Speaking of Counterpunch, I can appreciate their taking of the high road and pointing to the numerous other reasons to impeach Trump, just as they did when the Republicans wanted to impeach Clinton... I have to agree with Lindorff:
like the one I broke — based upon documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — showing that the Houston FBI office learned or knew of a well-developed plot to conduct “intelligence” on the Houston Occupy movement, identify the leaders, and then “if deemed necessary” to assassinate them using “suppressed” sniper rifle fire, or the story I broke based upon information obtained from a county coroner suggesting that a potential key witness in the case of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was actually murdered by an FBI agent in Orlando, I have to talk about it on RT. No US corporate news organization will touch such stories. Same thing if I want to make the point that the US has been providing funding, arms and training in Syria to anti-Assad fighters of Al Nusra, an affiliate of the Al Qaeda organization. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/28 ... n-agent-2/
No doubt! These are crucial stories but it is also easy to see how easily it fits into Russia wanting to foment internal dissent in the US for their own ends. I don't blame them - as a world power trying to get your glory and booty back, it makes perfect sense. But it seems bad form to allow your radical US journalism to be published by such a state organ. But as always, the real enemy is the corporatez...
Take seven of the biggest: In the case of Apple, 62.3% of its 2016 revenues of $306 billion was earned abroad. For Qualcom, the figure was a whopping 98.6%$ of its $30.6 billion in 2016 revenues. Intel, meanwhile, “only” earned 82% of its $31.7 billion in 2016 revenues from abroad. ExxonMobil, headed by Rex Tillerson until he was named President Trump’s secretary of state, earned $67.3% of its 2016 revenues from abroad (and has been seeking a deal to license close to $1 trillion in gas an oil reserves off Russia’s Siberian coast in the Arctic Ocean), while Johnson & Johnson earned 5.2% of its 2016 revenues abroad. General Electric meanwhile, doesn’t just earn the bulk of its revenues abroad — about 53% in 2016. As of the end of 2014, 55% of its workforce of 305,000 was located abroad — a number that continues to rise. And yet President Obama, without a hint of irony, named GE’s then CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, to be a “jobs czar” for the administration in 2009 (a year later, GE reportedly paid no US taxes, though it paid $3 billion in taxes to foreign jurisdictions in which it operates).
But really, where are they paying their fair share? And is this the progressive praxis now? Get these naughty corporations to pay their proper taxes to pay for much-needed social welfare and infrastructure programs? Maybe those stupid life-hacks are really the only praxis left, because between the rise of dominance of China and Russia, "fairness" in government is out the window. We are entering a time of a brutal divorce of the polity from the people who will be left to continuously fight and run after whatever scraps happen to drop off the table as they brutally rape the last vestiges of life out of the natural world...There was a time when the US at least embraced rhetoric about democracy and transparency...you may think the withering of Masonic influence is a good thing, but you'd be wrong.
Basically a side note at this point but ... I am morbidly amused that the reveal of Harvey Weinstein's use of private intelligence assets against sexual assault victims brings such practices into the open but hasn't seemed to lead to much revisitation of Hillary's alleged involvement in squelching the voices (and tarnishing the reputations) of Bill's accusers. Am I wrong that Weinstein's private intelligence is one of the first such domestic deployments (outside Scientology) made public?
Face it, this place has been destroyed by SLAD the Impaler and her copy-paste Trump Derangement Syndrome. She's turned this entire site into a comment section at Rawstory. Or maybe Dailykos. It's unbearable.
The c&p is worse than anything AD ever dished out and is monomaniacal.
But have fun. I know it's cool to ignore the Big Picture and king for the perfect halcyon days of Pre-Trunp when we could all pretend we were "this close" to a Utopia.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Study: Facebook users 'are insecure, narcissistic and have low self-esteem'
by Mail Foreign Service
krem.com
Posted on September 9, 2010 at 9:17 PM
Using Facebook is the online equivalent of staring at yourself in the mirror, according to a study. Those who spent more time updating their profile on the social networking site were more likely to be narcissists said researchers.
Facebook provides an ideal setting for narcissists to monitor their appearance and how many "friends" they have, the study said, as it allows them to thrive on 'shallow' relationships while avoiding genuine warmth and empathy.
They also tend to use the site for promoting themselves to friends or people they would like to meet, the study concluded.
Researcher Soraya Mehdizadeh from York University in Canada asked 100 students, 50 male and 50 female, aged between 18 and 25 about their Facebook habits.
They all took psychology tests to measure their levels of narcissism, which the study defined as 'a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and an exaggerated sense of self-importance'.
Those who scored higher on the narcissism test checked their Facebook pages more often each day than those who did not.
There was also a difference between men and women. Men generally promoted themselves by written posts on their Facebook page while women tended to carefully select the pictures in their profile.
The findings, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, also suggested that those with low self-esteem also checked their Facebook pages more regularly than normal.
This may not be altogether surprising as it is widely thought, however contradictory it may appear, that narcissism is linked to a deep-rooted lack of self-esteem. Miss Mehdizadeh admitted that not everyone would appreciate her findings.
"I think people get sort of defensive about it - like, 'I don't use my Facebook for that reason' - because it's a label that you don't want to be slapped with," said Mehdizadeh.
Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide and is the world's biggest social networking website, but it has been involved in a number of controversies.
A study earlier this week showed that the grades of students who use Facebook while they study, even if it is only on in the background, are 20% lower on average than those of non-users.
STUDY FINDS LINK BETWEEN FACEBOOK USE, LOWER GRADES IN COLLEGE
SAN DIEGO – College students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for the social networking website, according to a pilot study at one university.
However, more than three-quarters of Facebook users claimed that their use of the social networking site didn’t interfere with their studies.
“We can’t say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying – but we did find a relationship there,” said Aryn Karpinski, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in education at Ohio State University.
“There’s a disconnect between students’ claim that Facebook use doesn’t impact their studies, and our finding showing they had lower grades and spent less time studying.”
While this was a relatively small, exploratory study, it is one of the first to find a relationship between college students’ use of Facebook and their academic achievement.
Typically, Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0.
In addition, users said they averaged one to five hours a week studying, while non-users studied 11 to 15 hours per week.
Karpinski conducted the study with Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University. They presented their research April 16 in San Diego at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association.
The researchers surveyed 219 students at Ohio State, including 102 undergraduate students and 117 graduate students. Of the participants, 148 said they had a Facebook account.
The study found that 85 percent of undergraduates were Facebook users, while only 52 percent of graduate students had accounts.
Students who spent more time working at paid jobs were less likely to use Facebook, while students who were more involved in extracurricular activities at school were more likely to use Facebook.
Science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) and business majors were more likely to use Facebook than were students majoring in the humanities and social sciences.
“Other research had indicated that STEM majors spend more time on the Internet than do other students, so that may be one reason why they are more likely to use Facebook,” Karpinski said.
There were no differences in Facebook use between different members of racial and ethnic groups that were part of the study, or between men and women.
Younger and full-time students were more likely to be Facebook users.
Findings showed that 79 percent of Facebook users claimed it did not have an impact on their academic performance. In open-ended questions on the survey, users claimed they didn’t use Facebook frequently enough to notice an impact, and emphasized that academics were a priority for them.
Karpinski emphasized that the results don’t necessarily mean that Facebook use leads to lower grades.
“There may be other factors involved, such as personality traits, that link Facebook use and lower grades,” she said.
“It may be that if it wasn’t for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.”
Karpinski said it was significant that the link between lower grades and Facebook use was found even in graduate students. She said that graduate students generally have GPAs above 3.5, so the fact that even they had lower grades when they used Facebook -- and spent less time studying – was an amazing finding.
The popularity of Facebook is evident in college lecture halls, Karpinski said. Faculty members who allow students to use laptops in class have told her they often see students on the Facebook site during class.
“It’s not going away anytime soon, and we need to learn more about how Facebook use is affecting students,” she said.
As for herself, Karpinski said she doesn’t have a Facebook account, although her co-author does.
“For me, I think Facebook is a huge distraction,” she said.
Facebook Study Finds Narcissistic Users Spend Most Time On Site
Huffington Post | Catharine Smith First Posted: 08-25-10 02:47 PM
Social networking websites keep people connected with friends, co-workers and acquaintances. But new research suggests that online profiles can also feed narcissistic tendencies and highlights a disconnect between one's real-world personality and curated online identity.
The blog All Facebook reports the findings from a study called "Self-Presentation 2.0: Narcissism and Self-Esteem on Facebook," which investigated 100 Facebook users' profiles and analyzed the subjects' real-world personality traits.
Lead by York University psychologist Soraya Mehdizadeh, researchers randomly selected 50 male and 50 female students to participate. All Facebook describes the methodology:
[A]fter having the students answer questions about their demographics, facebook activity, self-esteem, and narcissism [...] Mehdizadeh looked at the "About Me" section, the profile photo, the first 20 pictures in the "View Photos of Me" section, the notes, and the status updates of each student, rating each page based on extent it self-promotes the user.
