NBC News Sitting On Ronan Farrow's Weinstein Story IS A Scandal

thedailybeast |  By the time Farrow pitched New Yorker Editor in Chief David Remnick in August, according to multiple sources, he and NBC News investigative unit producer Rich McHugh, among others, had been pursuing Weinstein’s alleged serial groping—and worse—of young actresses and female staffers since the previous December.

Over the course of several months, scripts were prepared and vetted, and Farrow’s and McHugh’s reporting was subjected to various layers of both fact-checking and legal reviews, insiders said, and at one point a senior producer on NBC News’ Friday night show Dateline carefully re-interviewed many of their sources and witnesses, and concluded they were solid.

The vetting process lasted weeks and weeks, through much of the summer, but ended shortly after Kimberley D. Harris, executive vice president and general counsel of NBC Universal, subjected the material to her own review. Since Harris oversees the in-house lawyering of all the company divisions, an NBC source said it would not be unusual for her to review news division material for potential exposure to litigation. And although Harris reports to NBC Universal Chief Executive Steve Burke, a source insisted Burke wasn’t involved in the decision to spike the Weinstein story.

Indeed, according to this account, Harris never formally weighed in, because NBC News had already pulled the plug by the time she finished examining Farrow’s work.

With two such wildly contradictory versions of why and how NBC News spiked Farrow’s Weinstein story, it’s difficult to determine what objectively occurred.

But author and New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta, who has been covering Weinstein for decades and is among the legions of journalists who’ve tried and failed to document his casting-couch behavior, also sat for an NBC interview; at one point, according to witnesses, he turned to the camera and declared: “This evidence is so overwhelming that if NBC News sits on it, that will be a scandal.”

Evidence of Susan Rice's Criminality Hidden at Obama Presidential Library

WND |  Key evidence on whether the Obama administration spied on the Trump team may be kept under lock and key for five years, at former President Obama’s presidential library.

Perhaps just as surprising, the announcement came from President Trump’s own National Security Council, or NSC.

There are still a publicly unknown number of Obama holdovers on the NSC, but there’s no word yet on how the decision was made.

The government-watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Monday the NSC had denied its Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request for documents related to President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice’s alleged unmasking of the “identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team.”

In a potentially bombshell development, the NSC said those documents have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library, while pointedly adding, “you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.”

It’s not yet known if that would block congressional investigators, the FBI, or Special Counsel Robert Mueller from obtaining the documents.

Shameless Globalism - Double-00 Stacking Dead Presidents Like Hot Cakes!!!

express |  BARACK Obama will reportedly pocket a staggering £2.5million (€3million) today for delivering a speech to a sold-out audience in Milan as part of his lucrative post-presidential speaking tour.

The former President, who has already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for private speeches since leaving the White House, will make his highest-paying appearance yet at the Global Food Innovation Summit today.

AI Will Create Useless Class of Humans

ted |  The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?

This is not an entirely new question. People have long feared that mechanization might cause mass unemployment. This never happened, because as old professions became obsolete, new professions evolved, and there was always something humans could do better than machines. Yet this is not a law of nature, and nothing guarantees it will continue to be like that in the future. The idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking. The current scientific answer to this pipe dream can be summarized in three simple principles:

1. Organisms are algorithms. Every animal — including Homo sapiens — is an assemblage of organic algorithms shaped by natural selection over millions of years of evolution.

2. Algorithmic calculations are not affected by the materials from which the calculator is built. Whether an abacus is made of wood, iron or plastic, two beads plus two beads equals four beads.

3. Hence, there is no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that non-organic algorithms will never be able to replicate or surpass. As long as the calculations remain valid, what does it matter whether the algorithms are manifested in carbon or silicon?

Not Hacks. Inside Leaks. Until The Leak Was Plugged....,

DailyMail |   A Wikileaks envoy today claims he personally received Clinton campaign emails in Washington D.C. after they were leaked by 'disgusted' whisteblowers - and not hacked by Russia. Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September.

'Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,' said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com on Tuesday. 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.'

His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.

Murray is a controversial figure who was removed from his post as a British ambassador amid allegations of misconduct. He was cleared of those but left the diplomatic service in acrimony.

His links to Wikileaks are well known and while his account is likely to be seen as both unprovable and possibly biased, it is also the first intervention by Wikileaks since reports surfaced last week that the CIA believed Russia hacked the Clinton emails to help hand the election to Donald Trump.

