The WORST Part of the Epstein Case - #PropagandaWatch

Corbett Report

SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=32026 

According to the dinosaur media, the worst part about the exposure of Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking and high-level blackmail operation is that it bolsters conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking and elite corruption. Newsflash: they're trying to gaslight you. Don't fall for it for a second.

The Revelations of WikiLeaks: No. 4—The Haunting Case of a Belgian Child Killer and How WikiLeaks Helped Crack It

Elizabeth Vos
Consortium News

Elizabeth Vos reviews the infamous legal case of Marc Dutroux and why it engendered public distrust in the institutions of government.

This is the fourth article in a series that is looking back on the major works of the publication that has altered the world since its founding in 2006. The series is an effort to counter mainstream media coverage, which is ignoring WikiLeaks' work, and is instead focusing on Julian Assange's personality. It is WikiLeaks' uncovering of governments' crimes and corruption that set the U.S. after Assange and which ultimately led to his arrest on April 11. In this article by Consortium News contributor Elizabeth Vos, originally published by her in 2017 on Disobedient Media, Vos looked at how WikiLeaks helped uncover evidence that showed Belgian case was part of a politically-protected child sex trafficking network. The Belgian case takes on added relevance in the wake of the arrest of financier Jeffery Epstein for alleged sex trafficking of children with allegations of Epstein's connections to powerful intelligence agencies. 
 
The case of notorious homicidal pedophile Marc Dutroux, now serving a life sentence in Belgium, is infamous for the deep depravity of the crimes that were committed and witnessed. Evidence emerged twice in the case, first in legal proceedings, secondly by the publication of many of the prosecution's records by WikiLeaks in 2009. 

The case was marked by the extreme suppression of evidence in what many have called a coverup perpetrated by the Belgian establishment. The episode is a definitive example of the exposure of deep judicial and political corruption leading to widespread public distrust in the legitimacy of their institutions of government. This sentiment has been echoed most recently in the U.S., where the primary rigging in 2016 by the Democratic National Committee left many feeling that the rule of law has come to mean little in the face of an utterly corrupt establishment that has become unaccountable to the public.

The Dutroux scandal set a precedent of mass public protest in response to such abuses, evident last year (2016) in South Korea's response to the scandal surrounding President Park Geun-hye and her advisor Choi Soon-Sil. 

It took the better part of a decade for the Belgian legal system to convict Marc Dutroux in 2004 for the mid-1990s kidnapping and rape of six girls, four of whom were murdered. The case was infamous for an inexplicably high number of mysterious deaths, suppression of evidence by the police, and numerous accounts from witnesses of extreme abuse perpetrated by a well-connected, violent pedophile ring.

The case prompted roughly 300,000 Belgians to take to the streets in 1996 in solidarity with the victims in "The White March," where protesters adopted a color that in Belgium is a sign of hope.

The Dutroux Affair left such deep scars on the consciousness of the Belgian population that roughly one third of Belgians who shared the surname Dutroux with the accused had their names legally changed. Despite the case having been legally concluded, many years later it is apparent that numerous significant elements of the important case remain unresolved. 

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See also:

The Eurocrats and Marc Dutroux I

The Eurocrats and Marc Dutroux II: A Judge, a King, a Psychopath and His Lover

The Eurocrats and Marc Dutroux III: Satanic Signs

The Eurocrats and Marc Dutroux IV: Underworld Justice

‘Sad sight’, ‘disgrace’ to see French minister caught throwing lavish parties on taxpayer money

Comment: Hardly shocking. This happens across the length and breadth of the European Union elite. It's merely business as usual. No wonder Britain wants to separate. Lying about it is also par for the (main) course.

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RT

A senior official in France finds himself embroiled in controversy after claims he used public funds to throw lavish parties with vintage wine and exquisite meals. His attitude leaves a stain on French politics, analysts told RT. 

Ecology Minister Francois de Rugy often campaigns for government transparency and has criticized other politicians involved in financial scandals. He got a taste of his own medicine earlier this week when investigative website Mediapart alleged that he hosted more than 10 luxurious dinner parties in which the guests enjoyed lobster, as well as fine wine and champagne – all paid for with taxpayer money. This reportedly took place when de Rugy was the head of the lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly.

