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HSBC’s Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent domestic tax authorities, according to a huge cache of leaked secret bank account files. The files – obtained through an international collaboration of news outlets, including the Guardian, the French daily Le Monde, BBC Panorama and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – reveal that HSBC’s Swiss private bank: • Routinely allowed clients to withdraw bricks of cash, often in foreign currencies of little use in Switzerland. • Aggressively marketed schemes likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes. • Colluded with some clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts from their domestic tax authorities. • Provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen and other high-risk individuals.

The revelations will amplify calls for crackdowns on offshore tax havens and stoke political arguments in the US, Britain and elsewhere in Europe where exchequers are seen to be fighting a losing battle against fleet-footed and wealthy individuals in the globalised world. Approached by the Guardian, HSBC, the world’s second largest bank, has now admitted wrongdoing by its Swiss subsidiary. “We acknowledge and are accountable for past compliance and control failures,” the bank said in a statement. The Swiss arm, the statement said, had not been fully integrated into HSBC after its purchase in 1999, allowing “significantly lower” standards of compliance and due diligence to persist. That response raises serious questions about oversight of the Swiss operation by the then senior executives of its parent company, HSBC Group, headquartered in London. It has now acknowledged that it was not until 2011 that action was taken to bring the Swiss bank into line. “HSBC was run in a more federated way than it is today and decisions were frequently taken at a country level,” the bank said.

Although tax authorities around the world have had confidential access to the leaked files since 2010, the true nature of the Swiss bank’s misconduct has never been made public until now. Hollywood stars, shopkeepers, royalty and clothing merchants feature in the files along with the heirs to some of Europe’s biggest fortunes.

Six months ago, the price of oil—the lifeblood of the Russian economy—began to crater, and U.S.-led sanctions, implemented in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, were biting. Russia’s currency, the ruble, buckled, and capital flight began to accelerate as rich but nervous Russians moved more and more money out of the country. It seemed plausible then to wonder: Could Vladimir Putin be losing his grip? Might economic pressure be enough to rein him in, or even lead to his downfall?Today, the answer is becoming clear—and it’s not the one the West was hoping for. Not only is Putin still standing, but the Russian economy, against most expectations, is recovering. Its stock market is one of the best performing globally this year; the ruble, after losing nearly half its value against the dollar over the course of a year, is rebounding; interest rates have come down from their post-sanctions peak; the government is taking in more revenue than its own forecast expected; and foreign exchange reserves have risen nearly $10 billion from their post-crisis low.

The lower price of oil still hurts. Citicorp economists estimate that every $10 decline in the price of Brent crude shaves 2 percent from Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP). Further declines—not out of the question, given that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest and lowest-cost producer, is still pumping record amounts of crude—will crimp growth even more. But those same Citicorp economists forecast that GDP, after contracting for the past 18 months, could now begin to grow at up to 3.5 percent per year, even without a recovery in crude prices.

Though better run than many Russian firms, Severstal is not an outlier. According to data from Bloomberg, some 78 percent of Russian companies on the MICEX index showed greater revenue growth in the most recent quarter than their global peers did. And Russian companies on the whole are now more profitable than their peers on the MSCI Emerging Markets index.What’s bailing out Moscow? For the second time in two decades, Russia is showing that while a sharp drop in its currency’s value does bring financial pain—it raises prices for imports and makes any foreign debt Russia or its companies have taken on that much more expensive in ruble terms—it also eventually produces textbook economic benefits. Since a devaluation raises import prices, it also paves the way for what economists call “import substitution,” a clunky way to say that consumers switch to buying less pricey products produced at home instead of imported goods.

But if this is an indication that Clinton will pursue the usual hardline policies calculated to pander to Israel’s most extreme supporters, it is also a sign that she, like other mainstream US politicians, is moving away from large segments of the US public, particularly the base of her own Democratic Party. This is illustrated in a poll from Bloomberg Politics, published Wednesday. Here are the key highlights: Israel has become a deeply partisan issue for ordinary Americans as well as for politicians in Washington, a shift that may represent a watershed moment in foreign policy and carry implications for domestic politics after decades of general bipartisan consensus. Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the US should support Israel even when its stances diverge with American interests, a new Bloomberg Politics poll finds. Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.