The results showed that students with comparatively lower self-esteem scores and higher narcissism scores not only spent spent more time on Facebook, but also tended to "self-promote" more than the students with higher self-esteem scores and lower narcissism scores. Facebook "self promotion" is described by ShockMD.com as "any descriptive or visual information that appeared to attempt to persuade others about one's own positive qualities. For instance posting 'My Celebrity Look-alikes'. Use of picture enhancement etc."
Therefore, the study concludes, a person's Facebook profile does not necessarily provide an accurate representation of the person creating the page. A user who constantly updates his or her status, obsessively uploads new photos and excessively posts or comments on others' walls, for instance, may be exhibiting narcissistic tendencies and battling issues of low self-esteem--or as All Facebook puts it, "those "cool" Facebook friends you have who keep spamming your news feed with constant information about themselves and how awesome they are may not be too awesome after all."
don't come here and act all high and mighty when you dwell in the house of Face....
go home to your preferred creepy playground....I am sure they ALL think the way you do
Nordic a man with the courage of his convictions says....
Still. It's creepy. There's absolutely no way that Facebook should be able to find a connection from me to these people WITHOUT invading someone's computer (maybe not mine, but it doesn't really matter) and STEALING their information from it.
It's fucking creepy and I can't believe they get away with it.
Well yeah, no shit Sherlock, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a person with whom I have absolutely NO network connections of any kind, and the cases I'm talking about are cases where there are absolutely NO network connections like those of which you speak.
The ONLY way they could have suggested this particular person to me would have been by accessing (and maybe I'm using the word "hacking" loosely, but if somebody GETS INTO MY COMPUTER I'm gonna call that "hacking") either my computer or her computer.
As in the other cases I'm talking about.
And it's fucking creepy!
Still. It's creepy. There's absolutely no way that Facebook should be able to find a connection from me to these people WITHOUT invading someone's computer (maybe not mine, but it doesn't really matter) and STEALING their information from it.
It's fucking creepy and I can't believe they get away with it.
No. I see what you're saying, but no. I'm saying the ONLY way this particular person would have been suggested to me is through having access to either my e-mail, or that of the other party. There's simply no other way they could have made the suggestion.
And I've seen it with other people, too.
It's explained through those "aps" and those stupid fucking quizzes and tests they get people to take ("What kind of sandwich are you?") where you must click something that lets them into either your own computer, and thus your address book or your e-mail history, OR your e-mail server, where they mine everyone you've e-mailed.
In my own case, I have never taken one of those stupid quizzes, or downloaded one of the aps. They're idiotic. But everybody else seems to do them all the time. Having no idea they're being probed.
And it's absolutely creepy.
David Fincher just finished shooting a movie about the origins of Facebook. Now why would that be? Why would anyone want to make a movie about the origins of Facebook?
I've had the same thought lately. It's become something that people expect of you, and once that happens, well, it's like a cell phone, you're just "supposed" to have one.
And in my line of work (one of them anyway) you're just expected to be on Facebook. I think it's stupid, it reminds me of AOL circa 1994, only with more pictures, but whatever.
But yeah, it's really taking over and you have some good ideas about this.
What's strange, too, is just after starting this thread here, I was "friended" by a woman who I don't know, some kind of slutty-looking trashy chick trying to "friend" me. Sure, I'm paranoid. And I'm sure she wasn't a chick.
Another thing they do is they try to lure you into some system where you can see who has looked for you. If your'e a guy, they put this little ad up with a succession of extremely sexy hot women and the headline "find out who's looked for you" or something like that. If you're a chick, they do the same with some ridiculously hot looking guy.
The whole thing is creepy.
Well, what's the old saying "behind every great fortune is a great crime" ?
Maybe not a "great" crime in this case, but a crime nonetheless.
Here's the bait I'm talking about. Two of my friends have "friended" her.
Yeah, look at how quickly myspace plummeted in popularity.
This morning I got a "friend request" from an online pharmacy. First one of those ....
It's hard to see people giving it up at this point, tho. It's become a big part of people's lives, moreso than anything I've ever seen except the internet itself, when AOL first came out.
I think the things that Facebook does is going to get absorbed into the common functions of the Internet, so that Facebook itself won't be needed. Kind of the way AOL's functions that were unique to AOL become absorbed into the common experience.
Yeah. Well, the Internet is one big salt-lick. Like any salt lick you can use it to find any group you want.
That's probably why they let us have it.
I was just reading in an alumni mag from USC that there are gaming people, meaning those who make and develop and harvest stats from online games, that law enforcement is already using this info in this way: that people who play these online games conduct themselves in the games the way they do in real life. They've realized that people who are drug dealers have a certain way of communicating with others, and they do this in the game as well. So you can sift through the users of the games and find the drug dealers who are playing.
Nice, huh?
Nordic and Zuckerberg sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Fri Dec 08, 2017 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
As a former fellow film crew member, I recognize that Nordic “acting high and mighty” is more of an act than reality. There’s nothing “high” about low brow personal attacks and nothing less “mighty” than weak whining about others’ opposing political views and posts. Nordic really needs to change his script and adjust his focus.
SLAD’s copy and paste productivity is one of the main reasons I come to RI. For those of us operating mostly outside the US borders, and with less access to your mainstream media, SLAD on RI is a welcomed and convenient source of current commentary on developing news. Those taking offense likely identify with her targets, or simply prefer pictures with captions to lengthy, informative, intellectual articles. Like Facebook's format.
Like Trump’s base, the lower levels of the evolutionary scale howl more.
Returning to the topic of Clinton, it amazes me that a defeated candidate can still command as much attention as a target in the ongoing political pitchforking. It seems Trump hasn’t yet viscerally integrated his own victory enough to move on. At some subconscious level his own insecurities and fear of failure still fuel his hindsight hysterics.
That seems almost typical of family political dynasties always building and rebuilding their surname brand from the eruption of internal corruption. The Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes and now Trumps can’t seem to embrace history’s imprint when it burnishes their brand on their unhappy hide like time’s tattoo – embedding warts and all. Supersensitive insecurity haunts the halls of power.
Nordic » Fri Dec 08, 2017 2:03 pm wrote:Face it, this place has been destroyed by SLAD the Impaler and her copy-paste Trump Derangement Syndrome. She's turned this entire site into a comment section at Rawstory. Or maybe Dailykos. It's unbearable.
The c&p is worse than anything AD ever dished out and is monomaniacal.
But have fun. I know it's cool to ignore the Big Picture and king for the perfect halcyon days of Pre-Trunp when we could all pretend we were "this close" to a Utopia.
Seriously, this board has gotten way out of control. I used to really enjoy coming here, and now it's almost impossible to wade through all the bullshit arguing and insulting and fighting.
It's really getting ridiculous.
It's turning into a real waste of time to come here and try to read anything.
here Nordi is speaking of our beloved Alice no wonder why she DOESN"T post here anymore
The Air Force announced that all flights of fighters and bombers in the United States will be halted on September 14 to allow for a review of procedures.
On Tuesday, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune that he had a “gut feeling” about a new period of increased risk. He said he based his assessment on patterns of terrorists in Europe and intelligence he would not disclose.
Item #3:
Top Cheney Aide: "We're One Bomb Away From Getting Rid" Of Wiretapping Court
I'm tending to think she misspoke, if this is indeed the case. Either that, or in the instance pointed out above she was telling people what they wanted to hear. Seems unlikely that OBL would have been bumped off in the month between these interviews.
I think Edwards is the only Democratic contender who could win a general election against the Republican '08 nominee. But I think most Democrats will only realize that in hindsight.
And you damn well know the Republican power brokers already know that. It's funny how the Dems don't know what the Repubs do.
How more obvious can it be, than the media utterly ignoring Edwards? For months and months now it's been Hillary vs. Obama. I wrote about this a year ago, in December of 2006, on Dailykos, here:
here he is when it was just fine to talk about impeachment
Nordic » Tue Jan 01, 2008 2:49 am
Nordic » Tue Jan 01, 2008 2:49 am wrote:Well if this isn't just a massive cataloguing of Bushco crimes for 2007 alone. Published by AfterDowningStreet.org, it categorizes a mind-numbing and infuriating list of the evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors of Bushco's last year:
I say "mind-numbing" because, well, it's almost like an immediate hit of "scandal fatigue". A person could spend days just reading through all these links.
this one speaks for itself
Nordic » Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:18 pm
Nordic » Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:18 pm wrote:So, Phillip "Centaur", why the fuck did you even start this thread? Just to demonstrate over and over again what an antagonistic asshole you are? Lately you've been dominating these discussions with nothing but antagonism and bullshit.
This entire thread is nothing but bait to get somebody to respond so you can pick a fight with them.
