The 11 o'clock News -It's later than you THINK

Why Fascism is Coming to America: "The Nazis Pay So Well"

by Richie Scallia --

Remember Henry Wallace?  Of course, you don't, because you're are a victim of the American "education" system.  In the late 1930s and early 1940s, only FDR eclipsed Wallace - Roosevelt's secretary of agriculture (1933-1940) and then his vice president (1941-1944) - in popularity with the American people. Today, however, Wallace is a mostly forgotten figure.  He should be remembered because his words of wisdom will be written on America's democracy tombstone:

“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those… With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

“American fascism will not be really dangerous,” he added in the next paragraph, “until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information…”

Noting that, “Fascism is a worldwide disease,” Wallace further suggested that fascism’s “greatest threat to the United States will come after the war” and will manifest “within the United States itself.”

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism the Vice President of the United States saw rising in America, he added:

“They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

Finally, Wallace said, “The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. … Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must…develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.”

As Wallace’s President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party’s renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia:

“…Out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man….”

Speaking indirectly of the fascists that Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core:

“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.”

But, he thundered in that speech:  “Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!”

Wallace was an Inside Man.  He knew what he was talking about the threat of fascism. "The Nazis pay so well."

 

America Has Lost Its Fucking Mind: Item No. 1

(Note: The 11 o'clock News will maintain a time capsule of lunatic thinking that contributed to the demise of the Land of the Free.)   

Item 1:  A MARYLAND appellate court on Wednesday explained its reasoning for its landmark decision earlier this month requiring police to establish probable cause and get a warrant before using a Stingray, or cell-site simulator.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals rejected the state of Maryland’s argument that anyone turning on a phone was “voluntarily” sharing their whereabouts with the police. And the 73-page opinion also harshly rebuked Baltimore police for trying to conceal their use of Stingrays from the court.

“This is the first appellate opinion in the country to fully address the question of whether police must disclose their intent to use a cell-site simulator to a judge and obtain a probable cause warrant,” said Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology.

The panel of judges stated that “cellphone users have an objectively reasonable expectation that their cellphones will not be used as real-time tracking devices, through the direct and active interference of law enforcement.”  They didn't mention the device can record information such as the phone numbers dialed as well as content of talk and text 

So does that mean we can't peek in windows, since anyone turning on the light was "voluntarily" sharing their whereabouts with the police?  

 

 

Trump's Last Aborted Stand

Donald Trump is no fool. He only plays one on TV.  The Donald is very aware he is facing a George Custer-moment in Cleveland, and he is gathering his forces for the Big Show-down against those Cleveland Indians. (You could Sioux, Donald.)

 

 Of course, none of his forces  include women, who rate him lower than a UTI.  That explains The Donald's latest blast at the weaker sex by punishing them for getting abortions.  Asked by MSNBC's Chris Matthews whether a woman who got an abortion illegally should face punishment, Donald said he supported that idea.   

 

"Yes, there has to be some form of punishment,"   Trump said.  

 

Not one to alienate his forces, Trump also said that men involved in an unwanted pregnancy that led to an abortion would not face any type of punishment. Nice.  If they were punished, The Donald would be facing the death penalty.  

 

The Donald shares a similar fate with George Custer: they were both done in by Sitting Bull.  

 

FBI Folds on Phony Bluff - They Got Nothin

The Federal Bureau of Investigation folded on its bluff to force Apple to help it create a method of accessing data on a locked iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook.  The case was headed for court and the FBI dreaded losing its case.  The only hope the FBI had was Tim Cook suffering a Tylenol overdose. 

Turns out the F.B.I. seized on the San Bernardino case as an opportunity to pursue a policy agenda that it has had for years, and that it oversold its case. The agency said that it was unable to unlock the iPhone 5C without Apple’s assistance. But as Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out in a blog post published on March 7th, this claim didn’t ring entirely true. In his piece, which included pictures of an iPhone 5C’s circuit board, Gillmor described how investigators could work around the auto-erase feature by removing the device’s NAND flash memory and backing it up, then trying every conceivable four-digit passcode combination.

“If the FBI doesn’t have the equipment or expertise to do this, they can hire any one of dozens of data recovery firms that specialize in information extraction from digital devices,” he wrote.

 It’s not known for certain if the F.B.I. used the method that Gillmor recommended to get into Farook’s phone. But the post suggested that the Bureau hadn’t exhausted all of the technological possibilities for accessing the data.

