Your days may be numbered if you share your
Netflix password with people outside the household. The company said
yesterday that it'll roll out plans globally to monetize account sharing
early next year. Netflix will allow you to create sub-accounts with
their own logins and profiles for more money each month. The strategy is
similar to tests that Netflix has already been running in Latin
America, forcing subscribers to pay an extra 2.99 for each additional
home streaming the application.
The company has long been aware
that its users share passwords, but it didn't do anything about it until
earlier this year, after reporting its first year over year decline in
subscribers. Executives estimated that over a hundred million households
were streaming without paying. Netflix added 2.4 million new
subscribers in the September quarter, but that was down from a year ago
when it reeled in 4.4 million.
I still don't get how they're going to penalize people.
For example, we bought Bros (out on streaming this week). And a friend at work hadn't seen it and he was asking if it was really that good -- I've talked it up here but I've talked it up even more at work.
We bought it on YouTubeTV ($24.99 and tax). So I told my friend that I'd bring my laptop to lunch.
We watched it on YouTubeTV for about forty minutes. (We have an hour lunch, we had to heat our lunches and we had to walk to the break room and back and do a bathroom break.) He couldn't stop laughing and he went home and rented it. (Again, it's like five dollars more to purchase it. I recommend you spend the extra five and be able to stream it as much as you want.)
But I used my laptop at work. If this had happened at a friend's house, if they'd asked is it really that funny, I would've logged onto our YouTubeTV account on their TV to stream it.
So I could have streamed three different locations -- my home, my work and a friend's house.
How would NETFLIX know unless I was out of state for one log in?
Wednesday, October 19, 2022. Is Wall Street hoping and pushing for
massive unemployment, what's the latest in the Hunter Biden scandals and
the stolen funds scandal in Iraq takes the spotlight off everything
else including the prime minister-designate.
Just the News further reports
that this payment took the form of a zero-interest, forgivable loan,
and though it was paid in 2017, when Joe Biden was no longer vice
president, it covered work done by his son and brother for the Chinese during his time in office.
We aren’t upset over credit; far from it. Kudos to Grassley for
drawing attention again to this deal, and Just the News for pointing out
the Bidens’ love of forgiving loans.
Yes, e-mails on Hunter’s laptop show that the Chinese paid the Biden
family at least $5 million, a fact confirmed by former business partner
Tony Bobulinski. One of the messages The Post printed back then had
another partner, James Gilliar, telling Bobulinski on May 20, 2017,
“Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I
know u know that but they are paranoid.”
Don’t remember reading that? Perhaps because when this newspaper reported it, it was during a two-week period that Twitter banned us and Facebook prevented
the sharing of our articles. And at the same time, 50 liberal former
intelligence officials declared our reporting “likely Russian
disinformation” based on no evidence — which the liberal media used as
an excuse to either ignore or insult us.
Of course the laptop was real, a fact only “confirmed” by The New
York Times, The Washington Post and others after Joe Biden was safely
elected.
THE NEW YORK POST has the right to pat
themselves on the back. The one element of the media story that I don't
think gets enough attention all this time later? THE NEW YORK TIMES'
attack on THE NEW YORK POST. They wouldn't investigate the story with
their own reporters. They did, however, publish a piece of garbage
(that we called out in real time) with baseless claims (because they
were made up by THE TIMES) of the NEW YORK POST newsroom being in an
uproar over what THE POST published. It was all make believe and
everyone pretends now that it never happened, or maybe they weren't
paying attention in real time. It had all the earmarks of the sort crap
David Corn and others pulled on Gary Webb to try to discredit Webb.
Meanwhile Senator Chuck Grassley's office released the following:
WASHINGTON – Senate
Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley is calling on the FBI to
produce specific records in its possession indicating potential criminal
activity in the Biden family’s foreign business deals. It remains unclear
whether those FBI records, which have been reviewed by Grassley’s investigative
staff, have been shared with the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office as part of its
ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.
“Notably,
the Justice Department and FBI have not disputed the accuracy of the
allegations that I have made public since May 31, 2022. The Justice
Department’s and FBI’s continued silence on these matters is deafening and
further erodes their credibility. Simply put, enough is enough – the Justice
Department and FBI must come clean to Congress and the American people with
respect to the steps they have taken, or failed to take, relating to the Hunter
Biden investigation,” Grassley wrote in a letter
to FBI and Justice Department leadership as well as the Delaware U.S. attorney.
