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The announcement today by Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, that the Trump administration warned Israel that imposing sovereignty over the West Bank would cause an “immediate crisis” between the U.S. and Israel, is spreading like wildfire. Newsweek reported the warning pointed to “a red line for the Trump administration in its relationship with the Israeli government”: “We received a direct message… imposing Israeli sovereignty [on the West Bank] would mean an immediate crisis with the new administration,” Lieberman told the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “The coalition should clearly state that there is no intention to impose [Israeli] sovereignty.” The warning came after Likud KM Miki Zohar, who advocates annexation, stated on Israeli television Channel i24 last night that the two state solution was “dead” and Palestinians, while not having full citizenship, would nonetheless enjoy rights like every citizen, except for the right to vote for the Knesset — unless they serve in the army or to “serve the country” which he hastened to assure viewers they would not do. Lieberman noted he’d been getting calls from “all of the world wanting to know if this is the position of the coalition,” continuing, “[W]e need to separate from the Palestinians and not to integrate them. The decision to annex Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] would mean the integration of 2.7 million Palestinians in Israel.” Rather confusing messaging from the Trump administration. Just last month Trump said he’d be “happy” with a one state solution “if Israel and the Palestinians are happy”. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley later walked that back, saying that the policy was still, two-state solution. Maybe Trump heard Palestinians are not happy. We may be hearing more on this latest development soon as Lieberman is due to meet with top U.S. administration officials this week in Washington.

Germany wants G20 leaders to agree to a concrete plan – one that includes affordable Internet access across the world by 2025, common technical standards and a focus on digital learning. Today, the G20 economies, like so many other economies around the world, are digital and interconnected. Digital services have opened up new avenues for sustainable economic growth. But, the digital economy will only continue to thrive and generate opportunities for citizens if the Internet is strong, secure, and trusted. Without this foundation, the global digital economy is at risk. Currently, there are 360 million people that take part in cross-border e-commerce. 28% of output in mature economies is digital. The Internet is set to contribute $6.6 trillion a year, or 7.1% of the total GDP in the G20 countries. And, by 2020, it’s estimated that more than 1 billion users will be added and there will be 30-50 billion additional connected devices. This level of interconnection will only boost the market. However, this cannot happen without a serious commitment by all parties to security and privacy. The truth is that economies can only function within a secure and trusted environment. Which brings us to encryption. Strong encryption is an essential piece to the future of the world’s economy and the Internet Society believes it should be the norm for all online transactions. It allows us to do our banking, conduct local and global business, run our power grids, operate, communications networks, and do almost everything else.

Encryption is a technical building block for securing infrastructure, communications and information. It should be made stronger and universal, not weaker. However, rather than being recognized as the way to secure our online transactions or our conversations, all too often the debate focuses on the use of encryption as a way to thwart law enforcement. To undermine the positive role of encryption in the name of security could have devastating consequences. Many great minds have already devoted considerable effort to resolving the conundrum posed by competing public policy objectives: providing security, safety and trust on the one hand, and law enforcement and legitimate policy goals on the other. But, it is time to stop kicking the encryption football up and down the field. Instead, we should recognize that encryption is key to the future digital economy and stop treating it as simply an obstacle to law enforcement. We need to deconstruct the issues faced by law enforcement and policy makers and agree together how we can achieve a trusted digital economy underpinned by encryption. This is the first time the G20 countries are holding a Ministerial on digital matters. It is also the first time that the G20 is inviting non-government stakeholders to contribute to these issues. This is a turning point that should not be missed. All views, including the technical perspective, must be at the table if we are to achieve progress on the G20’s ICT goals. If the G20 countries are serious about strengthening their economies and continuing to deliver economic and social prosperity to their citizens in future, there are three key principles they should endorse and implement immediately:

1. Encryption is an important technical foundation for trust in the digital economy and should be the norm. All users (whether government, business or individual) should use encryption to protect infrastructure, communications and the privacy and integrity of their data. Encryption technologies should be strengthened, not weakened. 2. The security of the digital economy is a shared responsibility that needs the expertise and experience of all stakeholders, across border and across disciplines. It is an urgent need that will require open, inclusive collaboration. 3. Users’ rights should be at the heart of any decisions related to the digital economy. They are both the customers and the contributors to the success of the digital economy. The Internet Society calls for ubiquitous encryption for the Internet. We strongly believe that this is the best foundation for trust in the digital economy, and we urge the G20 nations to stand behind encryption.

