Today’s News 28th February 2018

• "They Were Building An Escape Route" – Kim Family Used Fake Brazilian Passports To Apply For Western Visas

  It’s been widely suspected for decades that North Korea’s political elite – including members of the ruling Kim family – would obtain Western visas under false pretenses, but for the first time, Reuters has published images of a fraudulently obtained Brazilian passports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un used to apply for visas to visit western countries.

  Over the years, specific details about the Kim family’s strategy for covertly traveling abroad have proven elusive – until now. Previously, images of a fraudulent Dominican Republic passport belonging to Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of Kim Jong Un who was assassinated two years ago, surfaced after his death…

  

   

  Reuters published a photocopy of Kim Jong Un’s passport…

  

  Brazil’s foreign ministry said it was investigating.

  A Brazilian source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the two passports in question were legitimate documents when sent out as blanks for consulates to issue.

  Unnamed Western security officials say the passports reveal the ruling family’s preparations for a possible “escape route” should they ever lose their grip on power.

  “They used these Brazilian passports, which clearly show the photographs of Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Il, to attempt to obtain visas from foreign embassies,” one senior Western security source said on condition of anonymity.

  “This shows the desire for travel and points to the ruling family’s attempts to build a possible escape route,” the security source said.

  Four other senior Western European security sources told Reuters that the two Brazilian passports with photos of the Kims in the names of Josef Pwag and Ijong Tchoi were used to apply for visas in at least two Western countries.

  Though it’s unclear whether any visas were actually issued. The passports may have been used to travel to Brazil, Japan and Hong Kong. A Japanese newspaper reported in 2011 that KJU visited Tokyo in 1991 – when he was still a child – using a Brazilian passport, which is before the issue date on the two Brazilian passports obtained by Reuters.

  Both passports, which were good for 10 years, were stamped with “Embassy of Brazil in Prague” with a Feb. 26, 1996, issue date. Facial recognition technology has reportedly confirmed the photographs were those of Kim Jong Un and his father.

  So little is known about KJU that even the date of his birth is disputed. The passport issued for him in the name of Josef Pwag had a Feb. 1, 1983 date of birth. If that’s an accurate birth date, that would mean Kim is 35. KJU is known to have been educated at an international school in Berne, Switzerland, where he reportedly pretended to be the son of an embassy chauffeur.

  Kim Jong Il’s passport was issued in the name Ijong Tchoi, with a birth date of April 4, 1940. Kim Jong Il died in 2011. His actual birth date was in 1941. Both passports list the birthplaces of the two men as Sao Paulo, Brazil.

  Reuters was unable to confirm that the passports hadn’t been tampered with.

  

• What Civil Unrest Is Really Like: We Survived The Ferguson Riots

  Authored by Karen Morris via The Organic prepper blog,

  When I mention the year 2014 do any events stand out in your mind?  Some of you may think of births of family members or special anniversaries or incredible vacations that you took.  You know the kind,  the ones you wish you could take every year because they were just that amazing?  Yeah, I love those too.

  But when I think of 2014, two things come to mind. Let’s start with the second event.

  We moved (usually a fun thing) in November of 2014.

  But the reason we moved was because of another event that began in August of 2014 and continued through the end of 2014 and beyond.   The first thing that I will always think of when I hear, “the year 2014” are the images of destruction from my town of Ferguson, Missouri – images of the riots that we saw and experienced first hand while driving down streets where ruin ran rampant (say that five times fast).

  Businesses were destroyed.  Personal property was demolished. It wasn’t even safe to leave your house depending on where in Ferguson you lived.

  

  Some Background Details

  We considered moving to Ferguson in the fall of 2001.  We were expecting twins and decided to buy a house in an affordable suburb of St. Louis.  We had friends who lived in the area, and they liked it.  What greater reference to the quality of the community than someone who already lives there, right?  We found a great starter house on the corner of two of Ferguson’s four main streets.

  The house we chose to purchase had a small backyard, a decent sized front yard, and room for the two children we were expecting at the time to play.  We purchased the house in December of 2001 and lived there between 2001 and 2014.  We had our twins the following summer, and over the years, we added three more children to our family.  In August of 2014, our children’s ages were 12, 12, 8,7, and 3.

  How It All Started

  We pulled into our driveway on the afternoon of August 10, 2014, having just gotten back from a trip out of town.  After tucking the kids into bed, I got some things in order and started working on a project at my desk when a friend of mine messaged me asking if I was all right.  Okay, that was a rather odd question out of the blue.  I told her I was fine and asked her why she was asking.  She told me that there were riots going on in Ferguson.

  That one sentence changed the course of my life – literally.

  I knew my friend, and I trusted her.  But you know that feeling…the one that says, “It can’t be as bad as she’s making it out to be.”   Yeah, it’s real, and it’s called normalcy bias.  According to Wikipedia (which I’ve been told never to quote):

  “Normalcy bias is a belief people hold when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects, because people believe that things will always function the way things normally have functioned.” (source)

  I didn’t know it at the time, but that was exactly what was going on in my head – it can’t be THAT bad because nothing like this had ever happened to me before.   BUT since I knew she wouldn’t lie to me, I opened a new tab on my browser and started looking up “Riots in Ferguson.”

  One of the local news stations was running live coverage on their website.  I watched for a moment.  Then I called my husband over, and both of us watched, aghast at what we were seeing.  There was a wall of police and a mass of rioters.   As we watched and listened online we saw and heard screaming and yelling, threatening gestures, profanities being hurled. I saw one side moved forward and the other side moved back.  Then both groups shifted toward either the left or the right.  It was almost like watching a sinister dance.  But this was a dance that took a dark turn fast.

  That night things got out of control.  Businesses were burned stores were looted, most of them were still about a mile away from us.  We watched and we were saddened, but there was no reason to believe that but the events were going to get closer to us.  We were safe, right?

  Yeah, there was that normalcy bias again.

