by Chris White Exporting companies are using Chinese ships, planes, and trucks to transport dead Americans across the world for research purposes, according to a Thursday report from Reuters.
A Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship departed South Carolina in July carrying 6,000 pounds of human remains valued at $67,204. The container’s temperature was set to 5 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent the parts from spoiling. Relatives of the dead, meanwhile, did not realize their loved ones’ remains were being dismembered and sent to Europe and elsewhere, the report notes. Body brokers like Oregon-based MedCure rely on lax regulations to export heads, shoulders, knees and toes to Mexico, China, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, among several other countries. Plastic surgeons in Germany use heads to practice new techniques, while thousands of parts are shipped overseas annually. “There are people who wouldn’t necessarily mind where the specimens were sent if they were fully informed,” Brandi Schmitt, who directs a body donation system at the University of California, told reporters about the trade, which is still shrouded in mystery. “But clearly there are plenty of donors that do mind and that don’t feel like they’re getting enough information.” The FBI raided MedCure in November, which culminated in a federal investigation. MORE@LINK ABOVE
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Subject: - QAnon Drops Bombshell: Are Big Pharma/FDA Thugs Murdering Holistic Doctors, Too? Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:15 am
#2 February 9, 2018 FDA Tyrants Declare War Upon The 1st Amendment And The American People While Promoting 'Big Pharma Mafia' And Their Deadly Poisons That Have Killed Millions Of Americans
- QAnon Drops Bombshell: Are Big Pharma/FDA Thugs Murdering Holistic Doctors, Too?
By Stefan Stanford - All News Pipeline - Live Free Or Die
As if the FDA and their head Scott Gottlieb needed to give the American people any more proof how corrupt that they are while being joined at the hip with the 'big pharma mafia', we get it in this new story over at Yahoo News which the Drudge Report recently linked to. Reporting that the Food and Drug Administration has just launched what is akin to an all-out terror attack upon the free people of America with their latest attempts to ban an herbal product that millions of Americans use daily in place of big pharma's deadly poisons to safely manage pain, should we be surprised?
While President Trump recently stated at the State of the Unionthat he was in favor of expanding the options of experimental treatments for those who are dying, our own public servants, the FDA, have instead decided to take it upon themselves to further tyrannize those same suffering Americans to benefit their criminal cronies at Big Pharma who are making millions off of the opioid crisis and the deaths of millions of Americans.
As we reported on ANP back on February 1st, a shocking story out of a small West Virginia town PROVES that 'big pharma' is the biggest drug pusher in America, pushing over 20 million painkillers into a town of just over 3,000 people over several years. Why will the FDA allow big pharma terrorists to push their deadly poisons while trying to ban all-natural products?
And now we learn in this recent story from Mac Slavo over at SHTFPlan that the very same FDA tyrants are attacking the 1st Amendment itself, the very base of our Constituion, leading us to ask, has the FDA exposed themselves as another 'enemy of America within' as they launch war upon the 1st Amendment and the American people? From Slavo's story:
Is The Constitution Going Up In Vapor? According to the Pacific Legal Foundation, it most certainly is, literally.
PLF has filed a lawsuit against the unconstitutional Food and Drug Administration over what is being promoted as a healthy alternative to smoking. It’s a product that has been sweeping the nation for a couple of years now, and it called vaping.
Part of the claim is that the FDA devised a rule against vaping that appears to clearly attack the First Amendment by regulating what can be said about a product, even if those claims are true.
How in the world is a product that produces water vapor a tobacco product? On what planet does that fly? The same one that the same Communists tell us we are in the midst of global warming, over population and need a nanny state to tell us what to eat and drink.
It’s unconstitutional because only Congress has legislative authority under our Constitution. [size=16]Our Constitution doesn’t even mention an FDA, which has actually been the promoter of numerous drugs that have killed hundreds of thousands of people,according to its own website.
POLL BELOW: Should the FDA and every other US government agency that terrorizes the American people be disbanded?
As we also reported on ANP back on September 1st of 2016, the last time the FDA prepared to terrorize the American people by attempting to ban kratom, "the same 'elements within the US government' who are preparing to terrorize Americans by banning Kratom ALSO corrupted veterans' health care" as even 'far left' Salon reported back in 2016:
Veterans are losing the war at home: Making America pain-free for plutocrats, Big Pharma.