Go chill out and come back some time after you're back on your meds.
Thanks, 8bit, for a really interesting article and post.
Anyone with any sense of the real world knows that there are "good" FBI agents who were doing their damndest to investigate what happened. You can bet there are piles of evidence somewhere at the FBI, which if actually saw the light of day, could turn into a real investigation and draw some real conclusions.
July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage finance company, couldn't find a buyer who would pay $6,900 for the three-bedroom house at 1916 Prospect St. in Flint, Michigan. So broker Raymond Megie, who is handling the foreclosure sale, advised cutting the price to $5,000.
Megie still couldn't sell it. ``There's oversupply,'' he said. The home sold in 2005 for $110,000.
b) are manic depressive and our on a major manic spell.
c) doing blow.
I'll end here for now way too many Nordic ELECTION '08 posts to go through...good thing he really doesn't like me to talk about politics
odd Nordi really liked talking about politics until trump came along ...he talked about Biden....Clinton...Bush....Cheney.....Obama.....Kerry.....on and on and on.....now why would Nordi change his mind and not want to talk about politics anymore...except he really really likes to talk about Clinton and not a bad thing to say about trump
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
Nordic, it's not the same here without you. But poking a hornets' nest only makes it worse. We all bitch about "this place" and then just get on with it, each in their own way, not least because of the many great posters still here. I for one want to hear what you think, about the actual topics (trumprussiaclinton ad nauseum).
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
Elvis » Sat Dec 09, 2017 11:22 am wrote:Nordic, it's not the same here without you. But poking a hornets' nest only makes it worse. We all bitch about "this place" and then just get on with it, each in their own way, not least because of the many great posters still here. I for one want to hear what you think, about the actual topics (trumprussiaclinton ad nauseum).
Yeah, it's a fucking mess...just like everywhere is now for some reason or another...but we soldier on trying to deal with individual and collective rage...where to actually point it so it will do good, I dunno, but am open for suggestions...
That old nut, praxis...
But seriously, I would have no problem with this being revealed as actually a totally fabricated DNC plot...Both parties are now fractured really beyond all repair unless there is some magic moment of culpability on one side or the other...No one here wants to side with the "great patriots of the FBI" and the white savior of Mueller but you have to admit that it is an excellent side show as things slip further and further into a complexity almost ready to push out of our reality sphere...
Was watching some old McKenna lectures for some sort of clue...but of course, his simple message of how the universe is moving towards more and more complexity as opposed to simplicity has to be factored in and hard...There are so many genies out of the bottle now with no signs of containing. There is certainly no political will to restrict the Nuclear one...This stuff about Flynn, KSA and nuclear power should provide all sorts of fodder for analysis, not the least of which is well, the green light on many sides for KSA to start down that path - a kind of admittance of peak oil...but even thought will be lost down the rabbit hole as next week's scandals come down the pipe...
The Hillary Clinton email investigation has rocked this year’s election with its timing, but it’s about to be rocked even more, that is if a report by online news source True Pundit is legitimate.
The new emails include evidence that the Clintons, along with several American politicians, took numerous trips to the U.S. Virgin Islands by way of convicted child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 aircraft. Epstein has his own island there, which has been nicknamed “Orgy Island” and “Sex Slave Island.”
why no mention of trump and his mouth piece Dershowitz on the plane with Epstein????
True Pundit is a pro-Trump fake news site that began publishing on June 9, 2016—the day that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with Kremlin agents in Trump Tower to discuss the Kremlin's provision to the Trump campaign of incriminating material on Clinton.
Rory » Thu Nov 03, 2016 1:54 pm wrote:http://www.inquisitr.com/3672706/hillary-clinton-email-investigation-nypd-source-says-clintons-involved-in-sex-slavery-child-sex-crimes-child-exploitation-and-more/
The Hillary Clinton email investigation has rocked this year’s election with its timing, but it’s about to be rocked even more, that is if a report by online news source True Pundit is legitimate.
The right-wing publication claim the new emails have exposed the Clintons for being involved in such atrocities as child sex crimes, child exploitation, sexual slavery, money laundering, perjury and obstruction of justice to name a few.
FBI: We are moving towards a Hillary Indictment pic.twitter.com/Cn67Ixph1T
— Jack Posobiec ???????? (@JackPosobiec) November 3, 2016
The laptop that authorities needed to officially begin the renewed Hillary Clinton email investigation was recently confiscated from Anthony Weiner through a search warrant. This was just a couple of days ago, and already the device has revealed hundreds of thousands of potentially incriminating emails, and according to a New York Police Department whistleblower who spoke with True Pundit, the content of some of those emails is enough “to put Hillary and her crew away for life.”
“NYPD sources said Clinton’s ‘crew’ also included several unnamed yet implicated members of Congress in addition to her aides and insiders.”
The NYPD officers working the Hillary Clinton email investigation say they are prepared to disclose their findings to the public if the FBI or Justice Department do not make necessary preparations to indict the former First Lady and her accomplices.
“‘What’s in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach,’ the NYPD Chief said. ‘There is not going to be any Houdini-like escape from what we found. We have copies of everything. We will ship them to Wikileaks or I will personally hold my own press conference if it comes to that.'”
According to the Chief, FBI Director James Comey did not reopen the Hillary Clinton email investigation because he wished to skew the election in Donald Trump’s favor, but rather Comey was compelled to rekindle the case due to the alarming contents of the emails contained within Weiner’s laptop.
Sources indicate that close Clinton aide Huma Abedin, along with her estranged husband Anthony Weiner, are currently seeking out immunity agreements.
“If they don’t cooperate they are going to see long sentences,” claims a federal investigator.
In addition to Weiner and Abedin, a number of Congressional members and one Democratic U.S. senator look to be involved in the newly discovered Clinton crimes.
The new emails include evidence that the Clintons, along with several American politicians, took numerous trips to the U.S. Virgin Islands by way of convicted child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 aircraft. Epstein has his own island there, which has been nicknamed “Orgy Island” and “Sex Slave Island.” The reason for these nicknames? Ostensibly, Epstein runs a sex slavery operation in which the world’s elite come to sample male and female minors.
From the evidence the FBI has garnered so far, it’s clear that Hillary flew to the Virgin Islands with Epstein at least six times, while Bill Clinton accompanied the pedophile predator upwards of 20 times.
The Clintons could, of course, claim ignorance of Epstein’s illicit activities if indicted, but thanks to Virginia Roberts, a woman who came forward as one of Jeffrey’s sex slave victims in early 2015, “[Bill] Clinton stayed in one of the many villas on Epstein’s US Virgin Islands estate — where group sex was a ‘regular occurrence.'”
According to Page Six, Roberts also said that the Boeing 727 was decked out with a specially-designed bed where passengers could engage in “kinky, high altitude romps.”
If what Roberts says is true, it’s unlikely the Clintons were oblivious to the underage sex crimes taking place around them.
Additional findings from the revived Hillary Clinton email investigation include the fact that the former Secretary of State and Huma Abedin exchanged reams of emails, many of which contained highly sensitive government-related material, through the website anthonyweiner.com. Weiner reportedly used this website for his own campaign purposes, though the email addresses used therein were not well-known throughout Washington.
From what the FBI now knows about these new emails, it appears numerous people had access to top secret government documents exchanged through an unsecured server via Weiner’s laptop, though it’s not yet clear if these individuals were aware of it or not.
“At one point, FBI sources said, Abedin and Clinton’s classified and top secret State Department documents and emails were stored in Weiner’s email on a server shared with a dog grooming service and a western Canadian bicycle shop.”
It looks as if Clinton and Abedin broke cyber-security protocol habitually. For one thing, Weiner had access to top secret State Department material even though he was not in a position to legally be in that position. Also, any company or individual who was involved in the maintenance of anthonyweiner.com had unrestricted access to thousands upon thousands of classified emails.
There’s really no telling how many people were given a free pass into information of which only those in the highest of governmental positions are supposed to see.
It’s possible the reopened Hillary Clinton email investigation could lead to the end of the woman who so hopes to be the next U.S. president, but that’s what many people thought the first time around. What do you think? Is she going down, or will she prevail? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Seth AbramsonVerified account
(THREAD) It's time to tell the biggest untold story of the 2016 election: how a cadre of pro-Trump FBI agents and intel officers—some active, some retired—conspired to swing the election to Trump. The story involves Flynn, Prince, Giuliani, and others. Hope you'll read and share.
1/ True Pundit is a pro-Trump fake news site that began publishing on June 9, 2016—the day that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with Kremlin agents in Trump Tower to discuss the Kremlin's provision to the Trump campaign of incriminating material on Clinton.
2/ True Pundit would quickly reveal itself as having the same agenda Trump Jr. had when he met with Kremlin agents on the day True Pundit launched: its mission would be to destroy Clinton's candidacy by uncovering incriminating material about her—particularly via her emails.
