Desmoines Register Editorial: Something smells in the Democratic Party

Once again the world is laughing at Iowa. Late-night comedians and social media mavens are having a field day with jokes about missing caucusgoers and coin flips. That’s fine. We can take ribbing over our quirky process. But what we can’t stomach is even the whiff of impropriety or error. What happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period. Democracy, particularly at the local party level, can be slow, messy and obscure. But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy. The Iowa Democratic Party must act quickly to assure the accuracy of the caucus results, beyond a shadow of a doubt. First of all, the results were too close not to do a complete audit of results. Two-tenths of 1 percent separated Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

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Julian Assange is being arbitrarily held, UN panel to say

A UN panel has ruled in favour of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange after he complained he was "arbitrarily detained", the BBC understands.

Mr Assange claimed asylum in London's Ecuadorean embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex assault claims, which he denies.

The Met Police says Mr Assange would be arrested if he does leave the embassy. He earlier said his passport should be returned and his arrest warrant dropped if the UN panel ruled in his favour. In 2014, Mr Assange complained to the UN that he was being "arbitrarily detained" as he could not leave the embassy without being arrested. The application claimed Mr Assange had been "deprived of his liberty in an arbitrary manner for an unacceptable length of time".

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Rutherford Institute Warns Against Government Attempts to Intimidate Journalists by Prosecuting Radio Shock Jock Pete Santilli Over Oregon Standoff

Warning against attempts by the government to intimidate journalists whose reporting portrays the government in a negative light or encourages citizens to challenge government injustice and wrongdoing, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have weighed in on the government’s arrest and ongoing prosecution of radio shock jock Pete Santilli.

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Countries Sign The TPP... Whatever Happened To The 'Debate' We Were Promised Before Signing?

About an hour ago, representatives from 12 different nations officially signed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TTP) agreement in Auckland, New Zealand. The date, February 4th (New Zealand time) is noteworthy, because it's 90 days after the official text was released. There was a 90 day clock that was required between releasing the text and before the US could actually sign onto the agreement. The stated purpose of this 90 day clock was in order to allow "debate" about the agreement. Remember, the entire agreement was negotiated in secret, with US officials treating the text of the document as if it were a national security secret (unless you were an industry lobbyist, of course). So as a nod to pretend "transparency" there was a promise that nothing would be signed for 90 days after the text was actually released.

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L.A. prosecutors file criminal charges in methane leak near Los Angeles

Los Angeles prosecutors filed criminal charges against the Southern California Gas company on Tuesday over a huge methane leak near the city that has forced thousands of residents from their homes since October. The four misdemeanor charges accuse SoCalGas, a division of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, of failing to report the release of hazardous materials following the underground pipeline rupture and discharging air contaminants.

"While we recognize that neither the criminal charges nor the civil lawsuits will offer the residents of Los Angeles County a complete solution, it is important that Southern California Gas Co. be held responsible for its criminal actions," District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a written statement.

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Michigan officials ignored EPA warnings about toxicity

Guardian

The Environmental Protection Agency warned of an unfolding toxic water crisis in Flint but was “met with resistance” by Michigan authorities, a fiery congressional hearing into the city’s public health disaster has heard.

Expert advice was dismissed, prompting Michigan’s government to issue an apology to the people of Flint at the hearing for sidelining people who raised concerns over dangerous levels of lead in in the city’s water.

Congress was also told that flawed water testing practices, now eliminated in Flint, are happening unchecked across the US, risking a much wider public health crisis in other cities.

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We’re ignoring an American apocalypse: While everyone obsesses about Trump, the middle class is still rapidly dying

As the actual voting starts for 2016 it is critical we not just fixate on the horse race, but also on just how much socio-economic deterioration has occurred over these last eight years throughout our country. To name just one example: Democrats can’t ignore the failure of President Obama’s foreclosure prevention program to stop the accelerating decline of America’s cities and the growth in poverty just because he is a member of their party. They continue to ignore the collateral damage done to the victims of Wall Street’s uncharged crimes at the nation’s peril.

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Sanders raised $3M in 24 hours, his biggest single day yet

The Hill

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' campaign has reportedly raised $3 million since Monday night's Iowa caucuses.

Sanders communications director Michael Briggs told The Washington Post that "it's been our best day ever."

Sanders finished behind rival Hillary Clinton by a razor-thin margin of 0.2 points in the Iowa caucuses Monday night. Clinton had 49.8 percent and Sanders took 49.6 percent.

Most of the money raised by Sanders is in the form of small online contributions, averaging about $27 each.

Sanders' campaign announced Sunday that it raised $20 million in January.

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Missing precinct scrambles to report Sanders won!!!

Votes from one precinct in Iowa were still missing Tuesday morning, and Democrats from that neighborhood scrambled to find party officials so that they could report their tally: Bernie Sanders won by 2 delegates over Hillary Clinton.

With Des Moines precinct No. 42's results, Clinton's excruciatingly close lead narrowed further, making the final tally for delegate equivalents in the Democratic Iowa caucuses:

Clinton: 699.57

Sanders: 697.77

It quickly raised questions about whether Sanders had won the popular vote in Iowa. Sanders backers called for Iowa Democratic Party officials to release the raw vote totals.