The scandal prompted calls for de Rugy to resign, which he refused to do. He dismissed the story as a “grotesque” smear, claiming he does not eat lobster due to a “shellfish allergy” and avoids champagne because it gives him “a headache.”

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Did Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein Work For Mossad?

Comment: In a word: Yes.  Mossad are knee-deep in all kinds of disgusting activities, much like many of our intelligence agencies.

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Philip Giraldi
The American Herald

The extent of Israeli spying directed against the United States is a huge story that is only rarely addressed in the mainstream media. The Jewish state regularly tops the list for ostensibly friendly countries that aggressively conduct espionage against the U.S. and Jewish American Jonathan Pollard, who was imprisoned in 1987 for spying for Israel, is now regarded as the most damaging spy in the history of the United States.
 
Last week I wrote about how Israeli spies operating more-or-less freely in the U.S. are rarely interfered with, much less arrested and prosecuted, because there is an unwillingness on the part of upper echelons of government to do so.

I cited the case of Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Hollywood movie producer who had a secret life that included stealing restricted technology in the United States to enable development of Israel's nuclear weapons program, something that was very much against U.S. interests. Milchan was involved in a number of other thefts as well as arms sales on behalf of the Jewish state, so much so that his work as a movie producer was actually reported to be less lucrative than his work as a spy and black-market arms merchant, for which he operated on a commission basis. 

That Milchan has never been arrested by the United States government or even questioned about his illegal activity, which was well known to the authorities, is just one more manifestation of the effectiveness of Jewish power in Washington.
 
A far more compelling case involving possible espionage with major political manifestations has just re-surfaced. I am referring to Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire Wall Street "financier" who has been arrested and charged with operating a "vast" network of underage girls for sex, operating out of his mansions in New York City and Florida as well as his private island in the Caribbean, referred to by visitors as "Orgy Island." Among other high-value associates, it is claimed that Epstein was particularly close to Bill Clinton, who flew dozens of times on Epstein's private 727. 

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The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire (Documentary)

Independent POV

At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance. 

 

The Spider's Web was written, directed and produced by Michael Oswald, you can sponsor his future films on Liberapay (supports one time donations) and Patreon: https://liberapay.com/IndependentPOV https://www.patreon.com/independentdo... 

 

Share this documentary with your friends, and ask sites to feature it:  

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6483026/ 

 

The Spider's Web was substantially inspired by Nicholas Shaxson's book Treasure Islands you can read an extract of it here: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardi... 

 

Translate this documentary here on youtube or contact us for the .srt file 

 

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For those interested to learn more about tax justice and financial secrecy, read about the Tax Justice Network's campaigning and regular blogs - become part of the movement for change and listen to the Tax Justice Network's monthly podcast/radio show the Taxcast https://www.taxjustice.net/taxcast/ 

 

Review on Filmotomy: https://filmotomy.com/the-spiders-web... 

 

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German Version: https://youtu.be/1ZZR8vBKqwc 

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Subtitles: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Korean, Hungarian, English, Turkish, Portugese.

Sweden to reopen rape case against WikiLeaks' Assange

Comment: They are intent on making Assange an example, one way or another. 

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Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish prosecutors said Monday they are reopening a rape case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a month after he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. They said they will seek his extradition after he has served his 50-week prison term in Britain for jumping bail.

va-Marie Persson, Sweden's deputy director of public prosecutions, told a news conference in Stockholm that "there is still a probable cause to suspect that Assange committed a rape." She added: "It is my assessment that a new questioning of Assange is required."

Swedish prosecutors filed preliminary charges — a step short of formal charges — against Assange after he visited the country in 2010, following complaints from two Swedish women who said they were the victims of sex crimes committed by Assange.

A case of alleged sexual misconduct was dropped in 2017 when the statute of limitations expired. That left a rape allegation, but officials couldn't pursue it because Assange was living at the embassy and there was no prospect of bringing him to Sweden.

