Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 1, 2022 | Sundance
Comrades, if you were hoping to take the kids to the Drag Queen Story time at Ramstein Airforce base tomorrow in celebration of global Pride Month, unfortunately the 86th Airlift Wing has cancelled the event.
After initially telling everyone, “We’re celebrating Pride Month at the Ramstein Library with Drag Queen Storytime! Be sure to wear your brightest and most colorful outfits!,” apparently, the chief of public affairs, Lt. Col. Will Powell, now says the event did not go through the vetting process prior to the announcement.
According to the Washington Examiner: “The controversial event comes amid a growing ideological divide among liberals and conservatives about how and who should be teaching children about sexuality.
Conservatives have argued that these lessons should be left up to the parents, while some liberals in educational settings have begun teaching children about these topics according to their own views, at times without parental consent.” (more)
However, comrade binaries, all is not lost. The United States Marines and the United States Airforce are putting their best boots forward and promoting inclusive wokeism as part of a new military outlook under the new leadership of a more progressive -and sensitive- commander in chief.
With additional military forward deployment and support for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a male pronoun comfortable in stilettos, the enlightened coalition will soon arrive in the rainbow fields of Ukraine to combat the horribly patriarchal Russian advancement.
The U.S. Marines are well positioned in the cultural battlespace as noted by their announcement earlier today:
The pesky Russians don’t stand a chance against a well choreographed advance reconnaissance team. The few and very proud, with a well trained twerking division of soldiers ready to bare it all in defense of our allies, are practicing their line-dance formations as we speak.
Joint Chiefs’ Chair Mark Milley has assured Defense Secretary Austin that our fabulous troops will be well protected. The angels on their shoulders have triggered rainbow air support.
Dear leader has yet to announce who will be bringing up the rear; however, we suspect the U.S. army will rise to the occasion.
Be afraid President Putin and Chairman Xi… be very afraid!
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on June 1, 2022 | Sundance
Last night Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made an explosive announcement as an outcome of a whistleblower providing information to him and Jim Jordan about the FBI having a collaborative relationship with the Clinton/DNC law firm Perkins Coie. {Go Deep} Specifically, the explosive element surrounds the FBI having a workspace within the DNC law firm that would have given Democrats an open portal into FBI databases for use in opposition research.
Secondarily, Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann being in charge of this working arrangement within Perkins Coie for the past year, since the departure of Marc Elias, becomes a far greater issue. The potential ramifications of this joint collaborative activity are vast.
The FBI can exploit the NSA database to conduct searches of all cell phone, computer, email, text message, social media, electronic communication and all private data/communication belonging to Americans; this would include geolocation. If the FBI was operating within Perkins Coie since 2012, then the democrats have held access to fully intrusive electronic surveillance of their political opposition, or anyone else – anywhere, for a decade.
Mainstream conservative defenders of the DOJ and FBI institutions, as a result of their prior tenure inside those same agencies, have long denied the Dept of Justice and FBI are corrupt political entities. The revelation of the FBI and Perkins Coie working collaboratively to exploit this data portal is something that people like Margot Cleveland, Andrew McCarthy, Johnathan Turley and many others need to deny in order to retain the premise of institutional credibility.
However, the FBI and DNC law firm working collaboratively on issues of joint importance goes far beyond the ‘image of impropriety or conflicted interest‘ and extends to the actual corruption within the foundational institutions of government. Transparently, if these reports are accurate all of the inexplicable dynamics within the “two tiers of justice” suddenly reconcile. The FBI and Perkins Coie having the ability to conduct electronic surveillance of any target is a thermonuclear level of sunlight, that reconciles years of visible issues.
There is a common misconception about why the FBI and intelligence apparatus began investigating the political campaign of Donald Trump.
In this refresher outline I hope to provide some deep source material that will provide context to the revelation of the FBI-Perkins Coie relationship against numerous historic reference points that reconcile with the new revelation.
During the timeframe of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community, specifically within the FBI, doing unauthorized searches.
On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized FBI search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.
NSA Director Mike Rogers was made aware.
Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search queries were being done without authorization.
Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.
When you compile the timeline with the people involved; and the specific wording of the resulting review, which was then delivered to the FISA court; and overlay the activity that was taking place in the 2016 political primary; what we discover is a process where the metadata collected by the NSA was being searched for political opposition research and surveillance.
Tens-of-thousands of unauthorized and unlawful searches were identified by the FISA court as likely extending much further than the compliance review period: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of the non compliant queries since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 period coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
In short, during the Obama administration access to the NSA database was continually used to conduct surveillance. This is the critical point that leads to understanding the origin of “Spygate”, as it unfolded in the Spring and Summer of 2016.
It was the discovery of the database exploitation and the removal of access as a surveillance tool that seemed to create the initial problem for the FBI political unit in Washington, DC. Here’s how we can tell.