  I’m putting a picture from Google maps in here to show you where things were happening and where we lived.

  

  You’ll notice three main North/South streets, West Florissant (this is the street right off of which Michael Brown was shot and where the riots started), Elizabeth (the street we lived on) and N. Florissant (the west most of the main North/South streets).  The main East/West street that you see had several different names, Chambers and Hereford are two shown on the map.

  Our house was on the corner of Chambers and Elizabeth.

  Despite what happened during the night, during the next day, things felt rather normal.  The sun was shining, kids were walking to the school across the corner from our house, cars were driving by where we lived just like usual.  But it was an uneasy, eerie feeling.  It was like the calm that occurs when the eye of a hurricane passes over you and the sun comes out like life is happy and normal and there’s nothing to worry about until the second half of the hurricane hits you.

  But of course, night follows day.   And with the next night, there was more unrest.  Again, thankfully, it was mostly contained about a mile from us.

  The riots didn’t stop.

  This cycle of fairly calm days and vicious nights continued the next few days.  By Wednesday, we had seen that this wasn’t going to go away quickly.  The protests seemed to be growing each evening – at least a little.  So Thursday, I packed several suitcases and put them in the back of the van – where they stayed.  Bug Out Bags are okay, but if you know there’s a good chance you’re going to have to leave for a few days (or permanently if our house was burned) it’s better to have three changes of clothes and night clothes for each person than to have just one.

  The question started growing in our minds.  When do we leave?  We knew our family needed to be protected, but how close to our house is too close?  I’ve read articles where people talk about ‘buggin out’ like there is that one right moment to bug out.  Anything before that is just worry.  Anything after that is foolishness.

  There is no cut and dried “perfect time to leave” while you are living in a dangerous situation.  The struggle is a real.  You don’t want to leave too soon and foolishly waste resources or overtake friend’s houses unnecessarily.  On the other hand, you don’t want to get caught in the middle of the turmoil and not be able to make it out with your family.  The truth is there is no way to know when it is the exact right time to leave until after that moment happens.

  We waited, wondered if we should leave, and watched.  Friday night though, we had a lot more to watch.  That night the riots broke out in the area of Ferguson in which they had previously been contained.  Rioting, looting, and burning spread all the way from the area in which it started north almost two miles to the highway.

  

  It also spread across the city over to New Florissant road.  Our Walgreens, Little Caesars, and Shop & Save (our grocery store) were all on different corners of the intersection of West Florissant and Chambers/Hereford.  They were only about one quarter to one half a mile from our house.  All of them were looted.

  Again, we felt that torn feeling.  Do we stay or do we leave at 1 am? Do we wake up the kids and wake up our friends?  My parents also lived in Ferguson, so it’s not like we could go to their house for a few nights to escape the turmoil.  We hated to be a burden on friends outside the area.  I know it sounds silly.  Our friends would have been happy to put us up, but that really does weigh on your decision.  Going to a hotel wasn’t really an option.  That cost a lot of money that at the time we didn’t have.

  We stayed that night and didn’t sleep much.  As the next day dawned though, we witnessed the destruction.

  Then everything changed.

  There was something else that was evident the next morning too.  Now that the riots had turned more violent and moved to the other side of our house, I had lost my sense of security.  That might sound like a “DUH,” moment, but until something like this happens, it’s hard to realize just how deep your sense of security had been and just how much is now gone.  It was that ‘normalcy bias’ that I talked about earlier.  It was then that I realized things weren’t going to get better quickly.

  With our sense of security gone, practical things changed for us. we could no longer sit out on our porch swing.  Our children weren’t allowed outside.  The blinds were kept pulled all day long.  We didn’t leave the house unless we absolutely had to.  At night we could literally smell the tear gas that was being hurled at people.

  On the night of Monday, August 18th, everything exploded again.  Hundreds of protesters gathered in Ferguson.  Rioters threw bottles at police before the group charged the officers.  Almost 100 people were arrested that night.  The next morning, we called our friends, loaded our children into the car and decided that it was time for us to leave for a few days.

  We spent three days with friends about thirty minutes from Ferguson as things continued. After three nights of being away, when Governor Nixon recalled the national guard from Ferguson, we found that our house was still standing and there was no physical damage to the property. We decided we really needed to return home.

  Things would never be the same.

  Upon our return, our attitude changed further.  It’s amazing the things you take for granted like the stores at which you shop.  I stopped shopping at my usual stores because I didn’t want to shop in the area.  I would travel five to eight miles out of town to go to a store when it had a counterpart less than a mile from me.

  We found a park near my husband’s work and ate lunch with him and to let the kids play because they weren’t going to play outside at home.  We did what we could to give the kids a sense of normalcy since we were living in this nightmare for months on end.

  The atmosphere during the following days continued to change as well.  Gunshots in the streets became more frequent.  We had heard them on occasion over the previous thirteen years that we had lived there, but NEVER like we heard after August 9th. There were fewer kids walking to school.  Police sirens were heard crossing our corner almost hourly.

  It was about this time that my husband and I began to talk about relocating.  We had been casually talking about the possibility of a job with a company located in central Illinois.  We decided that this was the time to get more pointed and committed to the discussion with them.  We didn’t know how we were going to sell a house in the middle of a zone torn by riots, but we knew we couldn’t continue living this way with five children.

  The unrest went on far longer than most people realized.

  What might surprise many readers is that the riots really lasted a LONG time for us.  There was unrest almost every night for months.

  One night, I had to be out teaching a class.  When I came home, the kids all told me about how the protesters had walked from the Memorial on West Florissant north to Chambers/Hereford where they turned west, and then when they reached North (New) Florissant, they turned south and went to the police station.  This took them right by our front yard.  As a matter of fact, the crowd was so big that there were some who overflowed into our yard.  The police had a helicopter with its searchlight/spotlight pointed into our front yard to watch the protesters at one point.  It was a sensational event for a couple of my children, but it really frightened several of my children.

