Hillary Clinton, With Little Notice, Vows to Embrace an Extremist Agenda on Israel

Former President Bill Clinton on Monday met in secret (no press allowed) with roughly 100 leaders of South Florida’s Jewish community and, as The Times of Israel reports, “he vowed that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would make it one of her top priorities to strengthen the US-Israel alliance.” He also “stressed the close bond that he and his wife have with the State of Israel.”

It may be tempting to dismiss this as standard, vapid Clintonian politicking: adeptly telling everyone what they want to hear and making them believe it.

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Scalia murdered? Sealed his fate 4 days before his death?

Four days before he died, Supreme Court Justice Scalia voted to stall Obama’s plan to force drastic climate-change rules on the American economy. The vote was 5-4.

With Scalia now gone, the vote would be 4-4.

With a new Obama Supreme Court appointee, if Obama could ram his choice through, the vote would be 5-4 in the President’s favor. Ditto, if the next President shares Obama’s position. And the climate-change agenda would roll ahead.

We’re not talking about small climate-change rules. We’re talking about the Big Ones.

And note: such rules could very well dovetail with the Brave New World spelled out in the upcoming TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership).

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Fed eyes increased risks for US economy

Many Federal Reserve policymakers saw increased risks facing the US economy as they assessed the market turmoil that has erupted in 2016 amid plunging commodity prices and confusion over China’s currency policies. The central bank’s minutes for its January meeting released on Wednesday showed that Fed policymakers were wary of rushing to premature conclusions about the implications of the month’s financial turbulence, but most agreed that the outlook had become more clouded and uncertain. Several argued that it would be “prudent” to wait for more evidence about the underlying strength of the economy and inflation before embarking on any further interest rate increases, according to the record of the meeting held on January 26-27. If the slide in shares, high dollar and tighter financing costs persisted, the effects “may be roughly equivalent to those from further firming in monetary policy,” the record showed.

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Order to hack iPhone for FBI ‘chilling’: Tim Cook

A U.S. magistrate's order that Apple help the FBI access an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists is "chilling" and is essentially asking the U.S. tech giant to "hack" its own users, Chief Executive Tim Cook said. In a letter to customers on Wednesday, Cook said he opposes a "dangerous" court order. "The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand," Cook said. "The implications of the government's demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone's device to capture their data." Cook said the government could "extend this breach of privacy" to demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept messages, access health records or financial data, track location or access your phone's microphone or camera without your knowledge.

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Keiser Report: Unintended Consequences of Economics Goals

In this episode of the Keiser Report Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss unintended geo-economic and financial consequences of trying to treat economics and politics as a science.

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Indian Point plant leak sparks concern over ‘Chernobyl on the Hudson’

News of the tritium water leak at the Indian Point nuclear power plant has rekindled concerns about the 40-year-old plant among the local residents, public health experts and environmentalists.

Situated on the Hudson River, 25 miles (40 km) north of New York City, Indian Point serves the electricity needs of around 2 million people. Its two working reactors have operated since 1974 and 1976, respectively.

Last month, crews preparing one of the reactors for refueling accidentally spilled some of the water containing the radioactive hydrogen isotope tritium, causing a massive radiation spike in groundwater monitoring wells.

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Anonymous Hacks Turkish National Police Server, Leaks A Trove of Data

Hack Read

The year 2015 was a difficult year for Turkey due to the uncertain situation on the ground and cyber attacks conducted by Anonymous on high-profile targets such as banks and national domain registrar.

Now hacktivist collective Anonymous claims to have dumped online a huge database belonging to Turkey’s General Directorate of Security (EGM)  in response to “various abuses” by the Turkish government in recent months.

The person who uploaded the database Monday said he received it from a hacker who had “persistent access to various parts of the Turkish government infrastructure for the past two years.”

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US-NATO, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, “Losers on The Rampage”

Global Research

It should be clear by now that every single anti-government armed group in Syria has been created by Washington and its allies. Several senior US officials have admitted the fact. Regime change has always been the goal. Nevertheless, the charade of a ‘War on ISIS’ goes on, with a compliant western media unwilling to point out that ‘the emperor has no clothes’.

Geneva 3 has actually brought some results. First, none of the NATO-backed ‘opposition’ groups managed to show a credible face. Second, and more importantly, the US and Russia kept talking and actually developed another de-escalation plan. It is not conclusive but it is encouraging.

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End NATO Now. “An Insanity that’s Driving the World Inexorably Toward World War III”

The trigger for that war is now being set by NATO member Turkey, which wants to invade neighboring Syria, and which has the support of the Gulf Cooperation Council (including the world’s biggest buyer of US weapons, Saudi Arabia) who are massing troops and weapons on Syria’s northern border, in preparation for an invasion southward into Syria.

Once they invade Syria from Turkish territory, it won’t be enough for the Syrian army and its Russian ally to wage war against them inside Syria, because the invaders will then need to be counter-attacked in order to be defeated, and so there will be an invasion of NATO-member Turkey – a counter-invasion, in defense against Syria’s invaders – a counter-invasion which, however morally necessary it will be, will trigger nuclear war, for this reason:

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Provocative Saudi-Led Regional Military Exercises

Saudi Arabia’s support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, as part of Washington’s regional imperial agenda, threatens world peace and security.

According to the state-controlled Saudi Press Agency (SPA), 20 Middle East and North African countries will participate in Ra’ad Al-Shamal (Thunder of the North) military exercises.

They’re being held at King Khald Military City in Hafr Al-Batin in northern Saudi Arabia.

The participating countries include Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Senegal, Sudan, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Pakistan, Chad, Tunisia, Comoros, Djibouti, Oman, Qatar, Malaysia, Egypt, Mauritania, and Mauritius - along with what Riyadh calls the Peninsula shield forces.

