Jihad Report Jun 25, 2016 -Jul 01, 2016Attacks 50Killed 340Injured 702Suicide Blasts 12Countries 19

Jihad Report June, 2016Attacks 225Killed 2003Injured 1963Suicide Blasts 41Countries 31

28,745 people killed since 9/11 by the religion of peace.

European SUPERSTATE to be unveiled: EU nations 'to be morphed into one' post-BrexitEUROPEAN political chiefs are to take advantage of Brexit by unveiling their long-held plan to morph the continent’s countries into one GIANT SUPERSTATE, it has emerged today.

By Nick Gutteridge PUBLISHED: 11:01, Mon, Jun 27, 2016 | UPDATED: 17:20, Mon, Jun 27, 2016

The foreign ministers of France and Germany are due to reveal a blueprint to effectively do away with individual member states in what is being described as an “ultimatum”. 

Under the radical proposals EU countries will lose the right to have their own army, criminal law, taxation system or central bank, with all those powers being transferred to Brussels. 

Controversially member states would also lose what few controls they have left over their own borders, including the procedure for admitting and relocating refugees. 

The plot has sparked fury and panic in Poland - a traditional ally of Britain in the fight against federalism - after being leaked to Polish news channel TVP Info. 

Polish politicians say the plans include loss of control of a number of key policy areas

The public broadcaster reports that the bombshell proposal will be presented to a meeting of the Visegrad group of countries - made up of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia - by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier later today. 

Excerpts of the nine-page report were published today as the leaders of Germany, France and Italy met in Berlin for Brexit crisis talks. 

In the preamble to the text the two ministers write: "Our countries share a common destiny and a common set of values ??that give rise to an even closer union between our citizens. We will therefore strive for a political union in Europe and invite the next Europeans to participate in this venture."

The revelations come just days after Britain shook the Brussels establishment by voting to leave the European Union in a move some have predicted could leave to the break-up of the EU. 

A number of member states are deeply unhappy about the creeping federalism of the European project with anti-EU sentiments running high in eastern Europe, Scandinavia and France. 

Opponents of the EU have warned of its ambitions to create a superstateBritain voted to leave the European Union in an historic referendum last Thursday

Responding to the plot Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski raged: "This is not a good solution, of course, because from the time the EU was invented a lot has changed.

“The mood in European societies is different. Europe and our voters do not want to give the Union over into the hands of technocrats.

“Therefore, I want to talk about this, whether this really is the right recipe right now in the context of a Brexit."

There are deep divides at the heart of the EU at the moment over how to proceed with the project in light of the Brexit vote. 

Some figures have cautioned against trying to force through further political integration, warning that to do so against the wishes of the European people will only fuel further Eurosceptic feeling. 

This is not a good solution

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski

A few weeks before the Brexit vote European Council president Donald Tusk warned that European citizens did not share the enthusiasm of some of their leaders for “a utopia of Europe without conflicting interests and ambitions, a utopia of Europe imposing its own values on the external world, a utopia of Euro-Asian unity”. 

He added: “Increasingly louder are those who question the very principle of a united Europe. The spectre of a break-up is haunting Europe and a vision of a federation doesn’t seem to me to be the best answer to it.” 

His view was backed up by the leader of the eurozone countries, Dutch politician Jerome Dijsselbloem, who added: “In the eurozone some are pushing for a completion of the monetary union by creating a full political union, a euro area economic government or even a euro budget… to me it is obvious. 

“We need to strengthen what we have and finish it, but let’s not build more extensions to the European house while it is so unstable.” 

Meanwhile Lorenzo Condign, the former director general of Italy’s treasury, has said it is nearly impossible to see Europe opting for more integration at such a time of upheaval. 

He said: “It seems difficult to imagine that the rest of the EU will close ranks and move in the direction of greater integration quickly. Simply, there is no political will. 

“Indeed, the risk is exactly the opposite - namely that centrifugal forces will prevail and make integration even more difficult.” 

But others see the Brexit vote as an opportunity to push ahead with the European elite’s long-cherished dream of creating a United States of Europe.

Spain’s foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo has called for “more Europe” whilst Italy’s finance minister, Carlo Padoan, is advocating a common budget for the eurozone states. 

And Emmanuel Macron, France’s economy minister, wants to go even further and set up a common eurozone treasury which would oversee the permanent transfer of funds from wealthier northern Europe to shore up Mediterranean economies.

Soon after Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU), its foreign affairs chief, Elmar Brok, urged the economic and political bloc to go ahead with plans to create an army.

The German politician told Die Welt that EU countries need to cooperate more closely on issues of defence, and suggested the EU needs a military headquarters. He said:

“We need a common (military) headquarters and a coalition (of EU countries) acting in accordance with the permanent structural cooperation of the EU Treaty. From such a group an EU army could eventually arise.”

Mr Brok suggested the forces be modeled on the Franco-German Brigade, a special military brigade of the Eurocorps of the European Union.

Stating that a united EU army would make European foreign policy much more effective, the foreign affairs head said such a force would: “strengthen the role of Europeans in [global] security and defense policy, make Europe able to better fulfill its responsibilities in the world and also achieve more synergies in defense spending.”

While the head of the union’s foreign affairs committee acknowledged there are legal restrictions on the creation of a joint EU army because of legal restraints, he noted that it would be possible with treaty change and if edits were made to the EU’s constitution.

The EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, will present a new “global strategy” of foreign policy. The unveiling of these plans was delayed until after Britain’s referendum on June 23rd, for fears talk of an EU army would encourage more voters in the UK to vote for ‘Brexit’.

Last week Chancellor Angela Merkel announced her intent for Germany to increase its defense spending, despite the nation’s foreign minister warning against NATO “sabre-rattling” towards Russia.

A Pew poll from earlier this year showed that, in the European Union, only Poles and the Dutch favour an increase in defence spending. Respondents in other European countries were much more reluctant.

Foreign Troops on US Soil

The 502nd was in Arkansas practicing house-to-house searches and seizures in a joint U.N. training mission called Agile Provider in the Spring of 1994.

Agile Provider involved 44,000 U.N troops including troops for France and the Netherlands training in the states of Georgia, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee.

Yes, UN troops have been trained in this country in the past, but not in brigade strengths and not in domestic support house-to-house searches and seizures.

Many of our Congressman deny that UN troops are being trained in this country at all.

Not only are UN troops being trained in the United States, they would also have UN designated vehicles already available for operational use should they be called upon to deploy in US cities. All of us have heard over the years rumors of foreign troops in the

USA. I’ve always been reluctant to mention on-air because I have no way of verifying the reports. I received a call today from a long-time trusted Christian friend whom I have known for many years. The couple is wealthy and well-connected to movers and shakers in the USA and Europe.

Trust me, if they want to “name drop” it’s not an exaggeration for them. I was informed by the wife that they have a friend in DHS who promised to pass on anything significant that would be a sign for immediate preparation. That agent called yesterday. He is hearing talk inside DHS that thousands of Sp….N…Z boys from that place connected to Alaska have been infiltrating from Canada into USA throughout this summer. He estimated the number so far exceeds 20,000 commandos.

He advised my friends to take action immediately for food, water, ammo. I told her forget it! You need a plane ticket. The greatest shock to the American people will not be the invasion, but the merger of DHS with the invaders. Then they will understand the purpose of the 750 million rounds of hollow point ammo. Marxist Communist Valery Jarrett is the real power in DHS – not Napolitano. The nation has been compromised and sold out. Colonel Lunev told me in 1999 that the Sp…N…Z…boys will start arriving in large numbers months before the war.