In
the letter, Grassley attached a contract, signed by Hunter and James Biden and
three other business associates. The contract was part of an arrangement designed
to funnel $5 million from the Chinese communist government-connected CEFC to
Hunter and James Biden to compensate them for work done while Joe Biden was
vice president, according to an FBI interview summary of Tony Bobulinski. But
other records held by the FBI reveal frustration by the Bidens about CEFC’s
payment being delayed. Records previously
released by Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) show James and Hunter Biden
ultimately profited from a $5 million payment from a company connected to CEFC
via a separate arrangement.
Other
records held by the FBI shed light on Hunter Biden’s business and financial
relationship with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky. These documents include specific
details about conversations by non-government individuals relevant to potential
criminal conduct by Hunter Biden. These documents also indicate that Joe Biden
was aware of Hunter Biden’s business arrangements and may have been involved in
some of them. It remains unclear whether the FBI took appropriate steps to
follow up on this information or passed it to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s
office.
Whistleblowers
Grassley
frequently hears from current and former government employees who come forward
to shine a light on fraud, waste, abuse and gross mismanagement in government
agencies or by government contractors. He protects the identities of these
sources and frequently promotes policies that shield whistleblowers from
retaliation. Individuals wishing to call attention to mismanagement or
misconduct within the Justice Department and its component agencies, such as
the FBI, about the aforementioned allegations or other misconduct should
contact Sen. Grassley’s investigations unit at (202) 224-3738 or email wb_reports@judiciary-rep.senate.gov.
Director
Wray has personally committed to Senator Grassley that whistleblowers who have
come forward will not face retaliation.
Dear
Attorney General Garland, Director Wray and U.S. Attorney Weiss:
Since
May 31, 2022, I’ve written three letters to the Justice Department and FBI
based on protected whistleblower disclosures that indicate a pattern and
practice of political decisions being made at the FBI’s Washington Field Office
(WFO) and FBI Headquarters.[1] In those letters, I’ve noted that Congress
has a constitutional responsibility to ensure that the Executive Branch
executes the law and uses taxpayer money appropriated to it in accordance with
congressional intent. In furtherance of
that constitutional responsibility, Congress has an obligation to investigate
the Executive Branch for fraud, waste, abuse and gross mismanagement – acts
which undermine faith in the American people’s governmental institutions. Those constitutional and legislative
responsibilities apply to this letter to you.
My previous letters also invited individuals, including current and
former government employees, to contact me and my office to confidentially
report allegations of fraud, waste, abuse and gross mismanagement by FBI and
Justice Department officials. In
response, my office has received a significant number of protected
communications from highly credible whistleblowers which have increased since
my initial outreach to your offices.
Based
on recent protected disclosures to my office, the FBI has within its possession
significant, impactful and voluminous evidence with respect to potential
criminal conduct by Hunter Biden and James Biden.[2]
The
evidence within the FBI’s possession that I am referencing is included,
in
part, in a summary of Tony Bobulinski’s October 23, 2020, interview with
FBI agents. In that interview, Mr. Bobulinski stated that
the arrangement Hunter Biden and James Biden created with foreign
nationals
connected to the communist Chinese government included assisting them
with
potential business deals and investments while Joe Biden was Vice
President;
however, that work remained intentionally uncompensated while Joe Biden
was Vice
President. After Joe Biden left the Vice
Presidency, the summary makes clear that Hunter Biden and James Biden
worked
with CEFC and affiliated individuals to compensate them for that past
work and
the benefits they procured for CEFC. According
to the summary, Hunter Biden, James Biden and their business associates
created
a joint venture that would serve as a vehicle to accomplish that
financial
compensation, and that arrangement was made sometime after a meeting in
Miami
between Hunter Biden and CEFC officials in February 2017. According to
the summary, that vehicle was
called SinoHawk, which was owned 50 percent by Oneida Holdings LLC
(Oneida) and
50 percent by Hudson West IV. According
to the summary, Oneida was made of five evenly divided LLCs, one for
each business
associate – including Hunter Biden and James Biden. However, according
to the
summary, 10 percent of Hunter Biden’s interest was to be held for Joe
Biden. Attached to this letter is the Oneida
Operating Agreement which lists Hunter Biden, James Biden and their
business
associates and the percentage of interest for each individual.[3]
Included below is a copy of the
signature block for the Oneida Operating Agreement which was signed on May 22,
2017.