A day after the US gave tepid support for the establishment of Syrian safe zones to try to separate combatant forces and reduce the amount of fighting, they appear to have noticed that this might get in their way of their own attacks across the country, and are pledging to ignore the demilitarization of the zones.

Back when Turkey and the US were both super keen on the idea of safe zones, a big selling point was the imposition of no-fly zones over the areas, to keep the civilians within getting bombed. This was also a big obstacle, as the US wasn’t totally clear it could do this without declaring war on Russia. With Russia also on board now, that should’ve been easier. Instead, Russia announced that the safe zones, which went into effect overnight, are now officially closed to all warplanes, and US officials are livid at the idea, insisting they have no intention of respecting that. Largely this appears to be a case of the US just being deliberately difficult, as none of the safe zones are in areas US warplanes were operating in the first place. The reality, however, is that the zones are now being used in service of a ceasefire the US never really supported to begin with ,and with the US-backed rebels also objecting about the ceasefire getting in the way of their war, the US will be non-cooperative.

Judicial Watch today announced that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has ordered the U.S. Department of State to turn over to Judicial Watch “eight identical paragraphs” of previously redact material in two September 13, 2012, Hillary Clinton emails regarding phone calls made by President Barack Obama to Egyptian and Libyan leaders immediately following the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.  Both emails had the subject line “Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt” and were among the emails stored on Clinton’s unofficial email server.  Judge Jackson reviewed the documents directly and rejected the government’s contention that the records had been properly withheld under the FOIA B(5) “deliberative process” exemption. Judge Jackson ruled:  “the two records, even if just barely predecisional, are not deliberative. [The State Department] has pointed to very little to support its characterization of these two records as deliberative, and the Court’s in camera review of the documents reveals that they do not fall within that category.” The full emails may reveal what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama knew about the September 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

According to a new poll, Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America. The Harvard-Harris survey, published first in The Hill, found almost 60 percent of Americans view the Vermont senator favorably. Among certain demographics, the progressive politician's ratings are even higher: 80 percent of Democratic voters, 73 percent of registered black voters, and 68 percent of registered Hispanic voters view Sanders favorably. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren also scored positively, with 38 percent approving of the liberal icon and only 32 percent disapproving. This isn't a marked change from prior polling. In late 2016, Sanders was also viewed as the lawmaker with the highest favorability ratings, earning  approval from more than 50 percent of the electorate.  The least popular political figure in America? Look to the White House, but not the Oval Office—though Donald Trump is 7 points underwater, 44/51. His beleaguered chief strategist, Steve Bannon, came in dead last in the survey. Only 16 percent give the former Breitbart publisher a thumbs-up, while a full 45 percent offer the opposite. "In losing to Hillary [Clinton], Bernie Sanders has floated above today's partisan politics while Bannon has, rightly or wrongly, taken the blame for the administration’s failures,” poll co-director Mark Penn from Harvard-Harris told The Hill. "Sanders is an asset to the Democrats while Bannon is a liability to the administration." Read the full findings of the poll here.

On Wednesday, the US airlifted hundreds of mainly-Kurdish fighters to an area behind ISIS lines where they were dropped near the town of al-Tabqa. The troops– who are part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF– were accompanied by an undisclosed number of US Marines serving as advisors. Ostensibly, the deployment was intended to encircle ISIS positions and retake the area around the strategic Tabqa Dam. But the operation had the added effect of blocking the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) from advancing  along the main road towards Raqqa, the so called Capital of ISIS.  While the blocking move might have been coincidental, there’s a strong possibility that Washington is in the opening phase of a broader strategy to splinter the war-torn country and prevent the reemergence of a united secular Syria. According to Almasdar News: “The Coalition supported the offensive with air movement and logistical support, precision airstrikes, Apache helicopters in close air support, Marine artillery, and special operations advice and assistance to SDF leadership,” the US-led coalition said in a statement.” (AMN News) In a matter of weeks, Washington’s approach to the war in Syria has changed dramatically. While the US has reportedly ended its support for the Sunni militias that have torn the country apart and killed over 400,000 people, the US has increased its aid to the SDF that is making impressive territorial gains across the eastern corridor. The ultimate goal for the SDF fighters is an autonomous Kurdish homeland carved out of West Iraq and East Syria, while US objectives focus primarily on the breakup of the Syrian state, the removal of the elected government, the control over critical pipelines routes, and the redrawing of national borders to better serve the interests of the US and Israel.

