along and later told me that my daughter was a real looker. I said it was my granddaughter. Of course that’s closer to the truth. If youth knew, Robert but if age could.

RTC: Very cruel.

GD: Yes, today I am cruel. I’ll put some cayenne pepper is someone’s eye drops and tell them its acid.

RTC: My God.

GD: Well, I had some jerk stealing my really good brandy so I emptied out a bottle of the best, filled it with Old Mr. Boston swill and a good dose of croton oil.

RTC: Pardon?

GD: Croton oil. The strongest laxative known to man. One drop will move a man for a week.

RTC: How much did you spike it with?

GD: A tablespoon.

RTC: You could have killed them.

GD: No, but they had to carry around one of those little round life rings for months. They had a prolapsed rectum and other problems but they never touched any of my brandy again. I told the police that I never drank and the mark used to hang around the playground down the street, eyeing the tender tinies. Enough of that. It was a lot better than rat poison.

RTC: Probably.  I take it he did not pass on?

GD: No, he didn’t. He walked with care for a long time, however Looked like Hopalong Cassidy after a very long ride.

(Concluded at 11:55 CST)

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

 

1.4 Million Floridians Get Their Voting Rights Back Today, Whether Republicans Like It or Not

January 8, 2019

by Alice Speri

The Intercept

More than 1 million Florida residents will become eligible to vote on Tuesday as the newly amended state constitution restores voting rights to most of its previously disenfranchised felons. That’s the largest number of people to gain access to the ballot all at once since American women won the right to vote in 1920.

Last November, Florida residents voted in favor of an amendment to the state constitution, known as Amendment 4, that restores voting rights to roughly 1.4 million felons in the state who have completed their sentences. (Individuals convicted of murder or sex offenses were excluded from the amendment.) But while the measure was approved by nearly 65 percent of the state’s voters, some Republicans — including Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis — have sought to sow confusion about its immediate validity.

DeSantis, who opposed the amendment during the campaign, indicated that its implementation would be delayed until lawmakers can write it into law during the next legislative session. “They’re going to be able to do that in March,” he told the Palm Beach Post. Some local elections in Florida are scheduled for as early as February, before the next legislature meets.

DeSantis’s comments followed slow-walking on the amendment by other state officials, like Ken Detzner, the Republican secretary of state, who indicated in December that he believed the ballot language was unclear and would require state legislators’ review. “We need to get some direction from them as far as implementation and definitions — all the kind of things that the supervisors were asking,” Detzner said then. “It would be inappropriate for us to charge off without direction from them.”

Lack of direction from the state department — and from exiting Gov. Rick Scott — also led to confusion among election officials across the state, with the Division of Elections director saying that “the state is putting a pause button on our felon identification files . … We need this time to research it, to be sure we are providing the appropriate guidance.”

Asked for clarification, the Florida Department of State sent a somewhat equivocal statement to The Intercept, noting both that the amendment is now officially law and that the department would follow the legislature’s directive — a seeming contradiction. “Unless otherwise specifically provided for elsewhere in this constitution, if the proposed amendment or revision is approved by vote of at least sixty percent of the electors voting on the measure, it shall be effective as an amendment to or revision of the constitution of the state on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in January following the election,” a spokesperson for the department wrote, citing the state constitution. But then she added, “The Florida Department of State will abide by any future direction from the Executive Clemency Board or the Florida Legislature regarding necessary action or implementing legislation to ensure full compliance with the law.”

That ambiguity, critics say, is deliberate and unnecessary. The amendment’s language makes clear that the change is self-executing, meaning that it became part of the state constitution the moment it won voters’ support and that it must be implemented without delay or legislators’ input. The amendment’s language was cleared by the state Supreme Court before the vote, and supporters collected more than a million signatures to get it on the ballot.

“It was designed so that there would be no requirement for involvement by any legislators, politicians, the governor, or anyone,” said Melba Pearson, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, one of the groups that drafted the amendment. “There is no role for the governor or any legislator in this amendment. Their only role is to make sure that the constitution is upheld and that the will of the voters is respected.”

A Deliberate Mess

Republicans’ belated questions about the amendment’s clarity and immediate validity were met with a barrage of criticism and stinging rebukes from many of the state’s editorial boards. “About the only thing worse than making a mess is making a mess unnecessarily,” a columnist for the Palm Beach Post wrote. “But here we are anyway, because Secretary of State Ken Detzner — who reports to Scott and whose department oversees statewide elections — won’t do his job.”

Andrew Gillum, who lost to DeSantis in November by a narrow 33,000 votes, also slammed officials who are creating unnecessary obstacles to the amendment’s implementation. “The people spoke & voted for #Amendment4 with an overwhelming majority,” he tweeted in December. “Those who fight the will of the voters are fighting democracy itself.”

The backlash only intensified after DeSantis’s comments added fuel to the confusion — an unsubtle effort at intimidating newly eligible voters, critics said.

“The reality is even though he does not agree with the amendment, it is his duty as the governor, the incoming governor of the state, to uphold the will of the people. Period, end of story,” said Melba. “Amendment 4 is now law in the state of Florida, so he needs to uphold it as is. Politicians or elected officials don’t get to pick and choose in that manner.”

Melba called on all new eligible voters to register on Tuesday and invited anyone experiencing issues to report them on the ACLU’s website. She said she hoped that no obstruction would arise to warrant litigation, but that the group was “prepared for the worst. … No options are off the table.”

Groups of formerly incarcerated “returning citizens” who drove the effort to pass the measure will be out on the streets once again this week, this time to register new voters, and several groups would run voter education campaigns, Melba added. “All people need to do on January 8 is register to vote, either online or at their local Supervisor of Elections office in their county,” she said. “There’s nothing confusing about it.”

A spokesperson for DeSantis, who is also to be sworn in on Tuesday, did not respond to a request for comment, but his office told other publications that “the Governor-elect intends for the will of the voters to be implemented but will look to the Legislature to clarify the various questions that have been raised.”

Before the amendment passed, Florida was the largest of three states that disenfranchised felons for life. As The Intercept reported in November, 1.68 million residents of the state were ineligible to vote because of a felony conviction: 10 percent of the state’s adult population and 1 in 5 African-Americans. Across the country, more than 6 million people can’t vote because of felony convictions, though most states restore voting rights at some point between release and the end of probation.

In Florida, a regular swing state where it’s not unusual for elections like DeSantis’s to be decided by extremely narrow margins, many believe that re-enfranchising felons has the potential to significantly tip the state’s political scales. But those who led the yearslong effort to pass Amendment 4, and particularly a diverse coalition of individuals with felony convictions, rejected the politicization of their effort and noted that the issue impacted people across the state and the political spectrum.

“We are not pawns for any partisan gamesmanship, we’re not pawns for any partisan bickering,” Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, told The Intercept. “We are human beings, we are people over politics. And we are citizens of the state and of this country that want to be able to participate in the democratic process without being set up like we’re just a token for a political party.”

Meade, one of the earliest leaders of the voter re-enfranchisement movement in the state, said he would finally register to vote on Tuesday.

“And when I go to register, I’ll be doing so under the authority of the highest law in the state of Florida, and this law is over any legislature, it’s over any political or public servant,” he added. “We’re going forward fully expecting that every public servant that serves the systems of Florida is going to number one, respect the rule of the law, and number two, respect the wishes of its citizens.”

 

 

 

 

 

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TBR News January 6, 2019

Jan 07 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 7 2019:” Prior to the event of printed, and later television, media, it was not difficult for the world’s power elites and the governments they controlled, to see that unwelcome and potentially dangerous information never reached the masses of people under their control. Most of the general public in more distant times were completely illiterate and received their news from their local priest or from occasional gossip from travellers. The admixture of kings, princes and clergy had an iron control over what their subject could, or could not hear. During the Middle Ages and even into the more liberal Renaissance, universities were viewed with suspicion and those who taught, or otherwise expressed, concepts that were anathama to the concept of feudalism were either killed outright in public or permanently banished. Too-liberal priests were silenced by similar methods. If Papal orders for silence were not followed, priests could, and were, put to the torch as an example for others to note.

However, with the advent of the printing press and a growing literacy in the piopulation, the question of informational control was less certain and with the growing movements in Europe and the American colonies for less restriction and more public expression, the power elites found it necessary to find the means to prevent unpleasant information from being proclaimed throughout their lands and unto all the inhabitants thereof.

The power elites realized that if they could not entirely prevent inconvenient and often dangerous facts to emerge and threaten their authority, their best course was not censorship but to find and develop the means to control the presentation and publication of that they wished to keep entirely secret.

The first method was to block or prevent the release of dangerous material by claiming that such material was a matter of important state security and as such, strictly controlled. This, they said, was not only for their own protection but also the somewhat vague but frightening concept of the security of their people.

The second method was, and has been, to put forth disinformation that so distorts and confuses actual facts as to befuddle a public they see as easily controlled, naïve and gullible.

The mainstream American media which theoretically was a balance against governmental corruption and abuses of power, quickly became little more than a mouthpiece for the same government they were supposed to report on. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, most American newspapers were little better than Rupert Mudoch’s modern tabloids, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing but during the First World War, President Wilson used the American entry into the First World War as an excuse for setting up controls over the American public. Aside from setting up government control over food distribution, the railroads, much industry involved in war production, he also established a powerful propganda machine coupled with a national informant system that guaranteed his personal control. In 1918, citing national security, Wilson arrested and imprisoned critical news reporters and threatened to shut down their papers.

Wilson was a wartime president and set clear precidents that resonated very loudely with those who read history and understood its realities.

During the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt, another wartime leader, was not as arrogant or highhanded as Wilson (whose empire fell apart after the end of the war that supported it) but he set up informational controls that exist to the present time. And after Roosevelt, and the war, passed into history, the government in the United States created a so-called cold war with Soviet Russia, instead of Hitler’s Germany, as the chief enemy. Control of the American media then fell into the hands of the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency who eventually possessed an enormous, all-encompassing machine that clamped down firmly on the national print, and later television media, with an iron hand in a velvet glove. Media outlets that proved to be cooperative with CIA propaganda officials were rewarded for their loyalty and cooperation with valuable, and safe, news and the implication was that enemies of the state would either be subject to scorn and derision and that supporters of the state and its policies would receive praise and adulation.

The methodology of a controlled media has a number of aspects which, once clearly understood, renders its techniques and goals far less effective.

Mainstream media sources (especially newspapers) are notorious for reporting flagrantly dishonest and unsupported news stories on the front page, then quietly retracting those stories on the very back page when they are caught. In this case, the point is to railroad the lie into the collective consciousness. Once the lie is finally exposed, it is already too late, and a large portion of the population will not notice or care when the truth comes out.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 8
  • Fact Check: Did the U.S. catch 4,000 terrorists at the southern border in 2018?
  • Trump aides may be in legal jeopardy as Democrats give evidence to Mueller
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • White House has secret 5-story-deep doomsday bunker: Book
  • Trump threatens national emergency in ‘next few days’ over wall and shutdown
  • France’s Macron reeling as tough stance against ‘yellow vests’ backfires
  • France: ‘Yellow vest’ protesters storm ministry in Paris

 

 

815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 8

November 15, 2018

by Daniel Dale Washington Bureau Chief

Toronto Star

WASHINGTON—It took Donald Trump until the 286th day of his presidency to make 815 false claims.

He just made another 815 false claims in a month.

In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him — an outrageous barrage of serial dishonesty in which he obliterated all of his old records.

How bad have these recent weeks been?

  • Trump made 664 false claims in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.
  • Trump averaged 26.3 false claims per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.
  • Trump made more false claims in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).
  • The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.

As always, Trump was being more frequently dishonest in part because he was simply speaking more. He had three campaign rallies on Nov. 5, the day before he set the record, and eight more rallies over the previous five days.

But it was not only quantity. Trump packed his rally speeches with big new lies, repeatedly reciting wildly inaccurate claims about migrants, Democrats’ views on immigration and health care, and his own record. Unlike many of his lies, lots of these ones were written into the text of his speeches.

Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.

If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.

Oct 18, 2018

“Jon Tester says one thing to voters and does the EXACT OPPOSITE in Washington. Tester takes his orders form Pelosi & Schumer. Tester wants to raise your taxes, take away your 2A, open your borders, and deliver MOB RULE.”

Source: Twitter

in fact: Tester, the Democratic Montana senator, does not want to do any of these things. Democrats do not support open borders.

 

“Can you believe this, and what Democrats are allowing to be done to our Country?”

Source: Twitter

in fact: Trump posted a video of migrants in Guatemala, part of the caravan heading to the United States, receiving small sums of money. A Guatemalan journalist said the money had been collected by local merchants. There was no evidence Democrats had anything to do with the money or with the caravan itself.

“Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!”

Source: Twitter

in fact: Democrats’ “Medicare for all” proposals tend to be vague, but they would not destroy Medicare or take Medicare health insurance away from seniors. Rather, they would extend similar government-provided health insurance to younger people as well, and they would give current Medicare recipients additional coverage for things like vision and dental services.

“All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support.”

Source: Twitter

in fact: This claim is belied by Republicans’ actions. The party has tried repeatedly during Trump’s presidency to replace Obamacare with a law that would give insurers more freedom to discriminate against people with pre-existing health conditions. As part of a Republican lawsuit to try to get Obamacare struck down, Trump’s administration is formally arguing that the law’s protections for pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional and should be voided. Trump has not said what he would like to replace these protections with.