According
to the interview summary, the money transferred to Oneida as part of the
venture to compensate the Bidens was supposed to consist of an unsecured $5
million loan, intended to be forgivable, from CEFC in 2017. Similarly, the FBI has within its possession
a different document, dated in October 2020, but referencing events that
occurred years before. That document indicates that in May 2017 – approximately
three months after the joint venture was hatched in Miami and the same month it
was officially formed – Hunter Biden yelled at CEFC officials at a meeting for
failing to fund the joint venture. That
same document notes that as of July 2017 the money still had not been
transferred and James Biden considered calling CEFC officials and threatening
to withdraw Biden family support from future deals. Notably, my September 2020 report with
Senator Johnson and our floor speeches from this year made public bank records
and financial data that showed that Hunter Biden and James Biden profited from
a $5 million wire from a company connected to CEFC in August of 2017,
indicating that it could have been the money originally intended for SinoHawk. However, based on records, that money was not
transmitted to the SinoHawk joint venture, rather it was transmitted to Hudson
West III which could partially explain SinoHawk’s eventual failure.[4] As noted in our report and our floor
speeches, the money from the wire was transferred from Hudson West III to
Hunter Biden’s firm, Owasco, and James Biden’s firm, Lion Hall Group, apparently
circumventing SinoHawk.[5]
Based
on allegations provided to my office, the information provided by Mr.
Bobulinski formed a sufficient basis to open a full field investigation on pay-to-play
grounds; however, it is unclear whether the FBI did so and whether the
information is part of the ongoing criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney
Weiss.
The
FBI also has a document within its possession that notes that then former Vice
President Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden and his business associates at a
conference in Los Angeles on May 2, 2017, and May 3, 2017. The meetings have been publicly disclosed;
however, the fact that the FBI maintains documents referencing these data
points has not been made public before.
Lastly,
the FBI has within its possession a series of documents relating to information
on Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and his business and financial associations
with Hunter Biden. The documents in the
FBI’s possession include specific details with respect to conversations by
non-government individuals relevant to potential criminal conduct by Hunter
Biden. These documents also indicate
that Joe Biden was aware of Hunter Biden’s business arrangements and may have
been involved in some of them. Based on
allegations, it is unclear whether the FBI followed normal investigative
procedure to determine the truth and accuracy of the information or shut down
investigative activity based on improper disinformation claims in advance of
the 2020 election, just as it did with Hunter Biden information that I wrote to
you about on July 25, 2022.[6] It is also unclear whether U.S. Attorney
Weiss has performed his own due diligence on these and related allegations.
These
new whistleblower disclosures beg the question: in light of the allegations
that I have brought to your attention, what have the FBI and Justice
Department, to include U.S. Attorney Weiss, done to investigate?
Notably,
the Justice Department and FBI have not disputed the accuracy of the
allegations that I have made public since May 31, 2022. The Justice Department’s and FBI’s continued
silence on these matters is deafening and further erodes their credibility. Simply put, enough is enough – the Justice
Department and FBI must come clean to Congress and the American people with
respect to the steps they have taken, or failed to take, relating to the Hunter
Biden investigation. With respect to the
new – and numerous – legally protected disclosures that have been made to my
office, please provide the following no later than October 27, 2022, so that
Congress can perform an independent and objective review:
1.
The
full and unredacted FBI summary of Tony Bobulinski’s October 23, 2020,
interview.
2.
Was
Tony Bobulinski’s interview summary placed within Guardian? Was it placed within an investigative case
file?
3.
The
full and unredacted October 2020 document that lists a timeline of events associated
with Hunter Biden’s business associates, foreign and domestic.
4.
All
records relating to the May 2, 2017, and May 3, 2017, meetings between Tony
Bobulinski and Joe Biden.
5.