The most recent adaptation of Yinon’s plan was articulated by Brookings Institute analyst Michael O’ Hanlon in a piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal titled “A Trump Strategy to End Syria’s Nightmare”.  In the article, O’ Hanlon states bluntly: “To achieve peace, Syria will need self-governance within a number of autonomous zones. One option is a confederal system by which the whole country is divided into such zones. A less desirable but minimally acceptable alternative could be several autonomous zones within an otherwise still-centralized state—similar to how Iraqi Kurdistan has functioned for a quarter-century…. Security in the Sunni Arab and Kurdish autonomous zones would be provided by local police and perhaps paramilitary forces raised, trained and equipped with the direct support of the international community. …(“A Trump Strategy to End Syria’s Nightmare”, Wall Street Journal) In an earlier piece, O’ Hanlon referred to his scheme as “Deconstructing Syria” a plan that “would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad or ISIL.” Many of the details in O’ Hanlon’s piece are identical to those in Trump’s plan which was announced by Secretary of State Tillerson just last week. The Brookings strategy appears to be the script from which the administration is operating.

In his presentation, Tillerson announced that US troops would not leave Iraq after the siege of Mosul was concluded which has led many to speculate that the same policy will be used in Syria. Here’s an excerpt from an article at the WSWS that explains this point: “US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared Washington’s intention to keep troops deployed more or less indefinitely in the territories now occupied by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in remarks delivered at the beginning of a two-day meeting of the US-organized anti-ISIS coalition in Washington. “The military power of the coalition will remain where this fraudulent caliphate has existed in order to set the conditions for a full recovery from the tyranny of ISIS,” he told an audience that included Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. He gave no indication of when, if ever, US troops could be withdrawn from a war zone extending across Iraq and Syria, where there has been fighting of greater or lesser intensity throughout the 14 years since the US first invaded Iraq.” (Tillerson pledges long-term US military role in Iraq and Syria, World Socialist web Site) US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis reinforced Tillerson’s comments adding that the US plans a indefinite occupation of Iraq (and, possibly, Syria) stating that it was in America’s “national interest.”

What is really behind the deep-state infighting over the U.S. elections and the "wire tapping" of the Trump campaign? Why was the CIA-Neocon axis vehemently lobbying against Trump? What foreign interests and what money is involved in this? Answers to these questions are now emerging. The former director of the CIA under Clinton, James Woolsey, went to the Wall Street Journal and offered some information (likely some true and some false) on the retired General Flynn and the lobbying businesses he was involved in. Woolsey is an arch-neoconservative. He had worked on the transition team of Trump but got fired over "growing tensions over Trump’s vision for intelligence agencies." Flynn is the former National Security Advisor of Trump who later also got fired. Woolsey was a board member of Flynn's former lobbying company FIG. Woolsey claims: In September 2016 he took part in a meeting between Flynn and high level Turkish officials, including the Turkish foreign minister and the energy minister who is the son-in-law of the Turkish president Erdogan. During the meeting, Woolsey claims, a brainstorming took place over how the Turkish cult leader Fethullah Gülen could -probably by illegal means- be removed from the U.S. and handed over to Turkey. Gülen is accused by the Erdogan mafia of initiating a coup attempt against it. The U.S. claims officially that there is no evidence for such an accusation and that Gülen can therefore not be rendered to Turkey. Gülen is an old CIA asset that helped the U.S. deep state to control Turkey.  Erdogan divorced from the Gülen organization after it became useless for his neo-Ottoman project. Here is the WSJ report on the Woolsey claims and a video clip with parts of his WSJ interview. Woolsey also went on CNN where he repeated his WSJ story. Flynn was accused by the anti-Trump campaign to have worked for Russia. He had taken several $10,000 for speeches he gave in Moscow. He also, at times, had argued for better U.S. relations with Russia. But Flynn's pro-Russia stand was probably honest. (Or the bribes involved were just smaller than the ones paid by others.) The money he got on the speaker circus was rather small for a man in his position. Flynn's real corruption was on another issue. After having been fired from the Trump administration, Flynn retroactively filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). His lobbying firm had a contract over $530,000 to work for a company near to the Turkish president Erdogan: In its filing, Mr. Flynn’s firm said its work from August to November “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn’t paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.

