Filmmaker, Author Sues Big Media Over Sandy Hook

Filmmaker and author William Brandon Shanley launches a wave of lawsuits for more than $1 trillion against big media over the Sandy Hook massacre coverage. Here is Mr. Shanley’s Statement:

“After exhaustive research, the good news is that overwhelming evidence reveals that no children or teachers died at Sandy Hook two years ago. For relief, I have filed lawsuits against the media in US District Court in New Haven for Fraud and Terrorism. Here is an example of our abundant evidence, Exhibit D: The Connecticut State Police dash cams record no evacuation of children from school at critical moments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqcaaE6aFX8 — Smoking Gun evidence no children died at Sandy Hook.”

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NSA Reports It May Have Broken Laws With Decade of Spying on U.S. Citizens

BUSINESS WEEK

The National Security Agency today released reports on intelligence collection that may have violated the law or U.S. policy over more than a decade, including unauthorized surveillance of Americans’ overseas communications.

The NSA, responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, released a series of required quarterly and annual reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board that cover the period from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013.

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Two FAR MORE probable explanations for the Plumber’s truck

JIM STONE

I initially posted about this Texas plumber’s truck which ended up being used by ISIS as an anti aircraft artillery platform in Syria on the day the story broke, but pulled the report because of a claimed pedigree by Glenn Beck which explained how that truck got to Syria. But on close examination, Beck’s story is a b.s. white wash with no root in facts whatsoever.

Here is a far better explanation for how a nearly worthless worn out used truck was deemed worthy to ship overseas, and it has U.S. military intelligence written ALL OVER IT.

It is no small issue to ship a vehicle across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean and drop it off at Syria.

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Oswald and Atta: Erratic, Protected, and Seeking Attention

Graeme MacQueen’s new book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, reveals stunning links between the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax attacks that immediately followed. The book also reviews some of the interesting actions taken by alleged hijacker leader, Mohamed Atta, in the years preceding 9/11. These actions suggest that Atta was trying to leave the people he encountered with memories that would support the official myth. In the few years before JFK’s assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald engaged in similar attention-seeking actions.

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BOMBSHELL REPORT: IRS Targeted ‘Icky’ Conservative Groups

Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report.

The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed “icky.” (That’s right. “Icky.”)

“The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” the Oversight report states.

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The New York Times really wants Bush, Cheney held accountable for 'torture'

Two weeks after the New York Times published an op-ed explaining how formal pardons could be used to acknowledge wrongdoing by former Bush administration officials in regards to the CIA’s "torture" program, the newspaper’s editorial board on Monday urged the White House to prosecute former Vice President Dick Cheney.

"The question everyone will want answered, of course, is: Who should be held accountable? That will depend on what an investigation finds, and as hard as it is to imagine Mr. Obama having the political courage to order a new investigation, it is harder to imagine a criminal probe of the actions of a former president," the Grey Lady’s board wrote in an editorial, titled "Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses."

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Ukrainian Combat Jet Returned Without Missiles After MH17 Crash: Reports

A Ukrainian air force Su-25 combat jet took off from an airbase in eastern Dnipropetrovsk carrying air-to-air missiles and returned without them on the day a Malaysia Airlines plane crashed in eastern Ukraine in July, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported, citing an airbase employee.

The employee, who claims to be an eyewitness, said on July 17 that three Ukrainian combat jets took off, and that one of them, an Su-25, was carrying air-to-air missiles.

“After a while only one jet [of the three] returned, which had had those missiles… It returned without the missiles.

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The Secret CIA Document That Could Unravel The Case For Torture

As the public grapples with the gruesome realities put forth in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s damning report on the CIA’s torture program, the agency has dug in to defend itself. The CIA claims the torture tactics it used in the years following 9/11 were legal and saved American lives. And despite what the Senate study alleges, the agency insists it never lied about the torture program.

One internal CIA document, though, could be key to discrediting this defense. And at this very moment, it’s tucked away in a Senate safe.

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Janet Yellen's Christmas Gift to Wall Street

by Ron Paul

Last week we learned that the key to a strong economy is not increased production, lower unemployment, or a sound monetary unit. Rather, economic prosperity depends on the type of language used by the central bank in its monetary policy statements. All it took was one word in the Federal Reserve Bank's press release -- that the Fed would be "patient" in raising interest rates to normal levels -- and stock markets went wild. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had their best gains in years, with the Dow gaining nearly 800 points from Wednesday to Friday and the S&P gaining almost 100 points to close within a few points of its all-time high.

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How a Memo Cost Big Banks $37 Billion

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Elias was leafing through a pile of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. documents while tending to his newborn son in 2012 when he found something that came back to haunt the three largest U.S. banks.