These are not the only reports of foreign troops within the borders of the United States. Alex Jones documented the training of foreign troops in his documentary Police State 2000. Foreign troops trained alongside US Marines, practicing taking over American cities, rounding up American civilians and imprisoning them in barbed wire “containment” camps. Conditioning of the troops included having the actors posing as US citizens beg them for food and loudly proclaim that their Constitutional Rights were being violated. The troops were trained to ignore these pleas and accept them as part of “urban warfare.” Thus, despite arguments to the conrary from Congressman and average Americans alike, foreign troops have and are training on US soil, they are operating under the banner of the United Nations, and they are involved not in conventional war operations, but operations that include the searching of homes, the detainment of non-combatants and the controlling of mass populations in large metropolitan areas.

As recently as April 2012 the Defense Department confirmed that foreigners would be operating within the United States as reported by Alex Thomas:

The drills, which will take place throughout May, mark the first time that Russian and US troops will train along side each other on American soil and correlate with a long line of Foreign military’s training to take on the American people.

Interestingly, Russia is actually conducting a joint naval training exercise with Communist China at this very moment.

(Source: The Intel Hub)

This particular anti-terrorism exercise was designed to simulate a take-over of Denver International airport.

So, to answer the question, where is the proof that UN troops and foreign soldiers are training and stationed in the United States?

The proof is everywhere – you just have to be willing to accept it.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 is the set of laws that govern the ability of the President of the United States to deploy troops within the United States to put down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion. The laws are chiefly contained in 10 U.S.C. §§   331 –335. The general aim is to limit Presidential power as much as possible, relying on state and local governments for initial response in the event of insurrection. Coupled with the Posse Comitatus Act, Presidential powers for law enforcement are limited and delayed.

On September 30, 2006, the Congress modified the Insurrection Act as part of the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill (repealed as of 2008). Section 1076 of the law changed Sec. 333 of the "Insurrection Act," and widened the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States to enforce the laws. Under this act, the President may also deploy troops as a police force during a natural disaster, epidemic, serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or other condition, when the President determines that the authorities of the state are incapable of maintaining public order.

The bill also modified Sec. 334 of the Insurrection Act, giving the President authority to order the dispersal of either insurgents or "those obstructing the enforcement of the laws." The law changed the name of the chapter from "Insurrection" to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order."

(1) The President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to--

(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that--

(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and

(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or

(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).

(2) A condition described in this paragraph is a condition that--

(A) so hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State or possession are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or

(B) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.

Differences between old and new wording

The original wording of the Act required the conditions as worded in Paragraph (2), above, to be met as the result of

insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy

The new wording of the Act, as amended, still requires the same conditions as worded in Paragraph (2), above, but those conditions could, after the changes, also be a result of natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition

and only if, domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order.

Congress was granted the right to be informed immediately and every 14 days thereafter during the exercise of federal authority under these conditions. What can Congress do to stop a presidential executive order to send in the national guard? Nothing. The real question is, “What can Congress do to stop the UN from sending in troops to enforce a presidential executive order.

EXAMPLE: The State Legistlature of Utah decides that they are removing Federal control of State lands. Utah resumes mining and logging and opens lands to grazing that have been seized by the BLM. The BLM mercenaries are ejected from the State by force. Since the title to those lands has been sold to foreign accounts, the president orders the UN to send in troops and recover those lands. What happens then?

IMF Leader Threatens the UK

The director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde says that the TPP and TTIP must be passed, although she admits that the adoption of such agreements will widen the gap between rich and poor in the short term.

(The Real Agenda News) Globalism’s success depends on regions without nations and nations without borders. It feeds from countries whose governments have been

thoroughly absorbed by regional, non-elected organizations who then transfer the power to global non-elected elites.

The reality described above is the reason why nationalism is demonized by international non-elected organizations, such as the IMF, the World Bank and the European Union. Countries with borders and independent governments pose an obstacle, and if the country is large enough, it poses a threat to globalism.

The notion that a country creates its own laws and manages its own resources and currency are repulsive for elite members who want to politically and economically conquer “belligerent” countries that dare have their own voice on their own affairs.

Today, nationalism and putting self-interest first is called protectionism, isolationism and globalist entities often warn against countries that seek independence from them, governments that prefer to disassociate themselves from the chains of eternal debt and serfdom.

Most governments are known for mortgaging the lives of their citizens by acquiring debt which later will have to be paid by unborn citizens in a true example of modern slavery. Those empty promises made during political campaigns, where powerful donors buy political candidates off in exchange for easy cash to run for office, condemn entire nations to perpetual debt.

Once in government, politicians that were bought off during the campaign, begin their hard work to favor for donors and powerful interests while neglecting the will of the people.

Having a truly free and independent government, is key to containing its ever growing thirst for power. While a small, well-controlled bureaucracy may actually manage to work for the people, most governments tend to grow larger and more powerful and that power is always in the hands of special interests, not in the hands of the people.

Any call for nationalism or putting the interests of a nation first is portrayed by so-called leaders, as dangerous and unnecessary, because it directly affects the grip they have on the people. That is why movements such as BREXIT, Scottish and Catalan independence or renouncing treaties that destroy industry, trade and economic sovereignty are immediately by oligarchs, corporate leaders and the heads of international organizations.

Recent calls by Marie Le Pen, to leave the Euro zone, the move for Britain to exit the Euro system and Donald Trump’s plan to put America first above all other interests have been demonized by people like International Monetary Fund Director, Christine Lagarde.

While avoiding to mention Donald Trump by name, Lagarde said on Wednesday that the United States should “resist” any form of “protectionism”. Trump, the presumptive

Republican candidate, has railed against the new free trade agreements and the damage that globalization has caused American workers, a groundbreaking speech among conservatives in which he coincides with Bernie Sanders.

The IMF today called to ratify these new agreements (TPP and TTIP) between Pacific Rim countries and Europe as it attempted to address another of the great debates of the American political campaign: the impoverishment of workers. Lagarde then called for raising the minimum wage.

The Fund added social burden to the message to also request a progressive tax reform. The “warnings”are contained in the report on the US, which is a kind of annual review that the IMF takes on the economies. The organization also issues a battery of recommendations.

According to the IMF, the diagnosis is uneven, as disparate as the economic health of citizens in the first global power. “The unemployment rate is at the lowest level since the eve of the Great Recession, 4.7%”, says the report, which can be considered full employment, with GDP stringing its seventh consecutive year expansion.

At the same time, the agency urges a stronger fight against poverty in the richest country in the world and calls for a federal minimum wage rise because “exclusion affects not only unemployed, but also many people with jobs but miserable wages.”

“The need to tackle poverty is urgent,” says the Fund. One in seven Americans lives in poverty, one out of five if it comes to children. And having a job is no guarantee of anything, since about 40% of the poor work. So the Fund calls for a more favorable tax treatment and a rise in the federal minimum wage.

It is the lacerating inequality that has given wings to populist calls such as those of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, who are considered by their parties as fringe candidates despite the massive support accumulated during the primary season. Both Trump and Sanders have had to deal with all kinds of fraudulent practices carried out by the political elite of the country to keep them out of the presidential race.

Sanders gave Hillary Clinton a tougher battle than expected but has already been overcome by the former Secretary of State. Although they differ in almost everything else, both Trump and Sanders have lambasted the new trade agreements as one of the causes of the destruction of industrial production as companies have left the US to countries where labor is cheaper.

On Wednesday, in a speech in New York, the Republican magnate blamed Hillary Clinton accused Hillary Clinton of “getting rich” at the expense of poor Americans.