The statute of limitations on that case expires in August 2020. Assange has denied wrongdoing, asserting that they were politically motivated and that the sex was consensual. Persson said a European arrest warrant will be issued for Assange. The Swedish move would leave British authorities to decide whether to extradite Assange to Sweden or to the United States, where he is wanted separately for allegedly hacking into a Pentagon computer.

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‘Still too much’: Clintons’ speaking tour prices slashed, available for less than $14

RT

Demand for tickets to Bill and Hillary Clinton's speaking tour has been so sluggish that organizers have had to slash prices to get bums on seats. It's almost as if they're a spent political force that no one wants to listen to.

You may not have heard, but the the former president and the twice-failed presidential candidate have been touring North America speaking to audiences about their careers and "where we go from here."

The promotional material for 'An Evening With The Clintons' promises "a one-of-a-kind conversation with two individuals who have helped shape our world and had a front seat to some of the most important moments in modern history."

However, it seems that the public doesn't have much interest in hearing what the Clintons have to say. Mercifully, Sunday's event in Las Vegas is the final show before the tour finally wraps up.
Tickets can be purchased for less than $14. Saturday evening's show in Los Angeles saw prices drop as low as $6, while tickets for Friday's event in Seattle could be picked up for $20. It's a far cry from when Hillary used to reportedly command $275,000 to make speeches to Wall Street firms.
Even these bargain-basement prices are far too steep for many on social media, however, as people seem perplexed by the fact that anyone is willing to pay any amount of money to see the Clintons.

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The Delusional Futurism Of “Liberal World Order” Academics

Brandon Smith

Perhaps this is an overly broad generalization, but I feel there is an almost universal feeling among the public that there is something intrinsically annoying about academia. The source of this annoyance is up for debate, but I believe it stems from the image academics project versus the reality of their personal character and intent. Your average university approved academic will say that some people find them distasteful because they are “so smart”, and this makes others envious. I would say it’s the opposite – the average academic is actually quite ignorant, but brandishes a false image of being a genius. This is why I often refer to them as “academic idiots”.

Fake intelligence and faux wisdom are like sandpaper to people’s exposed nerves, and the average person is not as dumb as academics think they are.

At the top of the fraudulent academic totem pole are what I would call the “academic philosophers”; the gatekeepers, the people who pontificate regularly on the meaning of life and society while living the most charmed life one can imagine. These are people who in most cases come from upper class backgrounds. They have been provided for every waking moment of their existence. They have had every door opened for them by someone else on the path to success, and have experienced little to no struggle or suffering in the whole of their time on this Earth. And yet, they somehow deem themselves expertly qualified to comment on the human condition.

It should come as no surprise that the ideas these academics develop tend to deny concrete reality. They seek to pursue agendas that are fanciful at best and would be ultimately destructive if ever applied in the real world.

I find this to be common with many philosophers, not just today but throughout history. The venerated Plato was such a person; the youngest son of wealthy aristocratic parents who was required to do very little in early life but ponder. The trials surrounding his friend Socrates aside, Plato never abandoned the notion of elitist rule over society. Plato’s Republic is a shrine to the elitist model, imagining a world governed essentially by academics – People born with superior intellectual abilities and who were destined to rule over the rest of us as benevolent demigods.

It’s a funny coincidence that supposedly objective elitist academics always come to the conclusion that THEY are the best equipped people to manage society.

The academic cabal is not entirely naive, however. They have realized over time that their sales pitch of an intellectual priest class and Utopian pyramid schemes are not very effective, and they have opted to switch narratives. The new narrative is one of inevitability; the inevitability of socialism, the inevitability of globalism and the inevitability of algorithmic automation.

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The Christchurch Shooting and the Normalization of Anti-Muslim Terrorism

Whitney Webb

Mint Press News

The real forces responsible for the destruction of many Muslim-majority countries and the current chaos present in many Western countries are not generated by civilian populations or religions but instead by the global oligarchy that engineers and profits from this chaos.

