90 Miles From Tyranny : 2018-02-25

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Justin Trudeau's trip to India was a total disaster

Girls With Guns

Bombshell: Russian Propaganda Fools American Leftists To Attack US Fossil Fuel Interests

The House Science Committee has released a report detailing how Russia has been attempting to sabotage US domestic fossil fuel production, to promote their own fossil fuel exports, by stirring up climate activist opposition to US domestic fossil fuel production.

Republicans Accuse Russia of Using Social Media to Roil U.S. Energy Policy

By Ari Natter and Alan Bjerga
2 March 2018, 01:25 GMT+10 Updated on 2 March 2018, 03:56 GMT+10

The same Russian operatives accused of manipulating the 2016 U.S. presidential election used inflammatory social media posts to disrupt U.S. energy policy, including inciting environmentalists to protest against pipeline projects, House Republicans said in a report released Thursday.

The report, released by the House Science Committee, said it found evidence Russian-sponsored agents used Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to suppress the research and development of fossil fuels and stymie efforts to expand the use of natural gas and fracking.

“This report reveals that Russian agents created and spread propaganda on U.S. social media platforms in an obvious attempt to influence the U.S. energy market,” Texas Representative Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, said in a statement. “Russian agents attempted to manipulate Americans’ opinions about pipelines, fossil fuels, fracking and climate change.”

According to the report, Hillary Clinton was fully aware of Russian efforts;

… Former Secretary of State and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, with access to intelligence reports, made a private speech in 2014, according to documents from WikiLeaks, which included statements about the struggles of dealing with Russian-backed environmental groups. According to a media report, Secretary Clinton said the following: “We [the State Department and the U.S.] were up against Russia pushing oligarchs and others to buy media. We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand against any effort, ‘Oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you,’ and a lot of the money supporting that message was coming from Russia.”
…
To that end, the Kremlin is attempting to make, as Senator Cardin’s report states, “useful idiots” of unwitting environmental groups and activists in furtherance of its energy influence operations.33 Although this is not a new tactic in the Kremlin’s playbook, it has been adapted to account for modern technological advancements like the Internet and social media. Throughout history, the Kremlin has engaged and manipulated unwitting individuals to disseminate propaganda in furtherance of its global agenda.34 The Kremlin continues to employ this tactic, which has become substantially more effective with the proliferation of the Internet and social media. By leveraging the sincerely held views and beliefs of unwitting agents, the Kremlin is able to exploit polarized issues in....

The Secret Service believes the man's gunshot wound was 'self-inflicted'

A gunman has killed himself outside the White House, the US Secret Service has confirmed.

The building was put on lockdown as officers responded to reports "of a person who allegedly suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound along the north fence line".

In a statement, the US Secret Service said: "(He) removed a concealed handgun and fired several rounds, none of which appear at this time to have been directed towards the White House.

"The President and First Lady were not in the White House at the time of the incident."

The incident happened about 12pm local time (5pm UK time) and the surrounding area was cordoned off.

No other injuries have been reported and the gunman has been identified by investigators. However, his name is not being made public until his next of kin have been informed.

Mr Trump was in Mar-a-Lago, Florida at the time of the incident and was due to return to Washington DC later on Saturday.

Reporters inside the White House tweeted that they had been told to shelter in place.

Secret Service officers said pedestrian and vehicular traffic was affected in the aftermath of the shooting.

The White House Press Secretary said: "We are aware of the situation, the President has been...

The people of the United States are not being very well represented by their broadcast and cable news networks. Except for Fox News, all of the other major television news operations are decidedly liberal, even though the country is considered to be center-right politically. While there is a Republican in the White House and the party controls most state legislatures, and the Congress has 33 Governors, most of the mainstream news media is in lockstep with the opposition party, the liberal Democrats.

There is no better example of liberal media bias today than ABC, the television network owned by the Walt Disney Company, the second largest media conglomerate in the world. The network is filled with liberal reporters and anchors and offers insufferable programs like The View, a morning “news” program geared to women. The hosts on the program are all liberal, except for one token moderate. The format is either a liberal love fest with a Hollywood or media star or an attack on conservatism.

The format is either a liberal love fest with a Hollywood or media star or an attack on conservatism

On February 13, the program was even nastier than normal. On the topic of Vice President Mike Pence’s Christian faith, co- host Sunny Hosting said, “I don’t know that I want my vice president…speaking in tongues and having Jesus speak to him.” Host Joy Behar added an even more insulting comment, claiming, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct, hearing voices.”