Sound familar?  It should.  The FBI bungled the Anthrax investigation and  got off the hook when the case didn't go to court after Bruce Ivins died.  Then the FBI was free to defame Bruce's character and considered the case solved.  Of course, the FBI case would have been laughed out of court as Bruce did not have the expertise or the equipment to make the stuff.

This is a lesson learned for defense lawyers who face going to court against the DOJ/FBI in such technological cases, it may be a headache but keep your clients away from Tylenol.  The FBI will fold every time.  They play a good game but they got nothin.

Time for Regime Change in Saudi Arabia to Deter Terrorism

When Al Jazeera presenter Mehdi Hasan asked the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United Nations why he supports democratic elections in Syria but not in the country he represents, the response that followed was cringeworthy.

“Well, just because there are elections in Syria doesn’t mean there have to be elections somewhere else,” Abdallah al-Mouallimi told Hasan during a Friday segment of Al Jazeera’s “UpFront.”

The ambassador insisted that if you asked Saudi people about the current structure of their government, they’d voice their support.

“Isn’t that partly because if they do say they don’t want this government, they want another government, they’ll go to jail?” Hasan asked, noting that it’s a crime in Saudi Arabia to call for a change in the system of government.

“No,” al-Mouallimi replied. “I’m saying that if there was a way by which you can ask the common people in the street anonymously, privately, any way —”

“There is,” Hasan interjected. “It’s called voting.”

While oppressing its own people. Saudi Arabia is also  the world’s leading sponsor of Islamic extremism. 

On Jan. 2, Saudi Arabia beheaded 47 people across 13 cities. Among the executed was cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a leader from the country’s Shia religious minority who was arrested for leading peaceful protests against the regime in 2011-12.

Sheikh al-Nimr was known throughout the Islamic world for his staunch opposition to sectarianism. The outspoken Saudi dissident firmly insisted that Sunnis and Shias are not enemies, and should unite against the sectarian regimes oppressing them. “The oppressed should unite together against the oppressors, instead of becoming tools in the hands of the oppressors,” he declared.

By executing a dissident who challenged sectarianism, the Saudi monarchy was only further fomenting it.  If the US is serious about its war on terror, destroying the source would make sense. 

 

Sell that Beachfront Property Before the Day after Tomorrow

The current rate of global warming could raise sea levels by “several meters” over the coming century, rendering most of the world’s coastal cities uninhabitable and helping unleash devastating storms, according to a paper published by James Hansen, the former Nasa scientist who is considered the father of modern climate change awareness.

The research, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, references past climatic conditions, recent observations and future models to warn the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will contribute to a far worse sea level increase than previously thought.

Without a sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global sea level is likely to increase “several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years”, the paper states, warning that the Earth’s oceans were six to nine meters higher during theEemian period – an interglacial phase about 120,000 years ago that was less than 1C warmer than it is today.

 

Hansen argues that the perilous state the world is in right now has led him to take on the role of more than just a scientist and to send a clear message about the dangers of climate change.

This may have turned Hansen into an inspiration to advocates of climate change prevention, but it has also caused some colleagues to doubt whether his findings have been skewed to suit his political goals.

The new climate study focused on events that occurred some 120,000 years ago, when the Earth's global temperature reached a level that is considered to be slightly higher than what it is today. Researchers believe that during that time, much of the planet's polar ice melted, and the water level in oceans rose by as much as 20 to 30 feet.

Climate experts agree that the Earth is about to experience an equal, if not even greater, increase in sea level. However, many assume that it would take hundreds of years before such a drastic increase could happen.

Hansen and his colleagues argue that this event could occur at a much faster rate than what people assume. It could lead to significant changes in the world's environment, including an increase in global sea level by several feet over the next five decades. This would force many people living along coastal communities to seek refuge elsewhere.

The researchers believe this scenario could be triggered by the melting of the planet's ice sheets, which would cause a slow down or even the total collapse of ocean current systems that help mitigate heat on Earth.

This in turn would cause high temperatures to focus on deeper portions of the oceans, triggering a melting of ice sheets located below sea level.

Not even the experts really know if it will happen the day after tomorrow.   Sell your beachfront property before the day after tomorrow.

Burned Again: Tunnel Vision Leaves US in the Dark

"It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes

Tunnel vision is getting to be a nasty habit for our intelligence agencies.  Case in point: the Paris terrorists' mode of communication. New details of the Paris attacks carried out last November reveal that it was the consistent use of prepaid burner phones, not encryption, that helped keep the terrorists off the radar of the intelligence services. 