Further illustrating how sharply partisan the debate has become, Republicans say they feel more sympathetic to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than to their own president, 67 percent to 16 percent, while Democrats are more sympathetic to President Barack Obama than to Israel’s prime minister, 76 percent to 9 percent. The survey also highlights how differently the nuclear negotiations with Iran are seen between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats, by a nearly 3-to-1 ratio, said they were more optimistic than pessimistic that a tentative deal with Iran announced this month will contain Iran’s ability to get nuclear weapons and thus make the world safer.

By a 2-to-1 margin, Republicans were more pessimistic than optimistic about the impacts of a deal. Majorities of Americans in both parties say any deal Obama makes with Iran should be subject to congressional approval, and that Iran is an unreliable negotiating partner because it is a religious theocracy.

Fortunately, I did decide to take a look and pretty soon my jaw absolutely hit the floor. Although the Wall Street Journal didn’t play up the connection, I was stunned to see that of all the oligarchs connected to foreign governments who donated to the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State, Ukraine was at the very top. I thought this to be strange, but as I read on I just couldn’t believe how connected the main donor was to the current regime in power. Considering this is the main geopolitical hotspot on earth right now, many, many questions need to be asked.

Let’s also recall some of the more shady aspects of the new government in Ukraine by taking a look back at the post, Made in the USA – How the Ukrainian Government is Giving Away Citizenships so Foreigners Can Run the Country [17]. Here are a few excerpts:

Claims that the new government in Ukraine is nothing more than a Western puppet Parliament have been swirling around consistently since February. Nevertheless, I think it’s very significant that the takeover is now overt, undeniable and completely out in the open. Nothing proves this fact more clearly than the recent and sudden granting of citizenship to three foreigners so that they can take top posts in the government. At the top of the list is American, Natalie Jaresko, who runs private equity fund Horizon Capital. She will now be Ukraine’s Finance Minister, and I highly doubt she will be forced to pay the IRS Expatriation Tax [18] (one set of laws for the rich and powerful, another set of laws for the peasants). For Economy Minister, a Lithuanian investment banker, Aivaras Abromavicius, will take the reins. Health Minister will be Alexander Kvitashvili of Georgia. Now read the following from the WSJ [14]:

Canada’s electronic surveillance agency has secretly developed an arsenal of cyberweapons capable of stealing data and destroying adversaries’ infrastructure, according to newly revealed classified documents. Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, has also covertly hacked into computers across the world to gather intelligence, breaking into networks in Europe, Mexico, the Middle East and North Africa, the documents show. The revelations, reported Monday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, shine a light for the first time on how Canada has adopted aggressive tactics to attack, sabotage and infiltrate targeted computer systems. The latest disclosures come as the Canadian government debates whether to hand over more powers to its spies to disrupt threats as part of the controversial anti-terrorism law, Bill C-51.

Christopher Parsons, a surveillance expert at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, told CBC News that the new revelations showed that Canada’s computer networks had already been “turned into a battlefield without any Canadian being asked: Should it be done? How should it be done?” According to documents obtained by The Intercept from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, CSE has a wide range of powerful tools to perform “computer network exploitation” and “computer network attack” operations. These involve hacking into networks to either gather intelligence or to damage adversaries’ infrastructure, potentially including electricity, transportation or banking systems. The most well-known example of a state-sponsored “attack” operation involved the use of Stuxnet, a computer worm that was reportedly developed by the United States and Israel to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities. One document from CSE, dated from 2011, outlines the range of methods the Canadian agency has at its disposal as part of a “cyber activity spectrum” to both defend against hacking attacks and to perpetrate them. CSE says in the document that it can “disable adversary infrastructure,” “control adversary infrastructure,” or “destroy adversary infrastructure” using the attack techniques. It can also insert malware “implants” on computers to steal data.