3/ All articles on True Pundit are published anonymously. The only person publicly associated with the website operates under a pseudonym—"Thomas Paine." (Thomas Paine, a Founding Father of the United States, was instrumental in convincing the colonies to rebel against Britain.)
4/ From June 9, 2016 to June 12, 2016, it seemed clear True Pundit had been started up in a hurry—it published dozens of stories but no original reporting. More than 95% of stories were simply links to other sources, while True Pundit "originals" were two-sentence news summaries.
5/ Many of True Pundit's early news sources were predictable: Breitbart, The Daily Caller, InfoWars, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Free Beacon, Fox News, and The Daily Beast. Breitbart was far and away the most commonly linked-to website at the time.
6/ But True Pundit also, in its first three days, occasionally linked to mainstream news sources like The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC, ESPN, Reuters, The Guardian (UK), The Telegraph (UK), and The Independent (UK).
7/ That said, in its first 72 hours True Pundit also linked to two Russian news sources—RT and Sputnik—an intelligence-oriented site called "Intel News," and several fringe-right publications. A typical link assured readers Clinton would destroy America:
8/ Then, on June 12th, 2016, the Orlando nightclub shooting occurred—and it seemed a switch had been turned on. True Pundit had its story. The site meticulously covered Omar Mateen, the 29 year-old from a moderate Muslim family who killed 49 people at an LGBT club called "Pulse."
9/ It's important to know that of the site's first several dozen stories pre-June 12, only one was both a) not a link to another source, and b) more than two sentences. This story—about the July DNC—claimed True Pundit (just 3 days old) had "police" and "security expert" sources.
10/ It must've seemed odd to any readers of True Pundit in those first 72 hours of operation to read that the Philly publication already had *multiple* sources in the Philadelphia Police Department and *multiple* Philly-based "recognized security expert" sources—but so they said.
11/ But Mateen changed everything. Suddenly True Pundit was publishing what it said were original ("exclusive") stories, all of which relied—or claimed to—on FBI sources. Not just one source, but multiple—and not just random sources, but sources close to the Pulse investigation.
12/ The mystery of this was dispelled almost immediately, when True Pundit wrote the following in an "exclusive" on Mateen after the shooting: "True Pundit has folks who worked for the FBI and other agencies on staff." It then claimed to have "unique insight" into FBI operations.
13/ Whether or not True Pundit really had ex-FBI staff, no reader could possibly know. But what was clear was that True Pundit was obsessed with the FBI, had—at a minimum—some basic knowledge of criminal investigation, and was very, very, angry at the current state of the Bureau:
14/ Two things must be noted here: first, that the complaint True Pundit has about the FBI—that it radically underestimates the threat of Islamist terrorism and values HUMINT too little in fighting terrorism—are exactly the anti-terror complaints Mike Flynn has widely publicized.
15/ Second, if True Pundit had told the truth about itself, it meant (a) the very purpose of the website was to give ex-FBI agents an opportunity to complain about the Bureau, and (b) the site's M.O. in doing so would be to use as sources current FBI agents upset with the Bureau.
16/ Keep in mind that, by June 2016, the FBI had already been investigating Hillary Clinton's emails for eleven months—since July of 2015. Indeed, the FBI's investigation into Clinton's emails had begun at almost exactly the same time Donald Trump announced his presidential run.
17/ Keep in mind, too, that True Pundit was launched less than a month before then-FBI Director James Comey announced—on July 5, 2016—that the Bureau was not going to bring charges against Clinton. By mid-June, current FBI agents would've just learned no charges were forthcoming.
18/ Rudy Giuliani would later describe the anti-Clinton elements at the FBI as being, during Summer/Fall 2016, not just "angry" but "boiling," and not just "boiling" but on the brink of "revolution."
True Pundit appears to have been an outgrowth of that.
19/ So this is where I point out that there was one *other* story—besides the Omar Mateen story—that True Pundit was positively obsessed with (and doing "exclusive" reporting on, using FBI sources) during its first week: Hillary Clinton's emails and the FBI investigation thereof.
20/ Just 96 hours into its existence, True Pundit was running a *multi-part* "exclusive" on an FBI probe the site's authors' friends in the Bureau were conducting. The reports cited "intelligence sources" with extensive knowledge of the FBI investigation.
21/ In "Part 2" of its "exclusive" reporting on the FBI investigation of Clinton's emails, the self-professed ex-FBI agents behind True Pundit quoted sources within the FBI investigation clearly angry at Mrs. Clinton for (they said) withholding her emails.
22/ You have to understand the level of access to current FBI agents True Pundit was then claiming to have: the site, which had started up *less than 100 hours prior*, was claiming to have *exclusive* knowledge of *prior FBI contacts* with the nation's then-most infamous killer.
23/ By June 13, 2016, it was clear that True Pundit was a political outfit: it had quoted from and linked to a Trump press release, and had mercilessly attacked the Democratic candidate for president. Any active FBI agent speaking to True Pundit was—already—a Hatch Act violation.
24/ Here's all the info you need on the Hatch Act.
It applies to the FBI and—while not a criminal statute—a violation of the Hatch Act is a violation of federal law and would get you fired from federal employment immediately (assuming a serious breach).
25/ So here's where things get complicated. Beginning in mid-June 2016, True Pundit switches to all original "reporting" and begins publishing longer stories. It is relentlessly right-wing: anti-immigration, pro-Second Amendment, pro-Trump, virulently anti-Clinton and anti-Obama.
26/ It also takes a hard turn into anti-Clinton fake news within its first week—as the story below demonstrates.
27/ But here's what you *really* need to understand: the FBI quickly became aware of this website—at the highest levels—and *acknowledged*, internally, that the people behind True Pundit had access to intel from *current* FBI agents.
28/ And it *matters* that James Comey was (a) aware of True Pundit, and (b) believed they had sources within the FBI.
29/ Documents acquired via FOIA requests by (of all organizations) Judicial Watch reveal that Andrew McCabe, Comey's deputy, believed that True Pundit had "heavyweight" sources within the FBI. While Comey was skeptical, he *acknowledged* the sources were *definitely* FBI sources.
Moreover, it *matters* that he knew—and he did—that True Pundit was angling for sources *inside* the Clinton probe, and that Comey's deputy thought he had them.
Even *James Comey* was aware of True Pundit.
30/ When McCabe forwarded a True Pundit story to Comey on October 24, 2016, calling its source on Clinton "heavyweight," Comey demurred, saying "This still reads to me like someone not involved in the investigation at all, maybe somebody who heard rumors."
Judicial Watch: New FBI Records Show FBI Leadership’s Conflicts of Interest Discussions on Clinton Email Investigation
31/ The date here matters, as does Comey's response. This was the week Comey ultimately decided to go to Congress with his decision to reopen the Clinton case—and in using the word "still," we hear Comey's anxiety about the possibility details of the Clinton FBI probe would leak.
32/ It's clear from this email that True Pundit was a source McCabe thought active FBI agents on the Clinton case might consider leaking to, and Comey by no means dismissed that possibility. Why does it matter? Because it was *this* fear of a leak that *led* to The Comey Letter.
33/ The New York Times has written that Comey reopened the Clinton investigation—which decision FiveThirtyEight polling appears to confirm cost Clinton the election—because he felt news of "new" Clinton emails (from Anthony Wiener's PC) was "sure to leak."
Justice Dept. Strongly Discouraged Comey on Move in Clinton Emails
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/us/p ... ge_article 34/ So, to recap: on October 24, 2016, Andrew McCabe warns his boss Jim Comey that True Pundit has access to "heavyweight" FBI sources—clearly implying *sources within the Clinton probe*. 72 hours later, Comey writes the "Comey Letter" because he's "sure" probe details will leak.
35/ Things are about to get confusing, so let me just step back and say that from mid-June 2016 to October 2016 True Pundit had become a big deal—they were getting regularly retweeted and discussed by right-wing media outlets. Including—by the way—WikiLeaks. (More on that later.)
36/ So while the fact that True Pundit had routinely published fake news was widely known by October 2016, so was the fact that it was run by men who purported to be ex-FBI and who credibly claimed to have FBI sources. The few times they were *right* were when they had FBI intel.
37/ But understand something else: within 60 days of its creation, True Pundit had become a "darling" of the 600 Russian Twitter accounts that routinely pushed anti-Clinton propaganda as part of the Kremlin's interference campaign. And True Pundit knew it.
Breitbart, other 'alt-right' websites are the darlings of Russian propaganda effort
38/ USA Today: "[Thomas Paine] did not deny playing a part in the Russian network's information operation....'we are flattered to be accused of participating in disinformation campaigns for government because as a startup that's the exact time-tested model we've been emulating.'"