This lobbying, not the alleged Flynn-Putin relation, is the real scandal and part of the Trump/CIA/Clinton deep-state in-fighting. The meeting Woolsey described was under the "Turkish" Flynn contract. The Turkish business man, and owner of Inovo, Ekim Alptekin is a member of the Erdogan gang. But hidden at the very end of the WSJ story is the real key to understand the shady network: Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments. It was the Israeli gas company, not the Alptekin outlet, that drove the issue. The Leviatan (and Tamar) gas fields in the Mediterranean along the Israeli coast are a huge energy and profit resource IF the gas from them can be exported to Europe. Several companies are involved in the exploration and all are looking for ways to connect the fields to the European gas network. There are (likely true) rumors that huge bribes have been payed in Israel, Jordan and elsewhere to win exploration contracts and to sell the gas. Negotiations between Israel and Turkey over the pipeline have been on and off. They depend on a positive climate towards Israel in the Turkish government which again depends on the often changing political position of the Erdogan gang.

The picture evolving here (lots of sleuthing and sources) is this: An Israeli company (or whoever is behind it) wants a gas pipeline to Turkey. It hires Flynn and Alptekin to arrange a positive climate for the Leviathan pipeline within the Turkish government. It offers Flynn more than half a million for a little (4-month long) influence work. His job is to create a "friendly atmosphere" for the deal by using his influence in the U.S. to accommodate Erdogan. A major point that is expected from Flynn is to arrange the handover of Gülen, by whatever means, from the U.S. to Erdogan. After accepting the (lobbying) bribe Flynn-the-whore suddenly changes his former anti-Turkish, pro-Russian, pro-Kurdish political position into a pro-Turkish, neutral-Russian and anti-Kurdish one. (His lobbying firm also makes some smaller payments related to the Clinton email-server scandal. This may be related to links between the Clinton family and the Gülen school empire.) He has a meeting with the Turkish government/Erdogan officials part of which is a discussion of a removal of Gülen to Turkey. He pens a pro Erdogan anti-Gülen op-ed which is published on the day of the election and he denigrates the Pentagon plan to work with the Kurds in Syria. The NSA, CIA and the FBI are listening to Flynn's conversations with Turkish and Israeli interests. (For the old and long history of such "wiretapping" of Turkish and Israeli connections and various dirty and criminal deals they revealed read and ask Sibel Edmonds.) The projects which Flynn is involved in, especially removing Gülen, are against the long term interests of the (neoconservative-driven) CIA. Selected tapes of his talks are transcribed and distributed within the anti-Trump campaign. This is the origin of the "wiretapping" of the Trump Tower the U.S. president lamented about. The stuff the CIA dug up about Flynn's dealing was and is used against Trump. Woolsey is caught up in this as he also worked for Flynn's lobbying firm. (His neocon-pro-Zionist history suggests that he is the senior Israeli watchdog over Flynn in all this.) He is now engaged in damage control and is "coming clean" and selectively leaking his anti-Flynn stuff to exculpate himself. (There is probably also some new, better deal involved that will pay off from him.) The Israeli-Turkish pipeline and the related deep-state fight are not the only issue involved in the campaign against Trump. There are also British interests and British intelligence involvement especially with the accusations against Russia of "hacking" of the DNC. If and how these fit in with above has not yet been revealed.

James Shea, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Emerging Threats at NATO – now that’s a lovely title – recently gave a talk at a private club in London on the Islamic State/Daesh. Shea, as many will remember, made his name as NATO’s spokesman during the NATO war on Yugoslavia in 1999.After his talk Shea engaged in a debate with a source I very much treasure. The source later gave me the lowdown.  According to Saudi intelligence, Daesh was invented by the US government – in Camp Bacca, near the Kuwait border, as many will remember — to essentially finish off the Shiite-majority Nouri al-Maliki government in Baghdad.