In a memo, one J.P. Morgan employee warned her bosses they were putting bad loans into securities being created before the financial crisis hit.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., soon started sending subpoenas to J.P. Morgan officials tied to the memo. Three months later, top Justice Department officials in Washington told investigative teams across the country to hunt for similar ammunition in tens of millions of documents from other banks, especially Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.

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Blaming Government Surveillance on the Government Ignores the Plutocrats Behind the Curtain

Both the Obama and Bush administrations have displayed astonishing continuity with regard to national security policies that sanction measures like mass surveillance, pervasive secrecy and covert operations. According to Tufts professor Michael J. Glennon, a leading critic on these matters, this is the result of government bureaucracies like the Department of Defense consolidating so much clout and autonomy that they essentially answer to no one, not even the President.

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Were NATO Dogs Used to Rape Afghan Prisoners at Bagram Air Base?

ALTERNET

After the release of the CIA torture report by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) the world is reeling in shock at the level of brutality revealed in the documents. In fact, the whole report is nothing more than a confession of sadistic procedures that could have been lifted from the diaries of Torquemada, from “rectal feeding” to nude beatings and humiliation — horrors that were well-known but not officially confirmed. But the report remains incomplete. Indeed, some 9000 documents have been withheld. 

What new horrors could be discovered with the publication of these records?

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A Wider Geopolitical Agenda: Why the Secrecy on the Mh17 Investigation

On 17 July 2014 Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine. Although the precise circumstances were at that point unknown the western media were quick to blame Ukrainian “rebels”. The means by which MH17 was destroyed, the media alleged, was a surface to air BUK missile supplied to the “rebels” by Russia.

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Fed Says It Will Be ‘Patient’ on Interest Rate Timing

WASHINGTON — Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, said on Wednesday that the Fed still expected to start raising interest rates next year, but that it would wait patiently for the right time and did not expect to begin any earlier than late April.

Ms. Yellen’s remarks, and a statement issued by the Fed’s policy-making committee, both emphasized that the nation’s central bank was not inclined to act more quickly in light of positive economic news, including stronger job growth and plummeting oil prices.

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Ecuador Family Wins Favors After Donations to Democrats

NY TIMES

The Obama administration overturned a ban preventing a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman from entering the United States after her family gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to finance records and government officials.

The woman, Estefanía Isaías, had been barred from coming to the United States after being caught fraudulently obtaining visas for her maids. But the ban was lifted at the request of the State Department under former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton so that Ms. Isaías could work for an Obama fund-raiser with close ties to the administration.

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Paul Craig Roberts: US Government Most Corrupt on Earth

On the teetering economy and possible economic collapse, former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says, “We know something serious is wrong.

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3 Members of Congress Just Reignited the Cold War While No One Was Looking

By Dennis Kucinich

Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a far-reaching Russia sanctions bill, a hydra-headed incubator of poisonous conflict. The second provocative anti-Russian legislation in a week, it further polarizes our relations with Russia, helping to cement a Russia-China alliance against Western hegemony, and undermines long-term America’s financial and physical security by handing the national treasury over to war profiteers.

Here’s how the House’s touted “unanimity” was achieved: Under a parliamentary motion termed “unanimous consent,” legislative rules can be suspended and any bill can be called up.

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Federal judge finds Obama amnesty is unconstitutional

A federal judge has found parts of President Obama’s new deportation amnesty to be unconstitutional, issuing a scathing memo Tuesday accusing him of usurping Congress’s power to make laws, and dismantling most of the White House’s legal reasoning for circumventing Congress.

Judge Arthur J. Schwab, sitting in the western district of Pennsylvania, said presidents do have powers to use discretion in deciding how to enforce the law, but said Mr. Obama’s new policy goes well beyond that, setting up a full system for granting legal protections to broad groups of individuals. He said Mr. Obama writing laws — a power that’s reserved for Congress, not the president.

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Endless Ebola Epidemic? That's The 'Risk We Face Now,' CDC Says

Speed. That's key to ending the Ebola epidemic, says the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Thomas Frieden is visiting West Africa this week to figure out how to reduce the time it takes to find new Ebola cases and isolate them.

Otherwise, Ebola could become a permanent disease in West Africa.

"That's exactly the risk we face now. That Ebola will simmer along, become endemic and be a problem for Africa and the world, for years to come," Frieden tells NPR. "That is what I fear most."

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CIA torture: health professionals 'may have committed war crimes', report says

Health professionals who assisted in the CIA’s torture programme of terror suspects “betrayed the most fundamental duty of the healing professions” and may have committed war crimes, according to a hard-hitting report released on Tuesday.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) called for a federal commission to investigate the full extent of health professionals’ participation in CIA torture following last week’s release of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on the agency’s detention and interrogation programme.

“Under the auspices of the Bush administration, the CIA systematically tortured suspected terrorist detainees, in at least one instance to the point of death.

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