All
records,[7]
including FD-71, FD-209a, FD-302, FD-794b, FD-1023, FD-1040a, FD-1057 and
Guardian leads, from January 1, 2014 to the date of this letter that reference
Mykola Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden, James Biden and Joe Biden.
Thank
you for your attention to this important matter.
[7] “Records” include any written, recorded, or
graphic material of any kind, including letters, memoranda, reports,
notes,
electronic data (e-mails, email attachments, and any other
electronically-created or stored information),
calendar
entries, inter-office communications, meeting minutes, phone/voice mail or
recordings/records of verbal
communications,
and drafts (whether or not they resulted in final documents). This definition applies to all requests for
records in the questions for the record.
An event took place yesterday which encapsulates the essential class
dynamic at work in the deepening crisis of the global capitalist economy
as inflation surges to its highest levels in four decades, interest
rate hikes by the US Fed and other central banks continue, and the
danger of world recession looms ever larger.
Following a Bloomberg
report that a US recession is virtually certain in the next twelve
months, according to its economic model projections, stocks on Wall
Street surged for the second day in a row after taking a battering in
the recent period.
The financial speculators are salivating at the
prospect of a recession, knowing full well that the Fed’s policies are
aimed not at curbing corporate price gouging and bumper profits, but at
slashing workers’ wages.
The class content of the so-called “fight against inflation,” which
is the mantra of the Fed and other central banks, was spelled out by
former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn.
“We’re going to have to
see job destruction if we’re really going to see inflation be
curtailed,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Finance on Monday.
Cohn
let the cat out of the bag so far as the “fight against inflation” is
concerned, making clear it has nothing to do with the price hikes
ripping apart living standards and that its central focus is only on one
price: that of labour power, wages.
“We now have a smaller labour
force population in the United States so businesses are having to pay
workers more to attract them into the labour force which is
inflationary. Wages go up and so this is inflationary,” he said.
This claim is a total falsification. As every economic report indicates, including the World Economic Outlook
issued by the International Monetary Fund last week, wages have not
kept pace with inflation, either in the US or the rest of the world.
The
inflationary spiral is the outcome of the actions of the capitalist
ruling classes. The refusal of governments around the world to undertake
public health safety measures to eliminate COVID-19 from the human
population, lest they adversely impacted on the stock market, set off
the supply chain crisis.
The
price hikes have been exacerbated by the US-NATO war against Russia in
the Ukraine, the major increases in military spending by all governments
and the speculative bubble created by the flow of ultra-cheap money
into the financial system over the past decade and a half.
On top
of this, there is rampant profit gouging by the food and energy giants
and speculation by hedge funds and others in food, metals, energy and
other basic commodities as the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) made clear in a report issued earlier this month.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the big scandal continues to be the theft of money.
An investigation by Iraq’s finance ministry discovered
Sunday that US$2.5 billion dollars were stolen from a government tax
commission account by five companies, in what amounts to one of the
largest corruption scandals in the country’s history.
All together, taxpayer revenue totaling 3.7 trillion Iraqi dinars was
embezzled from a government account at Baghdad’s Rafidain Bank—a
state-owned bank and the largest in Iraq—between September 2021 and
August 2022.
During this time, 247 cheques were cashed by five companies, three of which were formed just over a month before the scheme began, reported Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi political analyst.
The account’s intended purpose was to hold funds for “companies who held contracts with the public sector, to be repaid once projects are completed,” Jiyad explained.
“These amounts have been stolen by the companies through the cheques
issued by the General Commission of Taxes instead of going to the real
beneficiaries,” the internal probe concluded.
An Iraqi investigative judge has questioned five senior tax officials
over $2.5 billion in public funds that have gone missing, and more
arrest warrants have been issued, authorities said on Tuesday.
An internal probe by the Finance Ministry in oil-rich Iraq has found
that the money was withdrawn from the tax authority’s account at
state-owned Rafidain Bank, the state news agency INA reported on
Saturday.
Local media published a tax authority document showing the funds were
withdrawn between September 2021 and August this year, transferred to
the accounts of five companies using 247 checks, and then immediately
withdrawn.
The Baghdad judge summoned five tax office officials, including the
director-general, his deputy and a supervisor at the finance and control
department, the supreme judicial council said in a statement Tuesday.