Those who profit from this country's endless wars are one and the same - the 'war criminal plutocrats' in Washington DC and 'big pharma'.
As we hear from the Daily Sheeple in the first video below, the war that the FDA has declared upon free Americans should be an outrage to EVERY American, regardless of whether or not they agree with prohibition. Just like the FDA attempting to ban homeopathic medications, we're witnessing government tyranny unfolding before our eyes.
[size=13]The Government...ANY GOVERNMENT, doesn't have the right to go through your mail in search of a LEGAL product and then seize/destroy said LEGAL product....but trust the Government because they have our best interest at heart.... yeah right! [/size][/size] And while the Yahoo story reports that there have been a whopping 44 deaths involving the herbal supplement kratom since 2011, less than 7 people a year, and even those numbers are totally skewed as the dead had other 'big pharma' poisons in their system, Food and Drug Administration head Scott Gottlieb is the very face of corruption as he has received nearly a half-million dollars from Big Pharma according to Pro Publicaand has a direct working relationship with the manufacturer of fentanyl, Cephalon, according to United States Senator Ed Markey.
For those who haven't been paying attention, opioids that the FDA and Scott Gottlieb approve of are now the LEADING cause of death among young Americans with big pharma's opioids killing over 64,000 in 2016 alone. So, WHY do they really want to ban kratom? And why does FDA Head Scott Gottlieb WANT Americans to die while he enriches himself and helps to enrich big pharma's mafia off of their deadly poisons?
While not directly tied to the tyranny that 'big pharma' and their 'cowardly whipping boys' over at the FDA are preparing to unleash upon the American people, in an interesting series of posts recently made by QAnon over at 8Chan, Q goes directly at not only big pharma but also the mysterious deaths of medical researchers going back at least 5 years and the billions and billions of dollars being made by big pharma terrorists.
As he mentions in this first post below, our minds will be blown by the chain of command.
What should Americans know about the abuses of our pharmaceutical system and its ties to government agencies such as the FDA and why are people such as Scott Gottlieb permitted to enrich themselves while Americans die off of Gottlieb and countless other government dregs just like him profiting?
And there we go again...the mention of dead medical researchers in the past 5 years. Is this another hint that 'big pharma' or their cronies over at the FDA are 'taking out' medical researchers or holistic health care practitioners?
As Erin Elizabeth has been reporting over at Health Nut Newsfor several years now, there has been an extraordinary number of alternative medical doctors who have met their mysterious and untimely ends.
Is 'big pharma' the very head of the globalist beast that has long been working to 'take down America'? We'll totally agree with 'QAnon' and his statement: "These people are sick!" How 'sick' are they? Are they murderers?
Is it time for President Trump to disband the failed FDA? While approving poisons from Monsatan, nutrasweet, and the list goes on and working 'hand in mouth' with big pharma terrorists who are murdering Americans with their poisons, ANY government agency that attempts to tell free Americans what helpful foods or herbs that we can put inside of our own bodies is doing the work of tyrants.
The mere fact that the FDA claims that kratom is dangerous while allowing big pharma's poisons to continue to murder countless Americans every day tells us everything that we need to know: The FDA and particularly FDA Scott Gottlieb are corrupt to the core and the perfect example of a useless government agency that Americans can do without.
And with the FDA proving they've gone all out tyrants by attempting to ban the 1st Amendment as well, we can firmly say that the FDA is another 'enemy of freedom and America within'. As Mike Adams reported over at Natural News back in 2007 in this story titled Tyranny in the USA: The true history of FDA raids on healers, vitamin shops and supplement companies", the FDA has long history of tyrannizing Americans.
Is the FDA also doing the dirty work of 'big pharma terrorists' and assassinating American healers of today, the 80+ alternative health care practitioners who have met their untimely ends? As 'QAnon' mentions, we'd love to see the 'chain of command' of the big pharma mafia and their 'terror enablers' within the FDA.
In closing, should the FDA and every other US government agency that terrorizes the American people be disbanded?