Murray's claims about the origins of the Clinton campaign emails comes as U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly confident that Russian hackers infiltrated both the Democratic National Committee and the email account of top Clinton aide John Podesta. 

U.S. Won't Provide For Its Own Veterans, But Makes Historic Provisions For Israel

reuters |  The United States and Israel have reached final agreement on a record new package of at least $38 billion in U.S. military aid and the 10-year pact is expected to be signed this week, sources close to the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

The deal will represent the biggest pledge of U.S. military assistance made to any country but also involves major concessions granted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to officials on both sides.

Those include Israel’s agreement not to seek additional funds from Congress beyond what will be guaranteed annually in the new package, and also to phase out a special arrangement that has allowed Israel to spend part of its U.S. aid on its own defense industry instead of on American-made weapons, the officials said.

Israel’s chief negotiator, Jacob Nagel, acting head of Netanyahu’s national security council, arrived in Washington overnight in preparation for a signing ceremony with U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, according to one source familiar with the matter.

Nearly 10 months of drawn-out aid negotiations have underscored continuing friction between U.S. President Barack Obama and Netanyahu over last year's U.S.-led nuclear deal with Iran, Israel's arch-foe. The United States and Israel have also been at odds over the Palestinians.

But the right-wing Israeli leader decided it would be best to forge a new arrangement with Obama, who leaves office in January, rather than hoping for better terms from the next U.S. administration, according to officials on both sides.

another fake bin laden story?

paulcraigroberts |  Osama bin Laden died in December 2001 of renal failure and other health problems, having denied in his last recorded video any responsibility for 9/11, instead directing Americans to look inside their own government. The FBI itself has stated that there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9/11. Bin Laden’s obituary appeared in numerous foreign and Arabic press, and also on Fox News. No one can survive renal failure for a decade, and no dialysis machine was found in the alleged Abbottabad compound of bin Laden, who allegedly was murdered by SEALs a decade after his obituary notices.

Additionally, no one among the crew of the ship from which the White House reported bin Laden was buried at sea saw any such burial, and the sailors sent messages home to that effect. Somehow a burial was held onboard a ship on which there are constant watches and crew on alert at all hours, and no one witnessed it.

Additionally, the White House story of the alleged murder of bin Laden changed twice within the first 24 hours. The claim that Obama and his government watched the action transmitted live from cameras on the SEALs’ helmets was quickly abandoned, despite the release of a photo of the Obama regime intently focused on a TV set and alleged to be watching the live action. No video of the deed was ever released. To date there is no evidence whatsoever in behalf of the Obama regime’s claim. Not one tiny scrap. Just unsubstantiated self-serving claims.

Additionally, as I have made available on my website, witnesses interviewed by Pakistan TV reported that only one helicopter landed in Abbottabad and that when the occupants of the helicopter returned from the alleged bin Laden compound, the helicopter exploded on takeoff and there were no survivors. In other words, there was no bin Laden corpse to deliver to the ship that did not witness a burial and no SEAL hero to return who allegedly murdered an unarmed bin Laden. Moreover, the BBC interviewed residents in Abbottabad, including those next door to the alleged “bin Laden compound,” and all say that they knew the person who lived there and it was not bin Laden.

Any SEAL who was so totally stupid as to kill the unarmed “Terror Mastermind” would probably have been courtmartialed for incompetency. Look at the smiling face of the man Who Killed Bin Laden. He thinks that his claim that he murdered a man makes him a hero, a powerful comment on the moral degeneracy of Americans.

only confederate wattles can rally behind a political process or a political figurehead that's phonier than a $3.00 bill....,

WaPo |  As Insiders readers know, in politics, what’s supposed to happen tends to happen. Elections usually fit into a historical pattern, even though there are always unique circumstances, different candidates and topical issues at play.  President Obama and the Democrats got shellacked in the 2014 midterms.  That is exactly what was supposed to happen. A lot of what happened was already written in the stars. Anyone who wants to talk about a new coalition or a new anything for 2016 should keep this in mind. If you had to bet today, it would be prudent to bet on a Republican winning the White House in 2016.