Tunnel vision:   The CIA's former acting director, Michael Morell, blamed the Paris attack on Internet companies "building encryption without keys," which, he said, was caused by the debate over surveillance prompted by Edward Snowden's disclosures. Former CIA chief James Woolsey said Snowden "has blood on his hands" because, he asserted, the Paris attackers learned from his disclosures how to hide their communications behind encryption. Woolsey said  Snowden should be "hanged by the neck until he's dead, rather than merely electrocuted." (Interestingly. this is the same feeling many people have about the snake oil salesmen who sold US lies about Iraqi WMDs.)

Of course, there is no evidence the perpetrators in Paris used the Internet to plot their attacks, let alone used encryption technology.  CIA officials simply made that up. 

There is evidence from a Belgian ISIS raid in January that suggests that the ISIS terror networks involved were communicating in the clear, and that the data on their smartphones was not encrypted.  European media outlets are reporting that the location of a raid conducted on a suspected safe house Wednesday morning was extracted from a cellphone, apparently belonging to one of the attackers, found in the trash outside the Bataclan concert hall massacre. Le Monde reported that investigators were able to access the data on the phone, including a detailed map of the concert hall and an SMS messaging saying “we’re off; we’re starting.” Police were also able to trace the phone’s movements. Belgian investigators concluded that Abaaoud directed the foiled operation there by cellphone from Greece — and that despite his attempts to avoid surveillance, his communications were in fact intercepted. Just a few days after the raid, Belgian news website RTL Info ran a whole article titled “What the Terrorist Suspects under Surveillance Were Saying.” It described surveillance over several months, through wiretaps and listening devices placed in the suspects’ car and their apartment. 

Turns out it wasn't Snowden's fault.  Those crazy terrorists were probably watching old narco movies to learn their MO: BURNER PHONES.

As an article in The New York Times reports: "the three teams in Paris were comparatively disciplined. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims."

The article goes on to give more details of how some phones were used only very briefly in the hours leading up to the attacks. For example: "Security camera footage showed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants, as he paced outside the stadium, talking on a cellphone. The phone was activated less than an hour before he detonated his vest." The information come from a 55-page report compiled by the French antiterrorism police for France’s Interior Ministry.

Outside the Bataclan theatre venue, the investigators found a Samsung phone in a dustbin: "It had a Belgian SIM card that had been in use only since the day before the attack. The phone had called just one other number—belonging to an unidentified user in Belgium."

As police pieced together the movements of the attackers, they found yet more burner phones: "Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented in the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam. When the brigade charged with sweeping the location arrived, it found two unused cellphones still inside their boxes." At another location used by one of the terrorists, the police found dozens of unused burner phones "still in their wrappers."

As The New York Times says, one of the most striking aspects of the phones is that not a single e-mail or online chat message from the attackers was found on them. That seems to be further evidence that they knew such communications were routinely monitored by intelligence agencies. But rather than trying to avoid discovery by using encryption—which would in itself have drawn attention to their accounts—they seem to have stopped using the Internet as a communication channel altogether, and turned to standard cellular network calls on burner phones.

That authorities are only now discovering this fact shows how well the strategy worked.

And it shows the "intelligence" agencies that fit the facts to fit their tunnel vision doesn't work and leaves US all in the dark. 

China's Communist Ideaology - It's all about the Dollar

While the old commie versus capitalism battles pretend to be about the rights of peoples to express their political beliefs, the truth is it's all about the dollar and getting rich. Consider the latest Chinese Party concerns about the Obama visit to Cuba.  The Chinese Party-controlled press weighed in with rather less enthusiasm. Though they took note of the “strategic vision” and “goodwill” on display in Havana, party-linked media took the chance to call attention to American "arrogance" and "interventionism" in Latin America — and warned the island about U.S. motives.

"U.S. President Barack Obama's trip to Cuba is seen widely as a historic move of Uncle Sam, but ultimate rapprochement with Cuba requires the United States to refrain from imposing its ideology on others and to treat others as equals," warned an opinion piece published by Xinhua, a Communist Party newswire.

"U.S. President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to Cuba, though a historic move, cannot reverse the fact that the United States has not yet dropped its ideology of interventionism in Latin America."

"China and Cuba, as fellow socialist countries, are closely linked by the same visions, ideals and goals," Xi said at the time.  Yes, they are.....Money.

 The bottom line:  China is Cuba's second-largest trading partner, after Venezuela, and a key source of credit to the island's embargo-choked economy. But the total volume of trade remains, particularly by Chinese standards.