In December 2015 there were 17 GOP candidates, all needing opposition research.
However, when Donald Trump won New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina the field was significantly whittled. Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Carson remained.
On Super Tuesday, March 2, 2016, Donald Trump won seven states (VT, AR, VA, GA, AL, TN, MA) it was then clear that Trump was the GOP frontrunner with momentum to become the presumptive nominee.
On March 5th, 2016, DonaldTrump won Kentucky and Louisiana; and on March 8th Trump won Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii.
The next day, March 9, 2016, is when NSA security alerts warned internal oversight personnel that something sketchy was going on. This timing is not coincidental.
As FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer later wrote in her report, “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” Put another way: attributes belonging to a specific individual(s) were being targeted and queried, unlawfully. Given what was later discovered, it seems obvious the primary search targets, over multiple date ranges, were political candidates, specifically Donald Trump.
There were tens-of-thousands of unauthorized search queries; and as Judge Collyer stated in her report, there is no reason to believe the 85% non compliant rate was any different from the abuse of the NSA database going back to 2012, the same year the FBI collocated a workspace within Perkins Coie.
As you will see below the NSA database was how political surveillance was being conducted during Obama’s second term in office. However, when the system was flagged, and when NSA Director Mike Rogers shut down “FBI contractor” access to the system, the system users needed to develop another way to get access.
Mike Rogers shuts down access on April 18, 2016. On April 19, 2016, Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s wife, Mary Jacoby visits the White House. Immediately thereafter, the DNC and Clinton campaign contract Fusion GPS… who then hire Christopher Steele.
Knowing it was federal “contractors”, outside government with FBI access to the system doing the unauthorized searches, the question becomes: who were the contractors?
The possibilities are quite vast. Essentially anyone the FBI or intelligence apparatus was using could have participated. Crowdstrike was a known FBI contractor; they were also contracted by the DNC. Shawn Henry was the former head of the FBI office in DC and later become part of Crowdstrike’s leadership team, a rather dubious contractor for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic company.
FBI Director James Comey’s special friend Daniel Richman was an unpaid FBI “special employee” with security access to the database. Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion-GPS on the Trump project in November 2015 and she was a previous open-source CIA contractor; and now that we know the FBI and Perkins Coie were in a collaborative relationship, we can also presume they were FBI contractors with similar clearances and access.
Remember the Sharyl Attkisson computer intrusions? It’s all part of this same network; Attkisson even names Shawn Henry as a defendant in her ongoing lawsuit.
All of the aforementioned names, and so many more, held a political agenda in 2016.
It seems likely if the NSA flags were never triggered then the contracted FBI system users would have continued exploiting the NSA database for political opposition research; which would then be funneled to the Clinton team. However, once the unauthorized flags were triggered, the system users (including those inside the FBI and sister agency the CIA) would need to find another back-door to continue… Again, the timing becomes transparent.
Immediately after NSA flags were raised March 9, 2016, the same FBI and CIA intelligence agencies began using confidential human sources (CHS’s) to run into the Trump campaign. By activating intelligence assets like Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper the IC (CIA, FBI) and system users had now created an authorized way to continue the same political surveillance operations.
When Donald Trump hired Paul Manafort on March 28, 2016, it was a perfect scenario for those doing the surveillance. Manafort was a known entity to the FBI and was previously under investigation. Paul Manafort’s entry into the Trump orbit was perfect for Glenn Simpson to sell his prior research on Manafort as a Trump-Russia collusion script two weeks later.
The shift from “unauthorized exploitation of the NSA database” to legally authorized exploitation of the NSA database was now in place. This was how they continued the political surveillance. This is the confluence of events that originated “spygate”, or what officially blossomed into the FBI investigation known as “Crossfire Hurricane” on July 31.
If the NSA flags were never raised; and if Director Rogers had never initiated the compliance audit; and if the FBI political contractors were never blocked from access to the database; they would never have needed to create a legal back-door, a justification to retain the surveillance. The political operatives/contractors would have just continued the targeted metadata exploitation.
Once they created the FBI surveillance door, Fusion-GPS was then needed to get the FBI known commodity of Chris Steele activated as a pipeline. Into that pipeline all system users pushed opposition research. However, one mistake from the database extraction, likely during an “about” query, shows up as a New Yorker named Michael Cohen in Prague.
That misinterpreted data from a FISA-702 “about query” is then piped to Steele and turns up inside the dossier; it was the wrong Michael Cohen. It wasn’t Trump’s lawyer, it was an art dealer from New York City with the same name; the same “identifier”.
A DEEP DIVE – How Did It Work?
Start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26, 2017. Review the details within the FISC opinion.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the FISA court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes. That complexity also helps the media avoid discussing it; and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the Obama-era surveillance issues. So we’ll try to break down the language.