  Some of our children started to exhibit signs of emotional trauma.  Incidents of bed-wetting increased, and our youngest child even refused to sleep in a bed by himself.  We had children that were frightened to go out to the car if it wasn’t in the garage.

  Between August and October, when we were home, we lived exclusively indoors.  We continued to take multiple trips each week to parks near my husband’s work.  The kids would play, and my husband would join us for lunch.  We had a library that we loved to go to where the kids didn’t have to worry about whispering.  We went there at least once a week.  It was hard helping the kids find a sense of normal in the midst of daily turmoil.  They had seen some very frightening events first hand.

  But time continued on.  Despite the fact that there was still unrest almost every night, television stations stopped broadcasting about the riots.  Everyone was tired of hearing of hearing about them, so all of a sudden, in the media, it was like the riots didn’t exist

  But they did for us.

  By this time our house was on the market (of course without a prospect on the horizon).  We were getting close to a job deal with the company in central Illinois.  Moving was starting to look like a real possibility.

  Once we reached October, there was a whole month of activities planned by activists called, “Ferguson, October.”  Fortunately, the events of “Ferguson October” were listed online.  When we were checking it out, we saw that there was going to be a big event in Ferguson in for an entire weekend.  Again, we were torn, but we didn’t need our children to be subjected to any more of the violence, so we decided to pack up and leave the town for the weekend.  We stayed with some friends in Illinois.   Not much came of that weekend, though.

  We finally relocated.

  Eventually, despite my husband’s well-paying, secure job in St. Peters, Missouri, we moved from Ferguson to a small city in central Illinois in November.  November actually ended up having the worst violence of our whole time in Ferguson.

  We planned on leaving Ferguson on November 20th, but on November 17th, Governor Nixon declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the verdict in the case of the police officer who shot Michael Brown.  No matter what the outcome, violence was anticipated.

  When we heard that, we left.  We packed up our belongings on November 18th and drove to a friend’s house in central Illinois.  We wouldn’t be taking possession of our rental house until November 20th, but all indications were that things were going to get out of hand.  Yeah.  That was the understatement of the year – and considering the year we had, that says something!

  The verdict of not guilty came out of November 24th and carnage ensued.

  Shops that had been looted before were now burned.  Shops we had used for years on end were gone never to be rebuilt – or at least not rebuilt as the businesses they were in the past.  There had been an attempt at a deal between the city of Ferguson to bring in a CVS drug store. With everything that happened, CVS refused to move into the neighborhood.  Other stores which hadn’t been destroyed pulled out as well.

  We still had to come back to finish cleaning out our house in the hopes of selling it.  We saw the devastation first hand again.

  This event affected us permanently.

  While we missed our house and our neighborhood, we would have missed it even if we had stayed.  I have friends who still live in Ferguson and they’ve told me that there is still violence from time to time and that it doesn’t have the same atmosphere as before the riots.

  When we moved, our salary was greatly diminished and our expenses were higher, but our children were able to play outside again.  It took years for our house to sell and we took an enormous loss. They were able to climb trees in our own yard again.  We rarely heard sirens anymore.  In many ways, my children were able to bounce back.  It was worth every bit the cost of moving and more.

  Even now though, four years later, from time to time I still notice residual actions or insecurities that I believe were brought on by what we lived through in Ferguson.  Those events changed each of us.  They made us a little more streetwise.  They brought us a little more sense of awareness around us.

  What we learned

  So if I could leave you with a few takeaways, they would be these:

  • Don’t think it could NEVER happen to you.  We lived in a small town surrounded by wonderful people.  I would never have dreamed in my wildest nightmares that we’d be enveloped in civil unrest of any magnitude, let alone that magnitude.

  • Being ready for the unexpected is a MUST! I have a friend who asked me why in the world she should keep items together (like a BOB or Grab-and-GO bag) in case they had to evacuate.  Sure she lives on the Florida peninsula, but they always have some notice before a hurricane, right?  This is why.  You never know when you literally have five minutes to be out of the house before unrest of one sort or another reaches you.

  • Learn to use social media to your advantage. During the whole situation, Twitter was our best friend.  We would stalk Twitter and more specifically #Ferguson on Twitter.  What we saw either could keep us in our house or evacuate us at a moment’s notice.  If we needed to leave the house, we always checked #Ferguson on Twitter.  We would be able to see where the protests were and which was the safest way out of the city.

  • Having items that you keep in your car all the time is VERY helpful in case you ever need to leave quickly. We keep various tools, foods, drinks, first aid kits and more in our family vehicle.  You never know when having them in your car is the difference between you having something and you having nothing.

  • Watch for the effects that stressful situations may be having on your children. Learn to notice the differences and do what you can to mitigate what they are going through.  If you can’t actually stop what they are going through, then do what you can to help them have a sense of normalcy in the midst of it.  For us, routines helped.  It was also helpful to learn where we could go that was safe so that our children could get out their energy.  Extra time with parents and extra snuggle time with those children who need it is also vital.

  I want to leave you with one final thought.

  Earlier I mentioned normalcy bias.  Ya know what?  You most likely have that, even if you’re a prepper.  By the time the Ferguson Riots hit, I was a prepper – maybe not a very good one – but a prepper nonetheless.  Yeah, I was prepping for some unnamed event out in the future that MIGHT happen to me, but when it did happen to me, in many ways it still didn’t seem real.

  There’s another part of Wikipedia’s definition I didn’t mention before,

  “This [normalcy bias] may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare themselves for disasters.”  (source)

  Don’t be that person.  Don’t be that person who doesn’t prepare for anything because they think that everything is just going to be the same as it always was.  Don’t be the person who lives in denial of a terrible event ever happening to them.

  It can happen to you, and it might happen to you.