According to one top-secret NSA briefing paper, dated from 2013, Canada is considered an important player in global hacking operations. Under the heading “NSA and CSEC cooperate closely in the following areas,” the paper notes that the agencies work together on “active computer network access and exploitation on a variety of foreign intelligence targets, including CT [counter terrorism], Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and Mexico.” (The NSA had not responded to a request for comment at time of publication. The agency has previously told The Intercept that it “works with foreign partners to address a wide array of serious threats, including terrorist plots, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and foreign aggression.”) Notably, CSE has gone beyond just adopting a range of tools to hack computers. According to the Snowden documents, it has a range of “deception techniques” in its toolbox. These include “false flag” operations to “create unrest,” and using so-called “effects” operations to “alter adversary perception.” A false-flag operation usually means carrying out an attack, but making it look like it was performed by another group — in this case, likely another government or hacker. Effects operations can involve sending out propaganda across social media or disrupting communications services. The newly revealed documents also reveal that CSE says it can plant a “honeypot” as part of its deception tactics, possibly a reference to some sort of bait posted online that lures in targets so that they can be hacked or monitored.

Ben Wizner, who is perhaps best known as Edward Snowden’s lawyer, directs the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. Wizner, who joined the ACLU in August 2001, one month before the 9/11 attacks, has been a force in the legal battles against torture, watch lists, and extraordinary rendition since the beginning of the global “war on terror.” Ad Policy On October 15, we met with Wizner in an upstate New York pub to discuss the state of privacy advocacy today. In sometimes sardonic tones, he talked about the transition from litigating on issues of torture to privacy advocacy, differences between corporate and state-sponsored surveillance, recent developments in state legislatures and the federal government, and some of the obstacles impeding civil liberties litigation. The interview has been edited and abridged for publication.

en Wizner, who is perhaps best known as Edward Snowden’s lawyer, directs the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. Wizner, who joined the ACLU in August 2001, one month before the 9/11 attacks, has been a force in the legal battles against torture, watch lists, and extraordinary rendition since the beginning of the global “war on terror.” Ad Policy On October 15, we met with Wizner in an upstate New York pub to discuss the state of privacy advocacy today. In sometimes sardonic tones, he talked about the transition from litigating on issues of torture to privacy advocacy, differences between corporate and state-sponsored surveillance, recent developments in state legislatures and the federal government, and some of the obstacles impeding civil liberties litigation. The interview has been edited and abridged for publication.

Many of the technologies, both military technologies and surveillance technologies, that are developed for purposes of policing the empire find their way back home and get repurposed. You saw this in Ferguson, where we had military equipment in the streets to police nonviolent civil unrest, and we’re seeing this with surveillance technologies, where things that are deployed for use in war zones are now commonly in the arsenals of local police departments. For example, a cellphone surveillance tool that we call the StingRay—which mimics a cellphone tower and communicates with all the phones around—was really developed as a military technology to help identify targets. Now, because it’s so inexpensive, and because there is a surplus of these things that are being developed, it ends up getting pushed down into local communities without local democratic consent or control.

Japanese researchers are reluctant to comment, but more than 90 percent of fir trees in forests close to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) show signs of mutations and abnormalities while plant lice species sampled in a town more than 30 kilometers from the disaster site either have deformed legs or are missing legs. The mutations are a probable precursor of what is in store for Japanese people who are being resettled in allegedly de-contaminated towns and villages.

Japanese scientists are reluctant to comment on the record. Several attempts by nsnbc to reach out resulted in off-protocol confirmations of suspicions and references to Japanese law that makes revealing of unauthorized information about the Fukushima disaster a criminal offense that can be punishable with up to ten years in prison. The official line is that Japanese scientists are trying to figure out whether there is a causal relation between the wave of mutations and the still ongoing release of radiation and radionucleides into the environment. Studies focus primarily on hos radioactive cesium spread in forests and forest soil after the catastrophic triple meltdown at the TEPCO operated Fukushima Daiichi NPP after it was struck by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami in 2011. Results of a 2013 study already revealed that levels of the radioactive isotope cesium from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant in northern Japanese forests had almost doubled within one year and that it will continue increasing as the forests bioaccumulate the isotope. The 2013 study and ongoing studies have major ramifications even though these studies largely ignore a cohort of other, potentially more dangerous isotopes such as plutonium.