For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.
Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.
The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.
While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).
Here are some significant segments:
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.
Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.
♦ FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (“702”); and the “16” is a check box to initiate a search based on “To and From“. Example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check “option 16” as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything “To and From” that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.
♦ FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the “17” is a check box to initiate a search based on everything “About” the search qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check “option 17” as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.
And that’s just from a phone number.
Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. The search result is only limited by the operators’ imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”. Who were they sharing it with? Perkins Coie?
In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the search results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy; and database access was from the FBI network:
But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.
Read this next excerpt carefully.
The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non compliant”.
85% !! “representing [redacted number]”.
We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 10,000 and 99,999 [six digits]. If we take the middle number of 50,000 – a non compliant rate of 85 percent means 42,500 unlawful searches out of 50,000.
The [six digit] amount (more than 10,000, less than 99,999), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period, November 2015 to April 2016. The timeframe of highest interest in the republican presidential primary.
Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” This tells us the system users were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic identifier, repeatedly over different dates. Put another way, specific person(s) were being tracked/monitored.
Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012.
2012 is an important date in this database abuse because a network of specific interests is assembled that also shows up in 2016/2017:
Who was 2012 FBI Director? Robert Mueller, who was selected by the FBI group to become special prosecutor in 2017.
Who was Mueller’ chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley, who became one of the lead lawyers on the Mueller special counsel.
Who was 2012 CIA Director? John Brennan (remember the ouster of Gen Petraeus)
Who was ODNI? James Clapper.
Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? Ash Carter
Who wanted NSA Director Mike Rogers fired in 2016? Brennan, Clapper and Carter.
And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and then lied about the use of the Steele Dossier? The same John Brennan, and James Clapper along with James Comey.
Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I’ll explain why momentarily.)
OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“.
So, someone using the justification of FBI “requests”, was exploiting their access to the FBI portal; and they were searching for material “well beyond” the justification of “FBI requests” the used. Doesn’t this exactly sound like someone in Perkins Coie using their FBI portal access?
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or likely not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the very next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:
This specific footnote, if declassified, could be a key. Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.
Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.
Summary: The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with FBI contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for.
Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize the FISA legislation, Nunes wrote a letter to ODNI Dan Coats about this specific issue:
SIDEBAR: To solve the issue, well, actually attempt to ensure it never happened again, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the “About” query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process completely. [SEE HERE] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so the Trump administration went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as a full combatant command. [SEE HERE] Unfortunately it didn’t work as shown by the 2018 FISC opinion rendered by FISC Judge James Boasberg [SEE HERE]
There is little doubt the NSA database system was used by Obama-era FBI officials and political allies, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.
Quite simply, there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.
When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.
All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired.
Everything that comes after March 9, 2016, had a dual purpose: (1) done to cover up the weaponization of the FISA database. [Explained Here] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI Director when this began. And (2) they needed to keep the surveillance going.
The beginning decision to use FISA(702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA. However, there was an earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort.
Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:
How this all comes together.
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the FBI contractors were already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Clinton campaign already knew everything about the Trump campaign, as they were monitoring everything by exploiting their FBI relationship and the Perkins Coie location for portal access to the database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Clinton Team and FBI needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content. The Steele Dossier was used in lieu of the ‘Woods File’, underpinning the justification for the Carter Page Title-1 surveillance warrant.
The Steele Dossier, an outcome of the Fusion contract, contains two purposes: (1) the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing FBI surveillance operation (protect Obama and Clinton); and (2) facilitate the FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign (assist Clinton and Perkins Coie).
An insurance policy would be needed.
The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into a Title-1 search warrant against Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page (he worked for the CIA); essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.
The Obama FBI needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing political surveillance and spy operations. Fusion-GPS gave them that justification and evidence for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier.
Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier was so important; without it, the FBI would not have the tool that Mueller needed to continue the investigation of President Trump. In essence by renewing the FISA application in 2017, despite them knowing the underlying dossier was junk, the FBI was keeping the surveillance gateway open for Team Mueller to exploit later on.
Additionally, without the Steele Dossier the DOJ and FBI are naked with their surveillance (FISA-702) abuse as outlined by John Ratcliffe.
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In this video NSA Director Mike Rogers explains how he was notified of what was happening and what he did after the notification. WATCH:
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Knowing there is a very strong probability Perkins Coie and the FBI were working together on this, makes everything else make sense.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house June 1, 2022
It’s something a little different for this crowd, but the civil lawsuits between Hollywood actor Johnny Depp and his former wife, actress Amber Heard, have concluded. A jury found Ms. Heard acted with malicious intent when she defamed her former husband Mr. Depp with accusations of abuse.