Both sides seem keen to change that. Trade between the two countries rose 57 percent in the first three months of 2015, according the Chinese embassy in Havana.

In December of that year, Air China launched a thrice-weekly direct flight to Havana — an effort they hope will see ever-more Chinese tourists strolling along the Malecón. There are already more than a dozen Chinese-linked resort projects in the works, according to Xinhua, representing about $460 million in Chinese investment.

Of course, the United States also wants in on the action. Obama was accompanied on Air Force One by the CEO of Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Starwood this weekend became the first U.S. hotel chain in decades to sign a deal in Cuba.

That, clearly did not please Beijing. The editorials published Monday urge Cuba to stick with the socialist set rather than side with the capitalist newcomers.

"Yes, Obama's visit is commendable for indicating the possibility of communication and collaboration between countries with divergent ideologies," said one of the Xinhua editorials. "But Washington needs to offer substantive and sufficient compensation to the island country to pay for its past wrongdoings."

As if to underscore the potential economic rivalries, Starwood signed a deal on Saturday to manage three hotels in Cuba, and on Monday picked a sweetened buyout offer from Marriott over a pitch by a major Chinese-led insurance group.

 Of course, there's only so much money made off commie tourism.  

As the US and Cuba work to restore diplomatic relations, keeping in mind that we are doubtful the US trade embargo on Cuba will be lifted until after the 2016 presidential elections, Cuba is flaunting what it says are billions of barrels of oil in its offshore Gulf of Mexico territory.

So far, there isn’t a great amount of excitement over Cuba’s announcement. In 2012, three exploration wells came up dry and, at present, most are eyeing new opportunities in Mexico since it opened up its oil and gas to foreign companies and ended state-run Pemex’s monopoly on the industry. Depressed oil prices will also keep interest in Cuba to a minimum.

Still, a recent study does claim to confirm what Cuba has long said was a potential oil and gas bonanza—20 billion barrels of undiscovered crude, more specifically. The most recent US Geological Survey data estimates around 7 billion barrels.

With tensions mounting over maritime disputes in the South China Sea, the cause of the problem, at least in part, is believed to lie at the bottom of the water. But it is still unclear exactly how much oil and natural gas lurk beneath the surface. 

Along with fishing and lucrative shipping routes, oil and gas reserves are often cited as a major reason for the disagreements over which country owns which patch of water, including China, which claims nearly all of the South China Sea. 

But how much oil and gas really exist is still a question mark, according to Carl Thayer, a Professor Emeritas at Australia’s National Defense Academy. 

“No one has done the really hard work scientifically. These are estimates, because there has been an interruption to oil exploration efforts in the past, the cable cutting incidents in the past, ships have been forced out of water by the Philippines that have been contested by China,” he said. 

China has said that the sea holds 130 billion barrels of oil. U.S. estimates are more conservative. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says the sea likely holds just 11 billion barrels of oil, and 190 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. 

What Really Scares Donald "Narcissist" Trump Most?

It ain't ISIS. It ain't Mexicans.  It' ain't Hillary. Not even Megyn Kelly.  It's the IRS and the fear someone may release his tax returns.  The Donald is a classic narcissist.  He has an inflated sense of self-worth, which means he hates being treated as a common, unremarkable person as much as he loathes being put down and humiliated.  Hence, Donald will go to his grave before he lets the world know his claim of great financial wealth is an embarrassment and he is quite an unremarkable person.    

So what may Trump's IRS return reveal?    David Cay Johnston has an idea.  NB. Johnston won a Pulitzer Prize working the tax beat for the New York Times. 

DCJ: His biggest write-off would be depreciation of real estate. Most Americans can only deduct $25,000 of depreciation. If you have a job that pays $75,000 and you’re a landlord on the side,  you can only take $25,000 to offset your paycheck, no matter how much value your property loses to depreciation. But Congress enacted this special rule in the 1990s that says if you’re a full-time real estate person — and “full-time” in this case is 15 hours a week — then you can take unlimited deductions as your property depreciates.

And then he’s probably writing off his luxurious lifestyle as a business expense. You’re not allowed to take personal expenses against your taxes. But Trump almost certainly set it up so his 757 jet is owned by one of his businesses. He certainly has a letter from his security adviser that says that it’s not safe for him to travel commercially because he might be kidnapped or attacked. That allows him to use the jet for personal use and pay nothing for it except the taxes on the value. The taxes on a round-trip flight to Paris would come to less than $900, even though he’s flying in his own personal 757 jet. He undoubtedly doesn’t go anywhere without it being a business expense.   In all likelihood, his whole lifestyle is funded like that. I’m sure that he is able to charge a lot of his luxurious lifestyle to the tax system.   People need to understand that very wealthy people don’t just avoid paying taxes. For people like Donald Trump and Mitt Romney, the income tax is a source of wealth. The rest of us are burdened by it, but they get rich off it.