Should the FDA and every other US government agency that terrorizes the American people be disbanded? [size=16]Absolutely No, they are heroes to us sheeple... Other Please Specify: [/size]
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Subject: Uranium One Scandal: Moscow Routed $3 Million To Clinton Global Initiative Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:19 am
Uranium One Scandal: Moscow Routed $3 Million To Clinton Global Initiative
Mac Slavo February 8th, 2018 SHTFplan.com
An informant has come forward with evidence that the Clinton Global Initiative received $3 million from Moscow in lobbying fees in exchange for nuclear support. But it gets worse for Democrats as more evidence that the media covered up this scandal surfaces as well. Don’t expect the mainstream media to report on this: An undercover FBI informant embedded in the Russian nuclear industry who was made to sign an “illegal NDA (non-disclosure agreement)” by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has finally given his testimony to three Congressional committees. William D. Campbell became an FBI counterintelligence asset after spending several years as a CIA operative who developed working relationships in the nuclear industry in Kazakhstan and Russia. Campbell discovered that Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm, Transport Logistics International (TLI) in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bribed a Russian nuclear official in exchange for a contract transport Russian-mined U.S. uranium, including “yellowcake” uraniumsecured in the Uranium One deal. What happened next, according to Campbell’s testimony, was that Moscow routed millions of dollars to the United States with the expectation it would be used to benefit Bill Clinton‘s charitable efforts while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quarterbacked a “reset” in US-Russian relations. Campbell said in the statement obtained by The Hill that he was told by Russian nuclear executives that Moscow had hired the American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide specifically because it was in a position to influence the Obama administration, and more specifically Hillary Clinton. Campbell said Russian nuclear officials “told me at various times that they expected APCO to apply a portion of the $3 million annual lobbying fee it was receiving from the Russians to provide in-kind support for the Clinton’s Global Initiative,” he added in the testimony. “The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over twelve months. APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the U.S.-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.” Now, who’s been caught “colluding with Russia?” APCO Worldwide immediately went into damage control mode.” APCO Worldwide’s activities involving client work on behalf of Tenex and The Clinton Global Initiative were totally separate and unconnected in any way,” APCO told The Hill in a statement. “All actions on these two unconnected activities were appropriate, publicly documented from the outset and consistent with regulations and the law. Any assertion otherwise is false and unfounded.” Meanwhile, Campbell claims to have video evidence of bribe money related to the Uranium One deal being stuffed into suitcases. Obama’s FBI knew about the bribery scheme, yet the administration still approved the Uranium One deal. Campbell was paid $51,000 by FBI officials at a 2016 celebration dinner in Crystal City to “thank him for his service.” When it emerged that Campbell had evidence against the Clinton Foundation, a Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff (of FISA warrant application fame) slammed Campbell as a “disaster” potential witness. This is more evidence that the media is covering up major scandals of The Obama Administration and other powerful Democrats, like Hillary and Bill Clinton. Campbell told Congressional investigators that the Uranium One deal, along with billions in other uranium contracts inside the United States during the Obama administration, was part of a “Russian uranium dominance strategy” involving Tenex and its American arm Tenem – both subsidiaries of state-owned Russian energy company Rosatom.
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“The emails and documents I intercepted during 2010 made clear that Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One – for both its Kazakh and American assets – was part of Russia’s geopolitical strategy to gain leverage in global energy markets,” he testified. “I obtained documentary proof that Tenex was helping Rosatom win CFIUS approval, including an October 6, 2010 email … asking me specifically to help overcome opposition to the Uranium One deal. Rosatom/Tenex threw a party to celebrate, which was widely attended by American nuclear industry officials. At the request of the FBI, I attended and recorded video footage of Tenam’s new offices,” he added.
[size] Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton, also attempted some damage control. Merrill said Campbell’s account is simply being used to distract from the investigations into President Trump and Russia. “Just yesterday the committee made clear that this secret informant charade was just that, a charade. Along with the widely debunked text-message-gate and Nunes’ embarrassing memo episode, we have a trifecta of GOP-manufactured scandals designed to distract from their own President’s problems and the threat to democracy he poses,” Merrill said. Campell painted a different picture, however. He accused Obama administration officials of making decisions that ended up benefitting the Russian nuclear industry, which he said was seeking to build a monopoly in the global uranium market to help President Vladimir Putin seek a geopolitical advantage over the United States. “I remember one response I got from an agent when I asked how it was possible CFIUS would approve the Uranium One sale when the FBI could prove Rosatom was engaged in criminal conduct. His answer: ‘Ask your politics,’ ” Campbell said. For a more in-depth timeline of the events unfolding around this scandal, please click here. This is a developing story and we will update you as information becomes available.[/size] Click here to subscribe: Join over one million monthly readers and receive breaking news, strategies, ideas and commentary.