The jury awarded Mr. Depp $10 million in compensatory damages, and $5 million in punitive damages which are an outcome of the ‘malicious intent‘ finding. However, the punitive damages are limited by law to $350,000. On the three specific issues cited for consideration by the jury, the jurors all found Ms. Heard was guilty of lying, fabricating and targeting her former spouse with false claims. {LINK} Result, Ms. Heard owes Mr. Depp $10,350,000.
Additionally, for her side of the countersuit, Ms. Heard was awarded $2 million as compensatory damages against Mr. Depp’s lawyer for one issue within a Daily Mail article where the Depp representative accused Ms. Heard of manufacturing a confrontation for publicity. The net result of all the legal action is Ms. Heard owes Mr Depp $8.35 million.
With the three major issues around the litigation determined by the jury in favor of Mr. Depp, the actor released the following statement:
“Six years ago, my life, the life of my children, the lives of those closest to me, and also, the lives of the people who for many, many years have supported and believed in me were forever changed.
All in the blink of an eye.
False, very serious and criminal allegations were levied at me via the media, which triggered an endless barrage of hateful content, although no charges were ever brought against me. It had already traveled around the world twice within a nanosecond and it had a seismic impact on my life and my career.
And six years later, the jury gave me my life back. I am truly humbled.
My decision to pursue this case, knowing very well the height of the legal hurdles that I would be facing and the inevitable, worldwide spectacle into my life, was only made after considerable thought.
From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome. Speaking the truth was something that I owed to my children and to all those who have remained steadfast in their support of me. I feel at peace knowing I have finally accomplished that.
I am, and have been, overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and the colossal support and kindness from around the world. I hope that my quest to have the truth be told will have helped others, men or women, who have found themselves in my situation, and that those supporting them never give up. I also hope that the position will now return to innocent until proven guilty, both within the courts and in the media.
I wish to acknowledge the noble work of the Judge, the jurors, the court staff and the Sheriffs who have sacrificed their own time to get to this point, and to my diligent and unwavering legal team who did an extraordinary job in helping me to share the truth.
The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally begun.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 31, 2022 | Sundance
Joe Biden sought counsel today from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern about how best to remove firearms from Americans and force the U.S. economy to a dependency on renewable energy. Prime Minister Ardern took the top spot in the global progressive movement after the retirement of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
PM Ardern, a remarkable smiley-faced fascist, now represents the face of modern global leftism and boned-up her progressive bona fides with the totalitarian New Zealand COVID policy. The corporate fascists within the World Economic Forum love the government compliance model represented by Ardern to the collective global society they are creating.
New Zealand has a population of 5 million people, and a GDP of $205 billion (about the same as Nevada). By comparison the U.S. has a population exceeding 350 million and a GDP exceeding $21 trillion. That said, during their White House meeting today, Joe Biden emphasized that he welcomes the assistance of PM Ardern in helping to guide U.S. efforts for firearm regulation and a comprehensive climate change driven renewable energy economy.
[Transcript] – […] You understand that your leadership has taken on a critical role in this global stage — and it really has — galvanizing action on climate change; the global effort to curb violence, extremism, and online, like happened in Christchurch.
And — you know, we want to be — I want to work with you on that effort. And I want to talk to you about what those conversations were like, if you’re willing.
The United States is, you know — it’s just been — there’s a — there’s an expression by an Irish poet that says, “Too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart.” Well, there’s an awful lot of suffering. We’ve been — I — I’ve been to more mass shooting aftermaths than, I think, any President in American history, unfortunately. And it’s — it’s just — so much of it is — much of it is preventable, and the devastation is — is amazing.
Yesterday — or not — the day before, I was up — I was down in Texas. And people sat in a room — about 250 of them in a large room — with me for almost four hours. Not — nobody left. They waited until aft- — until I spoke to every single person in that room. Every single person, they waited to the very end. And the — they — the pain is palpable.
And you’ve been one of our closest partners with a long history and friendship. Eighty years ago, Marines landed in New Zealand before embarking on — into the Pacific Theater in World War Two. And I think I told you, when I met my — my — two of my mother’s brothers who were in the Pacific — they used to be able to deploy at the same time in those days, in World War Two. And one was shot down in New Guinea. And they never found the body. But it’s — you know, it’s — the history goes back a long way — a long way.
And I want to, by the way, recognize New Zealand’s significant support for Ukraine, as a lot of Indo-Pacific countries are doing now. And — because this is more than just a regional war going on.
So, I look forward to our conversations today. We have a lot to talk about. And I’m really, really delighted to have you here — really.
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Thank you. And can I say, Mr. President, thank you, so much — so much —
PRESIDENT BIDEN: You — you can do anything you want.
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Great. (Laughs.) Thank you. And we really welcome this opportunity.