The wave of mutations in insects, fir trees and other animals is according to Japanese experts who are relutant to speak on the record a precursor for what populations who live within a 100 km radius of the crippled power-plant can expect to see in human populations. The Japanese government’s push for resettling populations that were evacuated to so-called de-contaminated villages and towns is particularly problematic and controversial. The Japanese government’s definition of a de-contaminated village, for example, means that the village itself and an area of a few hundred meters leading to these villages have been de-contaminated by e.g. top-sol removal. Water and airborne isotopes will, however, move with the waters and winds and easily re-contaminate these so-called safe zones. Evacuees who refuse to be resettled risk losing government support. Another serious issue is that radioactive contaminated waste from the region is incinerated in facilities throughout Japan, thus spreading airborne contamination throughout the entire country. Some critics stress that this program may aim at making it extremely difficult to conduct epidemiological studies.

A new survey shows that 26 percent of US adults ages 18-64 say they or someone in their household had problems paying their medical bills in the past 12 months. The Kaiser Family Foundation/New York Times Medical Bills Survey shows that those from all walks of life are saddled with medical debt, with the uninsured and low-income households carrying the heaviest burden.

Being uninsured has a strong correlation with medical bill difficulties, with 53 percent of the uninsured reporting problems paying household medical bills in the past year. However, as the survey’s findings point out, “insurance is not a panacea against these problems.” About one in five of those with insurance—either through an employer, Medicaid or purchased on their own—also report problems paying medical bills. Among those with private insurance, the prevalence of high-deductible health coverage significantly impacts the financial burden on households, with 26 percent of those with high-deductible coverage reporting difficulties paying their medical bills. Although the survey does not indicate which of those interviewed purchased their coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it is clear that the high deductible plans dominating the ACA marketplace are becoming increasingly common among plans sold by private insurance companies.

Not surprisingly, households with lower or moderate incomes are more likely to report problems paying their medical bills. Nearly four in 10 (37 percent) of those with household incomes below $50,000 report these problems, compared with 26 percent of those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000, and 14 percent of those with household incomes greater than $100,000. Women are slightly more likely than men to experience problems paying medical bills (29 percent versus 23 percent), as are adults under age 30 compared with those ages 30-64 (31 percent versus 24 percent). Residents in the South reported the highest share of medical bill problems (32 percent), while those in the Northeast reported the lowest (18 percent). At 24 percent, whites reported slightly less difficulty pay their bills than blacks (31 percent) and Hispanics (32 percent). People with the greatest medical needs are also more likely to face problems paying their medical bills. Of those who say they have a disability that prevents them from participating fully in daily activities, 47 percent report medical bill problems. Among those who rate their own heath as fair or poor, 45 percent report these problems, while 34 percent of those who say they receive regular treatment for a chronic condition report problems.

Swiss oil traders might have gotten themselves into some trouble after it was revealed that they regularly imported oil from terminals in Turkey, where Daesh, also known as ISIL/ISIS, sold their illegal oil supply, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin reported.The newspaper obtained documents showing that several major Swiss petroleum trading companies exported oil from the Turkish city of Ceyhan, one of the places in the country where Daesh-extracted oil was sold. "The risk [of Swiss companies importing Daesh-oil] is very high," said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French expert on terrorism financing, according to Le Matin. As Daesh sold oil for a cheaper price than its official market price, many customers didn't mind buying it, although there was an official ban to purchase oil from Daesh-controlled territories.

An investigation carried out by Le Matin shows that several Swiss companies recently purchased oil from the port of Ceyhan. Previously, it was reported that Daesh transports oil and petroleum products to Turkey using a complex system that involves a wide network of middlemen. Turkey has long been the main destination for petroleum products, stolen by Daesh from numerous oilfields in Iraq and Syria. In early December, the Russian Ministry of Defense released satellite images showing columns of trucks on their way from the territories controlled by the militants to Turkey.

Following the attempt on Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro’s life with two explosive-laden drones on Saturday, the President promised to get to the bottom of the failed plot. Last night he showed that his government has learned some things at least, and Maduro says there is still more evidence to come. Prior to releasing the evidence, Maduro announced that he would be showing off what Venezuelan security had found late Monday night. According to Maduro at the time the evidence backed up the initial claims he had made right after the assassination attempt that “there is sufficient evidence of the participation of the outgoing Colombian government of President Juan Manuel Santos.” On Tuesday night Maduro presented the evidence to the people of Venezuela in a televised address. Much of what Maduro presented seems to confirm his conclusions and exposes a wider network of the forces plotting to end his life, and the Bolivarian revolution.