 

“I am watching the Democrat Party led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws) assault on our country by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, whose leaders are doing little to stop this large flow of people, INCLUDING MANY CRIMINALS, from entering Mexico to U.S…..”

Source: Twitter

in fact: Democrats do not want “open borders.” They are not leading any influx of unauthorized immigrants or asylum seekers.

“We had the votes to repeal and replace (Obamacare), and somebody disappointed us a little bit.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Trump never had the votes to repeal and replace Obamacare. (That “somebody” was the late senator John McCain, who never agreed to support Trump’s plan. McCain had campaigned for years on repealing and replacing Obamacare, but that is not the same thing as agreeing to support a particular replacement policy.)

“I got rid of the individual mandate, which is the worst thing in Obamacare. And we’re running the remnants of Obamacare before it expires completely…”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: While Trump did get rid of the individual mandate, he did not eliminate Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people, the federal and state Obamacare marketplaces that allow other uninsured people to buy insurance, or the subsidies that help many of them make the purchases. These elements are not scheduled to “expire.”

“And how about Pocahontas, Elizabeth Warren? You know, the one good thing about her test is that there was so little she had less than the average American. I used to say I have more Indian blood in me than she does and I have none. I used to say that. And I was right. But the only good thing she did, I think she probably disqualified, because she made a fool out of herself. But I think the only good thing she did, I can’t call her Pocahontas anymore. Right? I came up with the name Pocahontas, and they once said you must apologize for that. I said, why? Well, it’s not nice what you’re doing. I said, OK, I’d like to apologize to the real Pocahontas. But not to the fake — not to the fake Pocahontas. Not to the fake Pocahontas. But it’s true, she has so little Indian blood. She has none, that I cannot call her Pocahontas anymore. But if you don’t mind, I’ll continue.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: A Stanford University professor who conducted a DNA test on Warren concluded that “the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor” six to 10 generations in the past. The analysis found that almost all of Warren’s ancestors were European, and many Native Americans reject the suggestion that a distant Native ancestor can qualify a person as any part Native. But it is not true that “she has none.”

“Do you think she leaked? She leaked. She leaked. Remember that? No, I didn’t leak, remember? Remember? Senator John Cornyn, great guy from Texas. He asked a question. ‘Did you leak?’ She was startled, because she was unprepared. ‘No — no — did — what? Did I leak? No, no, we didn’t leak, no. No, we didn’t leak.’ That was the worst body language I think I’ve ever seen. Remember? Remember Jon Lovitz, the liar, remember Jon Lovitz? ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m a businessman, that’s right. I went to — yeah, yeah, I went to Harvard. Yeah, that’s right. I went to Harvard. I’m a businessman.’ That was, like, a female version of Jon Lovitz.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Trump did not accurately recount the answer Feinstein gave when Republican Sen. John Cornyn pressed her, at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on the leaking of Christine Blasey Ford’s letter accusing judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Feinstein didn’t say “Well, what, what, what? No, I didn’t do it. Did we leak? Did we leak? No. No. No, we didn’t.” She vehemently said she did not leak the letter; asked if her staff leaked it, she said, “Oh, I don’t believe my staff would leak it. I have not asked that question directly, but I do not believe they would.” When Cornyn followed up, she said, “The answer is no. The staff said they did not.”

“Jon Tester joined the shameful Democrat mob. They were calling it a mob. Now, a lot of people are calling — these people are starting to think of it as a mob. And voted against Kavanaugh, voted against — I guessed, I didn’t even know — did he vote against Justice Gorsuch? He did. How do you vote against him? Right? Top student at Harvard. Top student at Columbia. Top student at Oxford. Oxford. And they vote against him? How do you do that? And he’s just, like, led an impeccable life. Justice Kavanaugh, number one in his class at Yale, I mean, these are extraordinary people.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: As a Yale undergraduate, Kavanaugh graduated cum laude, which means he was not first in his class; other students graduated summa cum laude and magna cum laude. Yale Law School’s grading system does not allow the calculation of class rankings at all. (Gorsuch, too, was not number one in his class at Harvard or Oxford, as Trump has repeatedly claimed, but Trump was a big vaguer in this case, simply saying “top student” rather than “number one in his class.”)

“…we have a massive trade deficit with Japan. We have a massive trade deficit with everybody. But we’re changing it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: The U.S. does not have a trade deficit with “everybody.” While the U.S. has a substantial overall trade deficit — $566 billion in 2017 — it had surpluses in 2017 with more than half of its trading partners, according to data from the U.S. government’s own International Trade Commission, including Hong Kong, Brazil, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, Chile, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Kuwait and dozens more countries and territories. And while Trump is free to claim his actions will eventually reduce deficits, they have not done so yet: the overall 2017 deficit was the largest for any year since 2008.

“Japan, I was speaking to Prime Minister Abe the other day. They’re opening up new car factories and plants in Michigan, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, in Kentucky.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: There are no automotive assembly factories in Pennsylvania, and Japanese firms do not appear to be planning to open any. (We will update this item if additional information emerges.)

“How about this guy in California? I have to say, look, I’m sure he’s a nice guy, nice guy, young guy, they say, oh, someday he wants to be president. Oh, please let him run. But how about this guy? Running for governor, California. He wants open borders, and he wants to take care of everyone’s health care, everyone’s medical costs, right? He wants to put more gas taxes on, where they just have a lot. But he wants to take care of everybody. So open borders, the whole world is going to go to California. And they owe about 15 zillion dollars. They owe more money than anybody knows, it’s not even possible for them. And he’s asking everybody in the world, just come on in. Open borders, we’re going to take care of your health care. We’re going to take care of your schools. We’re going to take care of everything. I mean, I mean, give me a break. Right? No, I saw this platform the other day.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Democratic California governor candidate Gavin Newsom has indeed endorsed the idea of providing health insurance to illegal immigrants. He has not, however, endorsed “open borders.” Newsom is not even among the Democrats who have called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement; he has instead called for “fundamental reforms” to the agency.

“Any miners in the audience, please? How are you guys? Happy, right? Better believe it. It’s coming back. Clean coal. I say beautiful, clean coal. And we have more of it than anybody.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: The term “clean coal” is false in itself. Even if one were to believe that there is indeed “clean coal,” a term that is the creation of industry spin, the term is not meant to be applied to all coal from a country or state, which is how Trump uses it. The phrase, the New York Times reported, “is often understood to mean coal plants that capture the carbon dioxide emitted from smokestacks and bury it underground as a way of limiting global warming.” As the Washington Post wrote: “Saying that the United States exported clean coal is like saying that the United States is shipping bathrobes overseas each time a shipping container full of cotton leaves an American port. Maybe it will be a bathrobe, but that’s not what we’re sending.”

“And, by the way, if this scene — if this scene of people pouring up — if that doesn’t make people want to build — you know, in 2006, all these people — just about all them — they wanted a wall… But they just don’t want to give us the victory. I know for a fact, they said, you know what, we can’t let them have the wall because that would be another campaign promise fulfilled.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Some Democrats, not all, voted for the Secure Fence Act in 2006. As the name suggests, it was a law for border fencing, not the kind of giant concrete wall Trump is proposing.

“She opposes the wall, which we’ve started and we’ve done a lot of work on it, but I’d like to get it done quickly. Give us the money and we’ll do it fast, but we’ve started it. We got $1.6 billion, $1.6 billion, and $1.6 billion. And I want to get it finished.” And: “But — but we’ve started the wall.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent. In these comments, Trump also added a third “$1.6 billion” that does not exist.

“Kathleen Williams supports open borders.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Williams, a Democratic congressional candidate in Montana, does not support open borders. She said in May: “We need secure borders that foster (legal) trade, including our northern and southern borders, our ports and air transit hubs. I am concerned about a physical border wall: it is impractical, will aggravate wildlife issues, and it sends the wrong signal to the rest of the world. I am more interested in proposals introduced by border-state legislators that would use modern technology to strengthen our borders in a cost-effective and practical way.”

“But Nancy Pelosi, crying Chuck Schumer, and the radical Democrats, they want to raise your taxes, they want to impose socialism on our incredible nation, make it Venezuela, because that’s what’s going to happen…They want to take away your health care, because you won’t be able to have it. Our country won’t be able to afford it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Democratic leaders do not want to impose Venezuela-style socialism, and they do not want to “take away your health care.”

“Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, he was in there at the beginning. Remember he got up and he said, ‘I don’t know what you guys are wasting your time for. Nobody is going to beat Trump. Why are you doing this? You can’t beat him.’ In fact, do you remember, he said, ‘In fact, I just went out and bought a Trump tie and I’m dropping out after this debate, but none of you guys are going to beat Trump.’ That was Mike Huckabee. That was pretty cool. That was pretty cool. It was very good for my ego. In fact that might have been my worst debate because I was so impressed with what he said, I didn’t think about anything. No, Mike is great.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Mike Huckabee did not say in a debate that “nobody’s gonna beat Trump.” During the Republican primary debate in which Huckabee announced he was wearing a Trump tie, he also called Trump a “good man” and said, “Donald Trump would be a better president every day of the week and twice on Sunday rather than Hillary.” He did not predict a Trump victory.

“A subpoena from the United States Congress. She (Hillary Clinton) gets it. Then she deletes 33,000 e-mails. And she acid-washes — she acid-washes — this way, it’s a very expensive process, never used, it’s never used, because it costs so much. It’s called acid-washing. It’s called bleach — it’s called five different names. But I like acid-washing, because that really says it. She acid-washes 33,000, so that nobody can ever find — but they’re around someplace.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: Clinton’s team deleted emails using a free software program that happened to be called BleachBit. There was no “acid-washing.”

“You ever see their signs? ‘Resist.’ They say, ‘What are you going to resist?’ ‘I don’t know.’ Do you ever see when the fake news interviews them? And then they try and cut it, but they — they’ll go to a person holding a sign who gets paid by Soros or somebody, right? That’s what happens. Well, did you see with — with now Justice Kavanaugh, did you see — and, by the way, also, with Justice Neil Gorsuch. How good is he? That’s a great two people. But did you see the signs? They’re brand-new. They’re beautiful, the black-and-white signs. Everybody has the same size, right from the finest printer in Washington. Do you think the people — those are not signs made in the basement. They were all identical. And I pointed that out, and the next day everybody had signs that looked like they were made in the basement.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: People protesting Brett Kavanaugh did not change their signs to make them look more homemade after Trump began suggesting their signs were suspiciously professional. There is no evidence that television stations have tried to “cut” evidence that anti-Trump “resistance” protesters do not know what they are resisting. And there is no evidence that the anti-Kavanaugh protesters were “paid by Soros or somebody.” Both sides of the fight had paid professional organizers helping to organize average people passionate about the cause, but these average people were not paid. The slight factual basis for Trump’s allegation was that Ana Maria Archila, one of the sexual assault survivors who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator, is the co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a group that has received significant donations from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Jennifer Flynn Walker, director of advocacy and mobilization for the Center, told the Washington Post that it was not paying protesters and that Soros was not involved in its efforts to fight Kavanaugh.

 

“We have the worst laws anywhere in the world. We have the dumbest laws anywhere in the world. Somebody comes in and we say, excuse me, a foot hits the ground. You know, if a foot hits the ground, we’re not allowed to say, hey, go back. Every other country in the world, they say go back. Can’t come in. Sorry. A foot hits the ground, we have to by law, with these horrible people that are making their own rulings, having nothing to do with our Constitution, we have to take those people in, even if they’re criminals, and we have hardened criminals coming in.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: The U.S. is not the only country that allows people to claim asylum and signs them up for legal proceedings rather than immediately deporting them. “This statement is patently false,” James Hathaway, a Canadian law professor and director of the refugee and asylum law program at the University of Michigan, said in an email after Trump made a similar claim. “It is completely routine in other countries that, like the U.S., have signed the UN refugee treaties for asylum-seekers to have access to the domestic legal system to make a protection claim (and to be allowed in while the claim is pending). If anything, the U.S. is aberrational in the opposite direction: U.S. domestic law falsely treats the granting of protection to refugees as a matter of discretion, whereas international law *requires* a grant of protection to anyone who meets the refugee definition. This doesn’t mean that refugees have a right to stay in the U.S. or anywhere else forever — but they *do* have a right to stay for the duration of the persecutory risk, unless another safe country that has also signed the refugee treaties agrees to take them in.”

“All because of the illegal immigration onslaught brought by the Democrats, because they refuse to acknowledge or to change the laws. They like it. They also figure everybody coming in is going to vote Democrat. You know. Hey, they’re not so stupid, when you think about it, right? But they are crazy. And the crazy Democrats refuse to support any form of border security legislation to fix our absolutely horrible, old-fashioned, loophole-ridden immigration laws.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: There is no evidence that the current level of illegal immigration was “brought by the Democrats.” (The number of apprehensions at the southwest border, traditionally used as a proxy for how many people are trying to illegally cross the border, was higher under Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush than it was under Democrat Barack Obama.) Contrary to Trump’s suggestion, illegal immigrants cannot vote. (They would be allowed to vote only if they were eventually granted an official path to citizenship, which they do not currently have.) And it is not true that Democrats “refuse to support any form of border security legislation”; they have simply demanded something in return. For example, Democratic leaders said they would agree to give Trump $25 billion for his border wall in exchange for a path to citizenship for the “DREAMers,” unauthorized immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children; Trump refused.