 

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND — What is without question the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history took place on Friday when shooters, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant among them, opened fire at two Christchurch mosques. Four, including Tarrant, have been arrested for the heinous act, which claimed at least 49 innocent lives. Tarrant was responsible for killing more than 40 victims, among them several children, in a rampage he live-streamed on Facebook, sending chills throughout the Muslim community, particularly Muslims living in Western countries.

Tarrant’s motives and ideology, laid bare in a 74-page manifesto, show a concern over the fertility rates of non-white groups as well as the immigration of non-whites to countries like New Zealand and Australia, which he likened to an “invasion” that threatened the white majority in those countries. However, Tarrant — in his ignorance — failed to grasp that many of the Muslim immigrants he targeted had come to New Zealand after fleeing Western-backed invasions, occupations, or persecution in their home countries.

Notable among Tarrant’s views is the fact that he is a clear ethno-nationalist, promoting his view that different ethnic groups must be kept “separate, unique, undiluted in [sic] unrestrained in cultural or ethnic expression and autonomy.” Tarrant also claimed that he doesn’t necessarily hate Muslims and only targeted those Muslims {i.e., immigrants) that chose “to invade our lands, live on our soil and replace our people.” 

He also stated that he chose to target Muslims because “Islamic nations, in particular, have high birth rates, regardless of race or ethnicity” and to satiate “a want for revenge against Islam for the 1,300 years of war and devastation that it has brought upon the people of the West and other peoples of the world.” His views are remarkably similar to those of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, which is unsurprising given that Tarrant named him as an inspiration for the shooting.

Though many — in the hours after the shooting — have sought to place blame and point fingers at notable demagogues like President Donald Trump or “counter-jihad” alt-right figures like Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl, it is important to place Tarrant’s motivations in context. 

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Blackmail, Balderdash and the Brexit that Wasn’t

Tom Luongo

After a lot of drama, British Prime Minister Theresa May came back from Brussels with a breakthrough on Brexit.

Only it wasn’t. 

While the changes to the protocol that governs the implementation of the Irish Backstop are an improvement they are far fro enough to allay the rightful fears of Brexiteers and the Northern Irish.

From the beginning of this process, the EU has been in blackmail mode. They’ve made it clear that they would not negotiate in good faith or even at all. That much has been clear. 

The biggest question has been whether May herself was working in the British people’s best interest or was she simply a stalking horse for further EU integration of the entire continent of Europe.

Never forget that the EU has imperial ambitions. Those that have been its architects saw it as regaining the mantle of the center of the world as the U.S. bankrupts itself maintaining an empire around the world, fighting against the rise of Russia and China.

It sits in the weeds, making byzantine bureaucratic law and building both a fiscal and political union through these under-handed back doors.

And the people of Europe have woken up to it. The Brits voted to leave the EU because of this. 

Euroskeptic parties are rising across Europe. The latest rebuke of the EU came in Austria’s Salzburg, a traditional center-left stronghold just voted for a Lega-style nationalist/populist majority.

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The Integrity Initiative And The British Roots of The Deep State: How The Round Table Infiltrated America

Matthew J.L. Ehret
Sott.net 

With the near weekly revelations that the British Foreign Office, MI6, and GCHQ have been behind the long standing agenda to undermine the Presidency of Donald Trump and undo the peaceful alliance between nationalist leaders in America, Russia, China and elsewhere, a new focus on the British hand in undermining the United States has become a serious thought for many citizens. In the first week of the new year, fuel was added to this fire when internal memos were leaked from the British-run Integrity Initiative featuring a startling account of the techniques deployed by the anti-Russian British operation to infiltrate American intelligence institutions, think tanks and media.

For those who may not know, the Integrity Initiative is an anti-Russian propaganda outfit funded to the tune of $140 million by the British Foreign office. The January 2019 leak, featuring documents dated to the early period of Trump's election, demonstrate that this organization, already active across Europe promoting anti-Russian PR and smearing nationalist leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn, was intent on spreading deeply into the State Department and setting up "clusters" of anti-Trump operatives. The documents reveal high level meetings that Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly had with former Trump Advisor Sebastien Gorka, McCain Foundation director Kurt Volker, Pentagon PR guru John Rendon among many others.