As you’ve said, we’ve spoken on several occasions. And what stood out to me on both those occasions were we traversed such similar issues, and not — not least, of course, our shared history.
You speak of your uncle’s service in the Pacific; my grandfather served in the Pacific. And I think that speaks to the personal connection but also the depth of our friendship and relationship as two countries.
We are in an incredibly difficult international environment. But also, domestically, it is extraordinarily challenging as well. And can I bring the sincere condolences of the people of Aotearoa New Zealand for what you have experienced in Texas and in New York? And it’s been devastating to see the impact on those communities.
Our experience, of course, in this regard, is our own. But if there’s anything that we can share that would be of any value, we are here to share it.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, the work you’re doing with tech companies is really important, and I want —
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Absolutely.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: — to work with you there as well.
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: And I absolutely look forward to updating you on some of the conversations we’ve had this week because I hold hope that we can make progress.
I also wanted just to acknowledge your leadership in bringing to the table the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. And whilst, of course, we are significant advocates for the CPTPP, the IPEF presents a significant opportunity to build the economic resilience of our region. So, I look forward to having a bit of a discussion about that opportunity as well.
I also want to acknowledge your significant leadership on Ukraine and how important that has been not only to us as we’ve looked to play a role as well, but globally as we look to make sure that we strengthen the international response to what is a threat to our values and, of course, the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine.
I do want to finish on a note of optimism. Climate change also is one of the greatest threats that we face. And I believe that, in you, not only have we seen the leadership but the opportunity that exists between our nations to work together on this incredibly difficult issue that will only be resolved if we work together.
So, thank you. With — as you’ve seen, we’ve got a lot to discuss, so —
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We’ve got a lot to do. And I want to emphasize the last point you made: “working together.”
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Absolutely.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: We are not coming to dictate or lay down the law. We —
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Yeah.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: — we have more work to do in those Pacific Islands as well. I mean, we’ve — and so, we talked at length about — in the past about my trip to Japan and Korea and then dealing with the Quad. And so — but I think there’s a lot of opportunity —
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: Yeah, I agree.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: — to make the world safer and deal with the environment.
PRIME MINISTER ARDERN: I agree. I agree. So, thank you.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Thank you.
Thank you all very much.
Q Mr. President, will you meet with Senator McConnell on guns?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: I will meet with the Congress on guns. I promise you.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on Posted May 30, 2022
Today, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced new legislation to freeze gun ownership in the country and block any further ownership. [Gov Statement Here] It certainly was a short trip from confiscating and seizing the bank accounts/assets of his political opposition, to removing guns from Canadian citizens.
Trudeau held a press conference to announce the new legislative measures which include “red flag” laws, and blocks on any further handgun sales. Recap Video WATCH:
QUESTION: Marty; the gold propaganda is increasing dramatically. They are now claiming there are five signs that say the dollar will collapse any day now.
Warning Sign #1: Russia Sanctions Prove Dollar Reserves “Aren’t Really Money”
Warning Sign #2: Rubles, Gold, and Bitcoin for Gas, Oil, and Other Commodities
Warning Sign #3: The Petrodollar System Flirts With Collapse
Warning Sign #4: Out of Control Money Printing and Record Price Increases
Warning Sign #5: Fed Chair Admits Dollar Supremacy Is Dead
My friend flew in from Brazil and they pulled her over and checked all her jewelry. I think you had said they were doing that in Italy last year. This was New York at JFK. Cryptocurrency is not currency and selling oil in Bitcoin which is crashing makes no sense when it too is not backed by anything. These are the same old claims for the last 20 years that I can remember. Their solution is always – buy, buy, buy gold. My question is if they are now pulling you over for jewelry when you travel, gold has underperformed for 30 years compared to stocks and even the dollar. Will gold even survive in this crazy world?
Thank you for always being the voice of reason
WK
ANSWER: These ideas and claims are old and never change. For years they claimed the dollar was only the reserve currency because of oil, yet oil as a percent of the world economy was at best 5%. Then the claimed Bitcoin would replace the dollar as the reserve currency. That was just another scam and based on this same old theory of the Quantity of Money that dates back to Gresham’s Law. That theory is so dead it’s crazy, but it is like one of those Zombie movies that it keeps coming back to life.
Gresham advised Queen Elizabeth based on the debasement he saw in the coinage by her father Henry VIII. He was debasing his currency because Spain was doing that and he thought it was a way to create free money. The French did that during the 13th century by altering the silver to gold ratio which blew up the financial system in Italy and ended many banking houses. Those who base their entire theory on this period TOTALLY fail to grasp the context of the period.
There was NO Reserve Currency. All the currencies of various nations traded on the first currency exchange which was Amsterdam. They traded against each other ENTIRELY on the metal content. That is what determined the value of their currency.