39/ While USA Today wouldn't write about True Pundit until August 2017, the time-period of True Pundit's influence they're discussing—Summer/Fall 2016—is when Paine was proudly "participating in a [Russian] disinformation campaign" but *also* causing the FBI real fear over leaks.
40/ So I think this is a good time for you to hear Thomas Paine's voice. Here's a lengthy interview he gave (of course not giving his name or allowing his likeness to be visible, as he knew—and we'll discuss this more shortly—his operations were illicit).
41/ Paine: "We started True Pundit as a way of doing something—instead of sitting around and complaining—when Clinton was running for president. We figured we would get some of the guys from the old band together—[unintelligible]-type guys and some intel guys we all worked with."
42/ So what these ex-FBI and intel guys did is libel Clinton for the 150 days leading up to the 2016 election. What they specialized in was falsely accusing her of crimes. On October 2, 2016, it was that Clinton had tried to order Julian Assange's murder.
43/ On September 29, 2016, True Pundit's false claim—immediately echoed, like many True Pundit stories, by RT, the Kremlin-backed TV station—was that there was a criminal conspiracy between Clinton and Facebook (ironic now, I know) to steal the election.
44/ In early September 2016, True Pundit claimed, falsely citing NYPD sources—as it often would (and this fact will become important)—that Clinton was wearing an invisible earpiece during a live "town hall" on NBC.
45/ As the election approached, the fake news coming from True Pundit often focused on false claims that Clinton had a major medical condition she was hiding. Again, these claims got spread from True Pundit to Russian media—and True Pundit *knew* about it.
Secret Service Detail: Hillary Clinton Was Drunk Morning of Campaign Rally http://truepundit.com/secret-service-se ... ign-rally/ 46/ The same day True Pundit launched its fake news about a Clinton-ordered drone strike on the founder of WikiLeaks, the New York field office of the FBI took possession of Anthony Wiener's computer from NYPD—this was October 2, 2016. Comey knew the FBI was getting the computer.
47/ Unfortunately, the same FBI field office that had been occasionally leaking to True Pundit about the Clinton email investigation over the summer was the one now in possession of Wiener's computer—so when Comey instructed them to see if it had any new emails, they ignored him.
48/ Here's where I have to incorporate the entirety of an article I wrote last December for The Huffington Post about what the pro-Trump agents in "Trumplandia" (the New York field office of the FBI) did when Comey told them to work on the Wiener computer.
49/ We now know that Wiener's computer had only duplicate Clinton emails on it. But at the time Comey didn't know that. In fact, that's what he wanted his agents to find out—and IT experts will tell you that it wouldn't have taken long to get a sense that that was the situation.
50/ Instead, Comey's agents *sat* on the computer, doing no meaningful work on it—certainly nothing that would confirm or deny whether it had any *new* (let alone inculpatory) evidence on it. Comey didn't find out his agents had done nothing he'd asked them to until late October.
51/ What the New York field office of the FBI *did* do during that period, along with NYPD, was issue threats—via True Pundit—that it would "leak" the *content* of the emails on Wiener's computer (which content wasn't known, of course, as they had no search warrant to search it).
52/ Comey assumed his agents would do one of the following:
(1) Get metadata from the PC to confirm the emails were duplicates; (2) ask Abedin or Wiener—both cooperating witnesses—if the FBI could view the emails; or (3) get a warrant for the emails.
They did *none of these*.
53/ The result was neither NYPD nor the FBI had read the emails on Wiener's PC, but were—according to True Pundit, at least—simultaneously leaking false information to True Pundit about what the content was. They wanted Comey to fear such leaks of false information—and it worked.
54/ On November 2, 2016—a week before the 2016 presidential election—True Pundit published the article below, which is the biggest pile of steaming bullshit dropped on America at any point during the 2016 election season. Every single word of it was false.
BREAKING BOMBSHELL: NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes with Children, Child Exploitation, Pay to Play, Perjury
55/ Immediately—*same day*—Trump's top national security advisor, Mike Flynn, retweeted the article.
Recall that Flynn was receiving undisclosed—*illegally* undisclosed—monies from Russia while advising Trump in the fall of 2015, and dined with Putin in Moscow in December 2015.
56/ Within 48 hours (in other words, as quickly as he could schedule a radio interview) Erik Prince, another Trump national security advisor—who's since admitted to having contact with Mike Flynn during the presidential campaign—spread the fake news via Steve Bannon's Breitbart.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
Was watching some old McKenna lectures for some sort of clue...but of course, his simple message of how the universe is moving towards more and more complexity as opposed to simplicity has to be factored in and hard.
I wish McKenna was still with us. I feel like he'd have an uncanny riff on our trickster acceleration towards the cosmic promised land and so assuage the night terrors of World War Trump. I guess we deserve the literal and naive stellar colonialism of an Elon Musk instead. You get the oracle you deserve.
AD) This is Part 2 of a thread on "True Pundit," the fake-news website—launched by a former FBI agent—that helped swing the 2016 election to Trump by blackmailing James Comey into reopening the Clinton email investigation just before Election Day. Hope you'll read and share.
BREAKING: On November 2, 2016—the day True Pundit threatened to leak fake NYPD-held Clinton emails if Comey didn't indict Clinton—ex-FBI asset Doug Hagmann told Alex Jones that Trump advisor "Rudy Giuliani is behind this information coming from the NYPD."
If you're wondering, as you should be, why Comey hasn't spoken of any of this, it's because a) it's the subject of a nonpublic Inspector General investigation at the FBI (IG Horowitz), and b) it airs the FBI's dirty laundry in public—one thing Comey has steadfastly refused to do.
Hagmann confirms NYPD and pro-Trump FBI agents illegally held onto Clinton servers after being told to destroy them—which illegal handling of evidence let them credibly claim to Giuliani (and Giuliani credibly *leak* to Paine or others) that NYPD had incriminating Clinton emails.
Remember: Giuliani was supposed to be Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security until he suddenly removed himself from contention, saying he wasn't interested (though he had no other job).
That the nomination would've required Senate confirmation and questioning now explains that.
So a Trump and Giuliani ally—someone with no interest in harming Trump or Giuliani, but rather commending them—now confirms Giuliani was either behind the True Pundit leaks that (per the McCabe-Comey email) influenced Comey *or* was himself the source of True Pundit's fake news.
BREAKING/ Follow this breaking news thread for more on the ties between the Trump campaign and the True Pundit story apparently partly responsible for forcing Jim Comey to reopen the Clinton case and swing the election—per FiveThirtyEight polling—to Trump:Seth Abramson added,
BREAKING: On November 2, 2016—the day True Pundit threatened to leak fake NYPD-held Clinton emails if Comey didn't indict Clinton—ex-FBI asset Doug Hagmann told Alex Jones that Trump advisor "Rudy Giuliani is behind this information coming from the NYPD." …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... d7yYB9QsTw You must understand that at the moment pro-Trump/ex-FBI asset Doug Hagmann credited Giuliani for spreading NYPD lies about Anthony Wiener's PC—itself an Obstruction of the then-reopened FBI probe into Clinton's emails—Giuliani had NEVER been associated with the True Pundit story.
Hagmann: "Giuliani is—people better be looking at him really close and listening to what he's saying—because he's behind, responsible for a lot of this info coming from the NYPD segment of the group of patriots forming and pushing against the sold-out political hacks in the FBI."
NOTE/ Yes, there are other ways to identify who runs the "True Pundit" site. I'm familiar with them. And I'm guessing they'll be—or have been—pursued by Mueller, Horowitz, and/or Congress. I don't detail them at length here because it's overkill—they'll happen one way or another.
DOCS5/ To be very clear, it may well be found that there's an explanation for the actions I've described—by Webb, Paine, Flynn, Prince, Bannon, Hannity, Pirro, Kallstrom and others—that's noncriminal. I'm open to the possibility. But clearly the FBI and Congress must investigate.
DOCS4/ Here's the seminal report on "Trumpland," released—ironically—the same day Trump NatSec advisor Erik Prince used Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon's Breitbart to *publish* the threats on the FBI that Trump campaign advisor Giuliani had earlier teased.
'The FBI is Trumpland': anti-Clinton atmosphere spurred leaking, sources say Highly unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton intensified after James Comey’s decision not to recommend an indictment over her use of a private email server https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... nald-trump DOCS3/ (Keep in mind Trump's aides—pre-election—obsessively spread Paine's threats and fake news. Mike Flynn—see Part 1 of this multi-part thread via Tweet #1—did *same-day* True Pundit retweets; Prince went to Bannon's Breitbart to spread it; Giuliani teased it on major media.)
DOCS2/ "Thomas Paine"—True Pundit—has *also* used Twitter to make not-so-veiled threats against a sitting Senator who wouldn't do his bidding. This is the same M.O. he used in March 2017 in threatening to release fake Clinton emails if the FBI didn't fire James Comey immediately.