  I never dreamed that my family would have to face having our home severely damaged by a tornado, or that we’d live through the Ferguson riots, or even that we’d be attacked by a knife-wielding teenager bent on killing everyone at our chess club.  We didn’t plan for any of that to happen to us, but it did.

  Learn, practice, and prepare yourselves mentally as well as physically, so that if a life-altering event happens to you, you can face it and come through the other side more wise and capable than when you went in.

  

• "It's Not Safe Here" – Activists Warn Illegal Immigrants To Avoid Florida As ICE Arrests Surge

  Following the unveiling of a new partnership between ICE and local sheriffs departments, a coalition of nearly two dozen Florida-based activist groups has issued a travel warning to all black and brown people – especially illegal aliens – to take “great caution” while visiting the sunshine state.

  Florida, according to the group, saw the biggest jump in ICE apprehensions in 2017.

  Illegal aliens should take extra care when traveling through transportation hubs like Greyhound bus station and airports.

  According to PJMedia, these groups have staged events across the state to spread the word to illegal immigrants who are thinking about vacationing in Florida during Spring Break. They’re also posting information on which areas to avoid as 17 sheriffs across the state have agreed to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement – a partnership that has been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union.

  Illegal immigrants should “reconsider visiting Florida and especially recommended to avoid high-risk areas, including ports, airports, and Greyhound stations.”

  ICE immigration arrests during Obama’s presidency dropped from 297,898 to 110,104. That number has already rebounded to 143,470 under President Trump.

  “We are taking the step of warning our communities that as the Florida lawmakers, state, local and federal do not take steps to push back against the anti-immigrant policies, we do not feel like our communities are safe in the state,” Tomas Kennedy, deputy political director at the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said.

  Federal law enforcement has been tightening security in the 100-mile zone near all borders and coasts, leading to a significant increase in arrests. Since Trump was elected in 2016, immigration arrests in Florida have climbed by 76%. Texas and Oklahoma have also seen sharp increases in detentions as well, with Dallas posting the highest number of arrests in 2017, while Houston and Atlanta weren’t far behind.

  

  Even though Trump’s executive order expands law enforcement’s focus to include illegal immigrants without a criminal history, nearly 75% of immigrants arrested last year had prior convictions.

  The most common crimes committed by illegal immigrants last year included driving under the influence – 16% – and possessing or selling dangerous drugs like opioids – 15%. The most common pending criminal charges were general traffic offenses – 17% – driving under the influence of alcohol – 14% – having or selling drugs – 13% – and immigration violations – 7%.

  It’s impossible to compare 2017 data with earlier years because ICE only recently started collecting and reporting detailed information on the criminality of those arrested.

  Over the weekend, the highlighted a warning issued by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who undermined the Trump administration, by broadcasting a warning to all Bay Area residents that a massive coordinated ICE crackdown would be starting “within the next 24 hours.”

  

• Armed And Dangerous: If Police Don't Have To Protect The Public, What Good Are They?

  Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  In the American police state, police have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

  In fact, police don’t usually need much incentive to shoot and kill members of the public.

  Police have shot and killed Americans of all ages—many of them unarmed—for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

  So when police in Florida had to deal with a 19-year-old embarking on a shooting rampage inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., what did they do?

  

  Nothing.

  There were four armed police officers, including one cop who was assigned to the school as a resource officer, on campus during that shooting. All four cops stayed outside the school with their weapons drawn (three of them hid behind their police cars).

  Not a single one of those cops, armed with deadly weapons and trained for exactly such a dangerous scenario, entered the school to confront the shooter.

  Seventeen people, most of them teenagers, died while the cops opted not to intervene.

  Let that sink in a moment.

  Now before your outrage bubbles over, consider that the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed (most recently in 2005) that police have no constitutional duty to protect members of the public from harm.

  Yes, you read that correctly.

  According to the U.S. Supreme Court, police have no duty, moral or otherwise, to help those in trouble, protect individuals from danger, or risk their own lives to save “we the people.”

  In other words, you can be outraged that cops in Florida did nothing to stop the school shooter, but technically, it wasn’t part of their job description.

  This begs the question: if the police don’t have a duty to protect the public, what are we paying them for? And who exactly do they serve if not you and me?

  Why do we have more than a million cops on the taxpayer-funded payroll in this country whose jobs do not entail protecting our safety, maintaining the peace in our communities, and upholding our liberties?

  Why do we have more than a million cops who have been fitted out in the trappings of war, drilled in the deadly art of combat, and trained to look upon “every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making?

  I’ll tell you why.

  It’s the same reason why the Trump Administration has made a concerted effort to expand the police state’s power to search, strip, seize, raid, steal from, arrest and jail Americans for any infraction, no matter how insignificant.

  This is no longer a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

  It is fast becoming a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations,” and its rise to power is predicated on shackling the American taxpayer to a life of indentured servitude.

  Cops in America may get paid by the citizenry, but they don’t work for us.

  They don’t answer to us. They’re not loyal to us.

  And they certainly aren’t operating within the limits of the U.S. Constitution.

  That “thin, blue line” of loyalty to one’s fellow cops has become a self-serving apparatus that sees nothing wrong with advancing the notion that the lives—and rights—of police should be valued more than citizens.

  The myth of the hero cop really is a myth.

  Cops are no more noble, no more self-sacrificing, no braver and certainly no more deserving of special attention or treatment than any other American citizen.

  This misplaced patriotism about police and, by extension, the military—a dangerous re-shifting of the nation’s priorities that has been reinforced by President Trump with his unnerving knack for echoing past authoritarian tactics—paves the way for even more instability in the nation.

  Welcome to the American police state, funded by Corporate America, policed by the military industrial complex, and empowered by politicians whose primary purpose is to remain in office.

  It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from the police state we’re operating under right now to a full-blown totalitarian regime ruled with the iron fist of martial law.

  The groundwork has already been laid.