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Subject: Norovirus SPREAD Quickly At 2018 Winter Olympics Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:21 am
#4 http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/norovirus-spread-quickly-at-2018-winter-olympics_02082018 Norovirus SPREAD Quickly At 2018 Winter Olympics
Mac Slavo February 8th, 2018 SHTFplan.com
As we previously reported, the norovirus is spreading quickly among security guards at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Determined not to let the Olympics spiral into a widespread gastrointestinal nightmare, organizers of the Games seemed intent on carrying out a scorched-earth assault on every last germ in a 40-mile radius. According to the New York Times, by Thursday night, 42 more cases of norovirus were confirmed around the sites of the 2018 Winter Olympics, bringing the official tally of cases this week to 128. A mere 24 hours before the opening ceremony of the Games,the outbreak has threatened to undermine an otherwise watertight start to the global sports event. Competitors, Olympic staff members, and journalists claimed not to be panicking, but the quietly growing sense of wariness in Pyeongchang was palpable. Sneezes provoked sideways looks. Fist bumps replaced handshakes. People washed their hands over and over and over again. “We’ve got every germ killing thing that you can have, just in case, and we’ve got masks if it gets bad enough,” said Mitchell Whitmore, an American speed skater at his third Olympics. But the norovirus is easily spread and difficult to contain.
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The norovirus is an infection which causes the sudden and severe onset of diarrhea and vomiting; symptoms which begin within 12-48 of exposure and can be painful. The virus is highly contagious and commonly spread through food or water that is contaminated during preparation or contaminated surfaces. You can also be infected through close contact with an infected person. Most people will cover without treatment in three days, however, hospitalization can occur if victims are infants or elderly. Organizers said this viral infection is particularly bad. Of the 1,200 guards removed from duty, 41 had suffered a sudden onset of vomiting and diarrhea on Sunday and all had been taken to a hospital. The outbreak comes just days before the opening of South Korea’s 2018 Winter Olympics on Thursday.-SHTFPlan
[size] At a news conference on Wednesday night, Dr. Park Kisoo, a spokesman for the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tried to temper the growing sense of worry. “You don’t need to go running out of the room if somebody sneezes,” Park said. Park preached the importance of proactive personal hygiene. So along with wool caps and long underwear, bottles of hand sanitizer in varying shapes and sizes have become this year’s hottest Olympic accessory. Plus, those measures are proving to be ineffective in the prevention of the spread of the norovirus anyway. Since the virus is found in the vomit and feces of an infected person, it makes sense that protecting oneself from a sneeze won’t help much. [/size] Click here to subscribe: Join over one million monthly readers and receive breaking news, strategies, ideas and commentary.
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Subject: HEROIN SANTUARY CITIES ? Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:26 am
SAN FRANCISCO TO OPEN NATION’S FIRST HEROIN INJECTION SITES Published: February 9, 2018
OURCE: FOX 59
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – The San Francisco Department of Public Health has unanimously endorsed a task force’s recommendation to open what could become the nation’s first legal safe injection sites aimed at curbing the opioid epidemic. The facilities provide a safe space where people can consume previously obtained drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl, under the supervision of staff trained to respond in the event of an overdose or other medical emergency. They also provide counseling and referrals to other social and health services. Although the often-controversial facilities are not an ideal solution, they are a necessity in light of the skyrocketing number of deaths caused by opioid overdose in the United States, according to San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell. “I understand the misgivings around it and some of the rhetoric from people who don’t support it,” Farrell said last week. “But we absolutely need to give it a try.” More than 63,000 people in the US died from drug overdose in 2016, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — more than the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. At this rate, over half a million people will die from overdose in the US in the next 10 years, exceeding the number of Americans killed in World War II, the deadliest conflict in human history. The city plans to open the first two facilities in July, the beginning of its fiscal year. “I’m really excited,” said Laura Thomas, the California state director for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. “I’ve been working on this particular issue for over a decade.” There are an estimated 22,000 intravenous drug users in San Francisco, many of whom openly inject in public areas across the city. Last year, over 100 people died in San Francisco of drug overdose, according to [url=https://www.sfdph.org/dph/hc/HCAgen/HCAgen2018/February 6/SIS Task Force Final Report 2017.pdf][/url]a report published by the city’s Safe Injection Services Task Force. More than 100 peer-reviewed studies on safe injection sites — otherwise known as supervised consumption facilities — have consistently shown them to be effective at reducing overdose deaths, preventing transmission of HIV and viral hepatitis, reducing street-based drug use and linking people to drug treatment and other services.