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S&P's Sam Stovall: This may signal scary times

CNBC

S&P Capital IQ's Sam Stovall on Tuesday looked to market history to handicap what the worst January for stocks since 2009 might mean for the rest of the year.

Let's get the bad news out of the way, because the chairman of the S&P Investment Policy Committee actually went on to be quite optimistic.

"We're seeing an earnings recession. And 75 percent of the time earnings recessions have preceded or accompanied economic recessions," Stovall told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

However, he leaned toward the underdog 25 percent odds.

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Sanders Campaign: Party Lost 5 Percent of Iowa Vote

The Iowa Democratic Party informed the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernard Sanders late Monday night that it has no results for 90 precincts across the state, which could account for as much as 5 percent of the total vote. And the party has asked the campaigns for help in getting a tally for those missing results.

“We are, right now, calling all our precinct captains on precincts where we have knowledge of what’s missing, to report what we think happened there,” a visibly irate Robert Becker, Sanders’ state director told Roll Call after Sanders’ speech at the Holiday Inn near the Des Moines airport.

“They’ve asked the other campaigns to do the same thing. At the end of the day, there’s probably going to be squabbles on it,” he added.

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How the Elite Avoid Taxes: The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States

Last September, at a law firm overlooking San Francisco Bay, Andrew Penney, a managing director at Rothschild & Co., gave a talk on how the world’s wealthy elite can avoid paying taxes.

His message was clear: You can help your clients move their fortunes to the United States, free of taxes and hidden from their governments.

Some are calling it the new Switzerland.

After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners.

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Gold - Willem Middelkoop

Real Vision is the video on demand platform for finance, where the world's best investors share their ideas. In this episode of the Gold series, Willem Middelkoop, founder of the Commodities Discovery Fund, dives into the history of monetary shifts and explores a scenario where the US dollar could be debunked as the global reserve currency.

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‘Eyewash’: How the CIA deceives its own workforce about operations

Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false information about operations and sources overseas, according to current and former U.S. officials who said the practice is known by the term “eyewash.”

Agency veterans described the tactic as an infrequent but important security measure, a means of protecting vital secrets by inserting fake communications into routine cable traffic while using separate channels to convey accurate information to cleared recipients.

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ObamaCare’s Wallet-Buster Health Plans

WSJ

On the campaign trail in Iowa, Hillary Clinton claimed that President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is little different than her health-care plan in 1993. “It was called HillaryCare before it was called ObamaCare,” she told supporters on Jan. 21.

Her timing was awkward. That same day, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that health-insurance premiums on the Affordable Care Act exchanges rose an average of 9% between 2015 and 2016.

But the HHS data account for less than half of individual-exchange consumers buying coverage only on the 38 states using the federal exchange. The overall premium increases were significantly higher.

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‘This was all planned’: Former IG says Hillary, State Dept. are lying

NY Post

The State Department is lying when it says it didn’t know until it was too late that Hillary Clinton was improperly using personal emails and a private server to conduct official business — because it never set up an agency email address for her in the first place, the department’s former top watchdog says.

“This was all planned in advance” to skirt rules governing federal records management, said Howard J. Krongard, who served as the agency’s inspector general from 2005 to 2008.

The Harvard-educated lawyer points out that, from Day One, Clinton was never assigned and never used a state.gov email address like previous secretaries.

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Brother of 9/11 Victim Hopes to Bring WTC Evidence to Court

UK citizen Matt Campbell lost his brother, Geoff, in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

In the ensuing years, Matt has been on a quest to find a route to justice for his brother's murder. He has helped expose the fact that the official story is incontrovertibly wrong — that hijacked planes and fires could not possibly be the sole reason for the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Specifically, he has educated government officials and the media by introducing them to the evidence supporting the theory of controlled demolitions.

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Zika: genetically engineered mosquitoes causing smaller heads?

Jonrappoport

This is the third article in my series on the Zika Freakout. In my previous piece, I listed six top candidates for causing smaller heads and brain damage in Brazilian babies.

None of those candidates is the Zika virus, which has a history of creating only minor illness, at worst. My top six may, indeed, be working together to bring about disastrous consequences.

In this article, I’ll focus on one candidate, the genetically-engineered (GE) mosquitoes which have already been released in Brazil, with the aim of decimating the population of mosquitoes that carry dengue fever, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya.

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False Flag Weekly News with Dr. Kevin Barrett and Prof. Tony Hall

False Flag Weekly News (FFWN) is uploaded every Friday by Noliesradio!

Don't miss the show!

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Stockholm: Crowd of masked men hunt and beat up non-Swedes

Dozens of masked man went on an anti-immigrant rampage in Stockholm in an apparent retaliation for the stabbing death of a young Swedish woman at a refugee center earlier this week, local media reported.

The crowd of some 40 to 50 people went on a violent spree on Friday night at around 9 p.m. local time in and around the Swedish capital’s main railroad station, according to the Aftonbladet daily. They were beating up anyone who didn’t look like ethnic Swede. The attackers were wearing black balaclavas and armbands, the video obtained by the tabloid showed.

“They came from Drottninggatan [Stockholm's main shopping street] and walked down toward the square and began to turn on immigrants,” a witness is cited by The Local.

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