Let’s say Trump deferred the taxes on a year of his salary from “The Apprentice.”  That is effectively a zero-interest loan. Trump claimed he got $65 million per year from “The Apprentice,” which anybody who knows anything about television knows is absurd. And NBC said publicly that it was absurd. But let’s assume he made $65 million.

The federal income tax on that year’s salary would have been about $23 million. Trump says he’s a world-class investor, so let’s assume he nets 10 percent per year on the $23 million he didn’t pay. At the end of 20 years, he could then pay the $23 million in deferred taxes, which has been eroded by inflation, and he would pocket the gains from investing that money for all those years. That works out to $130 million he would have made by deferring his taxes. This is one reason why the super-rich are getting super-richer — the tax system takes from you and me and gives to them.

Also, Trump claims to be a great philanthropist. But if you have zero income on your tax return — or negative income – then giving to charity has no value to you. Trump hasn’t donated a penny to The Donald J. Trump Foundation since 2006, and most of the money that’s in the foundation came from vendors and business partners. Their donations were really a form of kickback. A legal form of kickback, but a kickback nonetheless.

Trump actually sued a reporter for suggesting Trump wasn't all that rich.  One is Trump’s admission, under questioning from an  attorneys during a deposition, that he relied on his own “feelings” to assess the value of his holdings.

An attorney asked: Feelings?

“Yes, even my own feelings as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day,” Trump said, according to the court record. “Then you have a September 11th, and you don’t feel so good about yourself and you don’t feel so good about the world and you don’t feel so good about New York City. Then you have a year later, and the city is as hot as a pistol. Even months after that it was a different feeling. So yeah, even my own feelings affect my value to myself.”

 The statement effectively validated reporter O’Brien’s skeptical take on Trump’s self-reporting, which O’Brien characterized as Trump’s “verbal billions.”

A superior court judge in New Jersey ruled that Trump had no case and dismissed his suit in 2009. An appeals court affirmed that decision two years later.

Ultimately, Trump rationalized his defeat this way: “Essentially the judge just said, ‘Trump is too famous,’ ” he told the Atlantic magazine in 2013. “ ‘He’s so famous that you’re allowed to say anything you want about him.’ Well, I disagree with that.”    (spoken like a classic narcissist)

Trump said in an interview that he knew he couldn’t win the suit but brought it anyway to make a point. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

Yes, we can't let small people intimidate Donald Trump.  That would make him look like an unremarkable person who loathes being put down and humiliated. 

September Surprise: Hillary INDICTED

Forget about the October Surprise,  a news event deliberately created or timed to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the presidense.  The DOJ will be making its September Surprise: Hillary Clinton will be indicted for mishandling classified information.  Specifically she will be tried for willfully transmitting or willfully retaining Top Secret and Compartmented (TS/SCI) material using a private server system. Intent is not necessary. 

The individual who transmits and the individual who receives and retains TS/SCI information on a private server jointly share the culpability for risking the compromise and exploitation of the information by hostile intelligence services. The prosecutor’s charging document would likely include felony counts under 18 U.S. Code § 793 and under 18 U.S. Code § 798 against each transmitting individual as well as separate counts against each receiving and retaining individual. Violation of either provision of the U.S. Code cited above is a felony with a maximum prison term of ten years.

The prohibited conduct is the insecure transmission of highly classified information, as well as the receipt and retention of highly classified information in an unapproved manner. The requisite mens rea is the willful commission of the prohibited conduct and the knowledge that compromised information could result in prejudice or injury to the United States or advantage to any foreign nation.  

The DOJ is in a tight spot: not indicting Hillary risks the wrath of the CIA. There is precedence:  Ex-CIA Director John Deutch.  If Lynch refuses to prosecute Hillary,  GOOD LUCK DOJ TRYING TO INDICT ANY OTHER GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE FOR SIMILAR CRIMES.  And if she does prosecute Hillary, good luck blaming it on a left-wing conspiracy - that is the Obama DOJ. Joe Biden will send you some nice parting gifts.  Hillary could still run and she  would be able to keep her security clearance if she is elected. But who would vote for someone for president under indictment?