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Subject: WSJ Asks: Why Is The Media Ignoring The Real Bombshell FISA Memo? Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:29 am
Authored by Guy Benson via Townhall.com, We'll bring you Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel's tweetstorm in a moment, but I'll take a stab at answering her question about the media right out of the gate. Three possibilities:
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(1) The GOP hyped the Nunes memo, which quickly became the center of this whole firestorm -- replete with counter-memos, FBI objections, etc. The press followed the spotlight. (2) As we've been saying, there are so many complex pieces of this larger puzzle, following the plot is difficult. It's not just news consumers wondering, "which memo is this now?" -- it's many of the people trying to cover this drama, too. The document in question here is a second, less redacted, version of a Senate memo that few people have even heard of. (3) The Senate memo, produced by non-bomb-throwers Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, is substantially more disruptive to the Democrats' narrative than the Nunes document. And the press generally prefers Democratic narratives to Republican ones because most journalists are liberals.
[size] My guess is that some blend of all three factors helps explain why the Grassley/Graham memo has barely registered on the national radar, even after we've endured multiple high-octane news cycles starring Nunes and Schiff. But on the substance, does Strassel have a point, or is this just the latest shiny object the right-wing is waving around to distract from "the real story," now that the Nunes memo was arguably a bit of a dud? Here's her case:
[/size]
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Kimberley Strassel
✔@KimStrassel
[ltr]1) Why isn't the (mostly) unredacted Grassley memo front page news? Here's why: Because it confirms the Nunes memo and blows up the Schiff talking points (which the media ran with).[/ltr] 8:21 AM - Feb 7, 2018
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Kimberley Strassel
✔@KimStrassel Replying to @KimStrassel
[ltr]2)It is confirmation that the FBI's FISA application relied on the dossier and a news article, and worse, on the credibility of a source in the employ of the Clinton campaign.[/ltr] 8:23 AM - Feb 7, 2018
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Kimberley Strassel
✔@KimStrassel Replying to @KimStrassel
[ltr]3) It is proof that the FBI did not tell the Court the extraordinarily partisan provenance of the dossier.[/ltr] 8:24 AM - Feb 7, 2018
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Kimberley Strassel
✔@KimStrassel Replying to @KimStrassel
[ltr]4) It provides evidence that the FBI presented the FISA Court with materially false evidence, in the claim that Steele had not talked to the press. And then shows that even after Steele admitted under oath that he had, the FBI did not tell the FISA Court in its renewal.[/ltr] 8:26 AM - Feb 7, 2018
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Kimberley Strassel
✔@KimStrassel Replying to @KimStrassel
[ltr]5) It provides evidence that Steele was getting information from the Clinton team itself! Via the State Department! So now, not only do we have a dossier based on unnamed shady Russians, but on Sidney Blumenthal. How much of this was engineered by the Clinton campaign from start?[/ltr] 8:29 AM - Feb 7, 2018
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Does that all of check out? Allahpundit digs into the document (a much more redacted version had been released previously) and seems to agree that Grassley/Graham is a significantly bigger deal than Nunes. In our analysis of the latter document last week, we wrote that a major question was how much the DOJ relied on the Steele dossier itself to gain a FISA warrant against former Trump adviser Carter Page. According to Grassley/Graham, the answer is a lot. I posited that if investigators had used the unverified dossier as a starting point from which to chase down leads and produce more solid evidence to present to a FISA judge, that'd be one thing. But if they leaned heavily on Steele's file itself as the "evidence," that would be sketchier. According to the two GOP Senators, the FBI did the latter. From AP's excellent summary (the relevant bits of the memo itself are here and here): [/size]
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...“The bulk of the application” against Page was dossier material... “The application appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page.” In other words, they seem to have treated the dossier as evidence, not as a lead. That’s big news.