Meawhile, the IMF defends the old and new agreements. “The free exchange of goods and services has been one of the characteristics of the economic success of the United States. New trade agreements such as the Trans Pacific Strategic Economic

Partnership (TPP), serve to bolster and expand this principle as they go beyond the elimination of tariff barriers, which are already low, and include rules on investment, competition policy, intellectual property rights and regulations,” the Fund says.

Also in Europe the trade agreement has aroused enormous social rejection by the consequences that entails for workers in richer countries. This, in the language of the IMF is called “transition costs” for employment and income, which must be compensated with “temporary” aid for affected Americans. The Fund acknowledges that, in the first instance, the agreements will exacerbate the wealth gap in the United States.

Regarding immigration, the institution argues that there is potential for foreigners to compensate for the loss of an active European population in the country due largely to the aging of the population. The document also calls for “immigration reform” based on the skills of foreigners, but it doesn’t go into detail.

As many other globalist organization have done, the IMF has issued a warning regarding the possible exit of Britain from the EU. The IMF has issued a package of recommendations where it also calls for more public investment in infrastructure to boost business productivity, which has spent nearly two decades. The report also warns of future imbalances in public finances and calls for tax reform to improve the income of the public coffers and reduce inequalities. “Demographic trends and interest rates rising will cause higher fiscal imbalances over the medium term,” said technicians at the Fund, who estimate that public debt will begin to grow in 2019 and exceed 80% of GDP.

The Fund has reduced forecasts for US growth to 2.2% from 2.4% due to what it calls global uncertainty, among other things. However, the managing director told the press that the possible departure of the UK from the EU would lead to a recession. “A vote to leave the EU would have some effect on the US economy. How big it will be, is debatable. We agree with the president of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, that it would not lead to a recession in the US,” said Lagarde.

In sum, the head of the IMF attempts to sell the same old ideas that have brought the global economy to the current situation. Larger, more powerful governments, higher taxes, more debt and the adoption of treaties and agreements that will further deteriorate the stability of nations worldwide. Lagarde wants measures that give more power to entities such as the one she leads and less decision-making power to the nation-States. She wants global rules for local governments and a centralized control of all human activity via trade agreements that have been proven to be disastrous for all countries that decide to sign it. The IMF itself has admitted that trade agreements such as the TPP and the TTIP will indeed widen the gap between the poorest and the richest people. Interestingly, the IMF report has nothing to say about what will happen in the long run after countries surrender their sovereignty to the corporations that have written the TPP and TTIP.

Luis Miranda

Luis R. Miranda is an award-winning journalist and the founder and editor-in-chief at The Real Agenda. His career spans over 18 years and almost every form of news media. His articles include subjects such as environmentalism, Agenda 21, climate change, geopolitics, globalisation, health, vaccines, food safety, corporate control of governments, immigration and banking cartels, among others. Luis has worked as a news reporter, on-air personality for Live and Live-to-tape news programs. He has also worked as a script writer, producer and co-producer on broadcast news. Read more about Luis

The Clinton Crime Syndicate

Getting to the Root of the Problem

You and I know that in order to get rid of weeds, that drain the nutrients from the soil away from the flowers or garden plants you want to grow, you have to pull them out by the roots. The F.B.I. interviewed Hillary Clinton on Saturday morning for its investigation into whether she or her aides broke the law by corresponding through a private email server set up for her use as secretary of state, a controversy that has dogged her presidential campaign and provided fodder for her political rivals.

The voluntary interview, which took place over three and a half hours at the F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, largely focused on the Justice Department’s central question: Did the actions of Mrs. Clinton or her staff rise to the level of criminal mishandling of classified information?

It could take weeks or longer to reach a decision, but news that Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, had been questioned in the J. Edgar Hoover Building three weeks before her party’s convention quickly reverberated.

The Republican National Committee called the step “unprecedented,” while Mrs. Clinton’s expected opponent in the race for the White House, Donald J. Trump, wasted little time before weighing in.

“It is impossible for the FBI not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “What she did was wrong!”

The interview had been weeks in the making as law enforcement officials and Mrs. Clinton’s team coordinated schedules. Democrats also hoped that holding the interview on a holiday weekend might ease the anticipated storm.

Graphic: What We Know About Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server

In a telephone interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC after her meeting, Mrs. Clinton said, “I’ve been eager to do it, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to assist the department in bringing its review to a conclusion.”

Accompanying Mrs. Clinton into the meeting were her lawyer David E. Kendall; Cheryl D. Mills and Heather Samuelson, longtime aides who are also lawyers; and two lawyers from Mr. Kendall’s firm, Williams & Connolly, Katherine Turner and Amy Saharia.

Eight officials from the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice conducted the interview, according to a person who was familiar with the substance of the session but declined to be named because the meeting was private. This person characterized the meeting as “civil” and “businesslike.”

Neither the campaign nor the F.B.I. would elaborate.

Although the interview on Saturday was an important step toward closure on the email issue, technical analysis of the material remains to be done and could stretch on for an indeterminate period.

The F.B.I. regularly interviews key figures before concluding an investigation, and such meetings are not an indication that it thinks the person broke the law.

While defense lawyers often advise clients against such interviews, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has been eager for her to cooperate, lest she give her opponents additional ammunition.

On Saturday, in a statement after the meeting, the Republican National Committee said that Mrs. Clinton “has just taken the unprecedented step of becoming the first major party presidential candidate to be interviewed by the F.B.I. as part of a criminal investigation surrounding her reckless conduct.”

2016 Election Polls

Mrs. Clinton has struggled to get beyond the issue, which came to light last year during a Republican-led congressional investigation into the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. More than 30,000 emails have since been made public.

After spending much of last summer arguing she did not need to apologize for keeping a private server in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., because the practice was allowed, Mrs. Clinton now frequently apologizes for the practice, saying it had been a mistake.

The campaign has prioritized assisting the F.B.I., but it declined to cooperate with a State Department inspector general’s audit of Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.

Those findings, delivered to members of Congress in May, undermined some of Mrs. Clinton’s initial statements defending her use of the server.

The report said there was “no evidence” that she had requested or received approval for the server, despite having “an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business.”

Federal law deems it a crime to “knowingly” mishandle classified information outside secure government channels or to permit the practice through “gross negligence.”

None of the emails on Mrs. Clinton’s private server were marked classified at the time they were sent or received, but the Central Intelligence Agency later determined that some contained material that would be considered “top secret.”

First Draft Newsletter

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Asked Saturday on MSNBC if she had broken the law, Mrs. Clinton repeated her defense: “I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified.”

There has been no indication that sensitive information was compromised by Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private server. But it has fed a perception that she was trying to hide information, chipping away at data gauging her trustworthiness. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday found that voters deemed Mr. Trump more honest and trustworthy than Mrs. Clinton, 45 percent to 37 percent.

“I have said that I’m going to continue to put forth my record, what I have stood for, do everything I can to earn the trust of the voters of our country,” she told MSNBC when asked about being seen as less trustworthy than Mr. Trump. “I know that’s something that I’m going to keep working on, and I think that’s, you know, a clear priority for me.”

Mrs. Clinton had no public events scheduled on Saturday, but after her F.B.I. interview she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, went to New York and saw the Broadway show “Hamilton.”

Mrs. Clinton’s meeting with the F.B.I. came amid controversy over a brief, unplanned meeting between Mr. Clinton and Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch while both were at the Phoenix airport at the same time last week.

In case you have not heard about this meeting, The private meeting took place on the west side of Sky Harbor International Airport on board a parked private plane.

Former President Clinton was visiting the Phoenix area and arrived to Sky Harbor Monday evening to depart.