“Fake news. But a lot of money has been passing to people to come up and try and get to the border by Election Day, because they think that’s a negative for us.”

Source: Campaign rally in Missoula, Montana

in fact: There is no evidence that anyone paid members of the caravan of migrants in an attempt to get them to the border “by Election Day”; given their pace, there was no chance they would indeed arrive by Election Day. Contrary to Trump’s repeated suggestions, they would not be able to vote even if they did.

 

Fact Check: Did the U.S. catch 4,000 terrorists at the southern border in 2018?

Said one ex-official, “Terrorists trying to infiltrate the U.S. across our southern border was more of a theoretical vulnerability than an actual one.”

Janury 4, 2019

by Julia Ainsley

NBC News

WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday that Customs and Border Protection picked up nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists last year “that came across our southern border.”

But in fact, the figure she seems to be citing is based on 2017 data, not 2018, and refers to stops made by Department of Homeland Security across the globe, mainly at airports.

In fiscal 2017, the latest year for which data is available, according to agency data and the White House’s own briefing sheet, the Department of Homeland Security prevented nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists from “traveling to or entering the United States.”

According to Justice Department public records and two former counterterrorism officials, no immigrant has been arrested at the southwest border on terrorism charges in recent years.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about Sanders’ statement.

Ahead of President Donald Trump’s meeting Friday afternoon with Congressional leaders to negotiate the end of the government shutdown, the White House issued briefing materials that stated “3,775 known or suspected terrorists [were] prevented from traveling or entering the U.S. by DHS” in fiscal year 2017. Nowhere did the briefing materials state the known or suspected terrorists were stopped at the southern border.

Ned Price, who served on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, said many of those 3,775 were stopped simply because their name matches that of someone on a terrorist watch list, which have grown in recent years, and not because they pose a threat.

“So-called terrorist watchlists are an important tool in our national security arsenal, but they are far from fool-proof in large part because of their sheer size. The number of people on such lists ballooned in the years after 9/11, with some reports indicating that more than one million names had been associated with suspected terrorist activity. That’s why false-positives, including in the case of crossings at our southern border, are commonplace. Even the late Ted Kennedy was registered on one such list when attempting to fly, presumably because of the commonality of his name,” Price said.

Nick Rasmussen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center from December 2014 through December 2017 said, “During my tenure, the threat of terrorists trying to infiltrate the United States across our southern border was much more of a theoretical vulnerability than an actual one. It simply isn’t the case that terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda see the southern border as the optimal the way to get would-be terrorists into the country.”

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said at a press conference at the White House Friday afternoon that more than 3,000 immigrants have been stopped at the southwest border, over an unspecified period, because they are special interest aliens. DHS classifies nearly all immigrants crossing the border who is a national of a country outside of the Western Hemisphere as a Special Interest Alien, according to DHS reports.

A spokeswoman for the National Counterterrorism Center did not respond to a request for comment

 

Trump aides may be in legal jeopardy as Democrats give evidence to Mueller

Adam Schiff says he will hand over transcripts of interviews withheld by Republicans when they controlled committee

January 6, 2019

by David Taylor in New York

The Guardian

Donald Trump Jr and long-term Trump aide Roger Stone face a heightened threat of criminal charges as Democrats on Capitol Hill prepare to hand evidence to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

They could be charged with perjury if there is evidence that they lied to Congress during interviews behind closed doors with the House intelligence committee.

The California Democrat Adam Schiff will take over leadership of the committee now that his party has control of the House, following victory in the midterm elections.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Schiff made clear he would be handing over transcripts which had been withheld from Mueller’s investigation by Republicans when they controlled the panel.

The committee staged 73 interviews with dozens of witnesses, including Jared Kushner, Trump Jr and Stone. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, has already pleaded guilty to perjury for lying to Congress over attempts to make a deal to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Schiff said he was “trying to deconflict” with special counsel Mueller’s investigation because over the last two years the committee, under Republican leadership, had actively tried to make the special counsel’s work more difficult.

Schiff said he planned “as one of our first acts to make the transcripts of our witnesses fully available to special counsel for any purpose, including the bringing of perjury charges”.

Trump Jr is in peril because he orchestrated the now infamous Trump Tower meeting with a group of Russians after being promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. He would face problems if he told Congress that his father was unaware of the meeting but Mueller has obtained evidence to contradict that.

Stone has been under scrutiny over whether he joined the Russian conspiracy to hack Democratic party emails and whether he had prior knowledge of their publication by WikiLeaks.

Kushner, Trump’s son in law and senior adviser, has faced questions over his contacts with Russian officials during the transition period between the November 2016 election and the start of the Trump administration in January 2017.

Mueller’s investigation has had access to emails and other records which can be used to test whether witnesses were honest in their evidence to Congress.

Schiff did not name any individuals, but said: “There’s no reason to protect these witnesses. There’s every reason to validate Congress’s interest in not having people come before it and lie.

“I think people felt that they had some kind of immunity when the GOP majority at the time because they would often intervene and tell witnesses, ‘You don’t have to answer that question.’”

Schiff also underlined that his committee will start to investigate the Trump Organization and any possible connections to Russian money.

He said last month he wanted to investigate finances of the Trump Organization, naming Deutsche Bank, which has a history of laundering Russian money and which for a time was the only lender willing to do business with Trump.

On Sunday, Schiff said his committee had gone to work seeking records from private institutions.

Trump has consistently claimed the Mueller investigation into Russian election interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign is a hoax and a witch-hunt.

On Friday, it was confirmed that judge Beryl Howell, chief judge of US district court in Washington DC, had granted a six-month extension to the grand jury which has been reviewing evidence and recommending or rejecting charges in connection with the Mueller investigation.

Under federal rules, a grand jury can serve no longer than 18 months unless the chief judge extends its service by a period of six months or less, “upon determination that such extension is in the public interest”.

So far, 33 people and three Russian organisations have been charged, convicted or have pleaded guilty in connection with Mueller’s investigation.

Schiff said it was premature to talk about the possible impeachment of Trump, saying “we need to see what Bob Mueller has to say”.

He said impeachment was a theoretical possibility, but could only go ahead if it was a bipartisan process with Senate Republicans in support.

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

January 6, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

 

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas  in 1993  when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.

Conversation No. 43

Date: Friday, October 25, 1996

Commenced: 3:45 PM CST

Concluded: 4:15 PM CST

GD: Good afternoon, Robert. Everything going well for you? How was your doctor’s appointment?

RTC: Well, no results but I am resigned to being old, Gregory. When you get to my age, you’ll count the day as wonderful if you can open your eyes in the morning. How is it with you?

GD: It goes. Moving to Illinois was not the best of ideas but my son left me little choice. It was move or else.

RTC: Or else what?

GD: He would leave and I would be stuck with a huge rent for a big house with a swimming pool that he insisted we have but he only used once. I used it all the time but I had to clean it and with all the trees and the occasional drowned squirrel, it was a wonderful addition that I would never want again unless I was rich enough to afford a weekly pool service. Of course the scumbag neighbors wanted their filthy kids to use it but I said that was not possible. I told them my insurance forbade it but actually, who wants an army of screaming little assholes using the pool as their private toilet?

RTC: Sounds like you put your Scrooge hat on this morning.

GD: Actually, I like kids. If you barbecue the small ones, they go well with a pitcher of Jack Daniels.

RTC: For God’s sake, don’t ever say that around a Jew or you’ll go stone deaf from the screaming.

GD: Oh, I know you’re right about that one. It’s a little like saying that you’re looking for a chink in someone’s armor and Asian-Americans start shouting. And never call a spade, a spade.

RTC: Yes. We live in an artificial society, Gregory. Our primitive selves still heft the vanished club with which to smite other cave-dwellers.

GD: In the Mueller book, I made reference to the fact that we now have nice-nice titles for people. I said we call janitors ‘sanitary engineers’ and that Mongoloids are now called ‘differently abled.’ And some reader wrote a nasty letter to my publisher about this which he forwarded for my comment. She said she was horrified and repulsed by the use of the Mongoloid idiot implication. Her little Timmy was the sweetest child on earth and I ought to be thrashed for calling him this terrible, forbidden name.

RTC: Did you reply?

GD: Oh yes. I wrote to her that having read her letter with sorrow because she was stuck with a retard, I suggested, very pointedly, that she ought to put some chlorine in her gene pool.

RTC: (Laughter) Gregory, you didn’t.

GD: Why not? Hell, the Greeks knew something about genes and they left their retards out on the mountainside to either die slowly or more quickly when the animals got them. Keeps the race clean if you follow me. Now, we let the innates breed and they are filling what passes for civilization with all kinds of lopsided mongrels. Malthus doesn’t mention eugenics but I feel that the herd should be thinned and the best breeding stock put in a separate pen to avoid two legged goats or chickens covered with fur.

RTC: You sound like a Nazi. As I recall, we had that Dr. Mengele on the payroll. Down in South America where we wanted him to do work on breeding superior people.

GD: Jesus H. Christ, Robert, talk about infuriating the Jews. If they ever found out about that delightful fact, all their newspapers, magazines and television stations would do terrible damage to the CIA. My grandfather was a Nazi but I am not.

RTC: Over there?

GD: No, here. A member of the AO in good standing.

RTC: Pardon?

GD: The Auslands Organization. Party members residing outside Germany. He was a banker with close connections to the Schreoder people in Cologne. Party member since 1923.

RTC: Well, the CIA is now full of Jews so if they find that out, they will do more than keep your books out of the bookstores.

GD: I suppose if I turned my back on them, I might have some trouble. They don’t like confrontation and love to work in the dark or through surrogates. They hate the Mueller books, not because Mueller was anti-Semitic but because he is presented as a human being. To professional Jews, all Germans are evil. Little children of eight were trained to visit the concentration camp in their neighborhood and toss screaming Jewish babies into the giant bonfires that burned day and night.

RTC: Now I know you’re joking.

GD: Of course but that sort of silly crap is very close to what they do.

RTC: Of course it’s to make money and gain moral superiority. ‘Oh Mr. Salesman, my whole family died in the gas chambers. Terrible. Can you give a poor survivor 50% off on that couch?’

GD: Robert, that’s very unkind. True but unkind.

RTC: I remember when they attacked the Liberty and were killing Americans. Deliberate of course and the Navy sent aircraft to wipe them out. Johnson found out about this and stopped the flight. Why? He didn’t want to offend Israel.

GD: What about dead Americans?

RTC: Pales into insignificance when balanced against the vital needs of precious Israel. At the time, they were murdering captured Etyptian soldiers and they didn’t want us listening in so the tried to sink the ship.

GD: And Pollard…

RTC: Oh my, yes and even now they want us to liberate him. They made him an honorary member of the Knesset and put big bucks away for him in a private account. And this for an American who was stealing important secrets and giving them to what was supposed to be an ally.

GD: Did you ever read the Bunche report?

RTC: Ralph Bunche. The UN man?

GD: Yes. After the Jews murdered Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross and one of their royal family, solely because he refused to allow them to butcher Arab farmers, they killed him and Bunche, who was on Cypress dealing with refugees, was given his job. The UN prepared a chronology of violence in Palestine from ’44 until ’48…day by day. A wonderful chronicle of arson, murder, kidnapping, poisoning and God alone knows what atrocities. Blowing up hotels full of people and so on. I got a copy from an Army friend and if you like, I can send you a photo copy.

RTC: That I would like to see although there’s nothing I can do about it now.

GD: And when you were in the CIA?

RTC: I never liked dealing with those people. Jim Angleton loved them and kissed their asses but I never trusted any of them.

GD: Especially our allies?

RTC: Oh no, they are not our allies. If it weren’t for the fact that Jews have lots of money and own almost all the newspapers and TV stations, we wouldn’t be so eager to kiss their hairy asses, believe me.

GD: Well, the wheel turns, Robert, and one day there will be a reckoning of sorts. I don’t forsee enormous gas chambers being built in Detroit but the public can get very unpleasant when it gets angry.

RTC: But without the papers and TV and with political correctness in full swing, I can’t see mobs in the street burning down kosher meat stores.

GD: Who knows the way the wheel turns?

RTC: But don’t put any of this into future books, Gregory. Not a good idea. You will be accused of masterminding the assassination of Lincoln.

GD: Well, they may have the newspapers but there are other avenues. I remember once when I was giving a lecture, some old bitch came up to me afterwards and began telling me how her whole family had been turned into lampshades and soap at Auschwutz. She dared me to respond but I did.

RTC: And? God help us all, what did you say?

GD: Why, I said my uncle had died at Auischwitz during the war. She blinked and asked me if he were a Jew.

GD: I told her no, he was not. I said he got drunk on the Fuehrer’s birthday, fell out of a guard tower and broke his neck.

RTC: My God, you have balls, Gregory. What did she do?

GD: I think she swallowed her false teeth. However, everyone around us started laughing so not everyone was mad at me. She waddled off before I could tell her about the new German pizza oven that seated four.

RTC: Gregory, do let us change the subject. Suppose some Jewish FBI agents were listening to this?

