Corruption
Government corruption
In a recent interview, Elizabeth Warren said she agrees with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that too many Democrats lack the “guts” to take on Wall Street and argued that her party will keep suffering electoral losses until all of its members are “willing to take on the billionaire class… Until we have all of the Democrats who are willing to fight for the American people and not for a handful of billionaires and giant corporations, then it’s going to stay an uphill fight.”
The California water shortage is greatly exaggerated for political purposes, which is the justification for more government control. It is a jarring fact that only 11% of available water is allocated for urban use, 41% goes to agriculture, and 48% is allocated to protect the environment. The federal government has control over that portion and requires most of it to flow into the Pacific Ocean! As we have seen in California’s Central Valley, which used to be the breadbasket of America, supplying over 50% of the nation’s vegetables, fruits and nuts, government control over water has become control over the food supply. No water, no food.
The 66th annual Bilderberg Meeting, which has been held in locations around the world throughout the years, kicked off on Thursday in Turin, Italy and is set to end on Sunday. Despite a prestigious guest list of around 130 attendees — who will arguably have more of a global influence than any elected officials — the meeting will escape any scrutiny in the mainstream media. The reason this meeting of the global elite manages to remain free from any mainstream media coverage is no accident. This group of elite power brokers owns the media, they own the politicians, and, arguably, they own the world.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, where every position of power is appointed by either the king or other members of the Al Saud royal family from which the nation derives its name. Trump recently visited Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the U.S., and took the opportunity to deeply criticize the two nations’ mutual foe, Iran, and its commitment to democracy weeks after it held its presidential election. Though clearly hilarious and at the same time appropriately awkward, the incident highlighted the fact that mainstream journalists rarely ask the obvious questions that might so easily expose the glaring hypocrisy of US foreign policy and its leaders.
With millions of Americans already on the brink of deep poverty, Philip Alston, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights and author of the new report, warned that Trump’s tax law, deregulatory agenda, and welfare cuts are driving the poor closer to complete “ruination,” which the U.N. official defines as “severe deprivation of food and almost no access to healthcare.”
While Trump insisted that “open hostility” from Pyongyang in recent days was what ultimately led him to call off the summit, Korea experts were quick to point out that White House officials’ repeated references to the so-called “Libya model” provoked angry responses from North Korean officials, who have warned constantly over the past several weeks that it views such comments as explicit regime change threats.
After making the widely condemned and erroneous assertion that responsibility for Israel’s massacre of more than 50 Palestinians “rests squarely with Hamas,” the Trump administration on Monday unilaterally blocked a United Nations statement that expressed “outrage” at Israel’s killings and demanded “an independent and transparent” investigation. During an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley took the further step of applauding Israel forces during her speech for showing admirable “restraint” as it mowed down dozens of peaceful demonstrators.
If Any Other Country Was Shooting Civilians Like Israel, The US Would Be Calling For Invasion By Now
The death toll in Gaza increased dramatically on Monday as Israeli Defense Forces opened fire on thousands of Palestinian civilians, killing 41 and injuring at least 1,700, and the United States’ response served as a reminder that if the governments in Iran, Syria, North Korea or Russia had done the same thing, the U.S. would be calling for a full-scale invasion right now. It is hypocrisy at its finest, especially considering the fact that the U.S. has a history of cheering on and aiding protests against foreign governments. In fact, when the mainstream media began sharing reports of protests in Iran in December 2017, President Trump took to Twitter to cheer on the dissidents.
In the years leading up to the economic crisis in 2008, banks increased the funding for the riskiest loans (called subprime loans), from $30 billion a year to over $600 billion a year, rigged even higher interest rates on those loans, and then, while the bankers were making billions of dollars of profits off the borrowers’ high interest repayments, they made further profits betting against their customers ever being able to pay back the loans they had just been given. The FBI warned the government about this in reports as early as 2006, the IMF’s chief economist, Raghurum Rajan, presented a paper to the men in charge of all the world’s major banks, including the Federal Reserve, warning of the potential collapse of the system due to dangerous incentives, and journalist Allan Sloan published articles in Fortune magazine and The Washington Post in 2007 – nothing was done.
Donald Trump has committed what will go down as one of the greatest acts of self-sabotage in America’s modern history. He has put the United States on a path towards war with Iran and may trigger a wider regional war and nuclear arms race. This is not America first, this is Trump leasing out America’s foreign policy interests to the highest bidder. The only parties applauding this move are Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammed Bin Salman, who have consistently chosen to undermine regional security to advance their own short-sighted political fortunes. Trump’s reckless decision is a betrayal of the national interests of the United States of America that could haunt us for generations.
This month, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9-11 Inquiry, a group representing families of the 9/11 victims, filed a petition with the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to push for an investigation into the crimes of 9/11. The committee states that they have “conclusive” evidence that explosives were planted and detonated in the Trade Center buildings, and that this is the actual reason for the collapse of the towers.
The budget blueprint from the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—and titled A Framework of Unified Conservatism—says it “would take unprecedented steps to begin the deconstruction of the administrative state” and would cut $12.4 trillion over the next decade from federal spending. Among the plan’s numerous goals are the repeal of Obamacare and raising the eligibility age of Medicare and Social Security benefits to age 70.
The documents themselves are quite bizarre and, honestly, despite reports dismissing them, it is worth remembering that this is exactly what the CIA was working on for years during MKULTRA. That program was supposed to have been shut down after the Church Hearings and other congressional hearings exposed all of the CIA’s clandestine activities at the time many that violated human rights including experimentation on patients and the American population without their knowledge.
Military experts (and corporatists) rule – at least since the end of WWII. They have pressured every U.S. president to lead with the military option and have usually gotten their way. It hardly matters that they have pushed over the years for the use of nuclear weapons, or that they have lost every war they’ve fought since 1945, inflicting or at least expanding global chaos and suffering in the process.
Holding up the U.N. charter, which allows the use of military force for members only when necessary for self-defense or with the approval of the Security Council, Bolivian ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz said, “And we also know that they have nothing but scorn for international law…”