Sources tell ABC15 Clinton was notified Lynch would be arriving at the airport soon and waited for her arrival in his plane for up to 30 minutes.

Lynch was arriving in Phoenix for a planned visit as part of her national tour to promote community policing; however, her exact itinerary is not public knowledge for security reasons. She travels with FBI agents.

Here is how she accounts for the meeting that was witnessed by a local ABC reporter who happened to be patient enough to wait for Bill Clinton to come out of his airplane that was parked in the heat on the tarmac. The private meeting comes as Lynch's office is in charge of the ongoing investigation and potential charges involving Clinton's email server. The private meeting also occurred hours before the Benghazi report was released publicly involving Hillary Clinton and President Obama's administration.

"I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport as he was leaving and spoke to myself and my husband on the plane," said Lynch. 

Lynch said the private meeting on the tarmac did not involve these topics.

"Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social about our travels and he mentioned golf he played in Phoenix," said Lynch Tuesday afternoon while speaking at the Phoenix Police Department. There is a problem, though. Lynch has no children and therefore has no grandchildren. Clinton has one grandchild, officially.

Sources say the private meeting at the airport lasted around 30 minutes.

"There was no discussion on any matter pending before the Department or any matter pending with any other body, there was no discussion of Benghazi, no discussion of State Department emails, by way of example I would say it was current news of the day, the Brexit decision and what it would mean," she said.

They did discuss the former AG Janet Reno, who is still alive. I can imagine something like, “Man, now there is someone who knew how to handle an ongoing investigation. It was just like we were running the DOJ. She was great. It’s so nice to see she is still alive, don’t you think.”

She described the meeting with Mr. Clinton as a casual conversation that did not touch on the investigation. But it added to Clinton campaign staff members’ headaches over the email inquiry, which they had hoped to put behind them before the Democratic convention this month. Meanwhile, the FBI and Secret Service agents stood outside on the tarmac and talked among themselves. They would not allow the ABC reporter to take any pictures, shoot any video, or take any recorders, but he did recall the agents saying something line, “What the heck is going on here? This is just wrong.”

“I certainly wouldn’t do it again,” Ms. Lynch said of the meeting with the ex-president. Lynch did not know there was a reporter outside the plane watching everything.

To avoid any appearance of political meddling, Ms. Lynch said on Friday that she would accept the recommendations of career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director on whether to bring charges in the matter. She said she had made that decision several months ago, before the criticism surrounding her meeting with Mr. Clinton. That’s what it feels like when you get caught with a large manila envelope in your hand.

Lynch Opens Door for FBI

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch plans to announce on Friday that she will accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a Justice Department official said. Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case.

The Justice Department had been moving toward such an arrangement for months — officials said in April that it was being considered — but a private meeting between Ms. Lynch and former President Bill Clinton this week set off a political furor and made the decision all but inevitable.

Republicans said the meeting, which took place at the Phoenix airport, had compromised the independence of the investigation as the F.B.I. was winding it down. Some called for Ms. Lynch to recuse herself, but she did not take herself off the case — one that could influence a presidential election.

Ms. Lynch has said she wants to handle the Clinton investigation like any other case. Since the attorney general often follows the recommendations of career prosecutors, Ms. Lynch is keeping the regular process largely intact.

She plans to discuss the matter at a conference in Aspen, Colo., on Friday. The Justice Department declined to comment. The official who confirmed the discussion did so on the condition of anonymity because the internal decision-making process is normally kept confidential.

The F.B.I. is investigating whether Mrs. Clinton, her aides or anyone else broke the law by setting up a private email server for her to use as secretary of state. Internal investigators have concluded that the server was used to send classified

information, and Republicans have seized on the matter to question Mrs. Clinton’s judgment.

For the Justice Department, the central question is whether the conduct met the legal standard for the crime of mishandling classified information.

Ms. Lynch said that the meeting with Mr. Clinton was unplanned, largely social and did not touch on the email investigation. She suggested that he walked uninvited from his plane to her government plane, both of which were parked on a tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

“He did come over and say hello, and speak to my husband and myself, and talk about his grandchildren and his travels and things like that,” Ms. Lynch said at a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, where she was promoting community policing. “That was the extent of that. And no discussions were held into any cases or things like that.”

That did not mollify Republican lawmakers, who said the meeting raised questions about the integrity of the government’s investigation.

“In light of the apparent conflicts of interest, I have called repeatedly on Attorney General Lynch to appoint a special counsel to ensure the investigation is as far from politics as possible,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement on Thursday.

The meeting created an awkward situation for Ms. Lynch, a veteran prosecutor who was nominated from outside Washington’s normal political circles. In her confirmation, her allies repeatedly sought to contrast her with her predecessor, Eric H. Holder Jr., an outspoken liberal voice in the administration who clashed frequently with Republicans who accused him of politicizing the office.

Her reassurance that she will not overrule her investigators is significant. When the F.B.I. sought to bring felony charges against David H. Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director, for mishandling classified information and lying about it, Mr. Holder stepped in and reduced the charge to a misdemeanor. That decision created a deep — and public — rift.

The F.B.I. is expected to make a recommendation to the Justice Department in the coming weeks, though agents have yet to interview Mrs. Clinton. While some legal experts said they believed that criminal indictments in the case were unlikely, the investigation continues to cast a shadow over Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seized on the private encounter, describing it in a radio interview as a “sneak” meeting and saying it exposed the rigged nature of the process.

Even some Democrats criticized the meeting. “It doesn’t send the right signal,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said in response to a question on CNN’s “New Day.” While he said he believed that Ms. Lynch was an independent prosecutor, “I think she should have steered clear, even of a brief, casual, social meeting with the former president.”

Beyond the day-to-day workings of the Justice Department, there is precedent for explicitly relying on career officials to make politically charged decisions. When the Justice Department was considering whether to recommend sanctions against former Bush administration lawyers who approved waterboarding, Mr. Holder relied on his most senior career prosecutor to make the decision. No sanctions were recommended.

Reporter Christopher Sign of ABC 15 in Phoenix, AZ appeared on The O’Reilly Factor Thursday night to talk about his scoop involving that secret meeting between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Watch the entire interview below. Sign lays out how the story developed and then he leaves this little nugget:

“The former president steps into her plane. They then speak for 30 minutes privately. The FBI there on the tarmac instructing everybody around ‘no photos, no pictures, no cell phones.'”

Interesting.

First of all, it isn’t the FBI’s job to tell journalists or private citizens they can’t take photographs of a former president and the Attorney General. What were the agents going to do, arrest people for taking a picture or video?

Also, if there was nothing wrong with the meeting and it was totally innocent, why were federal agents instructed to demand no one take a picture?

Finally, let’s stop focusing on the fact that this meeting was inappropriate because Clinton’s wife is under investigation by Lynch’s Justice Department. I mean, that’s bad, but it’s actually letting Lynch and Clinton off the hook a bit. By focusing on the appearance of conflict because Hillary Clinton is being investigated, we are willfully overlooking the very real conflict in the fact that Clinton himself is under investigation, as the Grand Poo-bah at the Clinton Foundation. (Fox News)

The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News.

This new investigative track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton’s personal server.

“The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” one source said.

Yes, the investigation into the intersection of Clinton Foundation donations and the State Department slimes Hillary Clinton since it happened during her tenure as Secretary of State, but what about Bill Clinton? If the State Department and Hillary Clinton acted improperly or illegally by commingling staff and by granting favors to Clinton Foundation donors, isn’t the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton equally guilty of wrongdoing?