Late Tuesday night Maduro took to Twitter to announce that he would “be presenting strong evidence of the links that the Colombian oligarchy has with the events on Avenida Bolivar” in a few hours. In this post, Maduro promised that during his presentation that he would show that Venezuela’s security services “have the location, the names of the place in Chinacota Norte de Santander where they trained, the assassins, the terrorists,” and have also captured all those directly involved with the terrorist attack. Maduro’s final presentation late Tuesday shined even more light on the events of Saturday, including where the drone was controlled from. The Venezuelan Military also confirmed that the drones were stopped by signal jammers near the stage and that’s what caused them to crash and explode before reaching Maduro. According to Venezuelan intelligence, this attack was no one-off either, as the attackers had trained for months in the Colombian town of Chinacota, in the northern border province of Santander. According to Maduro, the assassination was originally planned for Venezuela’s Independence Day on July 5th but was delayed due to a lack of preparation. The military arrested two of the drone pilots minutes after the attack as well as four other conspirators in the days following the attempt on Maduro’s life. Two names of terrorists involved with the plot have been released so far, they are Rayder Russo, a resident of Colombia, and Osman Delgado, a resident of the United States. Earlier today, Venezuelan Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, said this list of suspectshas also grown since the attack to include another 19 individuals. According to the AG, many of these newly identified plotters are not actually in Venezuela so “The Public Ministry will send requests to the United States and Colombia for their cooperation to extradite those involved in this act.”

Over the last year the U.S. bombed Jabhat al-Nusra personal and facilities in Syria some five or six times. The al-Qaeda subgroup also has a history of attacking U.S. paid "relative moderate" proxy forces in Syria. The Pentagon recently inserted another U.S. mercenary group into north Syria. This was accompanied by a media campaign in which the administration lauded itself for the operation. The newly inserted group is especially trained and equipped to direct U.S. air attacks like those that earlier hit al-Nusra fighters. Now that freshly inserted group was attacked by Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of its members were killed and others were abducted. The Obama administration is shocked, SHOCKED, ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED that Jabhat al-Nusra would do such a ghastly deed. "Why would they do that?" "Who could have known that they would attack U.S. proxy forces???"

There is no longer an Jihadist ISIS or ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The people leading that entity declared (pdf) today, at the highly symbolic beginning of Ramadan, themselves to be a new caliphate:

Could someone explain to the fucking dimwits in the Pentagon and the Obama administrations that people everywhere, and especially terrorists group, hate it when you bomb them and kill their leaders? That those people you bomb might want to take revenge against you and your proxies? That people you bombed will not like your targeting team moving in next door to them? That alQaeda is not an "ally"? These people are too pathetically clueless to even be embarrassed about it. The accumulated intelligence quotient of the administration and Pentagon officials running the anti-Syria operation must be below three digits. But aside from their lack of basic intelligence the utter lack of simple "street smarts" is the real problem here. These people have no idea how life works outside of their beltway cages.

As opposed to the current patchwork of states that have legalized either medical marijuana, its recreational use, or both, the analysis looked at what could happen if the U.S. government made it legal to sell marijuana nationwide and included these major findings: If full legalization occurred in all 50 states today, there would be an excess of 782,000 jobs, and would increase to 1.1 million jobs by 2025.Full legalization would result in more legal businesses participating in the market, more consumers participating in the legal market, and more employees on official payrolls, resulting in $4 billion in payroll taxes. By 2025, payroll deductions would increase to $5.9 billion.Assuming a sales tax at the federal level was implemented at 15%, the total tax revenues from 2017–2025 would theoretically be $51.7 billion. This amount of revenue would be entirely new revenue to the U.S. Treasury, as there are currently no federal sales or excise taxes.By combining the business tax revenues, the payroll withholdings based on the theoretical employment required to support the industry, and the 15% retail sales tax, one can calculate the total federal tax revenue potential of legalization: The combined total is estimated to be $131.8 billion.The difference between the current structure and the theoretical model is a $76.8 billion increase in federal tax revenues. The new data comes in the wake of polling that shows historic levels of support for marijuana legalization nationwide. In October of 2017, a Gallup survey found that 64 percent of Americans now favor legal marijuana—the highest level ever recorded. It's also an issue that receives backing from people across the political spectrum. According to the Gallup poll, a majority of Republicans (51%) are in favor while Independents (67%) and Democrats (72%) support legalization at even higher levels.