Coming out of the Dark Ages, the first coin to actually attain a universal acceptable which was the first stage of a reserve currency was the gold florin of Florence, Italy. This was made possible by the rise of Italian banking and the Medici there in Florence. Other countries imitated the florin for it was accepted as the standard.
Imitations of the universally accepted currency took place with the Athenian Owls, the tetradrachm of Alexander the Great, and then the Roman silver Denarius and gold Aureus. The strongest economic power saw its currency become dominant in the world so others issued coins imitating them because a Roman gold aureus carried a premium over just a plain lump of gold. Egypt never even issued coins until they were conquered by Alexander the Great yet to facilitate trade, they issued imitation silver Athenian Owls, which were really the first established world currency.
However, I have warned that analysis has two approaches. First, you start with a theory and then cherry-pick the fact to support your theory as they are doing in Climate Change. There, they ignore all the data prior to 1850 and only attribute the warming since the last Little Ice Age to the Industrial Revolution.
They took a natural cycle oscillating back up which is when economic expansion always takes place historically, They then attributed that to fossil fuels and ignored the entire natural history of the earth. This has been used solely to justify creating their one-world government because no single nation can defeat global warming.
Here we have the front cover of Time Magazine predicting climate change back to an ice age. That was dated January 31, 1977 corresponding to the sharp spike down into a negative Arctic Oscillation in 1977. In the April 28, 1975 edition of Newsweek, they actually proposed solutions for climate change that included outlawing internal combustion engines.
This is when Al Gore came to the rescue. Just like the poles flip on the sun every 11 years, Al Gore flipped the argument from manmade cooling to manmade warming to save the end goal — eliminating all fossil fuels regardless of the evidence. Who needs science when you can just make up the studies and cherry-pick the facts to support whatever you want. They have done that very same exercise with this forecast centered on gold and how the dollar will collapse all because of fiat, which every currency has been from day one when Lydia first created coins and declare their value which was always in excess of the metal content.
Even the propaganda of the Petrodollar has been mind-blowing. Unbeknownst to these people who push that theory, they are clueless about the truth behind what really took place during the 1970s. In 1976, the US and Saudi Arabia colluded to force down oil prices, which inadvertently set in motion a financial crisis in Iran that destabilized that economy and undermined the Shah’s hold on power. These facts have surfaced from declassified documents of Brent Scowcroft who worked in both the Nixon and Ford White House Administrations. Their attempt to manipulate the price of oil downward created the Iranian Revolution. The religious faction used the decline in oil and the economic recession to overthrow the Shah. OOPS!
This strange theory that the dollar is supported by oil just does not hold up. Even when we just compare the highs and lows between the dollar and oil, it does not hold up. In 2008, the dollar bottomed against the Euro but oil peaked. The dollar bottomed in 2016 but crude bottomed in 2020. The high in the dollar in 1985 coincided with the 1986 low in crude. Like global warming, they focus on just one aspect and ignore the fact that the dollar has NEVER been canceled and that it has become the world reserve currency because of that fact, plus it is the dominant economy just as Rome, Athen, and Macedonia in their times.
Emerging markets before World War I issued debt in British pounds. After World War II and all the capital fled to America because tanks were rolling down the streets in Europe, Emerging markets issue their debt in dollars – no longer British pounds. These people focus only on gold, the quantity of money, and old dead theories of Petrodollars, and totally ignore the fact that the United States has the largest consumer-based economy in the world. That is how China, Japan, and Germany have all risen from the ashes without gold reserves. They were export-oriented economies selling products to Americans. None of these theories ever mattered and that is why you have heard the same story since 1971 and everyone who followed that forecast has lost a fortune in everything else.
The definition of Fiat Currency is highly prejudiced. Investopedia says:
“Fiat money is a government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold or silver, but rather by the government that issued it. The value of fiat money is derived from the relationship between supply and demand and the stability of the issuing government, rather than the worth of a commodity backing it. Most modern paper currencies are fiat currencies, including the U.S. dollar, the euro, and other major global currencies.”
“fiat money, in a broad sense, all kinds of money that are made legal tender by a government decree or fiat. The term is, however, usually reserved for legal-tender paper money or coins that have face values far exceeding their commodity values and are not redeemable in gold or silver.”
Before coins, even the Bible stated that in Genesis 23:16: “Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants.” The very first this that took place was that there was an agreement on the standardization of weight.
Therefore, it was in Lydia that the king began to stamp his symbol on these standardized denominations. He effectively took over the creation of money. The value he set was over and above the previous raw value of the metal. Thus, this became fiat which coin collectors call “seignorage” the profit over and above the metal content.
When war broke out, Lydia was the first to debase the currency maintaining the value but reducing the weight. This idea that if the money is gold somehow makes the system honest, is nothing but propaganda.