This may explain why the day after the surreptitious meeting in Phoenix, Lynch’s Justice Department informed a judge they were going to drag their feet on the release of emails connecting the former president’s foundation and the State Department: (Daily Caller)

Department of Justice officials filed a motion in federal court late Wednesday seeking a 27-month delay in producing correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s four top aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a closely allied public relations firm that Bill Clinton helped launch.

If the court permits the delay, the public won’t be able to read the communications until October 2018, about 22 months into her prospective first term as President. The four senior Clinton aides involved were Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Fuchs, Ambassador-At-Large Melanne Verveer, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin.

I guess when all of this adds up, it’s clear why Lynch and her FBI agents were so intent on keeping this inappropriate meeting private.

By the way, just so you know how confident miss Step-and-Fetch is that nothing will be done about any of this, Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Bloomberg Politics Mark Halperin cited a “senior Justice Department official” who said Attorney General Loretta Lynch will not recuse herself from the investigation into presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton use of a private email while secretary of state. Critics have called on Lynch to do so after holding a private meeting with her husband former President Bill Clinton earlier this week.

Halperin also said the source does not anticipate Lynch will admit the meeting was a mistake.

“This is a senior Justice Department official who is playing down that this is anything new,” Halperin said. “Says this was the attorney general’s intention all along to let the career people decide. Quote, ‘She is not recusing herself. She is not stepping aside and does not expect that the attorney general will say it was a mistake to meet with Bill Clinton privately for 20 or 30 minutes.’”

Former AG Comments

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “The Kelly File,” former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey reacted to a report that current U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch had met with former President Bill Clinton while his wife, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, was under investigation for her use of a private email server while secretary of state.

Mukasey called the meeting a mistake and dismissed the claim it was a chance encounter.

“I think it was a mistake,” Mukasey said. “People make mistakes all the time. It was a mistake because you don’t take a meeting with the spouse of somebody who was the subject of an investigation by your department. It’s not that that’s a written rule any more than it’s a written rule that a surgeon washes his hands before he operates. There are some things that are so elementary that you don’t have to have a written rule to have them in effect.”

“Megyn, the attorney general is protected by a security detail of FBI agents,” Mukasey said. “I assume she was traveling with staff since she was on government business. The president is

protected by a detail of Secret Service agents. They don’t work for the same department. They don’t encounter each other casually. That happens by design and I think it was actually not her fault. It was the president’s design. From what I read in the accounts, he was the one that pushed it forward.”

He went on to add it was cause for Lynch to recuse herself completely from the Clinton email investigation.

“The problem is the whole set of circumstances undermines the public confidence in the department and in the result,” he added. “You have months of effort by hundreds of FBI agents, by dedicated prosecutors within the department, John Carlin, who is the assistant AG within the national security division is involved in this – I mean, the national security division is involved in this investigation. He is a straight arrow. Everybody working in this case is a straight arrow. When you put a cloud over everything they’re doing by having something like this take place … She can remove the cloud by putting in place a procedure that is there for the taking – that is you take yourself out of it and you put the deputy attorney general Sally Yates, who is a very capable lawyer, really has the same background that Loretta Lynch herself has – U.S. Attorney in a major city and enormously capable. She has shown that.”

Everyone is really wondering how much was in the manila envelope left in Lynch’s plane.

Then there’s the biggest question of all: why didn’t the media care about any of this before the election of 2012?

The Death of the Republic: TPP

A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .”

On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers.

The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40 percent of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it.

Abdicating the Judicial Function to Corporate Lawyers

James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. . . . “Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. . . .”

And that, from what we now know of the TPP’s secret provisions, will be its dire effect.

The most controversial provision of the TPP is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) section. ISDS first appeared in a bilateral trade agreement in 1959. According to The Economist , ISDS gives foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever the government passes a law to do things that hurt corporate profits — such things as discouraging smoking, protecting the environment or preventing a nuclear catastrophe. Or rules that demand that corporations cease certain activities in order to qualify for trading with the US. For instance, the US could demand that Malaysia stop cutting down its rain forest in order to sell its finished goods to the US. That corporation would lose money and could sue under the ISDS.

Arbitrators are paid $600-700 an hour, giving them little incentive to dismiss cases; and the secretive nature of the arbitration process and the lack of any requirement to consider precedent gives wide scope for creative judgments. And who do you think will conduct the police action to enforce the judgment when it is ignored by the party that has to pay or cease their activities? Someone is going to have to build a giant and powerful cyber and physical army to make people obey, or else.

To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, this although the termination was apparently legal. Still in arbitration is a demand by Vattenfall, a Swedish utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany, for compensation of €3.7 billion ($4.7 billion) under the ISDS clause of a treaty on energy investments, after the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power industry following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.

Under the TPP, however, even larger judgments can be anticipated, since the sort of “investment” it protects includes not just “the commitment of capital or other resources” but “the expectation of gain or profit.” That means the rights of corporations in other countries extend not just to their factories and other “capital” but to the profits they expect to receive there. How would you like to be able to sue the US government for a regulation that cost your company profits you were going to make in the coming year? Pretty nice, huh?

In an article posted by Yves Smith, Joe Firestone poses some interesting hypotheticals:

Under the TPP, could the US government be sued and be held liable if it decided to stop issuing Treasury debt and financed deficit spending in some other way (perhaps by quantitative easing or by issuing trillion dollar coins)? Why not, since some private companies would lose profits as a result?

Under the TPP or the TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership under negotiation with the European Union), would the Federal Reserve be sued if it failed to bail out banks that were too big to fail?

Firestone notes that under the Netherlands-Czech trade agreement, the Czech Republic was sued in an investor-state dispute for failing to bail out an insolvent bank in which the complainant had an interest. The investor company was awarded $236 million in the dispute settlement. What might the damages be, asks Firestone, if the Fed decided to let the Bank of America fail, and a Saudi-based investment company decided to sue?

Abdicating the Legislative Function to Multinational Corporations

Just the threat of this sort of massive damage award could be enough to block prospective legislation. But the TPP goes further and takes on the legislative function directly, by forbidding specific forms of regulation.

Public Citizen observes that the TPP would provide big banks with a backdoor means of watering down efforts to re-regulate Wall Street, after deregulation triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression:

The TPP would forbid countries from banning particularly risky financial products, such as the toxic derivatives that led to the $183 billion government bailout of AIG. It would prohibit policies to prevent banks from becoming “too big to fail,” and threaten the use of “firewalls” to prevent banks that keep our savings accounts from taking hedge-fund-style bets.

The TPP would also restrict capital controls, an essential policy tool to counter destabilizing flows of speculative money. . . . And the deal would prohibit taxes on Wall Street speculation, such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax that would generate billions of dollars’ worth of revenue for social, health, or environmental causes.

Clauses on dispute settlement in earlier free trade agreements have been invoked to challenge efforts to regulate big business. The fossil fuel industry is seeking to overturn Quebec’s ban on the ecologically destructive practice of fracking. Veolia, the French behemoth known for building a tram network to serve Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, is contesting increases in Egypt’s minimum wage. The tobacco maker Philip Morris is suing against anti-smoking initiatives in Uruguay and Australia.

The TPP would empower not just foreign manufacturers but foreign financial firms to attack financial policies in foreign tribunals, demanding taxpayer compensation for regulations that they claim frustrate their expectations and inhibit their profits.

Preempting Government Sovereignty

What is the justification for this encroachment on the sovereign rights of government? Allegedly, ISDS is necessary in order to increase foreign investment. But as noted in The Economist, investors can protect themselves by purchasing political-risk insurance. Moreover, Brazil

continues to receive sizable foreign investment despite its long-standing refusal to sign any treaty with an ISDS mechanism. Other countries are beginning to follow Brazil’s lead.