GD: I would offer a special bargain on hand soap. I could set up a booth at a fair with hand soap in piles and a sign saying ‘Find a Relative!’ over it. Probably not a good idea. They would ask me for a 50% discount. Oh, by the way, to change the subject…

RTC: Thank God…

GD: Yes. Did you know that the British Prince Consort, Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, was a German, not a Greek. He also had been a uniformed member of several Nazi organizations before he joined the Royal Navy. His brother had been a member of the SS and his sister had been a German nurse so they never got invited to the royal wedding. His uncle was Prince Phillip of Hesse who lived in Italy where he married their Crown Princess. He was Hitler’s art dealer in Italy. Phillip is related to the last Empress of Russia, the German Kaiser  and others. His uncle was a general in the SA. I have a snapshot of him in his Hitler Youth uniform, dagger and all, with a friend of mine when both were at a Hitler Youth rally. I would imagine the IRA would love to buy that one.

RTC: I had heard something about this. Phil is a nasty piece of arrogant work. Anthony Blunt…

GD: I know all about his going to Germany and hiding references to Phillp’s Nazi past. That’s why he never got arrested when he was exposed as a Russian spy.

RTC: You do get around, Gregory.

GD: If we got together, I could tell you lots of interesting facts, Robert. Well, enough evil for the moment. My dog is making go outside noises so I had best leave you. I will call you later, OK?

RTC: Salud.

 

(Concluded at 4:15 Pm CST)

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

White House has secret 5-story-deep doomsday bunker: Book

April 2, 2018

by Steven Nelson

The Washington Examiner

The bunker, built during former President Barack Obama’s administration, was toured by members of President Trump’s staff last year.

A new book says the White House has a massive secret bunker beneath its north lawn for doomsday scenarios, while staffers battle a more immediate menace — insects — with pressurized salt guns.

The bunker, built during former President Barack Obama’s administration, was toured by members of President Trump’s staff last year, author Ronald Kessler wrote in The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game, which was released Monday.

Kessler, a former Washington Post reporter and author of several books on the Secret Service and national security, wrote that the facility is large enough to fit the White House workforce indefinitely.

A large north-lawn construction project began in 2010, officially to improve White House electrical wiring and air conditioning, though journalists long suspected the $376 million project involved a bunker.

The White House already had a bunker, under the East Wing, called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, where Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior officials hid during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The new facility is much larger, Kessler wrote.

“At least five stories deep, the bunker, which was completed near the end of Obama’s tenure, can house the staff of the entire West Wing indefinitely in the event of a weapons of mass destruction attack,” Kessler wrote. “After Trump became president, top staffers toured the bunker, whose existence is classified.”

A spokesperson for the Secret Service declined to comment on the bunker’s existence, or Kessler’s reporting that the Secret Service is actively surveiling approximately 100 people deemed to have uttered serious “Class III” threats against Trump.

Kessler wrote that Trump has received about as many threats each day — between six and eight — as did Presidents Obama and George W. Bush.

Most threats are deemed “Class II” — made by incarcerated or institutionalized people without the means to make good on their threats — or less-serious “Class I” threats, which may be uttered drunkenly or otherwise without intended action.

“For operational security purposes the Secret Service does not comment on specific White House security measures or protective intelligence matters,” said Secret Service spokesman Mason Brayman.

Kessler interviewed Trump, members of his family, and many current and former White House officials for his book, which also reports that the president himself often is an anonymous quotes “senior White House official” in news reports.

Although prepared for a nuclear winter, Kessler wrote that White House staff struggle with a more pressing fight, against flies, with salt-powered guns.

Kessler wrote that a widely reported news story last year about Trump ordering then-chief of staff Reince Priebus to swat a fly was untrue.

“The story had its origin in the fact that the West Wing, built on a swamp, is beset by flies. Trump hates flies. Staffers use air-pressured salt guns called Bug-a-Salt to kill them. Priebus was attacking an especially annoying fly in the Oval Office when Trump said jokingly, ‘Kill it! Kill it!’”

 

 

Trump threatens national emergency in ‘next few days’ over wall and shutdown

  • President heads for Camp David as talks drag on in Washington
  • Star-spangled shutdown: how nationalism warped US politics

January 6, 2018

by David Taylor and Martin Pengelly in New York

The Guardian

Donald Trump claimed on Sunday he may declare a national emergency over immigration, to allow him to build a wall on America’s southern border.

As the government shutdown triggered by the president entered its 16th day, Trump threatened to take extraordinary action to bypass Congress, where Democrats refuse to pass a spending bill that would give him $5.6bn to build his wall. New House speaker Nancy Pelosi has called the wall “an immorality” and refused to fund Trump’s signature election campaign pledge.

By declaring a state of national emergency, the White House thinks it will be able to unlock money from other sources without congressional approval, although it has given no specific details of the move.

Adam Schiff, a Democratic leader on Capitol Hill, declared the idea “a non-starter”.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, the California representative said: “If Harry Truman couldn’t nationalise the steel industry during wartime, this president doesn’t have the power to declare an emergency and build a multi-billion dollar wall on the border. So that’s a non-starter.”

The 1976 National Emergencies Act grants a president powers to take unilateral acts in times of crisis. But it also outlines congressional checks and with Democrats controlling the House, an attempt to make such a move would be fiercely contested, potentially pitching the US into constitutional crisis.

Leaving the White House for Camp David on Sunday morning, Trump claimed that many of the 800,000 federal staff who are either working without pay or have been told to stay at home “agree 100% with what I’m doing”.

“I may decide a national emergency depending on what happens over the next few days,” he said, insisting: “I have tremendous support within the Republican party.”

Vice-president Mike Pence was set to take part in talks on Sunday afternoon, although the meeting was due to include congressional aides rather than leaders and it is not clear that Pence has authority to offer any deal.

As he boarded Marine One, Trump cited human trafficking and claimed “there has never been a time when our country was so infested with so many different drugs”.

“Everybody’s playing games but I’ll tell you this, I think the Democrats want to make a deal,” he said. “This shutdown could end tomorrow or it also could go on for a long time.”

Trump said on Friday the shutdown could go on for years. The president’s language over the nature of the wall also continues to shift.

“The barrier or the wall can be of steel instead of concrete if that works better,” he said. “I intend to call the head of United States Steel and a couple of other steel companies to have them come up with a plate or a design … we’ll use that as our barrier.”

He claimed the wall “will pay for itself many times”.

On Fox News Sunday, asked if an emergency order was really viable, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said: “Whatever action he takes will certainly be lawful and we’re looking at every option we can. This is something the president takes incredibly seriously, is very passionate about, and is not going to stop until he figures out the best way to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make America safer and more secure.”

On CNN’s State of the Union, Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff since 1 January, said he was “heavily involved” in talking to all government departments “to try to find money we can legally use to defend the southern border”.

Mulvaney also sought to present Trump’s shift to steel for his wall, from concrete, as a significant concession.

“It came up the other day,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press, “in the private meeting with the ‘big eight’, as they’re called, the leaders of the House, the Senate, the Republicans, the Democrats. It was that he was willing to agree, and he mentioned this at the Rose Garden press conference, to take a concrete wall off the table.”

That meeting went nowhere, though, and however the White House describes Trump’s demand, Democratic opposition is unlikely to weaken. The House this week oversaw the passage of two funding bills without wall money. Public polling shows majorities against a wall.

By any measure, Trump’s fixation with a wall has boxed him into a corner. The New York Times reported on Saturday that it all began in 2014, when advisers needed a way to make the undisciplined speaker remember his key promises.

“How do we get him to continue to talk about immigration?” Sam Nunberg, one such adviser, told the Times he asked another, Roger Stone. “We’re going to get him to talk about he’s going to build a wall.”

Trump duly did, promising Mexico would pay for it, another vow now seemingly dropped although the president claims an as yet unratified trade deal with Mexico and Canada will provide savings that will pay for the wall. Factcheckers dispute that.

Trump is aware of his predicament: as long ago as January 2017, a leaked transcript of a call with the Mexican president showed him saying he was in a “political bind, because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall – I have to. I’ve been talking about it for a two-year period.”

On NBC on Sunday, Mulvaney said of the switch to steel: “What’s driving this is the president’s desire to change the conditions at the border. And if he has to give up a concrete wall and replace it with a steel fence in order to do that, so that Democrats can say, ‘See, he’s not building a wall anymore,’ that should help us move forward.”

On Twitter and in public, however, Trump has relentlessly demanded a wall, using the word repeatedly, on Saturday as part of an attempted Game of Thrones meme, over a picture of a fence. Mulvaney’s NBC interview took a similar turn towards the bizarre when, asked if the president no longer wanted a wall but wanted a fence, he said: “The president is going to secure the border with a barrier …

“I think he said [on Friday] he was going to secure the border with a 30ft-high barrier. I think he actually tweeted a picture out of it two weeks ago. We told the Democrats about it two weeks ago: ‘This is what we want to build. Do you think this is a wall?’

“Actually, under the way the law is written right now, technically it’s not a wall. If that’s not evidence of the president’s desire to try and resolve this, I don’t know what is.”

While such talk continued, around 800,000 Americans remained without pay. Key government services including E-Verify, which allows employers to check the immigration status of employees, are either down or, like the food stamps system that helps 38 million people, facing cuts.

Courts and airports are feeling the strain, national parks are short-staffed, museums and galleries are closed. It was however reported that one federally maintained attraction was still manned: the clock tower at the building which houses Trump’s Washington hotel.

 

France’s Macron reeling as tough stance against ‘yellow vests’ backfires

January 6, 2019

by Richard Lough and Caroline Pailliez

Reuters

PARIS (Reuters) – Emmanuel Macron intended to start the new year on the offensive against the ‘yellow vest’ protesters. Instead, the French president is reeling from more violent street demonstrations

What began as a grassroots rebellion against diesel taxes and the high cost of living has morphed into something more perilous for Macron – an assault on his presidency and French institutions.

The anti-government protesters on Saturday used a forklift truck to force their way into a government ministry compound, torched cars near the Champs Elysees and in one violent skirmish on a bridge over the Seine punched and kicked riot police officers to the ground.

The French authorities’ struggle to maintain order during the weekend protests raises questions not just over policing tactics but also over how Macron responds, as he prepares to bring in stricter rules for unemployment benefits and cut thousands of public sector jobs.

On Sunday evening, Macron wrote on Twitter: “Once again, the Republic was attacked with extreme violence – its guardians, its representatives, its symbols.”

His administration had hardened its stance against the yellow vests after the protest movement appeared to have lost momentum over the Christmas holidays.

The government would not relent in its pursuit of reforms to reshape the economy, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said on Friday, branding the remaining protesters agitators seeking to overthrow the government.

Twenty-four hours later, he was fleeing his office out of a back door as protesters invaded the courtyard and smashed up several cars. “It wasn’t me who was attacked,” he later said. “It was the Republic.”

Driving the unrest is anger, particularly among low-paid workers, over a squeeze on household incomes and a belief that Macron is indifferent to citizens’ needs as he enacts reforms seen as pro-business and favoring the wealthy.

Macron’s government has been shaken by the unrest, caught off-guard when in November the yellow vests began blocking roads, occupying highway tollbooths and staging violent invasions of Paris and other cities on weekends.

Two months on, it has not found a way to soothe the yellow vests’ anger and meet their demands, which include a higher minimum wage, a more participative democracy and Macron’s resignation.

With no clear leader, negotiating with the group is hard.

“IMPASSE”

Macron sought to head off the rebellion in December with a promise of tax cuts for pensioners, wage rises for the poorest workers and a reversal of planned fuel tax hikes, while pledging a national debate on key policy issues. He fell short.

The price tag for those concessions: 10 billion euros ($11.39 billion), enough to send French borrowing costs higher as investors fretted about debt levels and Macron’s ability to reform the euro zone’s second largest economy.

Laurent Berger, head of the reform-minded CFDT trade union, France’s largest by members, on Sunday accused Macron’s government of going it alone at a time it needed to reach out.

“We’re at an impasse. We have on the one side a violent movement … and on the other a government which thinks it can find the answers all on its own,” Berger told France Inter.

Some 50,000 protesters marched through cities and towns across France, including Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rennes and Marseille.

In Paris, the street marches began peacefully but degenerated when some protesters threw punches at baton-wielding officers, torched electric scooters and garbage bins along the Left Bank’s upscale Boulevard Saint Germain and set cars ablaze near the Champs Elysees. Clashes erupted in other cities too.

Both yellow vests and “casseurs”, hooded youths from anti-capitalist or anarchist groups, appeared to be involved.

Labour Minister Muriel Penicaud said the prolonged unrest was hurting foreign investment.

Opposition lawmakers demanded the government put forward concrete proposals to address the yellow vests’ demands, but government ministers dismissed caving in to a minority of troublemakers.

“We need to stop being a country that listens to those who cry the loudest,” Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told LCI news channel.

Reporting by Richard Lough and Caroline Pailliez; Editing by Janet Lawrence

 

France: ‘Yellow vest’ protesters storm ministry in Paris

Protests involving 50,000 turn violent in French cities as demonstrators smash into ministry with a forklift in Paris.

January 6, 2019

Al Jazeera

“Yellow vest” protesters clashed with police in several French cities, smashing their way into a government ministry in Paris with a forklift.

Benjamin Griveaux – a government spokesman evacuated from his ministry in central Paris on Saturday when a handful of protesters in high-visibility vests smashed down the large wooden door to the ministry compound – denounced the break-in as an “unacceptable attack on the Republic”.

“Some yellow vest protesters and other people dressed in black … got hold of a construction vehicle which was in the street nearby and smashed open the entrance gate to the ministry,” he told the AFP news agency.

They briefly entered the courtyard where they smashed up two cars, broke some windows and then escaped, Griveaux added, saying police were trying to identify them from security footage.