As automation and AI destroy millions of middle-income jobs, permanently forcing (primarily male) workers from the workforce, Americans are beginning to reconsider their attitudes toward a radical policy tool that's popular among some segments of the left: Universal Basic Income. According to CNBC, a recent poll conducted by Northeastern University and Gallup found that 48% of Americans support the measure. In an association that's hardly a coincidence, the poll also showed that three-quarters of Americans believe machines will take away more jobs than they'll generate...

Unsurprisingly 65% of Democrats want to see a universal basic income and 54% of people between the ages of 18 and 35 do. In comparison, just 28% of Republicans support UBI.

A global survey from WIN/Gallup International, the world’s leading association in market research and polling shows that 61% of those polled across 64 countries would be willing to fight for their country, while 27% would not.   However, there are significant differences by region.  Willingness to fight is highest in the M.E.N.A. region (83%) while it is lowest in Western Europe (25%).  A history of those countries in recent conflict provides an interesting comparison.  The Japanese (11%) are the least likely of 64 countries polled to be willing to fight for their country.  Results from Germany are very similar – 13% willing to fight.  By comparison these numbers more than double in the UK (27%) and France (29%).

Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have criticized an Israeli report on the country’s 2014 military operation against the besieged coastal enclave. The report was released by Israeli state comptroller Yosef Shapira on Tuesday. “I understand from the report that Gaza was merely the setting for an Israeli war game, with no objective but to destroy and murder indiscriminately,” said Basman Alashi, executive director of the El-Wafa Medical Rehabilitation and Specialized Surgery Hospital. The hospital, formerly located in the Shujaya neighborhood by the separation barrier with Israel east of Gaza City, was repeatedly shelled by Israeli forces during the 51-day offensive before it was evacuated under fire on July 17, 2014.

“The overall impression it leaves is this: ‘Netanyahu, You didn’t do a good job of destroying Gaza, do it better next time,’” Alashi said of the report. Others said the document contained useful information about Israel’s behavior during the offensive, even if its conclusions remained incomplete. “The report shows that Israel follows a systematic policy of humiliating Palestinians, especially through careless targeting of civilians,” said Ramy Abdu, founder and chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Abdu’s Geneva-based agency has conducted investigations of Israel’s military conduct, including an Oct. 30, 2014 report stating that its forces had “deliberately targeted locations with concentrations of civilians” during operations earlier that year. “What the report has failed to cover is to cite careless targeting of civilians as a consistent failure of the Israeli forces, with almost no serious actions to do something about it,” Abdu said in regard to the Israeli comptroller’s findings.

It also claimed the cabinet had not only failed to consider diplomatic alternatives to military action, but also to set any clear strategy concerning Gaza. Once the operation began, it said, Israeli forces largely failed to meet their objective of thwarting tunnels dug by Palestinian resistance groups, destroying only half of them over weeks of a bloody ground invasion that produced many casualties. The comptroller did not appear to consider the goals of an earlier military operation, launched by Israel in the West Bank on June 13, 2014. These goals were to weaken Hamas, obstruct an agreement by Hamas and Fatah to form a unity government across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and recover three young settlers captured by Palestinians.

Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, says the company will “engineer” specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine’s news delivery services. “We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik,” Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates “Russian propaganda.”

“We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.”The discussion focused on the company’s popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications.

The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a “longtime friend,” added that the experience of “the last year” showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves.“We started with the default American view that ‘bad’ speech would be replaced with ‘good’ speech, but the problem found in the last year is that this may not be true in certain situations, especially when you have a well-funded opponent who is trying to actively spread this information,” he told the audience.