In an April 22nd report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, gains from multilateral trade liberalization were shown to be very small, equal to only about 0.014% of consumption, or about $.43 per person per month. And that assumes that any benefits are distributed uniformly across the economic spectrum. In fact, transnational corporations get the bulk of the benefits, at the expense of most of the world’s population.

Something else besides attracting investment money and encouraging foreign trade seems to be going on. The TPP would destroy our republican form of government under the rule of law, by elevating the rights of investors — also called the rights of “capital” — above the rights of the citizens.

That means that TPP is blatantly unconstitutional. But as Joe Firestone observes, neo-liberalism and corporate contributions seem to have blinded the deal’s proponents so much that they cannot see they are selling out the sovereignty of the United States to foreign and multinational corporations.

Alternative Lyrics for American Pie

The Benghazi Mood.

A long, long time ago.I can still remember, how America used to make me smile

And, I knew if we had a chance, that we could make the people dance,And maybe they'd be happy once again.

But, November made me shiver.With every paper I'd deliverBenghazi on the doorstep. I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried.When I read about his widowed brideSomething touched me deep inside.The day the 'Heros' died

So, bye bye Miss American Pie.Drove my Chevy to the treasury.But the treasury was dry.Them good ol' boys were drinking Colt 45's, singing.

Will this 'Video' be 'my' big 'lie'...?Will this be the day, I 'get high'...?

Did you write the Bill of Care And did you 'leave' those, people THERE Did the 'Pollster' tell you tooo?

Now, do you believe in 'shuck in jive'?Could 4 years more save your, fiscal hide? And can you teach me how & why real...slow?

Well, I know that you're lovin' him, Cause I saw you 'dancing' in the gym...You all kicked off your shoes man. While I heard all the lies & news...

I'm a lonely, tax payin' buck.With an empty wallet and a pickup truck,But I knew I was out of luck.The day the 'Hero's, died.

I started singing, bye bye Miss American Pie.Drove my Chevy to the treasury,but the treasury, was dry.Them good ol' boys were drinking C-45's and , singing... This'll be the day that I lie.This'll be the day that they 'died'..!

Now for, four years we've been on our own.And polls grew fat on a 'Pollsters Tone', but...That's not how it used to beee.

When the Speaker sang for the 'king and queen'In a vote $he borrowed from, 'future teen'sOn a vote that came from you and yours.

Oh, and while the King was looking down.The Speaker $tole the futures' dawn.The 'Peoples House' was adjourned -As the vote was returned.

And while Lenin read a book on Marx.The Due-o dance'n in the park, and... In 'Benghazi', they fought in the dark, The day, our 'Hero's', died.

We are singing, bye bye Miss American PieDrove my Chevy to the treasury, but the treasury, was dry.Them good ol' boys were drinking C-45's, singing... This'll be the day that I buy.This'll be the day, I get high.

Helter Skelter in 'Mid-East' swelter -The 'Drones' flew off.With a 'Pollster Helper'.Two Miles High and filming fastIt scanned 'Heroes', their last 'gasp'...

The players tried for a forward pass.With their 'Leader' on the sidelines, with his 'Cast'.Now, the 'TV's air was tweaked.While 'His Surrogates', their, marching 'weak.

We were all in a trance.The Seals, never...had a chance.'Cause the players had, facts to 'HIDE'.In 'Benghazi', our people 'DIED

Do you recall what was revealed,the day, 'our Heros' died?We started singing, bye bye Miss American Pie.Drove my Chevy to the treasury, but the treasury was dry.

Them good ol' boys were drinking C-45's, singing. This'll be the day that I buy.This'll be the day, I get high .

And, there we were, all in one place -Generations' Lost in Space.With no time left to start again.

So, come on, Vote be nimble, Vote be quick.Votes Flash sat on a Candlestick, 'cause.Lying is the 'Lefties' only friend.

And, as I watched them on the tube My hands were clenched in fists of rage No angel born in H ell could break that Satan's spell...And, as the flames climbed high into the night,To 're-elect', sacrificial rite. I saw, Satan laughing with delight. The day the 'Hero's' died.

He was singing, bye bye Miss American Pie.Drove my Chevy to the treasury.And RE-ELECTED, am I....

Them good ol' boys were trying yet.'Sad' they must die, singing... This'll be the day that I 'LIE'This'll be the day that I 'LIE'

I met some girl's who sang the Blues.And I asked them for some happy news.Hillary, Jarret & 'Rice', just smiled & turned away.

I went down to the sacred store.Where I'd heard the music years before but.The man there said the music wouldn't play.

And, in the streets the children screamed.The lover's cried, and the poets dreamed, But not a word was spoken.The church bells all were broken.

And, the three people I despise most.Elected, the 'pol's', sure did toast. The day, the 'country', died.

And, they were singing.Bye bye Miss American Pie.Them good ol' boys were drinking C-45's. singing.This'll be the day I get high.

Austrian Presidency Annulled.

Austria’s Constitutional court has today ordered May’s presidential election be annulled and another called after “particularly serious cases” of voting fraud were detected in the photo-finish vote.The Green party-backed candidate Alexander Van der Bellen originally snatched victory by a mere 0.6 per cent in the second round vote, which was taken to decide the new president of central-European state Austria in May. He had made it to the round alongside Freedom Party (FPO) candidate Norbert Hofer, who campaigned to protect Austria from mass migration and Islamification.

Alexander Van der Bellen (L) and Norbert Hofer (R) speak in a televised debate before the presidential elections in May

Now the Austrian Constitutional court has upheld a complaint by the FPO about conduct in the election. The party had alleged that there were voting “irregularities” in 94 of the 117 total electoral constituencies in the country, reports   Kronen Zeitung.

It is not known how many of the 94 areas alleged to have voting irregularities have been investigated, but the court identified “20 particularly serious cases” after interviewing 67 witnesses. Two witnesses are reported to have refused to give a statement. The allegation is that in these areas the postal ballots were opened and sorted before the arrival of Electoral Commission arrivals, meaning they could have been easily tampered with.

Given that the election was carried by just 30,863 votes, and up to 740,000 postal votes are in question the Constitutional court has now ruled the vote should be re-run, although the date for this has not yet been announced. Until the new vote in Autumn, the role of Austria’s Presidency will be fulfilled by a three-member National President Council (Präsidium des Nationalrats) — on which the FPO presidential candidate Norbert Hofer already sits.

President of the constitutional court Gerhart Holzinger said the ruling “does not make you a loser or a winner” to representatives of the two parties present in the court room this morning, and said the sentence had been passed to “strengthen confidence in the rule of law and democracy”, reports Germany’s Die Welt.

Breitbart London reported in May that Freedom party secretary Herbert Kickl had spoken out before the vote over the “unusually high number” of postal ballots requested. He warned at the time that “[postal votes] repeatedly show inconsistencies”.

The decision comes just seven days before Green-backed candidate Alexander Van der Bellen was due to be officially sworn in as President of Austria.

Even before the allegations of electoral fraud, the vote was already considered extraordinary as it is the first time in modern Austrian history where none of the candidates in the final round were representatives of the mainstream parties. Rather than a run-off between the Austrian People’s Party (OVP) and Social Democratic Party (SPO), the presidency was up between either the populist-right Hofer, or Green der Bellen.

Hofer, who initially told press his party would not be contesting the elections despite the close vote before the serious voting problems became apparent, campaigned on his Euroscepticism and opposition to mass migration to Austria.