It didn’t happen this way, of course. Then, years later, in the summer of 2014, Daesh routed the Iraqi Army on its way to conquer Mosul. The Iraqi Army fled. Daesh operatives then annexed ultra-modern weapons that took US instructors from six to twelve months to train the Iraqis in and…surprise! Daesh incorporated the weapons in their arsenals in 24 hours. In the end, Shea frankly admitted to the source that Gen David Petraeus, conductor of the much-lauded 2007 surge, had trained these Sunnis now part of Daesh in Anbar province in Iraq. Saudi intelligence still maintains that these Iraqi Sunnis were not US-trained – as Shea confirmed – because the Shiites in power in Baghdad didn’t allow it. Not true. The fact is the Daesh core – most of them former commanders and soldiers in Saddam Hussein’s army — is indeed a US-trained militia. True to form, at the end of the debate, Shea went on to blame Russia for absolutely everything that’s happening today – including Daesh terror. 

Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday, saying the investigation had not been able to proceed because of legal obstacles. “We are not making a statement about his guilt,” Swedish Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny said. Assange, 45, has lived in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012 when he took refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden over the rape allegations. He feared Sweden would hand him over to the United States to face prosecution for information leaks as thousand of classified military and diplomatic documents were published by WikiLeaks. Ecuador’s government welcomed the decision by Sweden, but said it was long overdue.

Assange’s lawyer Per Samuelson said the drop of the investigation is a “total victory” for them.   “The preliminary investigation has been dropped and the detention order has been withdrawn, and from Sweden’s point of view this is now over,” Samuelson told Reuters. Ny added that the investigation could be reopened if Assange came to Sweden before the statute of limitations deadline for rape allegation in 2020. After a 7-year stand-off with Sweden, Assange may still not be able to leave the Ecuadorean embassy. British police said if Assange were to leave the embassy, it was still their obligation to arrest him. But the British government has not commented on whether the United States had made a request to extradite Assange. “Given that the European arrest warrant no longer holds, Ecuador will now be intensifying its diplomatic efforts with the U.K. so that Julian Assange can gain safe passage in order to enjoy his asylum in Ecuador,” said Long. “Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Julian Assange following him failing to surrender to the court on the 29 June 2012,” British police said. “The Metropolitan Police Service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the Embassy.” The United Nations has decried the unfair treatment of Assange, declaring that he was being arbitrarily detained and that his human rights were being violated. Professor Mads Andenas, chair of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, also welcomed the decision to drop the investigation. “This is a victory for the rule of law,” said Andenas. “The warrant was contestable.”

It's bleak out there for Democrats and progressives, yet the future of the GOP may be more precarious than it appears.According to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center, 23 percent of Republican voters ages 18-29 have switched parties since 2015, against just 9 percent of Democratic voters in the same age range. As many as half of Republicans 30 and under have abandoned the party at one point or another during that time.

Americans are dying at a shockingly high rate from preventable causes, found a first-of-its-kind global health study published late Thursday. The new research demonstrates that despite the fact that the U.S. has the largest economy in the world, healthcare for many of its residents is woefully inadequate. The U.S. was tied with Estonia and Montenegro, far below other wealthy nations such as Norway, Canada, and Australia, in the study’s ranking of 195 countries. “America’s ranking is an embarrassment, especially considering the U.S. spends more than $9,000 per person on health care annually, more than any other country,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, senior author of the study and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. “Anyone with a stake in the current healthcare debate, including elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels, should take a look at where the U.S. is falling short.”

Progressives have long pointed out that the U.S. is one of the only wealthy nations not to provide some form of government-mandated healthcare, exacerbating inequality in healthcare outcomes. The study published in the Lancet created a Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index, “a summary measure based on 32 causes, that in the presence of high-quality healthcare, should not result in death,” the researchers wrote. “Using deaths that could be avoided as a measure of the quality of a health system is not new but what makes this study so important is its scope, drawing on the vast data resources assembled by the Global Burden of Disease team to go beyond earlier work in rich countries to cover the entire world in great detail, as well as the development of a means to assess what a country should be able to achieve,” said Professor Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who participated in the study. Causes examined by the study include tuberculosis, diarrhea-related diseases, lower and upper respiratory infections, leukemia, breast cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, measles, tetanus, appendicitis, epilepsy, diabetes, and others. “The United States measures well for diseases preventable by vaccines, such as diphtheria and measles, but it gets almost failing grades for nine other conditions that can lead to death,” reported the Washington Post. “These are lower respiratory infections, neonatal disorders, non-melanoma skin cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, ischemic heart disease, hypertensive heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and the adverse effects of medical treatment itself.” “What we have found about healthcare access and quality is disturbing,” said Dr. Murray. “Having a strong economy does not guarantee good healthcare. Having great medical technology doesn’t either. We know this because people are not getting the care that should be expected for diseases with established treatments.”