This
scandal emerged days after Mohammed shia al-Sudani had been named prime
miniser-designate and tasked with forming a government in 30 days.
President
Joe Biden’s press team has made no secret of their frustration with the
way their boss is covered. And of late, the president is venting that
frustration himself.
At
a fundraiser in Los Angeles last week, Biden bemoaned the decline of
traditional news reporting at the expense of the Internet. “There are no
editors anymore,” he said. “How do people know the truth?” A week
earlier when reporters — this one included — shouted over one another
trying to ask Biden questions after a roundtable discussion on abortion,
he turned to a participant and said with some exasperation, “Among the
only press in the world that does this.
And
it’s not just in unscripted, private moments. When Biden signed the
Inflation Reduction Act in August, he had the press in mind as he said
that “too often we confuse noise with substance,” “confuse setbacks with
defeat,” and “hand the biggest microphone to the critics and the cynics
who delight in declaring failure.”
"How do people know the truth?"
You
mean like when you insisted -- repeatedly -- that Hunter Biden hadn't
done anything wrong? A grand jury is gearing up to charge him. Maybe
you should worry less about the media telling the truth and more about
whether or not you're telling the truth?
Equally
true, no president has ever gotten such an easy ride from the press so
who the heck is he to complain. The way the press treats him, you'd
think he was still in his first 100 days.
I wanted to write some more but we went ahead and bought Bros and I want to watch it before we go to bed. It's a great movie. I loved it at the theaters. I know I'm going to watch it over and over. It is the best film I have seen in 2022. And I don't believe there will be any comedy coming out in the next two months that will be better than Bros. (We bought it off YouTube TV for $24.99 and tax).
Tuesday, October 18, 2022. The world watches as Joe Biden continues to
persecute Julian Assange, a historic discovery takes place in Iraq and
the missing billions continue to raise eyebrows.
Dear Home Secretary Braverman and Attorney General Garland,
We,
a group of over 300 doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and other
health care professionals from more than 35 countries, are deeply
concerned that the ongoing extradition threatens not only the health of
Julian Assange, but also the health of our democracy. For the sake of
both, we implore you to drop the charges and release Mr. Assange from
Belmarsh prison immediately.
In calling for Mr. Assange’s
freedom, we join the ever-growing chorus of protest [1], including the
thousands of people around the world [2] who demonstrated on October 8,
2022 against Mr. Assange’s detention in the UK and his attempted
extradition to the US.
The threats to Mr. Assange’s health are
the cumulative result of extraordinarily cruel, unusual, degrading and
inhuman conditions imposed on him. This includes:
more than
ten years of arbitrary detention, with extended periods of solitary
confinement in a high security prison despite never having been
convicted of a crime;
character assassination campaigns in the media;
a
relentless persecution that systematically violated the rule of law and
due process, and had little basis in fact, as documented by the former
UN Rapporteur on Torture;
illegal surveillance in the
Ecuadorian embassy which included the video recording of his legal and
medical consultations [3]; and
being targeted in plans of the CIA to kidnap and assassinate him [4].
In
addition, Mr. Assange has faced the firepower of at least three US
government entities involved in the effort to extradite him, including
the Department of Justice overseeing the attempted prosecution, the CIA
conducting illegal surveillance and drawing up plans for kidnap and
assassination, and the FBI overseeing and greenlighting computer crimes
in Iceland committed by a hacker in a scheme to falsely implicate Mr.
Assange, as corroborated by the government of Iceland [5].
Adding
to the stress of a lawless persecution, Mr. Assange has also lived with
the knowledge of the impossibility of a fair trial if extradited to the
US. The public interest served by the publications in question
(including the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs) was overwhelming and
helped bring the catastrophic war in Iraq to a close. Yet, perversely,
public interest may not be considered in prosecutions under the
Espionage Act. In addition, no national security defendant has ever been
acquitted in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Mr. Assange would
be tried [6].
As health care professionals we have an ethical
obligation to denounce torture where we see it, and to seek to end it.
That is why we have called for an end to the persecution of Julian
Assange since our founding three years ago, and why we again call for an
end to his extradition once and for all.