But back to 2014 and what it all means. The day before the election, my friend and colleague Jonathan Capehart wrote that the “Democrats’ mistake was running away from Obama.” Well, more than 48 hours later, Jonathan has been proven right. At least, he was right in the sense that the Democratic Senate candidates would perhaps be no worse off today if they had run the Obama-friendly campaign that Jonathan advocated. However, I would also add that perhaps the Democratic brand would have suffered less if the Democrats had run honest campaigns, said what they really believed and were truthful about their allegiances. The idea that Michelle Nunn, Alison Lundergan Grimes and the rest of the lot would have been anything other than typical liberal Obama minions was laughable, and voters knew it. In fact, when Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) suggested that he actually stood up to Obama, voters literally laughed. A campaign that relies on pretending, posing, outright deceit and a hope that voters have amnesia is a long shot at best.

Republicans constantly try to blow the whistle on Democrats who campaign to the right and govern to the left. Well, maybe Tuesday’s results will help put an end to that practice and liberate Democratic candidates to tell the truth about who they are and what they believe.

To state the obvious, our political process lacks authenticity. Perhaps the great rebuke of 2014 will convince Democrats that it is easier to just be yourself and hope for the best.

haaretz mistranslates hebrew?!?!?!

haaretz |  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that he was under attack by "anonymous" critics simply because he was defending Israel and its national security interests, but stressed that he "cherished" Israel's alliance with the United States despite the arguments. 

Speaking to Knesset hours after a senior U.S. official was quoted calling him a "chickenshit prime minister," Netanyahu told Knesset: "When there are pressures on Israel to concede its security, the easiest thing to do is to concede. You get a round of applause, ceremonies on grassy knolls, and then come the missiles and the tunnels." 

"I am not prepared to make concessions that will endanger our state," Netanyahu said. "Understand, our national interests, topped by security and the unity of Jerusalem, are not what top the interests of those anonymous forces attacking us, and me personally. I am under attack simply because I am defending the State of Israel. If I didn't stand firm on our national interests, I would not be under attack." 

"I respect and cherish the deep connection with the United States," Netanyahu said. "Since the establishment of the state, we’ve had our arguments and then some. We have seen time after time, year and year, support rising among the American public. The strategic alliance between the stances is continuing and will continue."

clare daly not slobbering over barry o'bama...,

muslim convert leads the drone war..,

WaPo | For every cloud of smoke that follows a CIA drone strike in Pakistan, dozens of smaller plumes can be traced to a gaunt figure standing in a courtyard near the center of the agency’s Langley campus in Virginia.

The man with the nicotine habit is in his late 50s, with stubble on his face and the dark-suited wardrobe of an undertaker. As chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center for the past six years, he has functioned in a funereal capacity for al-Qaeda.

Roger, which is the first name of his cover identity, may be the most consequential but least visible national security official in Washington — the principal architect of the CIA’s drone campaign and the leader of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In many ways, he has also been the driving force of the Obama administration’s embrace of targeted killing as a centerpiece of its counterterrorism efforts.

Colleagues describe Roger as a collection of contradictions. A chain-smoker who spends countless hours on a treadmill. Notoriously surly yet able to win over enough support from subordinates and bosses to hold on to his job. He presides over a campaign that has killed thousands of Islamist militants and angered millions of Muslims, but he is himself a convert to Islam.

His defenders don’t even try to make him sound likable. Instead, they emphasize his operational talents, encyclopedic understanding of the enemy and tireless work ethic.

“Irascible is the nicest way I would describe him,” said a former high-ranking CIA official who supervised the counterterrorism chief. “But his range of experience and relationships have made him about as close to indispensable as you could think.”

legal assassination...,

WaPo | DOMESTIC AND international strictures empower the president to use lethal force, including targeted drone strikes, to protect the country against attack. That is so whether the target is a foreign national or a U.S. citizen; and it is true whether the target is located on a traditional battlefield or ensconced in a foreign country that is unwilling or unable to assist in capture.

President Obama was on solid ground in relying on such authorities when he reportedly ordered a drone strike in Yemen last fall that took the life of Anwar al-Aulaqi. Mr. Aulaqi was a U.S. citizen, a radical cleric and, according to the administration, an operational leader of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. We supported dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Mr. Aulaqi’s father that sought to force the administration to disclose the criteria for placing someone on the “kill list” — a legal gambit that would have invited unprecedented judicial intervention into battlefield decisions in the absence of congressional or legal authorization.

Double "O"