Texas Arrests Delinquent Student Loans

Being behind on student loan payments in Texas could cost you more than your credit score. The US Marshals Service in Houston is arresting people who aren’t paying their federal student debt.

Paul Aker said that seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his Houston home in combat gear.

“I was wondering, why are you here. I am home, I haven’t done anything,” he told Fox 26, adding that he didn’t receive any notice about a $1,500 student loan he received in 1987.

He claims he was taken to federal court, where he signed a payment plan for the debt.

“It was totally mind-boggling,” Aker said.

This is far from an isolated incident, a source told the station. It isn’t the first time Marshals have served someone for being behind on loans, and they are planning to serve between 1,200 and 1,500 other people who have student debt.

Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas) told Fox 26 that it’s worrisome that private debt collectors are able to use US Marshals as muscle to retrieve payments for loans.

“There’s bound to be a better way to collect on a student loan debt that is so old,” Green said.

Unlike other forms of debt, student loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy by law. They also have higher interest rates, due to being riskier to the lender because of a lack of collateral. Governments and collection agencies are also allowed to use tactics that are prohibited for other types of loans, such as seizing tax refunds, taking parts of disability payments or even garnishing wages – all without a court order.

Democratic U.S. presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrive on stage ahead of the start of the PBS NewsHour Democratic presidential candidates debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, February 11, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Hauck

Student loans have become a hot-button issue in the Democratic presidential primaries. Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have railed against what they call excessive student debt, vowing to lower student loan interest rates. However, Sanders goes a step further by supporting tuition-free public universities that are fully paid for with a tax on Wall Street.

Almost 71 percent of bachelor’s degree recipients graduate with a student loan, and those graduating in 2015 have an average debt from school of over $35,000, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The IMF is Coming After Your Deposits

A report by Agence France-Presse, the International Monetary Fund strongly suggests countries tax the rich to fix deficit, is a caveat for a bigger risk. “The IMF has set off shockwaves in Washington by suggesting countries fight budget deficits by raising taxes. In its Fiscal Monitor report, subtitled “Taxing Times”, the Fund advanced the idea of taxing the highest-income people and their assets to reinforce the legitimacy of spending cuts and fight against growing income inequalities.”

Before all those occupy supporters rejoice and start their partying, the sober reality of the actual methods that the financial elites would use to implement revenue enhancement, needs a closer examination.

Contrast the interpretation from Europe with the broader assessment in, IMF Discusses A Super Tax Of 10% On All Savings In Eurozone.

“The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a “capital levy”— a one-off tax on private wealth—as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). There have been illustrious supporters, including Pigou, Ricardo, Schumpeter, and—until he changed his mind—Keynes. The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be weighed against the risks of the alternatives, which include repudiating public debt or inflating it away (these, in turn, are a particular form of wealth tax—on bondholders—that also falls on nonresidents)

The tax rates needed to bring down public debt to pre-crisis levels, moreover, are sizable: reducing debt ratios to end-2007 levels would require (for a sample of 15 euro area countries) a tax rate of about 10 percent on households with positive net wealth(*).”

The rhetoric of taxing the supra rich floats the argument that the pain of confiscation is fine when the wealthy are bled. Such poppycock meant for the unsophisticated, clings to the notion that the world operates under some noble objective, of fair taxation levies. How ridiculous.

Analysis from The Market Oracle, Raul Ilargi Meijer adds the correct context, implication, and significance in this IMF “Taxing Times”.

“We can’t however, discard the possibility that this appears in an October 2013 IMF report precisely BECAUSE it, and its peers in national governments, have found a different way to achieve the same goals. The underlying ideas are clear: most governments have debt levels that can’t be rolled over into the future much longer. And inflating them away is not an option: that can’t be done without increased consumer spending, and consumers are maxed out. Radical solutions are called for. Not just in Europe either, US government debt will need to be dealt with too.”

The exact detail scheme of any wealth toll certainly has to be broad in scope for remotely approaching a reprieve on immediate default. The sums of funds necessary to rescue the global banksters gambling tab requires that claims on assets, once thought to be secure, must be tapped.

Dave Hodges writes in The International Plot to Steal All Retirement Accounts and hints at the actual target of the IMF’s effort to soften up the climate for drastic measures.

“The banks are acquiring hard assets while restricting their exposure by curtailing lending. We have long heard that bankers that have hijacked the government would commence stealing our private wealth through the pension funds, and this is exactly what the chief bankster, Jack Lew, is implementing. The next step will be to seize bank

accounts like they did in Cyprus, and then step up the MERS mortgage fraud as the Federal Reserve continues to purchase $40 billion dollars in Mortgage Backed Securities every month.

The G Fund is invested in interest-bearing Treasury securities (i.e. bonds) that make up the public debt. The Civil Service Retirement Fund finances benefit payments under the Civil Service Retirement System and the basic retirement annuity of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System, and those investments are made up of securities also considered part of the public debt. In other words, for you people who have cushy federal government jobs, Lew is telling you that the government controls your retirement. They own it and they own you. Since the national deficit is $17 trillion dollars and the unfunded federal mandated liabilities (e.g. social security, Medicare, etc) will exceed $220 trillion dollars in one year, these victimized federal workers will never see their full retirement.”

The central banker club uses the IMF as an enforcer. Derivatives used as transferring the debt obligation to the unsuspected asset claimers’, are instruments for expropriation. The mere mention of a tax on bank deposits causes a red alert in financial investment circles. However, the public is so dependent on the whims and continued existence from government policy and programs that the threat of raiding bank accounts does not compute.

Economic subsistence, with no cash reserves or negligible nest eggs, for the majority of the masses is routine. Draining the coffers or annuities of retired public employees, really is an acceptable alternative, since the less privileged perceive their status would get a jump-start when the affluence differential narrows.

Only those who have something to lose will see the IMF trial balloon as a danger to their monetary well-being. The class warfare card works every time. As long as the underlying reasons why the unsustainable debt obligations, mathematical inability of being serviced, without direct appropriation of massive assets from the ordinary public, is ignored.

Here resides the connection that anyone who is part of the paper financial system, is so unwilling to confront. The anointed “PC” rich, like Sir Richard Branson avoids their tax duties by fleeing to tax havens of artificial exemptions. In fact, my bank Wells Fargo just raised the amount I must maintain in my checking account from $500 to $7,500 as a minimum balance in order to avoid the $180 annual tax they charge me for having a checking account with them.

The repeal of Glass-Steagle allows the banks to own securities firms and gamble with deposits on the market. Sure, they must maintain the 10% cash balance to cover the loans they have out, but they are leveraging the 10% cash reserve to trade on the money markets. They make dozens of micro trades each month, making up to 50% profit on your money, while charging millions of account holders each year just for letting them hold your money.

My advice? Fire your bank. Get your money out of there and keep it somewhere no one will tax it just for sitting there; your home.

Time for the US to Exit the UN

The UN started with good intentions. In 1945, representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco to draw up the United Nations charter, which was signed on June 26, 1945 and came to exist on October 24, 1945. The charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The purpose was to promote international cooperation. It started with 51 members and now has 193.

But, the cost of operations for the UN is not evenly distributed among its members. The United States pays 22% of the U.N.’s annual costs, which are over 1 Billion dollars. The US also hosts the UN building in New York. Initially, the UN was an ally to Israel and the United States. Unfortunately, over time, Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, has been chastised more than three times as often as all other countries combined. UN monitors and reporters camp on the Palestinian side of the border and report Israeli retaliations against almost daily rocket attacks, without mentioning the chaos the homemade rockets cause in Israel.

The Arab state members have turned the UN into an organization which seems dedicated to the eradication of the state of Israel. I mean, they want them pushed into the sea and the land turned back over to the Palestinians. No Jews. Get it? There are constant resolutions against Israel in a variety of areas.