The former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno Ocampo has said that the investigation being carried out by the ICC concerning the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, will most likely result in condemnation of Israeli officials since the establishment of settlements is considered a continuing war crime. He added that the settlements constitute a clear legal violation of the Rome Statute and the rules of international law, which prohibit an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to an occupied territory. During a special panel discussion organized by Al-Quds University yesterday evening, Ocampo said that the prosecutor’s office has gone a long way in examining the issue of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

He denied the statements attributed to him by an Israeli newspaper a year and a half ago that settlements are not illegal, pointing out that it was not the first time that the Israeli press has presented its own interpretation of statements. In particular, he stated that what was reported in the newspaper at that time is contrary to his firm legal convictions that the transfer of the civilian population of an occupying force onto occupied land constitutes a war crime. Ocampo explained that the case brought by the State of Palestine before the ICC has caused huge discomfort among the Israeli side and is moving the Israeli government from an attack posture to one of defense, citing a quote by an Israeli official that Israel is recruiting more lawyers than soldiers as a result of the Palestinian complaint.

Zogby Analytics conducted a hybrid (live interviewer telephone and online) survey of 1,514 likely voters in the US. The survey was conducted 10/19/2017 - 10/25/2017. Based on a confidence interval of 95%, the margin of error for 1,514 is +/- 2.5 percentage points. In our latest poll, we analyzed voters' attitudes concerning potential 2020 presidential election match-ups. We found Donald Trump is in close races against Senator Elizabeth Warren and former first lady Michelle Obama. We also see the president in difficult match-ups with Senator Bernie Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden. In the match-up between President Trump and Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont receives a narrow majority of voters, while Trump receives 40% of voters. Sanders does better than Trump with women (56%-35%), younger voters age 18-24 (69%-27%), 18-29 (64%-30%), Walmart shoppers (47%-42%), voters age 50-64 (46%-44%), Amazon shoppers (51%-41%) and all minorities. As per usual Trump beats Sanders among voters age 65+ (53%-40%) NASCAR fans (47%-46%), Catholic voters (49%-43%), and rural voters (53%-36%). Sanders does the most damage to Trump among men (both tied at46%), and beats him significantly with Independents (51%-36%). Bernie Sanders also cuts into Trump's lead with older voters and NASCAR fans. When we examine Trump vs. former vice president Joe Biden, Biden beats the president 50% to 40%. Joe Biden, like Bernie Sanders, is favored among younger voters age 18-24 (74%-18%), voters age 18-29 (60%-31%), women (57%-34%), Independents (50%-37%), and all minority groups. President Trump struggles against Biden because Biden is able to tap into the president's base of voters who frequently shop at Walmart (tied at 46%), voters age 50-64 (Biden leads 47% to 43%) and voters with no college education (Biden leads 47% to 42%).

Senate Republicans are reportedly banking on the testimony of a "secret informant" to deepen their investigation into Hillary Clinton's role in the 2010 sale of uranium assets to Russia, Reuters reported Thursday. The GOP's source — a former FBI informant and lobbyist for the U.S.-based unit of Rosatom, a Russian-owned nuclear power company — will appear before the upper chamber as part of the probe into the so-called Uranium One deal. Although the Senate committee did not reveal the witness' name, former lobbyist William D. Campbell identified himself to Reuters. "I have worked with the Justice Department undercover for several years, and documentation relating to Uranium One and political influence does exist and I have it," Campbell said. Campbell was once a "star witness" in an FBI case against a Rosatom, until his credibility and motivations as an informant were called into question by defense attorneys. President Trump has repeatedly claimed that Uranium One's sale was approved by Clinton's State Department in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation, and deal skeptics point to the fact that the Clinton Foundation received $145 million in donations from owners of Uranium One. In a statement to Reuters, Rosatom noted that the State Department is only one of nine government agencies that had to approve the sale.