Even under a gold standard, there were periods of inflation and deflation. Read the history of the California Gold Rush. During the 1849 Gold Rush in California, the journalist for the New York Tribune, Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), arrived in San Francisco by ship during the summer of 1849. He was shocked at what he encountered and did not think that anyone would even believe what he was going to write. His dispatches about the gold rush economy in California stunned many and helped to create the 1849 Gold Rush. The average wage for a laborer in New York was about one or two dollars a day. In California, individual hotel rooms were rented to professional gamblers for upwards of $10,000 a month, which is the equivalent of about $300,000 today. The degree of inflation in terms of gold was astounding and lacks comparison in modern times. There was so much gold, that the value of goods rose even though they did not in New York. The inflation phenomenon was local.
Gold became so common; they were even striking $50 gold coins in California when $20 was the highest denomination elsewhere and $1-dollar coins down to 25 cents all in gold. Eventually, there were $1 gold coins minted in the United States for general circulation throughout the USA. Indeed, Taylor wrote:
“[One] citizen of San Francisco died insolvent to the amount of forty-one thousand dollars the previous autumn. His administrators were delayed in settling his affairs and his real estate advanced so rapidly in value meantime that after his debts were paid, his heirs had a yearly income of $40,000 [$1.2 million today].
“These facts were indubitably attested; everyone believed them, yet hearing them talked of daily, as matters of course, one at first could not help feeling as if he had been eating ‘of the insane root.’”
As far as fiat is concerned, the true definition is when the value of a currency is declared by the government which is all money even if it is made of gold or silver. Here are two silver dollars issued in 1873. The domestic silver dollar standard was taking 70 cents worth of silver and calling it one dollar with a weight of 26.73 grams. Simultaneously, that was not recognized in Asia so they issue a Trade Dollar for external use with a weight of 27.22 grams. The value of the metal is solely based upon the decree of the government. By the 1890s, the United States had flooded the world with silver which resulted in the Panic of 1893. By then, the value of the silver was perhaps 60 cents they were calling a dollar.
These people often confuse FRAUD with the monetary system. Sweden is the oldest Central Bank. That is where the fraud all began. The first true banknotes for circulation appeared in Sweden, and these were actually used by the government to support its wars with Germany. In 1661, the government established a 30-year monopoly for its Stockholm Banco to issue these banknotes known as “letters of credit” that were to be payable in Swedish copper plate money that was extremely heavy weighing almost 15 kilos. It was not very practical for these huge plates to actually be used in circulation.
However, this practice of Fraud began whereby they abused the system. They began to issue more paper notes without the copper plates in the bank. That is entirely different from fiat currency. Here they said they were backed by the copper plates, but they needed more money so they issued notes fraudulently without the purported backing. That is NOT a fiat system – it is fraud.
This FRAUD was discovered and it led to the first banking panic in 1663 when there were more obligations than copper plates to redeem the notes. The bank was forced to close in 1664.
I have told the story before that it is so CRITICAL to understand the full context of history. William Penn took the term Philadelphos in ancient Greek which meant Brotherly Love. He interpreted that in a Christian sense that I love my brother. So he named his city Philadelphia – the city of brotherly love. Well to those of us who did study ancient cultures and languages, it was always one of the funny jokes. Brotherly Love meant you married your sister.
These people interpret gold as money and fiat and all the other nonsense with petrodollars etc, they have selected what they want to support a theory that they began with. Everything they have been telling people for decades has resulted in a lot of people losing a fortune and even some losing their homes.
They are not interested in actually looking at the truth. To them, it’s all fiat money, and only a return to a gold standard will stop inflation and create the perfect world following that same dangerous path as Kark Marx.
The system is far more complex and you CAN NOT reduce everything to a single cause and effect. That is what others are doing with CO2. It’s time to wake up and smell the roses. Garbage in = Garbage Out.
I have warned that the Russian Sanctions have begun the decline and fall of NOT the dollar – but the entire world economy. Once Biden used SWIFT to remove Russia, that was the end of globalization. It has NOTHING to do with the oil or anything else. The sanctions have severed Russia from the West’s Economy and put China on alert that they are coming for them as well. China setting up its alternative to SWIFT, is not directly trying to kill the dollar. It is recognizing that the world economy is under siege and what will evolve in the future in the collapse of all governments but the single greatest threat has been the Sanctions which have altered everything – not fiat currencies and gold.
World peace is created by everyone benefiting from a global economy. Destroying globalization leads nowhere but to war for that hand no longer feeds you so go ahead and bite it.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 29, 2022 | Sundance
The Associated Press [HERE] and more importantly the U.S. Intel Community outlet, the Washington Post [HERE], are beginning to change direction in their narration of the war in Ukraine.