The exposure of the British hand behind the scenes affords us a unique glimpse into the real historical forces undermining America's true constitutional tradition throughout the 20^th century, as Mueller/the Five Eyes/Integrity Initiative are not new phenomena but actually follow a modus operandi set down for already more than a century. One of the biggest obstacles to seeing this modus operandi run by the British Empire is located in the belief in a mythology which has become embedded in the global psyche for over half a century and which we should do our best to free ourselves of. 

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The Ruling Elites Love How Easily We're Distracted and Turned Against Each Other

Charles Hugh-Smith
oftwominds.com 

No wonder the ruling elites love how easily we're distracted and divided against ourselves: it's so easy to dominate a distracted, divided, blinded-by-propaganda and negative emotions populace.

Let's say you're one of the ruling elites operating the nation for the benefit of the oligarchy. What's the best way to distract the populace from your self-serving dominance in a blatantly neofeudal system?

1. Provide modern-day versions of Bread and Circuses to distract the commoners from what actually matters: "the golden age of TV" and binge-watching; a cultural obsession with glorifying oneself via selfies posted on Facebook and Instagram; tweeting outrage and indignation on Twitter; a corporate-state media which magnifies insignificant events into social crises, political "leaders" who intentionally inflame polarization and conflict and so on.

Combine all these distracting circuses into one 24/7 system-overload, and what do you get? A populace so distracted, so stressed, so emotionally dazed that they are unable to focus on the predatory exploitation of the ruling elites, much less figure out how to change the neofeudal status quo.

2. Divide the populace with calculatedly divisive cultural issues and turn the commoner class against itself: with no middle ground and no shared class identity allowed, the populace is easily sliced and diced into angry, disaffected tribes who blame whomever media propaganda has targeted as "the other" for the nation's woes.

Correspondent Jonathan Twombly recently posted a description of this divide-and-conquer strategy of the ruling elites:

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Facing populist assault, global elites regroup in Davos

Associated Press

Britain's political system has been thrown into chaos as the country negotiates a messy divorce from the European Union. Under President Donald Trump, the United States is imposing trade sanctions on friend and foe alike, and the government is paralyzed by a partial shutdown over immigration policy that forced Trump and a high-level U.S. delegation to cancel the trip to Davos.

A year after getting a standing ovation from the elites at Davos, French President Emmanuel Macron is sinking in the polls as he contends with "yellow vest" protesters who have taken to the streets to call for higher wages and fairer pensions. Nationalist political movements are gaining strength across Europe.

And the economic backdrop is worrying: experts are downgrading their forecasts for global growth this year amid rising interest rates and tensions over trade. "Judging by the state of the world right now 10 years on from the financial crisis, and the dysfunctional state of global politics I would suggest that these annual events have achieved the sum total of diddly squat," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.

The collective worries have sent a shudder through global financial markets: The Dow Jones industrial average is down nearly 9 percent from Oct. 3. David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said the buckling market "represents a lot of anxiety that we're seeing from the corporate elite who meet at Davos."

How times have changed. For most of the past quarter century, the worldview symbolized by the World Economic Forum — of ever-freer world trade and closer ties between countries — had dominated. Then came a backlash from Americans and Europeans whose jobs were threatened by low-wage competition from countries like China and who felt alienated at home by wealth inequality and immigration.

In 2016, U.S. voters elected Trump, who advocated restricting immigration and scaling back free trade, and the British chose to leave the EU. "The winners from globalization have had the megaphone," said Paul Sheard, a senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard University's Kennedy School. "The losers have been somewhat silent, but now are starting to express themselves through the ballot box and through the political process."

The Davos confab has always been vulnerable to snark: hedge fund billionaires flying into Davos in fuel-guzzling private jets to discuss the threat of climate change; millionaire CEOs discussing inequality while downing cocktails; endless conversations between people who describe themselves as "thought leaders."

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Still Confused About Brexit? It's Actually Pretty Simple...