RICS countries are discussing the possibility of establishing a single gold trade system, First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Central Bank Sergey Shvetsov said Friday.

"The traditional (trade) system based in London and partially in Swiss cities is becoming less relevant as new trade hubs are emerging, first of all in India, China and South Africa. We are discussing the possibility to establish a single (system of) gold trade both within BRICS and at the level of bilateral contacts," he said, adding that this system may serve as a basis for further creation of new benchmarks. According to Shvetsov, the Bank of Russia has already signed a memorandum on development of bilateral gold trade with Chinese colleagues. The regulator plans to take first steps towards formation of a single trade system with the People’s Republic of China in 2018, he added. "We assume that trade and clearing links should be established. The point is that gold buyers should decide on the place of purchase," the official said, adding that trade links would enable market participants to make deals on international exchanges via the central counterparty.

A changing-places moment brought about by Russia-gate is that liberals who are usually more skeptical of U.S. intelligence agencies, especially their evidence-free claims, now question the patriotism of Americans who insist that the intelligence community supply proof to support the dangerous claims about Russian ‘hacking” of Democratic emails especially when some  veteran U.S. government experts say the data would be easily available if the Russians indeed were guilty. One of those experts is William Binney, a former high-level National Security Agency intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement, blew the whistle on the extraordinary breadth of NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W. Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home in 2007. Even before Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had access to telecommunications companies’ domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 trillion to 20 trillion communications. Snowden has said: “I have tremendous respect for Binney, who did everything he could according to the rules.”

I spoke to Binney on Dec. 28 about Russia-gate and a host of topics having to do with spying and America’s expanding national security state.

Bernstein: Your expertise was in the Soviet Union and so you must know a lot about bugging.  Do you believe that Russia hacked and undermined our last election?  Can Trump thank Russia for the result? Binney:  We at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published an article on this in July.  First of all, if any of the data went anywhere across the fiber optic world, the NSA would know.  Just inside the United States, the NSA has over a hundred tap points on the fiber lines, taking in everything.    Mark Klein exposed some of this at the AT&T facility in San Francisco. This is not for foreigners, by the way, this is for targeting US citizens.  If they wanted only foreigners, all they would have to do was look at the transatlantic cables where they surface on the coast of the United States.  But they are not there, they are distributed among the US population. Bernstein: So if, in fact, the Russians were tapping into DNC headquarters, the NSA would absolutely know about it. Binney: Yes, and they would also have trace routes on where they went specifically, in Russia or anywhere else.  If you remember, about three or four years ago, the Chinese hacked into somewhere in the United States and our government came out and confirmed that it was the Chinese who did it, and it came from a specific military facility in Shanghai.  The NSA had these trace route programs embedded by the hundreds across the US and all around the world.

Tags help you find and organize your bookmarks by letting you select all of your bookmarks with a certain tag or combination of tags. Quickly add relevant tags to a bookmark by clicking on any of the recommended tags that appear under the description field on the “Save Bookmark” pop-up. When you are satisfied with the information in the “Save Bookmark” pop-up, click the “Save Bookmark” button. Now a link to the page is stored in your Diigo library, and the information you entered is stored with it.

Highlight Highlighting lets you denote important information on a page, just like highlighting in a book, but with Diigo, the highlighted text will be conveniently saved to your library as well. There are some important things for me to denote on my recipe. My wife doesn’t like pineapple, my grandfather can’t have eggs or chocolate, and I don’t like coconut very much, so I highlight those items on the recipe to let me know I need to deal with them. Highlight by clicking “Highlight” on the Diigolet. Then select the text you want to highlight. The text will be visually highlighted and the text is now stored in your library. It’s that easy. Click the button again to exit highlighter mode. You can also change the color of a highlight by clicking the downward-pointing arrow next to “Highlight” and choosing a color. Colors are useful for differentiating different types of highlights. I will use a different color for each of the different people I need to consider.

To add a sticky note to a highlight, simply move your mouse cursor over a highlight. When the little pop-up tab with the pencil on it appears, move the cursor to it and a menu will appear. Choose “Add Sticky Notes”. Now you can type and post a sticky note just like before, but this time it will be tied to the highlighted text.