The Interior Ministry put the number of protesters who took to the streets across France at 50,000, compared with 32,000 on December 29 when the movement appeared to be weakening after holding a series of weekly Saturday protests since mid-November.

French President Emmanuel Macron did not specifically refer to the forklift incident, but tweeted his condemnation of the “extreme violence” against “the Republic, its guardians, its representatives and its symbols”.

Police said about 3,500 demonstrators turned up on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Saturday morning.

Some then made their way south of the river to the wealthy area around Boulevard St Germain, where they set light to a car and several motorbikes and set up burning barricades, prompting police to fire tear gas to try and disperse them.

Police said 35 people were arrested.

Nationwide protests

As many as 2,000 people were in Rouen, northwest of Paris, where some set up burning barricades. One protester was injured and at least two others were arrested, police said.

About 4,600 protesters hit the streets of the southwestern city of Bordeaux, with some hurling stones at police who answered with tear gas and water cannon.

Five police were hurt and 11 people arrested, local authorities said, adding several cars were torched and shop windows broken.

Further south in Toulouse, 22 people were arrested following clashes that erupted after 2,000 people turned out to demonstrate.

And in the central-eastern city of Lyon, several thousand took to the streets, blocking access to the A7 motorway and causing traffic jams for those returning from Christmas holidays in the mountains.

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TBR News January 6, 2019

Jan 06 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

 

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 6, 2019:” Donald Trump was always a very spoiled and willful child. When he was much younger, he was quite good looking but now that he is old, his looks have fled and he is fat and balding but he still believes that he is handsome and, most important, still a darling child who always gets his way.

He has constantly lied to anyone who would listen and has a habit of cheating on his bills, abusing his employees and strutting about as if he is actually someone of importance.

As President, assisted in achieving that high office by pragmatic Russians, he has, he knows, achieved the pinnacle of earthly grandeur and deserves to be worshiped, and obeyed, by a public who must learn the magnificence of their jobbed leader.

Trump has insulted legions of people in his life but has made a colossal error by insulting those in the government whose support and cooperation is necessary in leading the nation.

He has also deliberately insulted foreign nations, done terrible damage to the image of the United States as a world leader and the inevitability of his downfall totally escapes him.

The one positive aspect of the Trump attempted dictatorship is to unify disparate political and social entities against him and this union is far more beneficial to the public weal than the struttings, racial dislikes and vulgar personal actions of a man who would be more at home imitating the Roman emperor Nero to a school of deaf-mutes,”

Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 8
  • The key factor in the rise of Trumpism that we continue to ignore
  • Trump doesn’t believe in climate change, but sea-level rise is overtaking his favorite vacation spot
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • American detained by Russia tried to steal thousands of dollars from U.S. while deployed to Iraq as a Marine
  • Smallpox as a weapon

Continue Reading »

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TB News January 5, 2018

Jan 05 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 5, 2019:”Given the enormous uproar Trump is causing on the domestic American political scene with his bogus wall,his employer, Vladimir Putin must be enjoying him and considering the bribe money paid to Trump for similar disruptions to be money well spent. Now, Trump’s list of dangerous enemies looks like a guide to official Washington and there is now betting inside the Beltway that Trump’s survival, let alone any political power he might have, will, like the book title, be gone with the wind. Trump is used to ordering his underlings around and he considers the entire United States government to be paid flunkies to be screamed at and fired at will.”

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 8
  • Trump’s border wall demand is constitutionally illegitimate
  • Trump threatens years-long government shutdown, emergency powers to build wall
  • It won’t be easy. But Trump will lose ‘bigly’ on immigration
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • The Official Government Mortgage Scam ,
  • Eight Hundred Years of Glory: A short history of Christianity
  • DoTox G.m.b.H.

Continue Reading »

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TBR News January 3, 2019

Jan 03 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 3, 2019:” “Here is an entertaining email sent by a website operator to the editorial department of the New York Times.

‘Gentlemen:

I run two websites.

I take stories from various news sources.

I am entranced when I see that this or that major newspaper site only allows you to download a few stories free. After this, one must sign up and pay 30 cents a day for two weeks and once the paper has your credit card number, then one has to pay $60.00 a month.

If one does not pay the enhanced fee, they are cut off.

I have a number of friends and communicants scattered across the planet who will, if I request them to do so, download any story I need, whenever I need it and all for free!

But you assure the pubic that 80,000 eager viewers per diem sign up for your internet edition so I am only the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Fortunately for you, there are not that many stories on your site that I deem worthy of using.

The bulk of your publication consists of stories about new pizza restaurants for the deaf in Manhattan, the repainting of city busses, a touching two page story of two blind Lesbians and their three legged cat, a new book by a friend of the publisher dealing with serious bowel problems in public places, the tragic death of a black basketball player in a supermarket accident and whatever thrilling bit of fiction the CIA people want printed as fact.

Now if you printed nude pictures of Fat Donald the Groper (known in the trade as the Shrimp-Dicked Kid) getting it on with a poodle or how to fish in the city aquarium  after hours, you might get more important readers, otherwise I must admit, your paper makes a wonderful lining for the parrot’s cage.

Misha’ ”

 

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 7
  • Moscow’s covert muscle
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • Trump and Democrats Dig In After Talks to Reopen Government Go Nowhere
  • Clouds gathering over global economy

Continue Reading »

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TBR News January 2, 2019

Jan 02 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 2, 2019:” President Trump is starting to feel that he is surrounded by deadly enemies and is frantically searching for the means to neutralize their expected movement against him. One of his top aides has been very quietly working with very far right militant groups seeking their assistance. The emails between these groups and the White House people have been hacked and will most certainly be published. They suggest “militant, armed” support of the President, a march on Washington and a suggestion of physical force against various members of Congress, (and certain media outlets hostile to Trump) In short, a far-right wing revolt designed to keep the President in office and to neutralize his enemies, either by creating an image of universal public outrage at the thwarting of a President who is trying to make American great again or blunt force against his perceived enemies. A putsch in other words. The American military command does not like Trump so his frantic people are looking elsewhere for aggressive support which will neutralize his foes in Congress and secure his reign in the Oval Office.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 6
  • S. agents fire tear gas into Mexico at ‘violent mob’ near border
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • Neo-Nazi Al Qaeda
  • Hacker group threatens to leak 9/11 ‘truth’ unless paid in bitcoin

 

815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 6

November 15, 2018

by Daniel Dale Washington Bureau Chief

Toronto Star

WASHINGTON—It took Donald Trump until the 286th day of his presidency to make 815 false claims.

He just made another 815 false claims in a month.

In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him — an outrageous barrage of serial dishonesty in which he obliterated all of his old records.

How bad have these recent weeks been?

  • Trump made 664 false claims in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.
  • Trump averaged 26.3 false claims per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.
  • Trump made more false claims in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).
  • The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.

As always, Trump was being more frequently dishonest in part because he was simply speaking more. He had three campaign rallies on Nov. 5, the day before he set the record, and eight more rallies over the previous five days.

But it was not only quantity. Trump packed his rally speeches with big new lies, repeatedly reciting wildly inaccurate claims about migrants, Democrats’ views on immigration and health care, and his own record. Unlike many of his lies, lots of these ones were written into the text of his speeches.

Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.

If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.

  • Oct 13, 2018

“Not going to happen. Eighty-four judges — think of that, it’s a record — it’s a record — and we actually have a lot to go, 84 judges approved.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump’s 84 judge confirmations did not set a record, according to Russell Wheeler, an expert on the subject and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. As of the same date in their terms, Wheeler said, Bill Clinton had appointed 128 judges, John F. Kennedy 110 judges. Thomas Jipping, deputy director of legal and judicial studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said “Trump’s record is in appointing judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals,” not the federal judiciary as a whole: “29 so far,” to the appeals court, “is a significant record (previous record was 22 for George H.W. Bush).”

 

“I withdrew the United States from the horrible, one-sided Iran nuclear deal. You know, when I came to office, weeks before I was given rundowns of what’s happening, and Iran was just a question of when will they take over the entire Middle East.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: It is an exaggeration to claim “Iran was just a question of when will they take over the entire Middle East” before Trump took office. Hussein Banai, a professor who studies Iran at the international studies school at Indiana University, said in an email: “The claim that Iran was on the verge of taking over the Middle East prior to Trump taking office is utterly false. In fact, quite the opposite was the case, as the Sunni-majority Arab states in the region — most vocally led by Saudi Arabia and with the expressed support of the US and Israel — had already begun to curb Iran’s influence in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. There is no question that the perception of many of Iran’s rivals in the region after the nuclear deal was that the Islamic Republic had emerged with a stronger geopolitical hand. But the reality was that Iran had merely emerged from nearly 40 years of isolation from which many of these rivals had benefited. So, I would say that the major grievance at the time was that the Obama administration had allowed for the Islamic Republic to become a ‘normal’ country. The issue was never Iran’s military might — its defense expenditures and capabilities are dwarfed by those of Israel and Saudi Arabia — but the fact that it was on the verge of a major economic boom in a post-sanctions world.”

 

“We also passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor instead of waiting online for 12 days, for 24 days, for 38 days. We have our great veterans — we’re doing a great job with our veterans — we have our — but this was one of the most important things — because they’d be waiting in line for sometimes months if you can believe it. We had people waiting in line and they weren’t very sick. By the time they saw a doctor, they were terminally ill. Now, if there’s a line, if there’s a way, because we have great doctors in the V.A. That’s one thing we — I’ll tell you, everybody tells me. You can’t get to them. Now, if there’s a wait, you go to a local doctor, you get yourself taken care of, and we pay for the bill. We pay for the bill. That was another one. That was another one. Took over 40 years. I used to say to people, why don’t we do that? I thought I was so smart. I said, listen, I got a great idea. These lines are terrible, 28 days, 30 days. I got a great idea. It’s the greatest idea I think I’ve ever had. We’re going to have them go to a private doctor instead of waiting on line. Sir, we’ve been trying to get that passed for 40 years. Oh, you’ve heard about it before? Everybody heard — they couldn’t get it passed. But we’re good at getting things passed. We got it passed.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed merely modified the program.

“We have taken historic action to reduce the price of prescription drugs. You saw three weeks ago, Pfizer, Novartis, a lot of drug companies announced a very substantial increase. Then I said to Secretary Alex Acosta — and I said to Alex Azar, this is no good. This is no good. We got to do something.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump pressured Pfizer and Novartis to reduce their drug prices in July, three months prior to these remarks, not “three weeks ago.” Trump has a habit of moving up the date of good news to make it sound more recent.

“I have great respect and like him for President Xi, the absolute head — this is an absolute head of China. But you know what? They’ve been making $300 billion to $500 billion a year, taking it out of our country.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017, $375 billion if you only count trade in goods and exclude trade in services.

“I apologize to the women in the room. Remember, I got 52 per cent — remember, they kept saying, he’s not — the fake news — that’s right. Remember he said — they were all saying he will not do well with women? Wow, did we do well with women. Did we do well. Fake news. We did really well with women.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump won a majority of white women, according to 2016 exit polls, not a majority of all women, as he was claiming here. Exit polls found that had the support of 52 per cent of white women but 42 per cent of all women.

“Hispanic American and Asian-American unemployment has reached its lowest level in history. I can’t believe I’m still saying this.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The unemployment rate for Hispanics was indeed at a record low, at least for the period since the government began releasing data for this group in the 1970s. The Asian-American unemployment rate, however, was not close to a record. It briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May — a low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 — but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for September, was 3.5 per cent. This was higher than the rate in Obama’s last full month in office — 2.8 per cent in December 2016 — and in multiple months of George W. Bush’s second term.

“Remember, manufacturing’s never going to come back? Never going to come back, remember? The previous administration: ‘Oh, you think that’s going to happen? You’d need a magic wand.’ Well, I guess we had the magic wand. We had the magic wand.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The Obama administration did not say manufacturing jobs were “never going to come back.” Rather, at a televised PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana in 2016, Obama said that certain manufacturing jobs “are just not going to come back” — but also boasted that some manufacturers are indeed “coming back to the United States,” that “we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than any time since the 1990s,” and that “we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we’ve had in most of our history.” Obama did mock Trump for Trump’s campaign claims that he was going to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to Mexico, saying: “And when somebody says — like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for — that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.” But, again, Obama made clear that he was talking about a certain segment of manufacturing jobs, not all of them.

“We’ve added nearly 600,000 manufacturing jobs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The economy added 378,000 manufacturing jobs between January 2017 and September 2018.

“Since the last election — and these are numbers that the fakers back there, the fake news, would never have allowed me to say. They’d never in a million years, if I ever said this during the campaign, they would’ve had headlines. We’ve created over 4.2 million new jobs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump would not have been silenced if he had predicted there would be 4.2 million jobs added in the 22 months after the election. Over the previous 22-month period, under Obama, 4.7 million jobs were added.

“So we had a man, horrible person, the west side in Manhattan, where I live, where I love, right along the Hudson River. He’s driving a car down this roadway where the speed limit is 35. He’s going about 70. And he decides to make a right turn into a beautiful park that goes along the river with lots of people. Many people were killed. Nobody ever talks about the people that were horribly injured. They lost legs, they lost arms.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Nobody lost an arm in the terror attack on Manhattan’s West Side Highway in 2017. The Associated Press reported that one woman, a Belgian tourist, lost two legs. The commissioner of New York’s fire department offered corroboration, saying the attack led to one double amputation.