  The events of recent years have only served to desensitize the nation to violence, acclimate them to a militarized police presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

  The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

  Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback. Indeed, there were no protests in the streets after U.S. military forces carried out air strikes on a Syrian settlement, killing 25 people, more than half of which were women and children.

  And then there’s President Trump’s plans for a military parade on Veterans Day (costing between $10 million and $30 million) to showcase the nation’s military might. Other countries that feel the need to flex their military muscles to its citizens and the rest of the world include France, China, Russia and North Korea. 

  The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That’s a done deal.

  It’s astounding how convenient we’ve made it for the government to lock down the nation.

  Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

  As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

  I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

  This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

  

• Comey's FBI Was A Hotbed Of Sexual Misconduct: Official Report

  The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog sanctioned at least 14 FBI agents and officials over the last five years – most of which occurred under Former FBI Director James Comey’s leadership, reports Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller – which has reviewed documents from the agency’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz.

  

  The acts entail inappropriate romantic relationships with a subordinate, outright sexual harassment, favoritism or promotion based on demands for sex, and retaliation against women who rebuffed male employee’s advances. –Daily Caller

  Prior to Comey’s tenure as Director which began in September 2013, no sexual misconduct charges had been filed by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Most recently, an extramarital relationship between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page was revealed during Congressional investigations into the FBI, which had been uncovered by Horowitz through a search of text messages between the two agents.

  

  Perhaps the most shocking revelation, however, is that Comey attempted to thwart Horowitz’s investigation. 

  As Horowitz explained in his March 2015 final report on how law enforcement agencies handle sexual-misconduct complaints, his office’s ability “to conduct this review was significantly impacted and delayed by the repeated difficulties we had in obtaining relevant information from both the FBI and DEA as we were initiating this review in mid-2013.”

  After pulling teeth to try and obtain records from the FBI, Horowitz was finally presented with unredacted information that satisfied his requests – however it was “still incomplete.” 

  Of note, Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Comey fought Horowitz’s investigation into sexual misconduct charges.

  Lynch supported Comey’s defiance of the IG via a July 20, 2015, memo from DOJ Office of Legal Counsel principal-deputy AG Karl Thompson. Thompson charged law enforcement agencies could redact information in its files and withhold information from the Inspector General. It was one of her first acts as Obama’s new Attorney General, who was sworn in to office on April 27, 2015. –DC

  It was only after a multi-year battle with the Obama administration that Horowitz was finally able to obtain the information he sought after Congress passed the Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2016, restoring his office’s ability to access information without having to ask for it first. 

  Of note, Horowitz’s report on FBI malfeasance during the 2016 election is due out in several weeks – which many think will provide official confirmation that the top ranks of the FBI and DOJ engaged in a highly politicized hit-job on President Trump and his team in an effort to elect Hillary Clinton while undermining Trump. 

  Who is Michael Horowitz? 

  As we detailed in January, Horowitz was appointed head of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in April, 2012 – after the Obama administration hobbled the OIG’s investigative powers in 2011 amid the “Fast and Furious” scandal. The changes forced the various Inspectors General for all government agencies to request information while conducting investigations, as opposed to the authority to demand it. This allowed Holder (and other agency heads) to bog down OIG requests in bureaucratic red tape, and in some cases, deny them outright. 

  What did Horowitz do? As one twitter commentator puts it, he went to war…

  In March of 2015, Horowitz’s office prepared a report for Congress  titled Open and Unimplemented IG Recommendations. It laid the Obama Admin bare before Congress – illustrating among other things how the administration was wasting tens-of-billions of dollars by ignoring the recommendations made by the OIG.

  

  After several attempts by congress to restore the OIG’s investigative powers, Rep. Jason Chaffetz successfully introduced H.R.6450 – the Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2016 – signed by a defeated lame duck President Obama into law on December 16th, 2016, cementing an alliance between Horrowitz and both houses of Congress. 

  1) Due to the Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2016, the OIG has access to all of the information that the target agency possesses. This not only includes their internal documentation and data, but also that which the agency externally collected and documented.

  TrumpSoldier (@DaveNYviii) January 3, 2018

  See here for a complete overview of the OIG’s new and restored powers. And while the public won’t get to see classified details of the OIG report, Mr. Horowitz is also big on public disclosure: 

  13) Horowitz in 2017 took his organization to a new level via public disclosure. He no longer wants his findings hidden from us by the media. In May he created the twitter account @OversightGov. On October 1st his website https://t.co/TJqbITz0IR went live. pic.twitter.com/H8MKD6WzVE

  — TrumpSoldier (@DaveNYviii) January 3, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Horowitz’s efforts to roll back Eric Holder’s restrictions on the OIG sealed the working relationship between Congress and the Inspector General’s ofice, and they most certainly appear to be on the same page. Moreover, brand new FBI Director Christopher Wray seems to be on the same page as well. Click here and keep scrolling for that and more insight into what’s going on behind the scenes. 

  Once congress has reviewed the OIG report on the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 election, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees will use it to supplement their investigations, which will result in hearings with the end goal of requesting or demanding a Special Counsel investigation. The DOJ can appoint a Special Counsel at any point, or wait for Congress to demand one. If a request for a Special Counsel is ignored, Congress can pass legislation to force an the appointment. 

  And while the DOJ could act on the OIG report and investigate / prosecute themselves without a Special Counsel, it is highly unlikely that Congress would stand for that given the subjects of the investigation. 

  As TrumpSoldier points out in his analysis, the DOJ can take various actions regarding “Policy, personnel, procedures, and re-opening of investigations. In short, just about everything (Immunity agreements can also be rescinded).” 

  Back to the topic at hand, here are the 14 cases of sexual misconduct within the bureau, via the Daily Caller:

  • Tuesday the IG found that a special agent in charge (SAC) of an FBI field office, had an “inappropriate romantic relationship” with a subordinate who also was married. The SAC was married and had a young child at home, according to a source knowledgeable of the case.