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Nobody Seems to Know How Exactly Antonin Scalia Ended Up Dead Underneath a Pillow

On the morning of February 13, the owner of Cibolo Creek Ranch, in the west Texas town of Shafter, discovered the cold body of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in one of the ranch’s hotel rooms. The owner, John Poindexter, later told the San Antonio Express-News, “We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled. He was lying very restfully. It looked like he had not quite awakened from a nap.”

In quick, confusing succession, local news outlets declared three different causes of death. First it was unspecified “natural causes.” Then it was a heart attack (or a “myocardial infarction”), which is considered a natural cause of death. Then, finally, it reverted to “natural causes” again—not a heart attack—with one additional detail:

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The Weekly Standard is full of shit!

The Weekly Standard is full of shit! They want us to believe, in their new article about Trump, that GWB was oblivious to the fact that there were no WMD's in Iraq! Well , what about the Downing Street Memo? We remember! Tony Blair and Bush fabricated military intelligence, put US soldiers in harms way all to formulate an agenda that killed at least 1 million innocent people!

Everyone knew that Curveball was lying! Even the CIA was aware of the fact that Curveball was a drunk that often fabricated stories to get attention and money! Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as "a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth." CIA technicians and weapon experts found major flaws and inconsistencies in Curveball's stories.

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NYPD wants to make "resisting arrest" into a felony

It's no secret that "resisting arrest" is the go-to excuse for violence committed against suspects by corrupt cops -- it's practically a running gag.

But if NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton gets his way, resisting arrest will offer near-perfect impunity to his force's most violent and sleazy officers, who will be able to threaten anyone who complains about gratuitous violence during arrests with long prison sentences and felony records.

The Commission has suggested that he will be able to curb abuses of the new powers by having the police investigate fellow officers who lay higher-than-average resisting arrest charges in the course of their duties.

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Can we prevent nuclear war? | Dr. Ira Helfand

Ira uncovers the threat to human survival posed by nuclear weapons and what we can do to eliminate this threat. Dangers of nuclear war exist. As an existential threat to humanity, Ira asks you to take action to end nuclear in all forms forever. Together, Ira asks, "Can we prevent nuclear war?"

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Robots 'will make majority of humans unemployed within 30 years'

The pace at which robots and intelligent machines are able to take over the jobs traditionally performed by humans will result in more than half the population being unemployed within 30 years, an expert in computing has predicted. While some may look forward to a life of leisure, many others face the dismal prospect of long-term unemployment as a result of the rise of smart machines, from self-driving cars and intelligent drones to smart financial-trading machines, said Moshe Vardi, professor of computational engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Washington, Professor Vardi predicted that developments in robotics and artificial intelligence will create a workplace revolution unlike any other seen since the start of the industrial age more than two centuries ago.

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The Inaugural Financial Fraud Lemons of the Week Award Goes to DOJ

by William K. Black

The Bank Whistleblowers United announce the inaugural Financial Fraud Lemons of the Week award.  There can be no more fitting recipient than the ironically named Department of Justice (DOJ).  The “lemon” is used in the economics and criminology literature to refer to a car of surpassingly terrible quality.  The quality is so bad that the car can only be sold through fraud.  We will award it each week to an example of dishonesty or cowardice about financial fraud that is worthy of public ridicule.  We want to leave room in our scale for truly spectacular examples, so this first award will only receive Four Lemons.  The first award is for what has become a routine example of dishonesty and cowardice by DOJ.  Its conduct should be a scandal of national proportions, but by now everyone expects DOJ to embarrass our Nation when it deals with elite bankers.

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Wall St. Whistle-Blowers, Often Scorned, Get New Support

Becoming a whistle-blower by reporting wrongdoing on Wall Street or in a federal agency that regulates Wall Street takes lots of guts. And a strong argument can be made that whistle-blowers should be celebrated and rewarded for their courage.Incredibly, though, all too often the opposite occurs, and Wall Street whistle-blowers are shunned, ostracized and ignored. Often, they are fired from their jobs and blackballed from the industry. The wrongdoing they witnessed and reported gets covered up. This is a typical outcome, despite the promises from such prominent Wall Street regulators as Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in the Southern District of New York, and William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who have encouraged whistle-blowers to come forward and report wrongdoing, both because it is the right thing to do and because it will enable regulators to root out the bad behavior and prosecute those responsible for it.

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Professor William Black on US economy

CCTV America’s Rachelle Akuffo spoke to William Black. He’s an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.

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Feds Throw Kitchen Sink at NSA Lawsuits

Government attorneys moved in for the kill Friday, seeking to end the relative luck of legal activist Larry Klayman in his lawsuits against government surveillance.

The audience was smaller than at past hearings, perhaps because of the USA Freedom Act-ordered end to automatic bulk collection of domestic call records in November, but Klayman pressed ahead, urging U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to keep the fight alive.

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Is the Economy About to Collapse?

Since the turn of the new year, U.S. stocks have alternatively peaked and plunged like a gut-wrenching roller coaster, appearing ready to soar to new heights or dive to panic-inducing depths on any given day.

But unlike in 2007 and 2008, when risky financial practices and underlying economic weakness were driving the country toward a recessionary cliff, frightened traders are now the ones with their fidgety hands on the controls. The Dow Jones industrial average has often swung by hundreds of points in daily trading over the last few weeks. The index ended Friday up more than 313 points, only hours after plunging Thursday to its second-lowest bottom in nearly two years.

All of this volatility – against a softening international economic backdrop and a series of domestic payroll and unemployment metrics that suggest the U.S. is actually in pretty good shape – has analysts, consumers and monetary policy officials across the country scratching their heads.

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