The psychological
torture resulting from these abuses has been grinding down Mr. Assange’s
mental and physical health for over a decade. This has generated not
only the risk of suicide, which would be further aggravated by the
brutal conditions in US prisons. It also increases the risk of physical
illnesses like cardiovascular disease, known to increase under
conditions of psychological stress [10]. Confirming these concerns, Mr.
Assange has already experienced a mini-stroke, which occurred on the
first day of his extradition hearing in the UK High Court.
Compounding
these health injustices, Mr. Assange was reported to have tested
positive for Covid-19 on October 8, 2022. Given his chronic lung
ailment, Mr. Assange may be at increased risk of serious illness
resulting from Covid infection. In addition, Mr. Assange’s mental health
is placed at further risk by the solitary confinement he has been
forced to endure since his positive Covid test.
It is a travesty
that a remand prisoner never convicted of a crime is languishing in
Britain’s most notorious high security prison, when he shouldn’t have
been imprisoned in the first place. The critical nature of Mr. Assange’s
physical and psychological health underscores the need for his
immediate release from prison. Only then can he receive the independent,
high-quality, consistent health care which he requires, and which
cannot be provided in a high security prison. Releasing Julian Assange
will also bring to a close a case that is damaging press freedom across
the globe and judicial integrity in the UK and the US.
For all
these reasons, we request that you urgently intervene to end the
extradition process and ensure Julian Assange is promptly released.
We
look forward to hearing from you and would be grateful for a prompt
response in light of the serious and urgent subject matter. Please
address your reply to info@doctorsforassange.org.
Yours sincerely,
Doctors for Assange
Doctors
for Assange is a group of over 300 medical professionals from 35
countries formed in October 2019 to voice concerns about the health of
Julian Assange and to condemn the violations of his right to health, to
doctor-patient confidentiality and to be free from torture.
[10]
Clinical study on the correlation between psychological stress and
systemic inflammation as a major factor for cardiovascular disease https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36115323/
Julian's 'crime' was revealing the
realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the
information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.
And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.
For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War
Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war. The new logs detail how: •
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender. • More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical
evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or
ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric
shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.
Because the machine of this modern Leviathan was exposed by Julian and
WikiLeaks, the machine demands revenge. The United States has undergone a
corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. It is no longer a functioning
democracy. The real centers of power in the corporate, military,and national security sectors were humiliated and embarrassed
by WikiLeaks. Their war crimes, lies, conspiracies to crush the
democratic aspirations of the vulnerable and the poor, and rampant
corruption here and around the globe were laid bare in troves of leaked
documents. We cannot fight on behalf of Julian unless we are clear about
who we are fighting against. It is far worse than a corrupt judiciary.
The global billionaire class, who have orchestrated a social inequality
rivaled by pharaonic Egypt, has internally seized all of the levers of
power and made us the most spied upon, monitored, watched, and
photographed population in human history. When the government watches
you 24 hours a day, you cannot use the word liberty. This is the
relationship between a master and a slave.
Julian was long a target, of course. When WikiLeaks published the
documents known as Vault 7 which exposed the hacking tools the CIA uses
to monitor our phones, televisions, and even cars, he and journalism
itself was condemned to crucifixion. The object is to shut down any
investigation into the inner workings of power that might hold the
ruling class accountable for its crimes, eradicate public opinion and
replace it with a cant fed to the mob.
I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent on the outer reaches
of empire in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. I
am acutely aware of the savagery of empire, how the brutal tools of
repression are first tested on those Frantz Fanon called the wretched of
the earth. Wholesale surveillance, torture, coups, black sites, black
propaganda, militarized police, militarized drones, assassinations,
wars.
Once perfected on people of color overseas, these tools migrate back
to the homeland. By hollowing out our country from the inside through
deindustrialization, austerity, deregulation, wage stagnation, the
abolition of unions, massive expenditures on war and intelligence, a
refusal to address the climate emergency, and a virtual tax boycott for
the richest individuals and corporations, these predators intend to keep
us in bondage, victims of a corporate neo-feudalism, and they have
perfected their instruments of Orwellian control. Tyranny imposed on
others is now imposed on us.
From its inception the CIA carried out assassinations, coups,
torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including on that of US citizens,
activities exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the
Senate and the Pike Committee hearings in the House. All these crimes,
especially after the attacks of 9/11, have returned with a vengeance.