  • On June 3, 2016, a  SAC retired after it was disclosed he accepted free rent and lived at the residence of a subordinate FBI special agent in violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, which prohibits an employee from accepting a gift from a subordinate who receives less pay and is a violation of the FBI Code of Conduct policy.

  • In August 2015, the IG reported that an FBI assistant SAC (ASAC) was temporarily demoted because he made “inappropriate comments of a sexual nature towards employees and made inappropriate physical contact with employees.” The IG interviewed several witnesses “who told the OIG that they were either inappropriately touched or that they had inappropriate comments made to them by the ASAC. Other witnesses said they observed the ASAC engage in such conduct with the employees.” The ASAC denied the allegations, and stated “he did not recall” the specific incidents. “The OIG found the witnesses’ accounts to be consistent, credible, and corroborative of each other” and that he “lacked candor” in his interview.

  • In December 2014, an ASAC was disciplined for sexually harassing an FBI employee. He admitted to engaging in several acts of sexual harassment, including sending the employee an electronic communication containing sexual innuendo and making a sexually-oriented comment at a luncheon.

  • In December 2014, an ASAC was disciplined for making unwanted sexual advances to a special agent and later removing the special agent from his assignment for refusing those advances. He also allegedly selected a replacement for the special agent based on a personal relationship with the replacement. Although the IG investigation found “no evidence” the ASAC made supervisory decisions based solely on a personal relationship, the IG “found that the ASAC’s involvement in decisions benefitting the individual created an appearance of favoritism.”

  • In June 2014, the IG reported that an FBI program analyst was dismissed. While detailed to another federal agency, he arranged for sexual encounters using his work computer. The analyst also “admitted to arranging sexual encounters by using his personal e-mail account accessed through the other agency’s network on his work computer.”

  • In June 2014, an FBI Information Technology specialist and program manager resigned after making multiple unwanted sexual advances towards an FBI contract employee while intoxicated. When the contractor reported the incident to an FBI supervisor, the IT specialist allegedly “threatened to kick the contractor and retaliate against her at work.”

  • In January 2014, the FBI issued disciplinary action against an ASAC who had sexual relationships with and sexually harassed subordinates. He created “a hostile work environment” and disregarded his supervisor’s instruction to inform him if a relationship developed with his subordinate. The FBI determined the ASAC “sexually harassed other female subordinates, had inappropriate sexual contact with two other subordinates while on duty and retaliated against a female special agent after she refused to engage in a romantic relationship with him.”

  • In January 2014, the FBI demoted a SAC who “engaged in a protracted sexual relationship with a foreign national that he deliberately concealed from the FBI.” He also “disclosed sensitive information to the foreign national,” and allowed the foreign national to use FBI-issued iPads and an FBI-issued Blackberry phones on numerous occasions. He also exchanged sexually explicit communications on the Blackberry with the foreign national.

  • In January 2014, an FBI ASAC made “unwanted sexual advances” to an FBI special agent (SA). The ASAC removed the female agent for refusing those advances. “The ASAC was further alleged to have selected a replacement for the SA based on a personal relationship with the replacement.”

  • In November 2013, an FBI Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) resigned after it was determined he was involved in a personal relationship with a direct subordinate that resulted in favoritism. The two exchanged messages on their FBI-issued Blackberry devices. The DAD “failed to disclose the relationship and recuse herself from all official decisions regarding the subordinate, as required by FBI policy, and that the relationship created perceived instances of benefit or favoritism towards the subordinate, in violation of FBI policy.”

  • In May 2013, an ASAC voluntarily removed himself from his position and was reassigned to a GS-13 position for engaging in a relationship with a subordinate employee for a lengthy period that began before and continued after the his promotion to the ASAC position. The investigation also found that the ASAC “was insubordinate by willfully ignoring a former SAC’s instruction to terminate the relationship.”

  • In February 2013, an FBI ASAC was disciplined when he engaged in a relationship with a subordinate FBI employee for a lengthy period. The investigation also found the ASAC was insubordinate by willfully ignoring a former SAC’s instruction to terminate the relationship.

  • In January 2013, an ASAC engaged in romantic relationships with approximately 17 female FBI employees, nine of whom were direct subordinates, “creating a hostile work environment.” The investigation determined the ASAC “sexually harassed other female subordinates, had inappropriate sexual contact with two other subordinates while on duty, and retaliated against a female special agent after she refused to engage in a romantic relationship with him.

  

  

• The Asymmetric Co-Dependence Between Bitcoin & Stocks

  Authored by Nicholas Colas via DataTrekResearch.com,

  Today we update our statistical work on the relationship between bitcoin’s price and the S&P 500.

   The notion that bitcoin is a “Stub” asset (the riskiest piece of a capital structure) in global capital markets is getting some traction lately. The idea, in a nutshell, is that crypto currencies are increasingly part of the financial mainstream (numerous haters notwithstanding) and their fortunes are inherently tied to the risk tolerances that support all assets.

  Higher price correlations should therefore follow, even if bitcoin remains a very volatile asset.

  

  Short-term price correlations (measured in 10 day rolling averages) during the recent selloff in US stocks absolutely exhibit a high degree of linkage, but we need to call out a few caveats as well:

  • The 10-day historical correlations between bitcoin and the S&P 500 reached 0.79 on February 6th, right in the middle of the sharp decline in US stocks. For those of you with a statistical bent, that is an R-squared (coefficient of determination, rather than correlation) of 62%. Not bad for a one-variable model, to be sure.

  • This 10-day measure also shows that the relationship between bitcoin and stocks declined rapidly in the days that followed. By February 21st they had turned negative. As of today, the correlation was just 0.37.

  • It is also worth noting that 10-day price return correlations between bitcoin and the S&P have been high several times in recent years, and long before it was widely followed by the financial press. Examples include: February 22, 2016 (0.77 correlation), July 14th 2016 (0.80), April 21st, 2017 (0.81), and September 8th (0.80).