“And then you have chain migration. You know what that is, right? So we had a man, horrible person, the west side in Manhattan, where I live, where I love, right along the Hudson River. He’s driving a car down this roadway where the speed limit is 35. He’s going about 70. And he decides to make a right turn into a beautiful park that goes along the river with lots of people. Many people were killed. Nobody ever talks about the people that were horribly injured. They lost legs, they lost arms. These are people that were running. They want to keep themselves in shape. They were working out. Now, what happens? What happened to him? It will be years of litigation. He came in, and then he took chain migration, and he brought his mother, and his father, and his brother, and his sister, and his aunt, and his grandfather. None of them working. It ended up being approximately 22 people who came in. It’s called a chain. Isn’t that wonderful? A chain. And we’re stuck with them. We’re stuck with these people. And I don’t want a chain.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: There is no evidence that Sayfullo Saipov, the alleged perpetrator of the terror attack in 2017 on Manhattan’s West Side Highway, brought 22 relatives into the U.S. through “chain migration.” Even Trump’s own aides have declined to endorse this claim, and even anti-immigration advocates say it is wildly improbable that one man with a green card could have sponsored 22 people.

“Lottery. Lottery. Lottery. OK? Names, you pick them out, coming to the United States. Now, let me ask you, these countries set up lotteries. Do you really believe they’re giving us their finest? No. This is a lottery.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “set up lotteries”; there is one lottery, conducted by the U.S. State Department. Also, foreign countries do not “give” anyone to the lottery. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.

“The only immigration policy Democrats support is catch and release. How about that one? You catch a criminal thug, you take their name, and then you release them, say please show up in five years to court. Now, number one, it’s ridiculous. Number two, they never show up. What a mess.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: It is not true that people “never show up” for their immigration hearings. A 2017 report released by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates a hard line on illegal immigration, concluded that 37 per cent of people who were free pending trial did not show up for hearings over the past two decades. The author of the report, a former immigration judge, said the number was 39 per cent in 2016. In other words, even according to vehement opponents of illegal immigration, most unauthorized immigrants are indeed showing up for court.

“The new platform of the Democrat Party is radical socialism and it’s open borders. Democrats want to abolish ICE and they want to turn America into a giant sanctuary for criminal aliens and MS-13 thugs. And don’t kid yourself, that’s what’s going to happen. And they want to get rid of ICE.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The Democrats do not have a platform of “open borders.” There is new Democratic momentum behind the movement to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but that is not the position of “the Democrat Party” as a whole. While a smattering of Democratic House members and two prominent senators, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren, have joined the call for abolition at the time Trump spoke, the party’s leadership remains opposed to the proposal. Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters: “Look, ICE does some functions that are very much needed. “Reform ICE? Yes. That’s what I think we should do. It needs reform.” Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi, through a spokesperson, has called for a “drastic overhaul of its immigration functions,” but has not endorsed abolition.

“And Republicans only will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: This is nonsensical: Democrats have already implemented a plan to protect people with pre-existing conditions: Obamacare, which made it illegal for health insurance companies to discriminate against these people. It is Republicans, who are trying to repeal Obamacare, who have not put forward a clear plan. As part of a Republican lawsuit to try to get the Affordable Care Act struck down, Trump’s administration is formally arguing that the law’s protections for pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional and should be voided. Trump has not said what he would like to replace these protections with.

“The Democrat plan would obliterate Medicare and terminate Medicare Advantage for nearly 250,000 Kentucky seniors who depend on it. Republicans want to protect Medicare, and we will, for our great seniors who have earned it and who have paid for it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Democrats’ “Medicare for all” proposals tend to be vague, but they would not take Medicare health insurance away from seniors. Rather, they would extend similar government-provided health insurance to younger people as well, and they would give current Medicare recipients additional coverage for things like vision and dental services.

“Now, Amy supports a socialist takeover of your health care, which by the way means your taxes are going to triple if you’re lucky. She supports open borders. She needs the tax hikes to cover the through-the-roof garbage that you want no part of. And she wants to immediately decimate your now-thriving coal industry.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: McGrath does not support a “socialist takeover of your health care.” McGrath explicitly opposes Canada-style single-payer health care; on her website, she says, “I side firmly with former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, the man who implemented the ACA in a manner that made Kentucky the gold standard among states as far as how it’s supposed to work. Beshear said recently, ‘If we were starting from scratch, I would be for single-payer, too…But we aren’t starting from scratch. There are too many stakeholders to be able to sweep them away and begin all over again.’ In fact, currently proposed single-payer legislation would represent such a sweeping overhaul that it would put our healthcare system into massive upheaval. I do not support such an approach.” McGrath also does not support “open borders.” And Trump is free to argue that McGrath’s policies would decimate the industry, but he is wrong to say she “wants to immediately decimate” the industry. McGrath says on her website: “Kentucky’s energy future need not be an either/or choice between coal and sustainable sources. We can provide support for our coal communities and boost coal consumption here in Kentucky by using local coal-generated electricity for electric vehicles while we work to transition the energy infrastructure and expertise that we already have to renewables like wind and solar. ”

“A vote for Andy’s opponent, I had to do a little checking, who’s he running against? Who? This is an extreme liberal named Amy McGrath. Chosen by Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, that’s a real beauty…”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: There is no evidence that McGrath, a Democratic candidate for a Kentucky congressional seat, was “chosen by Nancy Pelosi,” and there is certainly no evidence that McGrath was chosen by Waters — a California Democrat who is not a party leader.

“But I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen the — you know, outside, you have 25,000, 35,000, some crazy number of people, and we set up movie screens. We set up beautiful movie screens. And to those people outside, we love you. We love you. You have to see the lines, they go all the way back, many miles. But a lot of them

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson was outside the rally. Before Trump’s comment, she posted a picture that showed, at most, 200 people watching on a screen. She wrote: “When the doors closed for President Trump’s rally tonight in Eastern Kentucky, a few thousand people were still in line and couldn’t get in. Most have left — it’s 47 degrees! — but this group is staying to watch on a video screen outside.” After Trump’s claim that there were 25,000 or 35,000 people outside, she wrote, “Everyone out here laughed as the president gave these numbers. ‘What?!?’ one woman said as she scanned the crowd herself.”

“Something about this place (Kentucky). Boy, did we win by a lot. What did we win by, 38? Thirty-eight. We won by a lot.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump won Kentucky by 30 percentage points in 2016, not 38.

“We had Obamacare repeal-and-replaced.” (Crowd applauds.) “We didn’t get one Democrat vote, but we’ll get it done. We had a little disappointment that night. A little bit of a disappointment. But it’s essentially done anyway, because when you get rid of the mandate, the individual mandate, it’s done.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump’s claim that he “had Obamacare repeal-and-replaced” was so misleading that the crowd applauded after he said it — before he implicitly made clear that Obamacare was not repealed and replaced. As Trump suggested in his next sentence, his favoured plan failed by one vote in the Senate; his comments were a bit like a losing hockey team saying “we won the Stanley Cup, we just didn’t get the overtime goal in Game 7.” The other part of Trump’s statement was also inaccurate: Obamacare is not “essentially done anyway.” Trump has weakened Obamacare in several ways, most notably by eliminating the “individual mandate” that required people to obtain health insurance, but the law is far from dead. Trump did not eliminate Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people, the federal and state Obamacare marketplaces that allow other uninsured people to buy insurance, or the subsidies that help many of them make the purchases.

“If Nancy Pelosi, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and the radical Democrats take over Congress, they will try to raise your taxes, they will immediately restore job-killing regulations, they will impose, believe it or not, socialism, take away your health care, your health care and your whole life will be unaffordable, shut down immediately, oh, forget this one, shut down your coal mines in about two minutes. You see what’s going on with the Second Amendment? They will destroy your Second Amendment. And the Democrats want to open our borders to a flood of deadly drugs and ruthless gangs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Almost none of this is true. Even if they won Congress, Democrats would not be able to immediately restore regulations or to impose socialism or to take away health care or to shut down coal mines or to destroy the Second Amendment: Trump would still be president, and he could veto any of their proposals. Also, Democrats are not looking to “impose socialism” as a system of government, though some of them favour some social-democratic policies like single-payer health care, and they are certainly not going to “take away your health care.”

“I just don’t think they’re ready yet. They’ve made too much money for too long. What they’ve done to our country is take out anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion a year. Rebuilt China.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017, $375 billion if you only count trade in goods and exclude trade in services.

 

“Now, one of the reasons it was my first pick is, if you remember, it was $110 billion of military that they were going to buy, but they were going to invest $450 billion in our country through the companies. I think you were there. And all of these — Raytheon, and General Electric, and General Motors — they were there getting contracts for $25 billion, $30 billion, $40 billion. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. So when you say that was my first country, that was my first country because no other country is going to be investing $450 billion. $110 billion in the military. It’s a lot of money.” And: “Well, there are many other things we can do. But when we take away $110 billion of purchases from our country, that hurts our workers, that hurts our factories, that hurts all of our companies. You know, you’re talking about 500,000 jobs.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: As the Associated Press and others noted, there has never been evidence that Trump has secured even close to $110 billion in Saudi military purchases. The AP wrote: “Trump’s wrong to suggest that he has $110 billion in military orders from Saudi Arabia. A far smaller amount in sales has actually been signed…Details of the $110 billion arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017, have been sketchy. At the time the Trump administration provided only a broad description of the defense equipment that would be sold. There was no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much…The Pentagon said this month that Saudi Arabia has signed ‘letters of offer and acceptance’ for only $14.5 billion in sales, including helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and training. Those letters, issued after the U.S. government has approved a proposed sale, specify its terms…Trump’s repeated claims that he’s signed $110 billion worth of new arms sales to Riyadh are ‘just not true,’ said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official.”

“But our country is doing — we’re the hottest country in the world, economically, by far. You take a look at us compared to China, compared to everybody else, we’re the hottest country in the world.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: The New York Times explained why this is false: “The United States does have one of the fastest growing of the world’s largest economies. But it is not the fastest growing in the whole world. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development compiles quarterly growth in real gross domestic product for its 36 member nations and nine other major economies like China, India and Brazil. The United States had the eighth-highest rate in the second quarter of 2018 out of this group. Its rate was the highest among the Group of 7, the largest of the industrialized democracies. Among the entire world, however, the United States is nowhere near ‘the fastest-growing economy.’ Growth rates among developing nations, while volatile, often exceed those of the big industrialized countries. In 2017, the United States’ GDP annual growth rate ranked in the bottom third out of more than 180 countries, according to data from the World Bank. The International Monetary Fund’s projections for GDP growth rate for 2018 place the United States among the bottom half of about 190 countries. Similarly, Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity projects that the United States will reach an annual growth rate of 3.07 per cent by 2026, placing it No. 104 out of 121 countries.” While China’s growth rate has slowed down in 2018, its 6.5 per cent growth in the third quarter was still about twice the forecasts for the not-yet-announced growth rate in the U.S.

“We have great car companies entering our country again. This hasn’t happened for 35 years.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: It is not true that this is the first time in decades that automotive companies are moving manufacturing operations into the U.S. or expanding existing U.S. operations. While they have indeed announced major investments under Trump, they also announced major investments under Obama. In 2015, for example, Volvo announced that it would open its first U.S. car plant, in South Carolina. General Motors announced in 2013 that it would invest $1.2 billion to upgrade an Indiana truck plant. Ford announced in 2015 that it would invest $1.3 billion to upgrade a Kentucky truck plant. That same year, Ford shifted production of the Ford F-650 and F-750 medium-duty trucks from Mexico to a plant in Avon Lake, Ohio.

“Now everybody wants to come in. And they come in illegally and they use children. In many cases, the children aren’t theirs. They grab them and they want to come in with the children.” And: “If they feel there’s separation — in many cases, they don’t come. But also, in many cases, you have really bad people coming in and using children. They’re not their children. They don’t even know the children. They haven’t known the children for 20 minutes, and they grab children and they use them to come into our country. You got some really bad people out there.” And: “It’s really a humanitarian tragedy, and we’re taking care of it. But this isn’t a case where people are coming up with children — coming in with children. People are grabbing children and they’re using children to come into our country, in many cases.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: The U.S. government has presented no evidence for Trump’s suggestion that “this isn’t a case where people are coming in with children” but rather that it’s more common that adults are “grabbing children” they don’t know in an attempt to fraudulently gain entry. The Department of Homeland Security told the Washington Post that there were a mere 46 cases of fraud of this kind (“individuals using minors to pose as fake family units”) in the 2017 fiscal year, 191 cases in the first five months of the 2018 fiscal year. That was an increase, but these cases were still nowhere near the norm: “there were 75,622 family units apprehended at the border in fiscal 2017,” the Post reported, “and 31,102 in the first five months of this fiscal year.” In other words, the alleged fraud cases represented a tiny fraction. Also, it is far from clear that the fraud cases involved people grabbing children they haven’t known “for 20 minutes.” As Vox reported, the government classifies family claims as fraudulent when “the adult isn’t the parent or legal guardian of the child they’re traveling with — even if it’s a grandparent who is raising the child as their own,” or when “the family’s documentation can’t be verified by the embassy of the family’s home country.”

“This is the same situation that President Obama found himself in. He had separation, and people didn’t talk about.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: Obama’s situation was not “the same” as Trump’s. While Obama administration policies did result in some parents being separated from children — former Obama officials say this happened in exceptional circumstances like the parent being found carrying drugs — it was Trump who decided to attempt to criminally prosecute everyone found crossing the border illegally. This decision resulted in the routine separation of parents and children, which did not occur under Obama.