Comment: This is a great article on the political power-plays going on behind the farce that is Brexit. However, I think it overplays how much immigration/terrorism played a part in the wish to leave the EU. It is almost caricatured in that respect.

EU corruption and decisions being made at Brussels (thus outside the "democratic" process of UK parliament) and an economic one-size-fits-all is at least equal to, if not more of a concern for many of those who voted leave than a blanket xenophobia. Ordinary British people - rightly or wrongly - have traditionally and generally been an extremely progressive country when it comes to cultural integration and continues to be to this day.

So, while immigration and terrorism does play a big part, it is not the primary driver here.  I think this is more about the EU hitting ordinary people in the pocket and fuelling the disillusionment and suspicion of EU dictates. There are multiple reasons, all of which point to more sovereignty and independence. British people are becoming acutely aware that they've been had. In that respect it follows very closely the Yellow Vests movement in France and the anger that resulted in the election of Trump.

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Joe Quinn
Sott.net

Brexit blather is back in the news again. To listen to politicians and media talking heads, you'd think it's all rather complicated and 'beyond the ken of mere mortals'. In reality, however, 'Brexit' is quite simple: for the last two and a half years, the British establishment has been trying to make Brexit go away.

Don't believe me? Explain why, then, that of the 650 UK Members of Parliament, about 70% come from constituencies where the majority of people voted for Brexit, while among all Members of Parliament about 70% have made it clear that they favor remaining in the EU.

In addition, the Conservative government which approved the referendum in 2015 was lead by David Cameron, who has always been against leaving the EU. His successor, Theresa May, who negotiated the pseudo-Brexit deal that would effectively keep the UK in the EU, and which was voted down yesterday by a massive majority in Parliament, is also against Brexit.

So the obvious reason why the last 2.5 years of British politics has been an utter farce, and why the British people find themselves in this current mess, is that while a majority of British citizens voted to leave the EU, a large majority of their MPs on both sides of the aisle (and the British 'establishment' itself) do not want to leave the EU and are determined to make sure it never happens. To claim otherwise would be to suggest that British politicians were as clueless about the nature of the UK's relationship with the EU as the British public. But that's not the full story.

The decision that Brexit would not happen was taken immediately after the 'Leave' vote in the referendum in 2016, and that fact was evident to anyone with eyes to see. The politicking of the last 2.5 years had little to do with Brexit and everything to do with internal UK political power games, i.e. British political party mandarins and individual politicians feathering their own nests with an eye on their future positions within the British political system, which they are sure will remain an integral part of the EU. The Conservative strategy so far has been to hold on to power by attempting to convince their voter base (who want Brexit) that Theresa May's 'deal' is actually Brexit, when it clearly isn't at all. The EU has been on exactly the same page as Theresa May all along.

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WHITE HELMETS: THE ‘OLD ETONIAN’ CARTEL PROTECTION RACKET

Vanessa Beeley 
21st Century Wire

Nepotism and corruption are nothing new, particularly in the corporate or political sphere. In 2013 Boris Johnson’s brother Jo was appointed head of No 10’s policy unit under David Cameron. As the Guardian article noted, this appointment did not appear to be a crucial necessity:  “it’s not as if anyone had complained of a dire shortage of Johnsons in the public eye, or of Old Etonians in the cabinet.” 

Bullingdon Club, Oxford 1987. Boris Johnson seated on right, Cameron second from left standing at back. (Photo: Telegraph)

 
Cameron and Johnson are both “Old Etonians” and shared the notoriety of being members of the elite Bullingdon Club at Oxford, whose members were renonwned for ostentatious displays of wealth, raucous, hard-drinking dinners and the exclusion of women from their ranks.

I am not going to dwell upon the vagaries of such clubs and networks that united the establishment elite into an exclusive consortium of wealth and privilege that has served them well throughout their careers and countless falls from grace.

However, now the White Helmets are involved believe it or not in a way that fully exposes the nepotism and corruption at the highest levels of policy making and intervention into the affairs of a sovereign nation, in this case, Syria.

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Survival of the Richest

Douglas Rushkoff
Medium

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future.