The CIA is a rogue and unaccountable paramilitary organization with its
own armed units and drone program, death squads, and a vast archipelago
of global black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured and
disappeared.
The US allocates a secret black budget of $50 billion a year to hide
multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National
Security Agency, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, usually
beyond the scrutiny of Congress. The CIA has a well-oiled apparatus to
kidnap, torture, and assassinate targets around the globe, which is why,
since it had already set up a system of 24-hour video surveillance of
Julian and the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, it quite naturally discussed
kidnapping and assassinating him. That is its business.
Senator Frank Church, after examining the heavily redacted CIA
documents released to his committee, defined the CIA’s covert activity,
and I quote, as “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail,
bribery, the spreading of lies, and consorting with known torturers and
international terrorists.”
All despotisms mask state persecution with sham court proceedings.
The show trials and troikas in Stalin’s Soviet Union, the raving Nazi
judges in fascist Germany, the denunciation rallies in Mao’s China.
State crime is cloaked in a faux legality; judicial farce. Julian is
extradited and sentenced. And given the Lubyanka-like proclivities of
the Eastern District of Virginia – This is a near certainty – It means
that those of us who have published classified material, as I did when I
worked for the New York Times, will become criminals
It means that the iron curtain will be pulled down to mask the abuses
of power. It means that the state, which through special administrative
measures, or SAMs, anti-terrorism laws, and the Espionage Act have
created our homegrown version of Stalin’s Article 58, can imprison
anyone anywhere in the world who dares commit the crime of telling the
truth. We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to
fight against powerful subterranean forces that, in demanding Julian’s
extradition and life imprisonment, have declared war on journalism. We
are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to fight for
the restoration of the rule of law and democracy.
We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to
dismantle the wholesale Stasi-like state surveillance erected across the
West. We are here today for Julian [applause], but we are also here to
overthrow – And let me repeat that word for the benefit of those in the
FBI and Homeland Security who have come here to monitor us: overthrow…
The corporate state and create a government of the people by the people
and for the people that will cherish, rather than persecute, the best
among us.
An Iraqi-American excavation team has unearthed a monumental rock-carving relief in a major archaeological site in the northern city of Mosul.
The
carvings were found at Mashki Gate, or Al Maska in Arabic, one of the
monumental gates for the old city of Nineveh, the imperial capital and
most populous city of the Assyrian Empire.
The reliefs date back to the era of the Assyrian King Sinharib who reigned from 705 to 681 BC, Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage director Dr Laith Majid Hussein said on Monday.
Meanwhile, the theft of over 2 billion euros remains a scandal in Iraq. ANF NEWS reports:
A huge corruption scandal is looming in Iraq: unknown persons have
stolen the equivalent of almost 2.6 billion euros from the Iraqi tax
authorities' account. The theft was announced by Oil Minister Ihsan
Abdul-Jabbar at the weekend and has since been confirmed by Prime
Minister-elect Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
Jabbar said an investigation by the Treasury Department, which he
headed until his resignation this week, found that "a certain group,"
without specifying details, had the money stolen from an IRS bank fund
at Rafidain Bank.
Earlier, the Iraqi Treasury released a document showing the alleged
theft. The letter caused a stir: it shows that the money had been
withdrawn between September 2021 and August 2022. It was deposited using
247 checks into the accounts of five different companies and withdrawn
immediately. Rafidain Bank said it had nothing to do with the theft. Its
job was limited to "disbursing the General Tax Administration's bonds
in its branches after verifying the validity of their issuance,"
according to the largest Iraqi bank, which also has branches in Cairo,
Beirut and Abu Dhabi.
UN
Special Representative for Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert has urged
authorities to recover $2.5 billion that was embezzled from the tax
authority, the latest corruption scandal to rock the country.
The case was revealed on Saturday
by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, who ordered an investigation when
he was acting finance minister. Documents related to the investigation
have been leaked to the media.
Winding down, we'll note this Tweet from Billy Eichner.
Not sure where else it will be available -- it'll be announced on the BROS site later today -- but AMAZON has it for rental -- $19.999 -- and iTunes has it for $19.99 rental and $24.99 to purchase.