No show on ABC would have mocked the religious faith of a devout Muslim, but they felt it was acceptable to ridicule a fine Christian such as Mike Pence. These comments were so outrageous that the watchdog group Media Research Center launched a protest. Within days, over 30,000 calls were made to the network demanding an apology.

Not surprisingly, ABC ignored the outraged pleas of Christians and offered no official statement and certainly did not make an apology. A few days later Behar ludicrously maintained that the comments were “a joke.” For Christians, this type of treatment is not a joking matter, for it happens all too often. Sadly, the blasphemous remarks are typical of the trash uttered by hosts on The View on a regular basis.

The anti-Christian bigotry was also not well received by the target, Vice President Pence. In an appearance on C-SPAN, Pence said, “To have ABC maintain a broadcast forum that compared Christianity to mental illness is just wrong.” He continued, “It is simply wrong for ABC to have a television program that expresses that kind of religious intolerance.”

For Pence, his Christianity is the most important part of his life. Amazingly, Behar is also a Christian, but must feel it is acceptable to mock others who share her faith. Behar has a history of crude comments, so her response is understandable, as is the non-response from ABC.

It is clear the network does not care about Christians or conservatives

It is clear the network does not care about Christians or conservatives. Not only has there been no apology, but the network has done nothing to discipline Behar or Hostin.

This is the same network that features George Stephanopoulos, a former top Bill Clinton operative, as its premier political correspondent. He is also co-host of Good Morning America and is host of This Week, their Sunday morning program.

No wonder the ratings for all of these programs has dropped in recent years as conservatives have no reason to watch liberal hosts promoting Democrats and grilling conservative Republicans.

To make matters worse, ABC just announced that Trump hating liberal actor Alec Baldwin will soon start hosting a new Sunday interview show on the network. Baldwin has been badly impersonating the President for Saturday Night Live since October of 2016 and seems to relish the opportunity to criticize him in public or on social media. Surely, the 63 million people who voted for President Trump in the last election will not be watching Baldwin on Sundays.

It would seem that any news network would strive for balance to attract all types of viewers. Instead, ABC is apparently trying to insult conservative viewers on a regular basis.

The calls to ABC are a good start, but, to be truly effective, conservatives need to launch an official boycott of the network’s advertisers and the Walt Disney resorts. Financial pressure is the only thing that gets the attention of...

Contradictions In Seth Rich Murder Continue To Challenge Hacking Narrative

As rumors swirl that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is preparing a case against Russians who are alleged to have hacked Democrats during the 2016 election - a conclusion based solely on the analysis of cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, a Friday op-ed in the Washington Times by retired U.S. Navy admiral James A. Lyons, Jr. asks a simple, yet monumentally significant question: Why haven't Congressional Investigators or Special Counsel Robert Mueller addressed the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich - who multiple people have claimed was Wikileaks' source of emails leaked during the 2016 U.S. presidential election?

Mueller has been incredibly thorough in his ongoing investigations - however he won't even respond to Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand entrepreneur who clearly knew about the hacked emails long before they were released, claims that Seth Rich obtained them with a memory stick, and has offered to provide proof to the Special Counsel investigation.

On May 18, 2017, Dotcom proposed that if Congress includes the Seth Rich investigation in their Russia probe, he would provide written testimony with evidence that Seth Rich was WikiLeaks' source.

In addition to several odd facts surrounding Rich's still unsolved murder - which officials have deemed a "botched robbery," forensic technical evidence has emerged which contradicts the Crowdstrike report. The Irvine, CA company partially funded by Google, was the only entity allowed to analyze the DNC servers in relation to claims of election hacking:

Notably, Crowdstrike has been considered by many to be discredited over their revision and retraction of a report over Russian hacking of Ukrainian military equipment - a report which the government of Ukraine said was fake news.

In connection with the emergence in some media reports which stated that the alleged “80% howitzer D-30 Armed Forces of Ukraine removed through scrapping Russian Ukrainian hackers software gunners,” Land Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine informs that the said information is incorrect.