[size] But that's not all. Grassley/Graham allege, based on intelligence, that the man behind the anti-Trump dossier was known to be unreliable by the FBI (they eventually severed ties with him) because he was caught lying either to US law enforcement or to British courts, telling each entity different stories about a key fact. Either way, FISA judges who approved and renewed the Page warrants weren't told about the proven unreliability of the foreign agent whose work product was (apparently) the central basis for said warrants. The FBI might counter that Steele seemed credible at first, then they dumped him when he burned them, but that doesn't mean their hands are clean, Allahpundit writes: [/size]
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(a) that doesn’t solve the problem that the original FISA application against Page evidently relied “heavily” on information passed from a not-very-credible foreign agent and (b) that doesn’t explain why the Bureau allegedly failed to tell the FISA Court in later applications to renew their surveillance of Page that Steele’s info maybe hadn’t been so credible...Grassley and Graham make another good point about Steele’s chattering to the press while his investigation was still ongoing: Once bad actors were aware that he was digging for dirt on Trump, they could have sought him out and fed him any amount of BS in hopes of it trickling through to the FBI and deepening the official suspicion surrounding Team Trump. That’s how Clinton cronies — maybe even Sid Blumenthal — got involved in this clusterfark. Because Steele was supposedly willing to accept even unsolicited tips about Trump, the Clinton team may have fed him rumors to help fill a dossier for which their boss was paying.
[size] Two big points there: [/size]
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Even after the FBI recognized Steele was an established liar, his dishonesty was not disclosed to judges deciding whether to keep the warrants active during renewal applications, which were largely predicated on Steele's credibility. And the topic about which he apparently lied was whether he blabbed to folks in the media about his work, which could have opened up the floodgates for disinformation from shady characters eager to make the anti-Trump case as juicy and brimming with salaciousness as possible.
[size] That's where Blumenthal and company, whom I wrote about here, may have come in. What a mess. Also, speaking of not revealing pertinent information to the courts, it looks like Nunes was technically incorrect that the judges weren't made aware that the Steele dossier was paid political oppo research. But he was more broadly correct that the judges didn't have even close to the full picture of who was behind the unverified partisan document upon which they were primarily basing the surveillance of a US citizen -- who happened to be a former aide to a major presidential campaign from the out-of-power party. "As Nunes himself later admitted, the Bureau apparently did disclose in a footnote that the material was paid political research. It just didn’t mention who, precisely, had paid for it," AP writes. The memo reads, "in footnote 8, the FBI stated that the dossier information was compiled pursuant to the direction of a law firm that had hired an "identified US person" -- now known as Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS...the application failed to disclose that the identities of Mr. Simpson's ultimate clients were the Clinton campaign and the DNC." So the disclosure came in a footnote and didn't mention that the parties who paid for the unverified dossier were the Trump campaign's explicit opposition. Maybe there was no misconduct in any of this, but even as someone who believes neither that suspicion of Carter Page was unreasonable, nor that this is all part of a grand anti-Trump conspiracy (remember, the Trump angle of the Russia probe started earlier, for an unrelated reason), there's enough in the Grassley/Graham memo to make me uncomfortable with the standards by which Page was surveilled by the US government.[/size]
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Subject: The Dow Falls 1,032 Points! Has The Financial Crisis Of 2018 Officially Arrived? Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:39 am
The Dow Falls 1,032 Points! Has The Financial Crisis Of 2018 Officially Arrived?
Michael Snyder Economic Collapse February 9, 2018 We haven’t seen this kind of a bloodbath on Wall Street since the great financial crisis of 2008. Prior to this week, the largest single day decline for the Dow Jones industrial average that we had ever seen was 777 points. That record was absolutely shattered on Monday when the Dow fell 1,175 points, and on Thursday the Dow dropped another 1,032 points. This was the third decline greater than 500 points within the last five trading days, and the Dow is poised to post its worst week since the dark days of October 2008. So is this just a “correction”, or has the financial crisis of 2018 officially arrived? At this point, many of the experts are pointing to the bond market as the primary reason why stock prices are crashing. The following comes from CNBC…
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There’s a not-so-quiet rebellion going on in the bond market, and it threatens to take 10-year yields above 3 percent much faster than expected just a few weeks ago. As a result, the bumpy ride for stocks could continue for a while.