The ones accusing Israel of human rights violations are the very ones that are committing human rights violations, and no one is chastising them! In addition, there is ongoing corruption, mismanagement, bribes, and a variety of other unseemly activities going on. There is no accountability and fraud, waste, and abuse of resources is ever-present. Our own former ambassador to the UN says,” “Yes, we have seen member states seek to use the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, and even the most arcane UN committees in ways that cross the line from legitimate criticisms of Israel’s policies to attempts to delegitimize the State of Israel itself,” continued Power.

The US Ambassador to the UN also pointed out that rogue regimes like North Korea do not receive anywhere near the amount of criticism received by Israel.

“The only country in the world with the standing agenda item at the Human Rights Council is not North Korea, a totalitarian state that is currently holding an estimated 100,000 people in gulags. It is not Syria, which has gassed lots of its people. It is Israel,” Power said

It has become a bloated bureaucracy which started out with 1500 employees and has now ballooned to 50,000 worldwide. Troops and equipment have been coming into the US for years and are parked at the ready in nearly every region of the country, waiting for something. For what? No one is talking.

Let’s look at current UN behavior, which should give every American citizen the impetus to scream for the US to get out of the UN, and get the UN out of the US. For starters, most Americans do not know or seem to care about Agenda 21. They don’t even know what it is. This is best explained by Rosa Koire, who is the executive director of Democrats Against UN Agenda 21. She writes,

UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the action plan implemented world-wide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education, all information, and all human beings in the world. Inventory and control is what it’s all about.

There is no congressional approval, or no citizen approval. There is no representation. There are only taxes, rules, and police actions. This is an elaborate plan to ultimately initiate The New World Order. It will take away freedoms that many have fought and died for, while decimating the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Americans will cease to have any control over their lives or property. Elitists at the head of governments will make all the decisions.

This has been in the works since the 1970’s, but really got underway in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro when President Bush signed on to it. Subsequent presidents have gone along with it and promoted this global plan of the conquest of human spirit and dignity. It is definitely designed to significantly change the economic and social structure of our country, and not for the better. By the way, billions of dollars are poured into it each year not to buy and preserve land. No. It is to cover the cost of enormous salaries and political bribes, PAC’s that run attack ads against Republicans, and to hire private mercenaries to keep people off their lands and seas.

Next, let’s look at the UN Human Rights Council, which met last month in Geneva. Their work and resolutions are laughable. There were four resolutions against Israel on human rights; one for North Korea; one for Syria; and one for Iran. No mention of violations for China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Qatar, and others. They even accused Israel of abusing women’s rights. How ludicrous is this?

All of us should be concerned that the UN is engineering the so-called “refugee” relocations to Europe and the United States. Why are we relinquishing our sovereignty to the UN? This is our country and we must control it…not UN bureaucrats. We do not want what they are peddling, so it is imperative that we get out of the UN and get them out of the US.

This organization clearly is not fulfilling its initial goals, and the US is funding a group which is promoting the terrorists, helping to defeat whatever “good guys” there are, and has layers of corruption. Since we have an economy which is rather stagnant, I don’t think that we should be funding this ineffective organization. Perhaps the UN should be moved to one of the Middle Eastern countries and let them support this bunch who appears to be carrying their water. Besides, I bet they can afford it a heck of a lot more than we can. In no other country that I can think of, would their “diplomats” be able to

thumb their noses at the law, and escape back to their homeland while serious crimes had been committed, because they all have diplomatic immunity.

Let’s get the USA out of the UN and the UN out of the USA, and we will be returning a bunch of taxpayer funds to the people they belong to; you.

Fear is the New Norm

There has never been a more unrealistic show on television than Friends. The fantasy it sells its audience on—that six people in their 20s can get together regularly without any sort of apparent planning—is a bald-faced lie. Can you imagine the group texts, the email chains, the interlocking commitments, the sheer complexity of organizing a six-person gathering at a coffee shop? If it wanted to make any effort at realism, Friends should have been a show about six people calling each other, leaving messages, and making excuses so they could stay in their apartments and watch TV.

Last week, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released the American Time Use Survey, an annual look at how people spend the precious minutes of their short lives. Mostly, people sleep (almost nine hours a day on average), work (just under eight hours on days they work), and watch TV (a bit under three hours). A scant 41 minutes of each average day are spent socializing in person with other humans, a number that's fallen by 9 percent over the past decade. Does this mean that society is falling further away from the everyone-kicking-it-all-the-time paradise of Friends? Or that I am talking with you, right now for three hours instead of you looking for someone to fall in love with or to dance with, or to share a song with.

Maybe something darker is at play here: Maybe Americans aren't hanging out because we're all hiding in our apartments and inventing elaborate lies about why we can't come out.

That's the conclusion of a recent study by something called Yelp Eat24, which I guess is like Seamless but run by Yelp? Regardless, I have no reason not to trust a home food delivery service when it sends out a press release about how people prefer to stay at home, so let's take them at their word when they say, "It may be that FOMO—the Fear of Missing Out—has run its course, as a new survey identifies the power of POMO... the PLEASURE Of Missing Out."

According to the study, almost 30 percent of people are disappointed by nights out, more than a third are stressed out and anxious by them, and hangovers and arguments are also common side effects. So it's no surprise 80 percent of people "admit to having made excuses to avoid going out," a.k.a. lying to your friends so you don't have to see them.

We're all familiar with these lies—"My dog is sick," "I have a thing," "Band practice," "Actually I'm trying not to drink anymore," "I'm not your girlfriend anymore," "I think you have the wrong number." We recognize them in others, and we use them ourselves in

order to maintain the facade that we really would love to come to your noise music festival—unfortunately there are some bugs coming out of a hole in the wall and also our cousin is in town. These lies are the lubrication that keeps social interaction from becoming painful, the Machiavellian web that binds us together.

Why don't we just tell the truth? Well, according to data from Yelp Eat24, which, again, I have no reason to even be slightly skeptical of, instead of going out, people who claim they are doing the following things:

1. Watch movie/TV2. Chill out/nap3. Eat in4. Working on emails or writing posts5. Spend time with children6. Read or listen to a book7. Listen to music8. Chores9. Have drinks and don’t want to drive10. Play video games

Now, obviously spending time with your partner and children is a pretty good reason not to go out, and chores have to be done, but "listen to music" is not generally an activity that takes up an entire evening. Neither is eating in. Not going out in order to "have drinks," presumably with yourself, is not the most aspirational of evenings, and I can only assume that "chill out" is survey code for "masturbate," which is another thing that really shouldn't take all night.

No matter what you think of "going out," this is kind of grim stuff. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans are spending less time on childcare, work, and socializing, and more time watching TV. And apparently we're all lying to cover up that fact, spinning tall tales about needing to work out when really we're getting shitfaced in front of Call of Duty, then "chilling out" into a Snuggie until our food from the good folks at Yelp Eat24 arrives.

If there's any silver lining here it's that at least everyone is doing the same thing. Your agoraphobia, and your inability to be honest with others (and probably, yourself) about what your life has become, is not a personal problem, it's a symptom of a broader malaise. That's why I'm not coming to your party, because society is afraid to go out of the house. I case every restaurant, every theater, and every outdoor celebration for a place to hide. I watch for suspicious people, packages, backpacks, baby carriages pushed by people in burqas and especially cops. They know something is going to happen before anyone else. They get chatter we only hear about on the news later.

Remember, it’s only paranoia if they’re not out to get you. This year, I’m watching fireworks on TV.