  • Bottom line: high short-term correlations between bitcoin and stocks are nothing new. (And one word of explanation: financial services professionals typically refer to correlations in percentage terms, even though they are obviously an index between -1.0 and +1.0. We follow that convention in our other work, but we find that bitcoin gets a lot of attention from math/stats people who are real sticklers about percentages reflecting R-squared data. In deference to them, we use their convention in this note.)

  Now, over the longer term, there is a statistical story about bitcoin and US stocks being increasingly tethered to the same market appetite for risk. The data here:

  • We’ve included two charts below. One shows the 90-day correlation between the S&P 500 and bitcoin, the other highlights the correlation between US large cap Tech stocks (using the XLK exchange traded fund) and the crypto currency.

  • With this longer-term timeframe, you can see that bitcoin now shows a much higher correlation to US stocks than for much of the last 2 years (the graph starts in January 2016). The lift-off point was in August 2017 when bitcoin went from a history of almost complete non-correlation to a 0.10 correlation coefficient and (more recently) 0.25-0.30.

  

  • Statistically minded people will note that this translates only to a 6-9% R-squared. Markets people will look at the chart and say “the trend is not the friend” of considering bitcoin as a non-correlated asset going forward.

  • Since bitcoin is a technology as well as a crypto currency, a comparison between it and US large cap Tech stocks is also worth a look. The data shows essentially the same relationship between bitcoin and US stocks, although a modestly tighter fit during last Fall.

  

  The upshot here is twofold:

  • Bitcoin seems to track US stocks when they fall (witness earlier this month) more than when they rise. That makes sense to us. A sudden shift in risk tolerances pulls capital out of all risk assets. The same thing happened with gold during the Financial Crisis, when the yellow metal was down in 2008 along with everything else.

  • Over time, bitcoin’s price will be set not by equity prices but by its own fundamentals. The long run correlations show that well enough, and it makes intuitive sense as well.

  

• Broward County Officials Opened 66 Investigations Of Misconduct Under Sheriff Israel

  The Broward County State Attorney’s office launched over 66 misconduct investigations by Sheriff’s deputies going back to 2012, reports Journalist and Fox News contributor Sara Carter.

  

  Many of the claims against officers – ranging from drug trafficking to kidnapping, happened under the watch of beleaguered Sheriff Scott Israel, whose office is now under investigation over allegations that his deputies failed to allow first responders to treat patients at Stoneman Douglas High School following the Feb. 14 massacre which left 17 dead, and that several deputies failed to enter the school to defend the children during the shooting – with reports of a “stand down” order emerging over the last 24 hours.

  

  Israel has defiantly pushed back against criticism, refusing to step down in the wake of what many believe to have been a preventable incident. 

  Over the weekend Israel fought back on calls for his resignation saying the actions of his deputies were “[not] his responsibility” when they failed to enter the high school that was under siege by Nikolas Cruz, 19. Police responded to calls regarding Cruz over 45 times over a seven-year period, although Israel disputes the report, stating his office only received 23 calls during that time frame.  The FBI also received a detailed call on Jan. 5,  warning that Cruz had posted disturbing images of slaughtered animals and comments on his Instagram saying he wanted to kill people, according to reports. The FBI stated on Feb. 16, that the tip was not forwarded to the FBI Miami Field Office. –Sara Carter

  Israel’s office under fire

  The existence of 66 BSO internal investigations came to light in a civil suit filed by the family of an African-American IT engineer, Jermaine McBean, who was killed in 2013 by Broward Sheriff’s deputies responding to a call that McBean was walking around with a weapon which turned out to be an unloaded air rifle resting on his shoulders, according to witnesses.

  The officer who shot him was indicted for homicide, which was later dismissed and is now under review by the state Supreme Court – however the shocking number of internal investigations into BSO deputies for a wide variety of criminal behavior has become extremely relevant in light of recent events.

  “Approximately 66 BSO (Broward Sheriff’s Office) deputies and other employees, including supervisory personnel were arrested for, charged with, and/or convicted of crimes that run the gamut from Armed Kidnapping, to Battery, Assault, Falsifying records, Official Misconduct, Narcotics trafficking, and other crimes involving dishonesty and violence in the years immediately proceeding 2013 when Jermaine was killed. Most of the offenses on the list occurred in the years 2012-2013,” according to court records filed against Israel and the Broward County Sheriff deputy defendants.

  “Often the cases against BSO (Broward Sheriff’s Office) employees are resolved by guilty pleas resulting in short or no period of incarceration and a chance for the criminal record to be cleared after a period of time.”

  Two months after McBean’s shooting, Sheriff Israel awarded two of the deputies the prestegious Broward Sheriff’s Office “Gold Cross Award,” however he later said they should have received them under mounting criticism. 

  

  The deputy who shot McBean, Peter Peraza, was eventually suspended more than two years after the incident and indicted for homicide. A local judge dismissed the indictment on Florida’s “stand your ground” law in Aug 2017 – however the Florida Supreme Court has taken the case on review, vacating the court’s lower order.

  The criminal section of the Department of Justice’s civil right’s division now has an open investigation into McBean’s death, Schoen said. Israel is always shifting blame and the “buck never stops with him,” Schoen said. The most current Brady list has not yet been made available and those numbers are expected to increase, he added. –Sara Carter

  Florida’s Stand Your Ground law was ruled unconsititutional last July, as Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch ruled that it allowed lawmakers to overstep their authorities – and that the state Supreme Court should have crafted the law in the first place. 

  

• Indian Banks Face Crippling Credit Crunch As PNB Scandal Worsens

  The biggest financial fraud in India’s history just got bigger.

  On Monday, Punjab National Bank disclosed that a fraud previously believed to be $1.7 billion had swollen to $2 billion as the true extent of the fraud is still coming into focus.