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down. 

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Millionaires now control half of the world’s personal wealth

Bloomberg 

 

The rich are getting a lot richer and doing so a lot faster. 

 

Personal wealth around the globe reached $201.9 trillion last year, a 12 percent gain from 2016 and the strongest annual pace in the past five years, Boston Consulting Group said in a reportreleased Thursday. Booming equity markets swelled fortunes, and investors outside the U.S. got an exchange-rate bonus as most major currencies strengthened against the greenback. 

 

The growing ranks of millionaires and billionaires now hold almost half of global personal wealth, up from slightly less than 45 percent in 2012, according to the report. In North America, which had $86.1 trillion of total wealth, 42 percent of investable capital is held by people with more than $5 million in assets. Investable assets include equities, investment funds, cash and bonds. 

 

“The fact that the wealth held by millionaires as a percentage of total wealth is increasing does not mean that the poor are getting poorer,” Anna Zakrzewski, the report’s lead author, said in an emailed statement. “What it means is that everyone is getting richer. Specifically, we believe that the rich are getting richer faster.”

 

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Something Unprecedented Is Happening at Bilderberg 2018

Comment: In case you didn't catch this video posted by Truthstream Media last week it offers some interesting insights about the Anglo-American elite who attended this year's Bilderberg conference. 

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Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy, & The Deep State: Chapter 1: Introduction to Pedophilia - The Mental Disorder and the Child Sex Abuse Crime

Comment: New Kindle book series by Joachim Hagopian. His blog is American Empire Exposed.

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From the book description at Amazon.com:

"The notion that pedophilia is a permanent, immutable condition inherited from birth is a slippery slope that some believe may relinquish self-responsibility for abusing children, which moves toward potentially normalizing and decriminalizing pedophilia, with the precedent of homosexuality already in place. A growing number of researchers believe that most child molesters are not pedophiles and that a sizeable yet unknown percentage of pedophiles live a celibate lifestyle never touching or harming children. It’s important to realize that satanic pedophiles amongst the elite will use these latest findings to their advantage. Changing societal mores leading toward increasing leniency, normalcy and decriminalization will only justify their continuing to feed off the flesh and blood of children for rejuvenated strength, longer life and enhanced power practiced since ancient times. Ritualized sacrifice of young innocents through systematic rape, torture and wholesale slaughter perpetrated by the Illuminati elite has secretly flourished to this day with total impunity."

www.amazon.com/

Britain has a real choice on June 8 and the Establishment is terrified

Neil Clark
Sputnik

For the first time in a quarter of a century, the British electorate has an opportunity to make a clean break with the banker-friendly neoliberal policies which have dominated politics since the era of Margaret Thatcher and which have led to a major redistribution of wealth away from the majority to the super-rich.

Well, we can't say we haven't got a choice.

Labour's manifesto, while still being nowhere as left-wing as the ones the pipe-puffing Harold Wilson won two elections on in 1974, nevertheless returns the party emphatically to the territory it occupied before the grinning faux-progressive Tony Blair came along in the mid-90s and turned Labour into a more socially liberal version of the Tories. There's pledges to renationalize Britain's railways — easily the most expensive in Europe — set up a publicly owned energy supplier and take water in England back into public ownership.

The rich will pay more tax, zero hours contracts will be outlawed and tuition fees will be scrapped. If it's an exaggeration to call the manifesto socialist, then its certainly social democratic and offers hope of a better future for millions of ordinary Britons who have seen their living standards fall dramatically in recent years. By contrast the Tories have lurched still further to the hard right and their elite-friendly agenda could not be clearer.

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There's money a plenty to bomb Syria-and continue with the neocon policies of endless war — but not enough to provide pensioners with winter fuel payments or all infants with free school lunches. The desire of the elderly to pass on their property to their children will be hit by what has been labeled a new "Dementia Tax" to pay for social care. Pensioners will also be hit by replacing the "triple lock" on their state pensions with only a "double lock." Meanwhile, corporation tax will fall to 17% by 2020 — the lowest rate of any developed economy.  


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