DOCS1/ Twitter has suspended Thomas Paine of True Pundit multiple times, possibly because he's issued his illegal threats against the FBI using the platform.
Under Twitter's Terms and Conditions, Paine should be *permanently* banned from Twitter for using it to commit crimes. CONCLUSION/ I think the Trump-Russia probe is the biggest news in the world right now and what law enforcement should focus on. But if the GOP, which controls Congress, insists on looking at the FBI, okay, let's dance: let's discuss the domestic conspiracy that stole an election.
1/ In Part 1 of this thread (see below), I discussed how a former FBI agent calling himself "Thomas Paine" launched the fake-news website True Pundit on the same day in June 2016 Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort met with Kremlin agents at Trump Tower Moscow.
2/ There is ample evidence—beyond his law enforcement past—confirming Paine knew the active (pro-Trump) FBI agents who leaked to True Pundit were violating the federal Hatch Act. Paine on several occasions claimed "Deep State" government agents were coming to arrest or kill him.
3/ Besides using a false name, Paine wouldn't allow anyone to videotape or photograph him, appearing for interviews only by Skype and only behind a picture of his namesake—Founding Father Thomas Paine.
After the 2016 election, however, he claimed he was going to reveal himself.
4/ Just like most of the stories he ran during the 2016 campaign, however—most intended to intimidate the then-current FBI brass into extending the Clinton investigation through Election Day, the better to ensure it tainted the vote—Paine's promise to reveal himself was a lie.
5/ As we saw in Part 1, one reason for his refusal to reveal himself was that he planned to do again—and did do again—what he did during the campaign: illegally issue blackmail-style threats against the FBI to get the Bureau to make all the investigative decisions *he* wanted.
6/ Paine's March 2017 threat against the FBI was far worse than his October/November 2016 threat, as it directly aimed to Obstruct Justice by promising to release fraudulent "Clinton emails" if the FBI didn't slow or stop the Trump-Russia probe by firing FBI Director James Comey.
7/ Though the FBI found Anthony Wiener's PC to hold only duplicate Clinton emails the FBI already had—with no evidence of criminal conduct—Paine still falsely claims Comey "confirmed" his November 2017 article on the emails (which article alleged they contained proof of crimes).
8/ Paine pulls this stunt by referring readers to a heavily edited excerpt of his original "bombshell" report—a version that only claims Huma Abedin had Clinton emails on her computer (which is true) rather than that his "NYPD sources" had seen in those emails evidence of crimes.
9/ Following his false boast of having beat the U.S. media to a big story—rather than using fake sources (or fake info from real sources) to try to swing a presidential election by falsely claiming proof of crimes against one of the candidates—True Pundit became a far-right hero. 10/ Paine continues to mythologize himself by falsely implying his life is in danger from Deep State operatives.
In fact, he's merely in danger of being identified by federal authorities and arrested for violation of federal criminal statutes he well knew before violating them.
11/ The question is how federal authorities will identify Paine so they can bring him in for questioning and—possibly—arrest him for threats against the FBI. Some evidence of how agents may seek to do this can be found in Paine's YouTube Skype interviews.
12/ In the Thomas Paine Skype interview linked to in Tweet #11—given to a far-right conspiracy broadcast called "Crowdsource the Truth," hosted by George Webb and Jason Goodman—Thomas Paine reveals that host George Webb knows who he is, and that the two have spent time together.
13/ A far-right YouTube conspiracy theorist, Paine's pal George Webb is best known for reporting to authorities what turned out to be a fake bomb threat against the Port of Charleston in the summer of 2017. Federal authorities may have questioned him then.
14/ But Paine's August 2017 interview (Tweet #11) with "Crowdsource the Truth"—a rare public "appearance" by the mysterious former FBI agent and fake-news purveyor—reveals more about the man than one of his known associates. It also reveals possible connections to Donald Trump.
15/ In the interview, Paine discusses how his "scoop" (fake news about NYPD having seen emails proving Clinton crimes) was stolen from him by Steve Bannon's Breitbart, which conducted an interview on the subject with Bannon pal and top Trump national security advisor Erik Prince.
16/ Discussing Trump advisor Prince's Brietbart interview spreading fake news about Clinton 96 hours before the election—see below—Paine makes a startling admission: "I've come across him [Trump advisor Erik Prince]. He's not a bad guy. He gets a bad rap."
17/ Given that Trump national security advisors Flynn and Prince met several times with Trump campaign CEO Bannon before and after the '16 election—and all three men pushed the True Pundit story just before Election Day—Paine saying he met one of them pre-election is significant.
18/ Remarkably, Paine's performance art-like pretension that his life was in danger after he published his fake-news "bombshell" a week before Election Day includes a claim that while Prince and Bannon were pushing his "report," he was on the run for his life from the Deep State.
19/ As Paine tells Webb (Tweet #11), "When we [True Pundit] broke it [on November 2nd, 2016]...a couple hours after that I said, 'We need to pack up and get the hell out of here for a couple days....because we're all going to end up not just getting in trouble but disappearing.'"
20/ But Paine also revealed an even *more* significant connection to Webb: a connection to James Kallstrom, the former Assistant Director of the FBI. Kallstrom became infamous during the '16 campaign for claiming to have spoken to active FBI agents about their hatred for Clinton.
21/ Kallstrom—for a long time the head of the New York FBI office now called "Trumpland"—spent the campaign implying that agents in that office would illegally leak details of the Clinton investigation to the media or others if Comey didn't indict Clinton.
Meet Donald Trump’s Top FBI Fanboy Trump supporters with strong ties to the agency kept talking about surprises and leaks to come—and come they did.
22/ Kallstrom later tried to walk back his claim, but as the Daily Beast piece linked to in Tweet #20 makes clear—and that piece is so important that it must be read start to finish—Kallstrom claimed to be in contact with "50 people in and out of the FBI" about the Clinton probe.
23/ In his interview with Webb (Tweet #11), Paine reveals Kallstrom (who he calls "Jimmy," and whose house he discusses visiting) is a friend and former boss—meaning that Paine worked in the New York office of the FBI, now known as "Trumpland." Paine confirms this moments later.
24/ Paine's method of confirmation that he's a former FBI agent from the New York office of the FBI comes via discussion of working the infamous TWA 800 case with Kallstrom and others. That case has long been an obsession of far-right conspiracy theorists. http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/only-the-peo ... -800-case/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-dona ... ia=desktop 25/ The TWA 800 case briefly became relevant to the Clinton probe in 2016, as Judicial Watch disclosed documents dealing with whether FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had designated the Clinton probe a "special" investigation as the TWA 800 case had been.
26/ Right-wing conspiracy theorists like Tomi Lahren and Sean Hannity falsely claimed, at the time, that McCabe had used the term to suggest Clinton was receiving special treatment from the FBI.
Of course, the term merely denotes a certain *type* of FBI probe—like TWA 800 was.
27/ Paine's work on one of the FBI's rare "special" investigations does suggest he's approached the Clinton case—from outside the authority of the FBI—as one such investigation. More importantly, he and Kallstrom seem to share an aim—to coerce the FBI into acting against Clinton.
28/ But it's not just Paine and friend/former boss Kallstrom who claimed illegal contact with former and retired FBI agents in the New York field office ("Trumpland") pre-election.
A man Kallstrom describes as a "very good friend" (Daily Beast) did the same thing—Rudy Giuliani.
29/ Per POLITICO— in another story one must read in full—Giuliani embarked on a campaign in the 3 days before Comey wrote his infamous letter to Congress reopening the Clinton probe to, like Kallstrom/Paine, convince Comey leaks would result if he didn't.
30/ What this generates is an ever-widening cabal of related individuals in the orbit of the Trump campaign and/or the New York field office of the FBI ("Trumpland"): Flynn, Prince, Bannon, Giuliani, Kallstrom, and Paine ("True Pundit"). Most of these claim NYPD connections, too.
31/ In writing all this, I need to pause to make one thing clear as an attorney and former investigator: there is a great difference between allegations of bias and proof of corruption. Many FBI agents may make judgments that are read as bias but are *not* evidence of corruption.
32/ For instance, Comey's July 2016 decision not to indict Clinton, and his October 2016 decision to reopen the case, have both been read as "biased" depending upon whether you're speaking to a Democrat or Republican. That *doesn't* mean those actions were evidence of corruption.
33/ Just so, former Mueller agent Peter Strzok can write all sorts of private text messages suggesting he had a bias against Trump—and he's now faced heavy disciplinary action for verbalizing that bias—but in itself those messages would *not* be evidence of corruption at the FBI.
34/ Corruption requires a) actions, and b) bad faith. Strzok's now-disputed action of changing "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless" was an action but was *not* in bad faith if you know *anything* about the criminal justice system whatsoever. I'll explain that briefly here.