“Well, we’ll be sitting together with all of the folks here, and a lot more. And we’ll have to make a determination. I do think this: That I worked very hard to get the order for the military. It’s $110 billion. I believe it’s the largest order ever made. It’s 450,000 jobs.” And: “But in terms of the order of $110 billion — think of that — $110 billion — all they’re going to do is give it to other countries. And I think that would be very foolish for our country. But there are other things we can do that will be very severe.”

Source: Meeting with pastor Andrew Brunson after his release from Turkey

in fact: As the Associated Press and others noted, there has never been evidence that Trump has secured even close to $110 billion in Saudi military purchases, nor that the Saudi purchases would create or support 450,000 jobs. The AP wrote: “Trump’s wrong to suggest that he has $110 billion in military orders from Saudi Arabia. A far smaller amount in sales has actually been signed…Details of the $110 billion arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017, have been sketchy. At the time the Trump administration provided only a broad description of the defense equipment that would be sold. There was no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much…The Pentagon said this month that Saudi Arabia has signed ‘letters of offer and acceptance’ for only $14.5 billion in sales, including helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and training. Those letters, issued after the U.S. government has approved a proposed sale, specify its terms…Trump’s repeated claims that he’s signed $110 billion worth of new arms sales to Riyadh are ‘just not true,’ said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official.”

“Chairman Kim was really great to us. I think that started the relationship that we have now in North Korea, with three hostages, as you know. Egypt — we had Aya. Aya was, they said, a spy. She was sentenced to 25 years. They told President Obama, ‘We will not let her out under any circumstances.'”

Source: Meeting with pastor Andrew Brunson after his release from Turkey

in fact: Aya Hijazi, the Egyptian-American charity worker, was imprisoned in Egypt for three years, but she was never sentenced at all. She was acquitted by an Egyptian court and freed in 2017.

“Not only that, human trafficking, so much is coming, it’s ridiculous, and we’re very much into fixing — I mean, I’d like to say totally eliminating, but sometimes that’s awfully difficult to say — but fixing the drug problem — you know it’s down about 15 per cent, and the opioid distribution is down more than 15 per cent.”

Source: Interview with WKYT Lexington

in fact: Opioid “distribution” might indeed be down 15 per cent, depending on what you’re counting and over what time period. In April, for example, health data firm IQVIA’s Institute for Human Data Science reported a 12 per cent decline in the total dosage of opioid prescriptions filled in 2017 as compared to 2016. But there is no sign that the entire “drug problem” is down 15 per cent. The Centers for Disease Control release monthly estimated numbers in which overdose deaths for a month in 2018 are compared to overdose deaths for a month in 2017, using a method that adjusts for the fact that many overdose deaths are not immediately classified as overdose deaths. In the CDC’s most recent estimates at the time Trump spoke, for March 2018, overdose deaths were estimated to be up 3.5 per cent.

U.S. agents fire tear gas into Mexico at ‘violent mob’ near border

January 1, 2018

Reuters

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – U.S. border agents launched tear gas into Mexico early on Tuesday to deter a group of migrants that one official called “a violent mob” from crossing over from Tijuana, according to a Reuters witness and the U.S. government.

Clouds of the noxious gas could be seen wafting up from around the fence at the border. One migrant picked up a canister and threw it back into U.S. territory.

U.S. officials said the group had attacked agents with projectiles but a Reuters witness did not see any migrants throwing rocks at U.S. agents.

Tijuana has become a flashpoint in the debate over U.S. immigration policy, which has been intensified by the recent deaths of two migrant children in American custody and a partial U.S. government shutdown over U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand for $5 billion in funding for a wall along the border with Mexico.

A previous incident in November when U.S. agents fired gas into Mexico to disperse migrants triggered a call from Mexico’s government for an investigation, as well as international condemnation.

Mexico Foreign Ministry spokesman Roberto Velasco said the government “regrets the events” at the border. He said Mexico “advocates respect for migrants’ human rights, security and integrity, while calling for respect for laws on both sides of the border.”

More than 150 Central American migrants approached an area of the border in Tijuana in the Playas neighborhood near the beach late on Monday. Migrants said they thought security measures might be relaxed due to the New Year’s holiday.

U.S. security personnel fired tear gas into Mexico after midnight as some migrants prepared to climb a border fence, according to the Reuters witness. During a second attempt, migrants began to pass youths and children over the razor wire along the fencing to the U.S. side.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman called the group “a violent mob” and said they had thrown projectiles at agents who responded with “the minimum force necessary to defend themselves.”

“Congress needs to fully fund the border wall,” Waldman said in a statement.

‘CRUEL, INHUMANE’

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement the gas was aimed upwind of people throwing rocks on the Mexican side who obstructed agents from helping the children being passed over razor wire.

The CBP statement said agents had not directly targeted the migrants attempting to cross the fence with tear gas and pepper spray.

A Reuters witness documented in one photo where a migrant had been hit by what appeared to be a gas canister.

Human rights group Amnesty International’s deputy director of research Justin Mazzola described the use of tear gas against migrants “cruel and inhumane” and called for an independent investigation.

“The Trump administration is defying international law and orchestrating a crisis by deliberately turning asylum-seekers away from ports of entry, endangering families who see no choice but to take desperate measures in their search for protection,” he said in a statement.

CBP said most of the migrants attempting to cross returned to Mexico while 25 people, including two teenagers, were detained.

Thousands of Central American migrants have been camping at shelters in Tijuana since arriving in November after traveling in caravans across Mexico to reach the U.S. border, where many have hoped to request asylum.

Mexico’s new leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has sought not to antagonize Trump over the U.S. president’s demands for a border wall. He obtained a pledge from the United States to contribute billions of dollars for development in Mexico’s poor south and Central America in order to deter migration.

Trump has backed away from his campaign pledge to make Mexico pay for a wall, but just last week he threatened to close the border with Mexico unless he gets the money he wants from U.S. lawmakers for a barrier.

The United States has also pushed Mexico to house Central American migrants while they seek U.S. asylum.

Reporting by Mohammed Salem; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in WASHINGTON, Mica Rosenberg in NEW YORK and Michael O’Boyle in MEXICO CITY; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Paul Simao and Paul Tait

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

January 2, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

 

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks,”: Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas  in 1993  when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publications.

Conversation No. 84

Date: Tuesday, May 27, 1997

Commenced: 10:07 AM CST

Concluded: 10:32 AM CST

GD: Good morning to you, Robert. How goes it with you today?

RTC: Quite well, thank you. And yourself?

GD: I can always complain but then there is the alternative. I’ve been going over this Kennedy business and I was very curious to know why it is that the role of certain people never became public. Or why such silly stories about Oswald’s non-visit to Mexico and his certainly non-visits to the Russian or Cuban embassies were never challenged.

RTC: Well, we have such a lock on the media here that no paper would ever publish anything about this if we asked them not to. And, of course, we did. And when the Warren Commission report came out, terribly flawed as it was, the New York Times raved about it and turned it into a best seller.

GD: They put it in the fiction section, naturally.

RTC: No, they treated it like what it was: A precious revelation of the truth, cutting through a jungle of lies. Actually, we also created the jungle of lies.

GD: Ah yes, one hand washing the other.

RTC: Precisely. I mean, Gregory, one could not cover up such an action unless one had complete control over the media and the major publishing houses. And some of the really nut books were done for us just to create literary smoke screens. And besides, the further away we get from the actual happening, and this was way back in ’63, don’t forget, the safer we all are. The circles of fanatics and nuts will always remain but the chance of their uncovering anything of importance is growing more impossible. The public has other things to think about, Gregory. More silly stories about whether this bimbo actress is in love with some pretty boy actor who actually is a cocksucker. No, that business is buried in a jungle of vines and palm trees and no explorer wants to go there. Hell, they can talk about Clinton’s latest muncher instead. And don’t forget the most important fact of all Gregory. Kennedy is still dead. And so is his pest of a brother although Hoover did him, not us.

GD: I have a friend who was a cook at the Ambassador Hotel on the night Bobby was offed and he saw the whole thing. Down in the kitchen . Sudden eruption of people, loud voices,, television lights, jostling, pushing and so on. And this man jumps out and shoots at Kennedy. Screaming, stampeding masses of idiots. He said the main chef, some Swiss, jumped over the steam tables and tackled Sirhan. The autopsy said the fatal shot was fired from about two inches away from the back of Bobby’s head but my friend said Sirhan was shooting at Kennedy with, as he called it, some little popgun and was never closer to Bobby than four to five feet. He was right there and saw the whole thing. Knew nothing about the autopsy and when I told him, he said flat out that the shooter was never, ever, that close to Bobby.

RTC: I told you Hoover had it done. One of the bodyguards did it. Latrine rumor but then they did Sullivan in because he was threatening to talk. Mistaken for a deer, poor Sullivan was. Some kid shot him right through the head using a telescope rifle. I suppose the telescope didn’t show the red jacket very well. That’s the way it goes. No, your friend was right but that’s another story that will never see the light of day. Good riddance to both of them. And God took care of old Joe the bootlegger. Sat around in a wheelchair in his dignity pants until God decided he needed another janitor up in Heaven and off Joe went. I hope he suffered, the vicious old fuck.

GD: Such violence Robert.

RTC: Gregory, you have no idea what a bad person Joe was. I put some of his background into that box I sent you. You read it?

GD: Read everything. None of that surprised me. I mean none of it. Very Renaissance Italy in nature. Machiavelli said that it was fine for the leader to be hated only so long as he was feared.

RTC: I’m told you are feared.

GD: Me? Why I’m a mixture of the Easter Bunny and some of the holier saints in the calendar. Never hurt a man in my life.

RTC: I said nothing about hurting people. Injured people can identify you.

GD: Yes, Robert, they can. But I’ve never had that problem.

RTC: No, I would think not. But you understand why Kennedy had to die, don’t you?

GD: I can see why you and your friends thought so.

RTC: Treasonable swine. And Kennedy, I mean Jack, disgraced the office.

GD: What about Clinton?

RTC: Seedy, very seedy. Back seat of an old Chevvy type.

GD: He should have kept sheep. Then the Christian right nut fringe wouldn’t get so hysterical over a blowjob or two. There idea of sex is face to face in bed with your wife, once a year, fully clothed and followed by a good bath and long prayers. God, I would hate to have such freaks as parents. I would either spike their elderberry wine with rat poison or run off and become a shill in a carnival. Which I did, by the way, when I was fourteen.

RTC: Did your family, Gregory?

GD: No, ran off and worked in a carnival. Much fun and very instructive.

RTC: You are always a source of entertainment and surprise. The Kimmel people would have us believe you were suckled by a werewolf but I always defended you. I said it was a vampire.

GD: Oh the horror of it all. What we have now is a situation wherein the lunatics are running the asylum. And Monica saved her stained dress.

 

(Concluded at 10:32 AM CST)

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

Neo-Nazi Al Qaeda

by William Grim

On the surface there would seem to be little to unite the Aryan racialists of the neo-Nazi movement with the terrorists of radical Islam. To the neo-Nazis, Muslims are almost all members of “inferior” races; and to the Islamic terrorists, the neo-Nazis are almost without exception either atheists or members of fringe quasi-Christian sects.

But the reality is that there has been close cooperation between Muslim extremists and Fascists ever since the founding of the Nazi movement in the 1920`s. For all of their differences, Muslim extremists and Nazis have always been united by a common group of beliefs and goals: hatred of Judaism (and conventional Christianity), hatred of democracy, and a desire for the destruction of Israel and the United States.

A little background is in order. During World War II the rabidly anti-Semitic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, pledged his unequivocal support to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist movement. The Grand Mufti was put on the Nazi payroll in 1937 after he met with Adolf Eichmann in Palestine. In fact, when the Grand Mufti had to flee the Middle East in 1941 after the failure of the pro-Nazi coup in Iraq, he was welcomed to Berlin by Hitler and provided with high-power transmitters in order to broadcast pro-Nazi propaganda to the Middle East.

The Grand Mufti also organized an all-Muslim unit of the SS for Hitler and was instrumental in forming the pro-Nazi Muslim Hanschar brigades in Yugoslavia. After the war and his conviction for war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Grand Mufti fled to Egypt where, as part of the ODESSA network of former SS operatives, he maintained close ties to former high-ranking Nazis who were now engaged in gun-running operations to Arab countries fighting the fledgling State of Israel.

One such ex-Nazi gunrunner was Major General Otto Ernst Remer (1912-1997), known as the “Godfather of the neo-Nazi movement.“ Remer had a major part in thwarting the Generals` Plot against Hitler in July 1944. Hitler rewarded Remer by putting him in charge of his protection detail. In the chaos of the immediate post-war period, Remer escaped de-Nazification and returned to Germany.

In 1949 Remer and his associates founded the Sozialistische Reichspartei in Lower Saxony, but the party was banned in 1952 as a neo-Nazi political organization. Remer then settled in Egypt where he began his close friendship with the Grand Mufti and also became security adviser to Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Remer, along with his associate Alois Bunning (who was Eichmann`s assistant in the SS), operated his gunrunning company, the Orient Trading Company, out of Damascus for many years. In the 1980`s, when the statute of limitations expired for the crimes he was alleged to have committed, Remer retired and returned to Germany where he became a close adviser to Michael Kuehnen, the most important neo-Nazi leader of the postwar period in Germany.