Ministry of Defence of Ukraine asks journalists to publish only verified information received from the competent official sources. Spreading false information leads to increased social tension in society and undermines public confidence in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. –mil.gov.ua (translated) (1.6.2017)

In fact, several respected journalists have cast serious doubt on CrowdStrike's report on the DNC servers:

How To Get To “Reasonable Certainty” on a Russia Finding – Jeffrey Carr, Medium (12.13.2016)
HERE’S THE PUBLIC EVIDENCE RUSSIA HACKED THE DNC — IT’S NOT ENOUGH – Sam Biddle, The Intercept (12.14.2016)

Pay attention, because Mueller is likely to use the Crowdstrike report to support the rumored upcoming charges against Russian hackers.

Also notable is that Crowdstrike founder and anti-Putin Russian expat Dimitri Alperovitch sits on the Atlantic Council - which is funded by the US State Department, NATO, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukranian Oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Who else is on the Atlantic Council? Evelyn Farkas - who slipped up during an MSNBC interview with Mika Brzezinski and disclosed that the Obama administration had been spying on the Trump campaign:

The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would not longer have access to that intelligence. -Evelyn Farkas

Odd facts surrounding the murder of Seth Rich

"The facts that we know of in the murder of the DNC staffer, Seth Rich, was that he was gunned down blocks from his home on July 10, 2016. Washington Metro police detectives claim that Mr. Rich was a robbery victim, which is strange since after being shot twice in the back, he was still wearing a $2,000 gold necklace and watch. He still had his wallet, key and phone. Clearly, he was not a victim of robbery," writes Lyons.

Another unexplained fact muddying the Rich case is that of a stolen 40 caliber Glock 22 handguns stoken from an FBI agent's car the same day Rich was murdered. D.C. Metro police said that the theft occurred between 5 and 7 a.m., while the FBI said two weeks later that the theft had occurred between Midnight and 2 a.m. - fueling speculation that the FBI gun was used in Rich's murder.

Furthermore, two men working with the Rich family - private investigator and former D.C. Police detective Rod Wheeler and family acquaintance Ed Butowsky, have previously stated that Rich had contacts with WikiLeaks before his death.

"According to Ed Butowsky, an acquaintance of the family, in his discussions with Joel and Mary Rich, they confirmed that their son transmitted the DNC emails to Wikileaks," writes Lyons.

While Wheeler initially told TV station Fox5 that proof of Rich's contact with WikiLeaks lies on the murdered IT staffer's laptop, he later walked the claim back - though he maintained that there was "some communication between Seth Rich and...

The school discipline policy that may have allowed Nikolas Cruz to escape arrest by Broward County law enforcement and ultimately purchase the firearm he used to kill 17 people is in effect in over 50 school districts across the country.

“He probably wouldn’t have been able to buy the murder weapon if the school had referred him to law enforcement,” veteran FBI agent Michael Biasello told RealClearInvestigations (RCI).

In 2014, the Obama administration issued a “Dear Colleague” guidance that threatened school districts – whose disciplinary measures showed a disproportionately greater number of minority students affected – could be subject to investigation by the Departments of Justice and Education, regardless of whether the behaviors leading to the discipline were unacceptable.

Deborah York, now a retired teacher in Edina, Minnesota, tells Breitbart News she sees “a lot of fear in schools, not only physical fear of being assaulted or violently abused, but ‘system fear’ that’s coming from the top down about gag orders and data privacy, where you can’t talk among your fellow teachers, even to share information.”

“If you do, you get into these lengthy investigations where they try to destroy you and – in a way – they’re trying to get rid of you,” she states.

York formed a coalition that worked with the Minnesota state legislature in 2016 to pass a bill that grants teachers a reinforced right to remove aggressive students and to be informed when students with violence in their histories are placed in their classrooms.

Her group produced the video above titled, Silenced Classroom.

In December, York and her group met with U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, other Trump administration education officials, and the Human Rights Commission to address the rise in school violence – particularly since the Obama Dear Colleague letter – and to ask them to consider a campaign to make the recent Minnesota teacher protection law a national law.

Breitbart News reached out to the U.S. Education Department for comment about the meeting with York and her colleagues, but received no immediate response.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has been supportive of the Obama school discipline policy. In fact, AFT is asking its members to register for a webinar about how to “protect the Obama-era school discipline guidance” that allows disruptive and even aggressive students to avoid disciplinary procedures “to help schools prevent and address discipline practices that discriminate against students of color.”

AFT is joining with the NAACP and The Dignity in Schools Campaign – which includes members such as affiliates of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, Mom’s Rising, and Girls for Gender Equity – to fight to maintain the Obama-era school discipline policy during what they call a “Week of...