35/ Once Strzok had been informed that his boss, Comey, wouldn't be seeking charges against Clinton, the FBI was *obligated* to *not*—in any public statement about that decision not to charge—use legal language to describe Clinton's actions. Why? Because it'd be a firing offense.
36/ While people are right to say Comey likely shouldn't have issued any statement at all when he decided not to charge Clinton, Lynch's recusal—and its terms, which explicitly put Comey in charge of the charging decision—*forced* Comey to do what an FBI agent normally wouldn't.
37/ So, while inadvisable, Comey's statement wasn't in "bad faith"—given he was dealing with the extraordinary role Lynch thrust upon him.
He was acting in a situation essentially without precedent—the DOJ declaring publicly that the FBI would have final word on a prosecution.
38/ But—that said—Comey *would* have been acting in bad faith, indeed would rightly be said to have been trying to influence the election in July 2016, if he had *deliberately* included legal language accusing Clinton of a crime at the time he announced he *wouldn't* charge her.
39/ Strzok's role—once he knew his boss, already in an extraordinary situation, was going to take the extraordinary step of making any public statement at *all*—was to make sure Comey didn't further bend FBI practice by accusing of a crime a person just cleared from prosecution.
40/ "Grossly negligent" is *language from a criminal statute* that had to be *stricken* from Comey's statement lest it seem a transparent ploy to telegraph to voters that Clinton *had* committed a crime even though she wasn't being charged with one. Strzok was right to strike it.
41/ So Comey exhibited neither bias nor corruption, but rather bad judgment; Strzok, bias but not corruption.
42/ So this thread—which is not a response to GOP claims of pro-Clinton bias in the FBI, but a continuation of work I was doing last December at The Huffington Post—is about *corruption* at the FBI. Meanwhile the GOP seeks to transmute "bias" into "corruption" for political gain.
In contrast, the FBI agents who leaked to Giuliani, Kallstrom, and Thomas Paine (True Pundit) were biased *and* corrupt. Their actions clearly violated federal statute.
43/ Unfortunately, the GOP's cynical false equivalence—pretending all bias is per se evidence of corruption, when it doesn't work that way—can make valid accusations of corruption at the FBI look like tit-for-tat. But the facts in this thread are major news, not a political ploy.
44/ So this thread details the investigative steps expected if one follows the credible evidence—if not yet proof—of illegal behavior discussed here. This is different from, say, the dangerous, conclusory "lock-'em-up" language of Trump ally Jeanine Pirro.
45/ Pirro, who regularly interviews/meets privately with Trump—and is a friend/advisor—should be questioned by the FBI. Per The Daily Beast, she publicly appeared with Kallstrom to encourage active FBI agents to illegally leak details of the Clinton probe.
46/ Many reading the news today wonder why certain Fox News personalities now sound like authoritarian monsters—comparing the FBI to the KGB; discussing "cleansing" law enforcement; calling for longtime public servants to be locked up; and demanding an end to any probe of Trump.
47/ It's important to remember that the 2016 election involved two New York City politicians with a) close ties to law enforcement, and b) legal troubles. So the circle of people who were allied with, investigating, or in some cases conspiring against Clinton or Trump was small.
48/ Sean Hannity secretly acted as an advisor to Trump during the 2016 election, so we have no idea what he knows about what Trump is now under investigation for. The same is true with Pirro. And Giuliani, a regular Fox News guest. So the motives of these people are still murky.
49/ In the case of Pirro and Giuliani—as well as regular Fox News guest Kallstrom—there's every reason to think being questioned by the FBI will reveal which agents in Trumpland (the New York office of the FBI) were illegally leaking to the Trump campaign. And who True Pundit is.
50/ What's clear is there was a domestic conspiracy to threaten Comey with illegal and false leaks to get him to reopen Clinton's case and swing the election to Trump. And it worked—the NYT says Comey wrote his infamous letter after becoming "sure" Clinton-probe info would leak.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
There is no original reporting on Abramson’s part. There is no work on his personal website or Medium page to fund. No independent research that he does outside his job that he already (presumably) gets paid to do. He simply reads other people’s work, and then tweetstorms about it. That’s the “journalism” that your donation is funding. Even Donald Trump does a better job of hiding his grifting. At least you get a hat in exchange for his scam—all Abramson gives you in return for your cash is high blood pressure and a dramatic misunderstanding of how this Russian saga is playing out.
Stop retweeting this man, and stop accepting his reading of the news as fact. Click on the story and read it for yourself. Read people who disagree with Abramson. Read people who agree with him. Read people who think that he’s a whackjob. Read everything you can on this topic, but do not give him your hard-earned cash. This Russia story is incredibly complex and no one has all the answers, so anyone who advertises themselves as The Oracle should be treated with skepticism. Don’t let people with no sources draw conclusions for you, especially ones like Abramson who seem to be far more interested in self-promotion rather than effecting real change.
when and where Rory .....when and where...either he said it publicly or he told you that in a private pm...did WR give you permission to publicly expose a pm he sent to you?
so funny Rory posting a WP MSM article to argue his point I thought you hated MSM Rory.....and is Paste considered MSM
WR didn't seem to think that way when he wrote this about an OP I started
Re: ICIJ releases THE PARADISE PAPERS Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Nov 05, 2017 2:56 pm This is such a well-timed masterstroke of delivery and timing, I can't help but think: "There's probably going to be another mass shooting tonight."
Let us pray this makes the monday morning news cycle, it's dynamite stuff.
WR didn't seem to think that way when he wrote this about another OP I started
Wombaticus Rex » Fri Nov 10, 2017 11:09 am wrote:This is one of the best thread titles of 2017, I'm oddly fine with it. OP was a well-done piece, to boot. Burliegh was pretty restrained.
WR definitely disagrees with stuff I post sometime he gets a laugh out of it but NO where have I found him saying what you have posted
To our knowledge, the only people who could possibly be in possession of the leaked transcript are Veselnitskaya herself, and the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
dies-laughing.jpg
Palmer Report always delivers the LULZ
If he feels that way so be it but so far I have not found proof of your statement Rory ...please provide proof
every thing Seth Abramson said is true ...unlike what you have said ....quit changing the subject
please list all the lies you have found in Seth's posts Rory, it is very easy every point is numbered ......PLEASE
What you don't like Seth exposing your fav TruePundit? what are you afraid of?
you know who lies all the time? I can see why you would support him
5 1/2 lies a day
liars begat liars
sexual predators begat child molesters
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
Study: Facebook users 'are insecure, narcissistic and have low self-esteem'
by Mail Foreign Service
krem.com
Posted on September 9, 2010 at 9:17 PM
Using Facebook is the online equivalent of staring at yourself in the mirror, according to a study. Those who spent more time updating their profile on the social networking site were more likely to be narcissists said researchers.
Facebook provides an ideal setting for narcissists to monitor their appearance and how many "friends" they have, the study said, as it allows them to thrive on 'shallow' relationships while avoiding genuine warmth and empathy.
They also tend to use the site for promoting themselves to friends or people they would like to meet, the study concluded.
Researcher Soraya Mehdizadeh from York University in Canada asked 100 students, 50 male and 50 female, aged between 18 and 25 about their Facebook habits.
They all took psychology tests to measure their levels of narcissism, which the study defined as 'a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and an exaggerated sense of self-importance'.
Those who scored higher on the narcissism test checked their Facebook pages more often each day than those who did not.
There was also a difference between men and women. Men generally promoted themselves by written posts on their Facebook page while women tended to carefully select the pictures in their profile.
The findings, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, also suggested that those with low self-esteem also checked their Facebook pages more regularly than normal.
This may not be altogether surprising as it is widely thought, however contradictory it may appear, that narcissism is linked to a deep-rooted lack of self-esteem. Miss Mehdizadeh admitted that not everyone would appreciate her findings.
"I think people get sort of defensive about it - like, 'I don't use my Facebook for that reason' - because it's a label that you don't want to be slapped with," said Mehdizadeh.
Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide and is the world's biggest social networking website, but it has been involved in a number of controversies.
A study earlier this week showed that the grades of students who use Facebook while they study, even if it is only on in the background, are 20% lower on average than those of non-users.
STUDY FINDS LINK BETWEEN FACEBOOK USE, LOWER GRADES IN COLLEGE
SAN DIEGO – College students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for the social networking website, according to a pilot study at one university.
However, more than three-quarters of Facebook users claimed that their use of the social networking site didn’t interfere with their studies.
“We can’t say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying – but we did find a relationship there,” said Aryn Karpinski, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in education at Ohio State University.
“There’s a disconnect between students’ claim that Facebook use doesn’t impact their studies, and our finding showing they had lower grades and spent less time studying.”
While this was a relatively small, exploratory study, it is one of the first to find a relationship between college students’ use of Facebook and their academic achievement.
Typically, Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0.
In addition, users said they averaged one to five hours a week studying, while non-users studied 11 to 15 hours per week.