Both sources of information are starting to position Eastern Ukraine as a lost cause, with the Washington Post giving specific examples of conscripted Ukraine fighters who are abandoning the effort in the donbas region. As noted, “after three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions. The volunteers were civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and they never expected to be dispatched to one of the most dangerous front lines in eastern Ukraine.”
The Ukraine commander, Serhi Lapko and one of his lieutenants, Vitaliy Khrus, “retreated with members of their company this week to a hotel away from the front. There, both men spoke to The Washington Post on the record, knowing they could face a court-martial and time in military prison.” Together, Lapko and Khrus describe the essential elements of a fragmented Ukraine fighting force up against a committed Russian military advance.
Even the Washington Post admits the Ukraine central government is desperate to push morale boosting propaganda which seems constructed from the efforts of the U.S. State Dept, specifically the intelligence community within it. “Videos of assaults on Russian tanks or positions are posted daily on social media. Artists are creating patriotic posters, billboards and T-shirts. The postal service even released stamps commemorating the sinking of a Russian warship in the Black Sea.”
These examples are targeted toward a western audience and likely not being carried out by independent Ukraine government operation in Kyiv. Promoting the image of Ukraine is a construct of the U.S. state dept and U.S. intelligence.
The global impression of Ukraine must remain elevated to continue the U.S. proxy war against Russia. However, as noted, the WaPo is starting to shift the goal posts and expectations away from a Russian defeat in the donbas region.
Most notably within paragraphs like this you can see the purposeful shift. “Lapko and Khrus’s concerns were echoed recently by a platoon of the 115th Brigade 3rd Battalion, based nearby in the besieged city of Severodonetsk. In a video uploaded to Telegram on May 24, and confirmed as authentic by an aide to Haidai, volunteers said they will no longer fight because they lacked proper weapons, rear support and military leadership.”
[…] Ukraine’s military rebutted the volunteers’ claims in their own video posted online, saying the “deserters” had everything they needed to fight: “They thought they came for a vacation,” one service member said. “That’s why they left their positions.”
Hours after The Post interviewed Lapko and Khrus, members of Ukraine’s military security service arrived at their hotel and detained some of their men, accusing them of desertion. The men contend that they were the ones who were deserted. (read more)
The Associated Press story flows in a similar line to the WaPo narrative; however, the AP must maintain the Western Government slant:
[…] Russia has intensified efforts to capture the cities of Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk, which are the last major areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk.
Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai reported that Ukrainian fighters repelled an assault on Sievierodonetsk but Russian troops still pushed to encircle them. He later said Russian forces had seized a hotel on the city’s outskirts, damaged 14 high-rise buildings and were fighting in the streets with Ukrainian forces.
[…] Mariupol’s port has reportedly resumed operations after Russian forces finished clearing mines in the Azov Sea. Russian state news agency Tass reported that a vessel bound for Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia entered the port early Saturday.
In the call with Macron and Scholz, the Kremlin said, Putin emphasized that Russia was working to “establish a peaceful life in Mariupol and other liberated cities in the Donbas.”
[…] Ukrainian authorities have reported that Kremlin-installed officials in seized cities have started airing Russian news broadcasts, introduced Russian area codes, imported Russian school curriculum and taken other steps to annex the areas.
Russian-held areas of the southern Kherson region have shifted to Moscow time and “will no longer switch to daylight saving time, as is customary in Ukraine,” Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Krill Stremousov, a Russian-installed local official, as saying Saturday. (read more)
“2000 Mules” is the new documentary everyone has been discussing. Its current audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 100%, and interest in the film continues to rise. There is video evidence of voter fraud surrounding the mail-in ballots during the 2020 US Presidential Election. Did Joe Biden actually secure more votes than any president in the history of our nation? An overwhelming amount of evidence suggests that the American people did not vote in the current president. Democracy has shattered and our ability to hold fair elections has come to an end.
The world has been taken over by the “Greens” who want to destroy all fossil fuel production fearing that if the tide turns, they will lose this opportunity. We are seeing the same push from Germany, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The AGENDA IS TO ACTUALLY DESTROY THE CAPACITY TO PRODUCE and cause so much damage that no future administration will be able to restart what they have destroyed.
There is no rational agenda, They do not care if there is any alternative available now. Even pushing for electric cars that take up to two hours to recharge after a few hundred miles are not ready to replace everything. The power grid will never support it. Worse still, the #1 target in war is the power grid. If all transportation is electric, taking out the power grid will become critical and could render the defense of a nation impossible. Add to that the push for Digital Currencies by the central banks so the government will get every penny of tax by eliminating paper money. Takedown the power grid, and you will also wipe out the financial system.
There is no discussion with these people that is even possible. Unfortunately, this is most likely the fundamental behind what our computer has forecast the rise in a civil conflict which will no down lead to civil wars and revolutions.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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