While Trump's Twitter activity from yesterday continues to drive media and political outrage, especially in the UK, and with the focus of the frenzied coverage being that the president retweeted a far-right U.K. leader's "anti-Muslim videos", there is actually something much more interesting concerning the context to the “Muslim Destroys A Statue Of Virgin Mary” video. That particular video shared by the president is from 2013 and shows a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander named Omar Gharba destroying a Virgin Mary statue as the group invaded a Syrian Christian town. In a geopolitical and deeply ironic twist demonstrating the absurdity and contradictions of US foreign policy, the radical Islamist commander was actually supported by the United States at the time as part of the FSA, which the media and US government deemed "moderate".  So a sitting US president shared a video which reveals a Syrian "rebel" fighter committing war crimes who was part of one of the very groups backed by the CIA as official US policy under the Obama administration. Of course it is likely that Trump himself is not fully aware of this, yet the astounding geopolitical irony in this should not be missed, even as public outrage is reduced to merely discussing "anti-Muslim bigotry" and whether or not Trump is being "presidential".

nd while multiple media outlets, for example NPR, continue to claim the videos are "unverified" and "have no context" or are of "murky origins" (as the Washington Post wrongly claims), this particular video especially was widely shared and discussed among the world's top Syria analysts and Middle East scholars at the time. The video was taken in 2013 and shows the Wahhabi cleric and FSA commander smashing the Christian statue in connection with the US-backed group's prior attack on Yakubiya in Idlib province. The book, The Islamic State: Combating The Caliphate Without Borders, authored by counter-terrorism experts Yonah and Dean Alexander, gives his full name as Omar Gharba al-Khojji and like vast numbers of FSA fighters he eventually jointed ISIS (some online sources alternately list his name as Omar Raghba).

akubiyah was a mostly Christian village principally comprised of Armenian Orthodox and Catholic churches which after being taken over by the FSA was subsequently held by ISIS. The local Christians saw no distinction between the invading FSA and ISIS fighters as it was primarily the US-backed FSA which began massacring Christians and looting churches. Even the US government funded Voice of America news had this to say based on an interview with a Christian survivor: Christian refugees described to VOA the execution of a half dozen of their co-religionists in the northwestern village of al-Yakubiye, in Idlib province, by Sunni Muslims aligned with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. Rahel, a 45-year-old former teacher, said, “Al Nusra didn’t come to our village; the people who came were from villages close by, and they were Free Syrian Army.”   ...Nearly a third of Syria’s Christians, an estimated 600,000, have fled the country. Before the war, Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria’s population of 22 million. And The Daily Beast also confirmed at the time that "nearly all Christians have fled [Yakubiyah] after half a dozen were executed with their heads chopped off and about 20 more were kidnapped" by the US sponsored FSA. Furthermore, an October 2013 report in Arabic media confirmed that, Terrorists belonging to al-Nusra front broke into homes in Yakubiyah in Syria's Idlib province, killed a Chrisitan man and destroyed a Virgin Mary statue. Upon arrival at a house that had the statue of virgin Mary, Wahhabi cleric, Omar Gharba' carried the statue of the Virgin Mary after it was taken over by militants from the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) and broke it by throwing it on the ground. He stated that he and his fellow Wahhabis won't tolerate any form of worship except strict Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.   "God willing, Only God will be worshipped in the land of the Levant," the terrorist who destroyed the statue said, noting that "no other idol will be worshiped after these days . We won't accept but the religion of Allah and the Sunnah of our Prophet Mohammed bin Abdullah." In 2012 and 2013 Omar Gharba's name appeared somewhat frequently in Western news reports as he was interviewed on a few occasions and presented as a "moderate" rebel, for example by BBC Arabic in 2012. The below video is one such example of Omar Gharba insisting that he and his fellow FSA militants would be tolerant and respectful of Christians and other religious minorities should they inherit power by toppling the Assad government  - though he was subsequently outed as the destroyer of the Virgin Mary statue, as the edit of the video interview makes clear.

First, we should have a balanced budget amendment.

Next, we need a constitutional amendment that ensures sound money.

Finally... we need a logical way to put a stop to the narrowing of the tax base.