Karpinski conducted the study with Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University. They presented their research April 16 in San Diego at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association.
The researchers surveyed 219 students at Ohio State, including 102 undergraduate students and 117 graduate students. Of the participants, 148 said they had a Facebook account.
The study found that 85 percent of undergraduates were Facebook users, while only 52 percent of graduate students had accounts.
Students who spent more time working at paid jobs were less likely to use Facebook, while students who were more involved in extracurricular activities at school were more likely to use Facebook.
Science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) and business majors were more likely to use Facebook than were students majoring in the humanities and social sciences.
“Other research had indicated that STEM majors spend more time on the Internet than do other students, so that may be one reason why they are more likely to use Facebook,” Karpinski said.
There were no differences in Facebook use between different members of racial and ethnic groups that were part of the study, or between men and women.
Younger and full-time students were more likely to be Facebook users.
Findings showed that 79 percent of Facebook users claimed it did not have an impact on their academic performance. In open-ended questions on the survey, users claimed they didn’t use Facebook frequently enough to notice an impact, and emphasized that academics were a priority for them.
Karpinski emphasized that the results don’t necessarily mean that Facebook use leads to lower grades.
“There may be other factors involved, such as personality traits, that link Facebook use and lower grades,” she said.
“It may be that if it wasn’t for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.”
Karpinski said it was significant that the link between lower grades and Facebook use was found even in graduate students. She said that graduate students generally have GPAs above 3.5, so the fact that even they had lower grades when they used Facebook -- and spent less time studying – was an amazing finding.
The popularity of Facebook is evident in college lecture halls, Karpinski said. Faculty members who allow students to use laptops in class have told her they often see students on the Facebook site during class.
“It’s not going away anytime soon, and we need to learn more about how Facebook use is affecting students,” she said.
As for herself, Karpinski said she doesn’t have a Facebook account, although her co-author does.
“For me, I think Facebook is a huge distraction,” she said.
Facebook Study Finds Narcissistic Users Spend Most Time On Site
Huffington Post | Catharine Smith First Posted: 08-25-10 02:47 PM
Social networking websites keep people connected with friends, co-workers and acquaintances. But new research suggests that online profiles can also feed narcissistic tendencies and highlights a disconnect between one's real-world personality and curated online identity.
The blog All Facebook reports the findings from a study called "Self-Presentation 2.0: Narcissism and Self-Esteem on Facebook," which investigated 100 Facebook users' profiles and analyzed the subjects' real-world personality traits.
Lead by York University psychologist Soraya Mehdizadeh, researchers randomly selected 50 male and 50 female students to participate. All Facebook describes the methodology:
[A]fter having the students answer questions about their demographics, facebook activity, self-esteem, and narcissism [...] Mehdizadeh looked at the "About Me" section, the profile photo, the first 20 pictures in the "View Photos of Me" section, the notes, and the status updates of each student, rating each page based on extent it self-promotes the user.
The results showed that students with comparatively lower self-esteem scores and higher narcissism scores not only spent spent more time on Facebook, but also tended to "self-promote" more than the students with higher self-esteem scores and lower narcissism scores. Facebook "self promotion" is described by ShockMD.com as "any descriptive or visual information that appeared to attempt to persuade others about one's own positive qualities. For instance posting 'My Celebrity Look-alikes'. Use of picture enhancement etc."
Therefore, the study concludes, a person's Facebook profile does not necessarily provide an accurate representation of the person creating the page. A user who constantly updates his or her status, obsessively uploads new photos and excessively posts or comments on others' walls, for instance, may be exhibiting narcissistic tendencies and battling issues of low self-esteem--or as All Facebook puts it, "those "cool" Facebook friends you have who keep spamming your news feed with constant information about themselves and how awesome they are may not be too awesome after all."
don't come here and act all high and mighty when you dwell in the house of Face....
go home to your preferred creepy playground....I am sure they ALL think the way you do
Nordic a man with the courage of his convictions says....
Still. It's creepy. There's absolutely no way that Facebook should be able to find a connection from me to these people WITHOUT invading someone's computer (maybe not mine, but it doesn't really matter) and STEALING their information from it.
It's fucking creepy and I can't believe they get away with it.
Well yeah, no shit Sherlock, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a person with whom I have absolutely NO network connections of any kind, and the cases I'm talking about are cases where there are absolutely NO network connections like those of which you speak.
The ONLY way they could have suggested this particular person to me would have been by accessing (and maybe I'm using the word "hacking" loosely, but if somebody GETS INTO MY COMPUTER I'm gonna call that "hacking") either my computer or her computer.
As in the other cases I'm talking about.
And it's fucking creepy!
Still. It's creepy. There's absolutely no way that Facebook should be able to find a connection from me to these people WITHOUT invading someone's computer (maybe not mine, but it doesn't really matter) and STEALING their information from it.
It's fucking creepy and I can't believe they get away with it.
No. I see what you're saying, but no. I'm saying the ONLY way this particular person would have been suggested to me is through having access to either my e-mail, or that of the other party. There's simply no other way they could have made the suggestion.
And I've seen it with other people, too.
It's explained through those "aps" and those stupid fucking quizzes and tests they get people to take ("What kind of sandwich are you?") where you must click something that lets them into either your own computer, and thus your address book or your e-mail history, OR your e-mail server, where they mine everyone you've e-mailed.
In my own case, I have never taken one of those stupid quizzes, or downloaded one of the aps. They're idiotic. But everybody else seems to do them all the time. Having no idea they're being probed.
And it's absolutely creepy.
David Fincher just finished shooting a movie about the origins of Facebook. Now why would that be? Why would anyone want to make a movie about the origins of Facebook?
I've had the same thought lately. It's become something that people expect of you, and once that happens, well, it's like a cell phone, you're just "supposed" to have one.
And in my line of work (one of them anyway) you're just expected to be on Facebook. I think it's stupid, it reminds me of AOL circa 1994, only with more pictures, but whatever.
But yeah, it's really taking over and you have some good ideas about this.
What's strange, too, is just after starting this thread here, I was "friended" by a woman who I don't know, some kind of slutty-looking trashy chick trying to "friend" me. Sure, I'm paranoid. And I'm sure she wasn't a chick.
Another thing they do is they try to lure you into some system where you can see who has looked for you. If your'e a guy, they put this little ad up with a succession of extremely sexy hot women and the headline "find out who's looked for you" or something like that. If you're a chick, they do the same with some ridiculously hot looking guy.
The whole thing is creepy.
Well, what's the old saying "behind every great fortune is a great crime" ?
Maybe not a "great" crime in this case, but a crime nonetheless.
Here's the bait I'm talking about. Two of my friends have "friended" her.
Yeah, look at how quickly myspace plummeted in popularity.
This morning I got a "friend request" from an online pharmacy. First one of those ....
It's hard to see people giving it up at this point, tho. It's become a big part of people's lives, moreso than anything I've ever seen except the internet itself, when AOL first came out.
I think the things that Facebook does is going to get absorbed into the common functions of the Internet, so that Facebook itself won't be needed. Kind of the way AOL's functions that were unique to AOL become absorbed into the common experience.
Yeah. Well, the Internet is one big salt-lick. Like any salt lick you can use it to find any group you want.
That's probably why they let us have it.
I was just reading in an alumni mag from USC that there are gaming people, meaning those who make and develop and harvest stats from online games, that law enforcement is already using this info in this way: that people who play these online games conduct themselves in the games the way they do in real life. They've realized that people who are drug dealers have a certain way of communicating with others, and they do this in the game as well. So you can sift through the users of the games and find the drug dealers who are playing.
Nice, huh?
Nordic and Zuckerberg sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g
Wow. SLAD your responses prove how utterly, obsessively insane you are.
First you accuse me of being in love with FB for some bizarre reason ...
When Jeff Wells himself (remember him) only posts at a FB now and never EVER POSTS HERE.
Methinks you might have abandonment issues regarding that, and him, which you are projecting into me.
Then in your next post you went back though 11 YEARS OF MY POSTS to find ones that might somehow embarrass me.
How long did that take? How many sleepless nights of searching 11 YEARS OF MY POSTS?
You are out of your fucking mind.
And you have pretty much let Donald Trump destroy your mind. Your hysteria is, well, sad. Because you are possibly the most miserable person imaginable -- one obsessed every waking hour with something you cannot control, obsessed with a human being who you've never met and who doesn't know you exist.
It's like you're a stalker of the most pathological variety, the one who has no other life, and who can't even harass the focus of their obsession into noticing them.
You're deeply ill.
Which is honestly sad because you used to be an amazing person.
You really need to get your life back.
This is just seriously bizarre behavior on your part.
Just tonight my son was asking me about "hell". I told him that people experience hell right here on earth, in these lifetimes. People who cannot love, people who are consumed with hatred. People like you.
Your job should be to get yourself out of hell.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
but he demands purity!!!!