It should be pointed out that National Socialism had a profound impact on the political philosophies of many radical Islamic political organization, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in Egypt in 1928), Nasser`s Young Egypt movement, the Social Nationalist Party of Syria founded by Anton Sa`ada, and the Ba`ath Party of Iraq. One of the main leaders of the 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Iraq was Khairallah Tulfah, the uncle and guardian of Saddam Hussein. When Saddam failed in his attempt to assassinate the Iraqi leader Abdel Karim Qassim in 1959, he fled to Egypt where he was given protection by Grand Mufti-protégé Nasser and ODESSA-connected former Nazis. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Third Position

The rise of Al Qaeda and the explosion of neo-Nazi activity in Germany and elsewhere coincided with the breakup of the USSR in the early 1990`s and the political vacuum created by the absence of the former Soviet behemoth. Neo-Nazis in both Europe and the United States began making overtures to Islamic terrorists and even to Louis Farrakhan`s Nation of Islam movement. The resulting admixture of Nazi and Islamicist ideologies is something that is termed the “Third Position.“

Simply put, adherents of the “Third Position“ oppose both communism and capitalism, the latter category subsuming Israel, the United States and all other democratic countries which are believed to be under the control of “International Jewry.“ To this end, the socialist portion of Nazi beliefs is emphasized (as opposed to Hitler`s reliance on corporatism), but the core belief in anti-Semitism is left unaltered. Like the original Nazis, the Third Positioners are eager to form alliances with Muslim (and black) extremists who share their anti-Semitic beliefs.

In Germany, the neo-Nazi leader Gottfried Kuessel has maintained close ties to Farrakhan`s Black Muslims, and Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, thought to have been involved in the murder of Jewish publisher Shlomo Levin as well as the Oktoberfest bombing of September 26, 1980, in which 13 persons were killed and over 200 injured, has long maintained ties with Arafat`s PLO and even moved his paramilitary training camp to Lebanon in 1980 with PLO assistance.

In France, the neo-Nazi leader Robert Faurisson maintains close ties with Ahmed Rami, the former broadcaster of the now-defunct Radio Islam, a viciously anti-Semitic station that operated out of Stockholm for a number of years. And for some time, Sweden`s neo-Nazis have provided skinheads for use as Rami`s bodyguards.

Much of the coordination of neo-Nazi/Muslim terrorist activities is done in the United States. Since overt Nazi activity is outlawed in Germany and many other European countries, neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists have taken advantage of America`s First Amendment protection of almost all political activity. In fact, the headquarters today of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterrpartei is in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Internet and electronic banking make communication and the transfer of funds instantaneous. Even when the transfer of funds needs to be done in person, American law permits every individual to enter or leave the country with $10,000 in cash or negotiable securities without reporting it.

The First Gulf War in 1991 was a catalyzing event in the development of neo-Nazi and Islamic terrorist relations. Early in 1991, the German neo-Nazi leader Michael Kuehnen contacted the Iraqi Embassy in Bonn and offered to train and equip a squadron of neo-Nazi mercenaries to assist Saddam in the coming war against the alliance led by the United States. Indeed, when Kuehnen was arrested for the last time by German police in April of 1991 (Kuehnen died shortly afterwards of AIDS), included among the documents found in his apartment was a copy of a draft treaty between the “Anti-Zionist League“ and the “Government of Iraq.“

Another German neo-Nazi leader, Heinz Reisz, appearing live on Hessian state television on January 25, 1991, gained a great deal of notoriety by proclaiming, “Long live the fight for Saddam Hussein, long like his people, long live their leader, God save the Arab people.“

Although upwards of as many as 500 neo-Nazi mercenaries, formed into a so-called Freedom Corps, were sent to Iraq in 1991, their military effect was negligible at best. Eyewitness accounts say that most of the mercenaries did little other than parade around Baghdad in SS uniforms. The members of the `Freedom Corps“ fled Iraq after the first night of Alliance bombing. Regardless of the ignominious military performance of the neo-Nazis in Iraq in 1991, this was an important event because it led to greater ties and cooperation among American right-wing extremists, European neo-Nazis and Islamic terrorists.

Oklahoma City

Domestic terrorism in the United States also rose greatly in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Timothy McVeigh, himself a veteran of that conflict, stunned the world by his bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995 in Oklahoma City. But the evidence suggests that the neo-Nazi/Islamic terrorist network played a significant role in this act of terrorism.

First, the choice of a terrorist target in Oklahoma is very telling. Although Oklahoma is a conservative southern state that has a reputation for patriotism and sends an unusually high percentage of its young people into the military, it is also one of the bastions of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States. In 1991, the Oklahoma Klan leader Dennis Mahon led a rally in support of Saddam Hussein in Tulsa. And Oklahoma is also home to Elohim City, a neo-Nazi paramilitary compound that has served as a training ground for right-wing extremists for the past thirty years. Groups associated with Elohim City have included The Order, Covenant Sword and Arm, White Aryan Resistance and the Aryan Republican Army. The latter group included Timothy McVeigh among its members.

Extremists residing at Elohim City received military-style training from a number of sources. One of the trainers there was Andreas Carl Strassmeir of Germany, a neo-Nazi and the son of Guenter Strassmeir, a chief aide of disgraced former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. The elder Strassmeir is widely regarded as the architect of Kohl`s reunification plan that merged the former East Germany with the Federal Republic in 1991.And Guenter`s father was one of the original members of the Nazi Party in the early 1920`s.

Andreas Strassmeir is important to this story because he not only became a close friend and confidant of Timothy McVeigh, but also because he is regarded by many investigators as John Doe #2, the unknown person assisting McVeigh and Terry Nichols at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing who was seen by a number of eyewitnesses.

In addition to training various neo-Nazi and militia groups, Strassmeir was involved in a number of very curious activities. According to an FBI report dated May 10, 1995, “Additional documents reveal that at one time Strassmeir was attempting to purchase a 747 aircraft from Lufthansa; however, the reason for the purchase is not reflected in the documents.“

In 1995 it would not have been unreasonable for an FBI investigator to give Strassmeir`s attempted purchase of a Boeing 747 mere passing notice. In light of 9/11, however, Strassmeir`s aborted airliner purchase gives one pause and raises the real possibility that 9/11 type attacks were being planned as far back as 1995 by insiders in the neo-Nazi/Islamic terrorist network. (And flying a privately owned jet or one operated by remote control would save the problem of hijacking airliners en route.) Strassmeir left the United States shortly after the bombing and currently resides in Berlin.

Mutual Enemies, Mutual Interests

The many points of contact between the neo-Nazis and the Islamic terrorists and their mutual targets of large public buildings demonstrate what I would like to term the “Strangers on a Train“ scenario of current terrorist activity. In the Alfred Hitchcock movie of that name, two men unknown to each other meet on a train and start talking. Each needs to dispose of a person. They agree to kill each other`s intended victim, thereby eliminating the element of motive from the ensuing police investigations. In a similar manner, evidence of late tends to support the idea that Al Qaeda is farming out terrorist work — which is why American investigators have been so interested in the remote area of South America where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay border each other.

It is there that wealthy German ex-Nazis, Islamic terrorists, Basque and IRA terrorists on the lam as well as narco-terrorists are known to be in steady contact. The possibilities for Mafia-style terrorist “contracts“ are virtually unlimited.

It may come as something of a surprise to some when they realize just how well funded the various neo-Nazi organizations are. Authorities have known for years that a Swiss banker by the name of Francois Genoud has been funding neo-Nazi activities throughout the world. Genoud first gained prominence as the financial adviser to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He is alleged to have funded neo-Nazi activities through the use of confiscated Jewish funds that were deposited in Swiss banks by the Nazis. Genoud funded the legal defense of Eichmann during his trial in 1961. And most chilling of all, Genoud was closely associated with the Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Another Swiss financier of neo-Nazi and Islamic terror is Ahmed Huber, (nee Albert Huber), a former journalist who converted to Islam. Swiss authorities raided Huber`s suburban home outside of Berne on November 8, 2001, when U.S. officials identified him as one of the chief financial operators for Al Qaeda. Huber had been very active with the Al Taqwa (literally “Fear of God“) international banking group, an Islamic terrorist front organization that had been funding the activities of Hamas and other Muslim extremists. According to a report released by Germany`s Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz (“Office for the Protection of the Constitution“), Huber “sees himself as a mediator between Islam and right-wing groups.“

Huber and others of his ilk have found that Holocaust denial organizations provide the ideal venues for coordinating the efforts of the neo-Nazis and the Islamic terrorists. Indeed, Holocaust denial is the one area in which the beliefs of the neo-Nazis and Islamic terrorists coincide completely. And given the levels of post-9/11 security, international Holocaust denial conferences now have greater importance for planning and coordination among the neo-Nazi/Islamic terrorist networks.

This is due to the unfortunate fact that Holocaust denial organizations have the patina of scholarly respectability. Groups such as the Santa Barbara, California-based Institute for Historical Review produce glossy quasi-academic-style journals complete with footnotes and bibliography and well-designed and user-friendly websites. Holocaust denial groups sponsor international meetings that allow representatives of neo-Nazi and Islamic terrorist groups to meet because they narrowly fall within guidelines in most Western countries allowing for the free exchange of “ideas.“ And with the current embrace of anti-Semitism by most leftist academics (in addition to their traditional anti-Americanism), there is now often very little difference between the symposia sponsored by officially recognized Middle Eastern Studies organizations in America and Europe and those organized by Holocaust denial groups.

While American forces continue to identify and destroy Al Qaeda`s ability to conduct terrorist activities on its own, we must become more vigilant to the increasing possibility of “terror by hire“ as neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremists step up to fill the void.

The next 9/11-style terrorist attack may not be attempted by a keffiya-wearing Arab terrorist spouting quotations from the Koran, but by an IRA terrorist whose services were purchased by a left-wing European intellectual attending a Middle Eastern Studies caucus of some leftist academic group during an annual conference in Omaha or Chicago or San Francisco

 

 

Hacker group threatens to leak 9/11 ‘truth’ unless paid in bitcoin

January 2, 2018

RT

The Dark Overlord hacker group has threatened to leak thousands of “secret” documents stolen from insurers and government agencies that they claim reveal the truth about 9/11 – unless they’re paid not to.

The Dark Overlord, a “professional adversarial threat group” known for their hacks of Netflix, plastic surgery clinics, and other sensitive targets, posted a link to a 10GB encrypted archive of documents related to 9/11 litigation, promising to release the encryption keys if their demands were not met in a post on Pastebin on Monday.

The group claims the documents tell the story of what really happened on one of the most notorious dates in recent history, tweeting “We’ll be providing many answers about 9.11 conspiracies through our 18,000 secret documents leak.” They published a “teaser” consisting of letters, emails, and various documents that mention law firms, the Transport Security Administration, and the Federal Aviation Administration, with a promise of more to come.

They claim to have hacked documents from not only major global insurers like Lloyds of London and Hiscox, but also Silverstein Properties, which owned the World Trade Center complex, and various government agencies. The material, which supposedly includes confidential government documents that were meant to be destroyed but were instead retained by legal firms, allegedly reveals “the truth about one of the most recognizable incidents in recent history and one which is shrouded in mystery with little transparency and not many answers.”

Also on rt.com Federal law enforcement agencies sued for keeping Americans in the dark about hacking activities

Anyone worried they might be named in the documents can have their names redacted – for a fee, according to the announcement. “Terrorist organizations” and “competing nation states of the USA” are also offered first dibs on the info – if they pay up. Otherwise, the hackers write, the insurers can pay an unspecified bitcoin ransom – or “we’re going to bury you with this.”

Some of the documents were nabbed in an April hack of a law firm associated with Hiscox that the firm acknowledges could have exposed 1,500 of its US commercial policyholders. The Dark Overlord claims that while their ransom was paid in relation to that earlier hack, their victim violated the “agreement” by cooperating with law enforcement, necessitating further extortion.

The group emerged in 2016 with hacks on medical centers, advertising sensitive data for sale on the dark web in order to force victims to pay for its removal. They infamously leaked an entire season of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black last year to prove to that company they meant business and have stolen data from more than 50 companies, according to Vice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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January 1, 2019

Jan 01 2019 Published by under Uncategorized

Washington, D.C. January 1, 2019: “Three weeks ago, someone showed up in Washington with a lengthy file of papers. This consisted of a long Russian intelligence report on Donald Trump. It was in Russian, covered with official office stamps and attached was an English translation. This eventually ended up in the hands of Mr. Mueller with the idea that it could also be send around to all the Democratic members of the House. Washington is the Gossip Capitol of the country and within a week, rumors, threats of rumors and intimations of postings swarmed like bees in the summer. What comes next no one knows but anyone betting on Trump leaving the Oval Office in the near future would have a sure thing in his pocket. The only problem foreseen is the anger and probable violence erupting in the ranks of his far-right supporters, many of whom are very militant and even more who are armed, mostly with semi-automatic AK47-style assault rifles that can easily be converted to full automatic. No one wants a reprise of the rigged Charlottesville episode and the Department of Defense has its own agenda if called out to respond to violence. They shoot first and explain later.”

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 5
  • How the War Party Lost the Middle East
  • Democrats unveil bill to end shutdown – without money for Trump’s wall
  • Democrat-controlled House faces question: what not to investigate?
  • The top Democrats set to make Trump’s life miserable in 2019
  • Steve Mnuchin Is a Dunce
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

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