  But the impact that this now-$2 billion fraud has had on the shares of PNB and other state-run Indian banks is having a wide-ranging impact across the country’s financial system, according to Bloomberg.

  Foreign banks, worried about the systemic lapses that the scandal has exposed, have become unwilling to lend money to smaller Indian firms – causing massive disruptions in trade finance. All of this pressure has hammered the Indian rupee, which is on track for its first monthly drop since September. This is largely because India’s economy, like the US, runs a trade deficit, and depends on capital inflows to function.

  

  Foreign capital comes through foreign funds’ purchases of Indian stocks and bonds, local exporters’ sale of foreign-currency earnings and dollar loans from foreign banks. India is one of the world’s biggest users of trade funding worldwide, according to the ICC Global Survey 2017.

  The fraud was purportedly masterminded by Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, both of whom are on the run.

  The two men worked with a PNB employee named Gokulnath Shetty, who recently retired. Shetty would issue fraudulent letters of undertaking to help companies create by Choksi and Modi apply for loans through the foreign branches of other Indian banks. The fraud continued as, when it came time to repay the loans, Shetty would issue still more LoU’s to cover the balance.

  Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Standard Chartered Plc and HSBC Holdings Plc are among banks reducing exposure to these transactions, used by smaller companies to access short-term dollar funding, said people with knowledge of the matter. As questions are raised about the creditworthiness of guarantees from Indian state-run banks, rates have risen by as much as 0.5 percentage point for some types of financing, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details are private.

  Spokesmen in Mumbai for Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Citigroup declined to comment. “We continue to support our clients on transactions that meet our internal controls and standards,” a spokesman for Standard Chartered said by email.

  If doubts about the safety of Indian firms continue to grow, some firms may soon be forced to pay a full percentage point above Libor, compared with 0.5 percentage point before the PNB fraud was disclosed. As Bloomberg points out, the interlinked nature of global trade means trust is a crucial component of these transactions.

  

  The one silver lining is that at least larger Indian companies, which have direct access to funding from foreign lenders and don’t rely on interim guarantees, haven’t been affected by the credit crunch.

  Possibly making matters worse, PNB has blamed other banks for negligence by failing to detect the fraud, though the fact that the bank’s internal controls weren’t connected to SWIFT – the international banking telecommunications system – making it much more difficult to detect the fraud.

  So the real question is: Will India’s banking regulators finally act to install meaningful controls? Or will the fallout from this short-term finance crunch continue to worsen until it blossoms into an acute capital-flight crisis.

  

• The Future Of Adult Entertainment: Strippers Now Accept Bitcoin Via QR-Tattoos

  Welcome to the exciting new world of Bitcoin.

  A cryptocurrency strip club called ‘The Legends Room’ has become the first of its kind in Las Vegas, where strippers wear temporary QR tattoos as a wallet to process bitcoin payments. This new feature provides patrons and strippers with an anonymous, decentralized payment solution for transacting naughty services, usually bought with cash or credit cards — that often leaves a money trail.

  

  The cryptocurrency strip club opened in May 2017 by martial arts trainer Nick Blomgren, who dreamed up the scheme to use cryptocurrency payments so patrons can keep their visits secret from loved ones, said Las Vegas I-TEAM.

  “We came up with an idea probably about a year and a half ago of how we could turn this Bitcoin into something. So we were brainstorming. First, we were thinking about a fight company because I own a mixed martial arts gym. I was like well that would work better in a strip club. It’s the best place to spend it if you don’t want your wife to know or you don’t want your boyfriend to know,” said Blomgren.

  He added that cryptos could be the next big thing; “Some people had the dot.com era and if you didn’t jump on then, you missed the boat. Well, I don’t feel I missed the boat this time, I got on the ground floor of something that’s going to be huge.”

  Patrons who have a cryptocurrency wallet can directly scan the QR tattoos on the dancers’ body — they can also pay through traditional forms of payment i.e., cash or card.

  Blomgren offers a substantial perk for patrons who wish to transact cryptocurrency in his club, that is a 20 percent discount on all club services.

  Vanessa Murphy, an I-Team field reporter, had a fascinating conversation (documented below) with one stripper, who claims to have been in the crypto game for over 5-years. The stripper tells the reporter, “cryptocurrency may be the future for adult entertainment workers.”

  Vanessa Murphy, I-Team Reporter: “How often do customers want to pay with Bitcoin?”

  Brenna Sparks, adult entertainer: “Oh, quite often.  Like the people that come here, they are like really into crypto. I feel like it’s very smart. They are really into that.”

  The dancer whose stage name is Brenna Sparks, says she became interested in cryptocurrency when she was just 19 years old. She’s now 26 years old.

  “It’s peer to peer.  It’s anonymous, and it’s instant,” Sparks said.

  Sparks says she and her friends think cryptocurrency may be the future for adult entertainment workers.

  “I’m not going to name names, but there are certain banks that… will shut down your account and actually deny you from having an account because we work in the adult entertainment industry, said Summer Chase, adult entertainment worker.

  The club’s DJ, known as Saint Clare, says part of her deal at the Legends Room is that part of her paycheck is cryptocurrency.

  “When I first heard about the concept, I thought wow this is really something different, you know,” DJ Saint Clare said.

  Vanessa Murphy, I-Team Reporter: “Do you check your account a lot?”

  Brenna Sparks, adult entertainer: “I do (laughs).  It’s fun though. Once you invest, it becomes an everyday thing.”

  And lastly, The Legends Room has its own cryptocurrency called LGD issued on Ethereum platform.

  

  “In the beginning, it was like a lot of bitcoin guys came in, a lot of LGD members came in and wanted to use their LGD to see if they can buy anything here at the club because nobody really thought that the club existed in the beginning,” explained Blomgren.

  “So now it’s, it’s become like curiosity. Let’s go down there and see if we can use our cryptocurrency.”

   

   

  

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