And without a doubt, analysts such as Jeff Gundlach clearly warned that there would be big trouble for stocks as bond yields rose…
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Gundlach had correctly predicted that if the 10-year U.S. Treasury note yield went above 2.63 percent, U.S. stock investors would be spooked. “Clearly, the market gets shaky when the 10-year hits 2.85 percent,” Gundlach said. “Just look at this week, and today. Makes one consider what could be coming if 10s push over 3 and 30s (30-year Treasury bond) over 3.22 percent.” The 10-year yield is currently trading around 2.83 percent. Gundlach said it is “hard to love bonds at even a 3 percent” yield. “Rising interest rates are a problem and the U.S. is in debt and there is massive bond supply,” Gundlach said.
Moving forward, it will be important to keep a close eye on bond yields. Every time they start going back up, we are likely to see stock prices go down…
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“We’re in a vicious cycle here. If the yields go up, you have to sell stocks. If you sell stocks, and they crash, yields come back down,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR. The bond market’s struggle to price in higher interest rates has been kneecapped each time the stock market reacts and sells off. Strategists expect the two markets to ultimately find an equilibrium but not without more sharp swings.
This is one of the reasons why the budget deal going through Congress right now is such a bad idea. Hundreds of billions of dollars of additional spending on top of what we are already doing is going to push up bond yields, and that is just going to make the pressure on Wall Street even worse. Of course the folks over at the Federal Reserve could intervene, but they don’t seem inclined to do that at this point. Late last year the Fed finally removed artificial life support from the financial system, and at first everything seemed to be going well. But now a new crisis is brewing, and we shall see if the Fed still remains determined to keep raising rates. The following comes from Peter Schiff…
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“The Fed were dragging their feet in raising rates while Obama was president. They talked about raising rates but at the end of the day, they barely moved them up. The pace of hikes has increased since Trump was elected, but part of the reason for that…I mean, the media is not talking down the economy; if anything they’re overhyping the economy. Everybody’s talking about how strong the economy is, how everything is great. Everybody is taking credit for this great economy. The Fed wants to take credit for it, Trump wants to take credit for it, so if everybody wants to talk about how great the economy is, the Fed doesn’t have any excuse if it doesn’t raise rates…in order to keep up the pretense that the economy is as strong as everybody thinks, the Fed is in this box where it has to raise rates. But they [the Fed] can’t tell the truth that it’s really a bubble, and if we raise rates, we’re gonna prick it, so they’re kinda in this bind. And they are still telegraphing that they’re gonna raise rates three or four times this year. And that is the problem.“
It has been my contention for a very long time that the greatest financial bubble in human history would not be able to continue without artificial support from the Fed and other global central banks. Once the Fed finally ended their artificial support for the markets late last year, I anticipated that there would be trouble, but stock prices continued to rise through the holiday season. But now reality is setting in, and investors are rushing like mad for the exits. I really like how Brandon Smithdescribed the current state of affairs in his recent article…
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After I predicted the election of Donald Trump, I also predicted that central banks would begin pulling the plug on life support for equities markets. This did in fact take place with the Fed’s continued program of interest rate increases and the reduction of their balance sheet, which effectively strangles the flow of cheap credit to banking and corporate institutions that fueled stock buybacks for years. Without this constant and ever expansionary easy fiat, there is nothing left to act as a crutch for stocks except perhaps blind faith. And blind faith in the economy always ends up being smacked down by the ugly realities of mathematics.
Without artificial support, gravity will try to pull stock valuations back to their long-term averages. That would mean a decline for the Dow of at least 10,000 more points, but major financial institutions are so highly leveraged and Wall Street has become such a giant casino that our system literally cannot handle that sort of a decline. The only way that the game can continue is for the Fed and other global central banks to intervene and prop up the absurd financial bubble that they originally created. Absent that, this crisis is likely to go from bad to worse, and we may soon find ourselves facing a financial panic unlike anything that we have ever seen before.
This article was posted: Friday, February 9, 2018 at 6:51 am
Subject: SPRING'S -2-9-2018 = 
Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:04 am
Kimberley Strassel
