News You Can Use

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Americans Are Dying With an Average of $62K of Debt | Fox Business

You’re probably going to die with some debt to your name. Most people do. In fact, 73% of consumers had outstanding debt when they were reported as dead, according to December 2016 data provided to Credit.com by credit bureau Experian. Those consumers carried an average total balance of $61,554, including mortgage debt. Without home loans, the average balance was $12,875.


The data is based on Experian’s FileOne database, which includes 220 million consumers. (There are about 242 million adults in the U.S., according to 2015 estimates from the Census Bureau.) Among the 73% of consumers who had debt when they died, about 68% had credit card balances. The next most common kind of debt was mortgage debt (37%), followed by auto loans (25%), personal loans (12%) and student loans (6%).

These were the average unpaid balances: credit cards, $4,531; auto loans, $17,111; personal loans, $14,793; and student loans, $25,391.

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Inside the final conservative push to thwart Trump’s health care bill | McClatchy DC

WASHINGTON
In the final hours before a vote on the Republican health care overhaul, powerful conservative groups raced to ensure that their Capitol Hill allies will oppose a bill they see as too weak, despite mounting pressure and threats from President Donald Trump.

Influential conservative groups treated Wednesday as a national day of action, flooding phone lines of members of Congress, running ads urging “no” votes in key congressional districts across the country and engaging in last-ditch lobbying efforts with Capitol Hill, demanding changes to a bill that, they argue, doesn’t go far enough in repealing former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Republicans who vote for the current measure “are going to own a bill that breaks their promise to fully repeal Obamacare, a promise that many of them have made for four consecutive election cycles,” warned Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, a major conservative group backed by the deep-pocketed Koch brothers. “I think it will harm their standing with conservatives and their base, and I think a lot of regular swing voters as well, because they broke their promise.”

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How Many Kids Are Dying In US? Infant Mortality Rate Reaches New Low

Infant mortality, the death of children under the age of one year, is usually considered a yardstick for a country’s public health. Its rate, calculated by the number of deaths per 1,000 live births, in the United States reached a new low in the past decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its report Tuesday.

The CDC noted there were 6.86 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2005. This rate drastically dropped by 15 percent to 5.82 in 2014. The CDC said it analyzed data from the National Vital Statistics System to arrive at trends by race, state and causes.

The report found that the highest mortality rates were observed among infants of non-Hispanic black women and American Indian or Alaska Native women.

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While IRS Made Conservative Groups Wait, Satanic Club Granted Tax-Exempt Status in 10 Days - Washington Free Beacon

The Internal Revenue Service made Tea Party and conservative groups wait years for tax-exempt status, but granted exempt status to an "After School Satan Club" in just 10 days, according to the watchdog group Judicial Watch.

Charitable, religious, and educational organizations can receive tax-exempt status if they follow IRS guidelines for nonprofits. The IRS for years prevented some conservative groups from obtaining this status, targeting them using key words such as "tea-party" and "patriot." Many of these groups had to wait up to seven years to receive tax-exempt status, while others were denied.

"In the meantime, leftist groups like the Satan club got fast tracked," Judicial Watch said. "The Satanic cult applied for tax-exempt status on October 21, 2014, and received it on October 31, 2014."

The nonprofit Reason Alliance was behind the after-school club. It operates in Washington State as the Satanic Temple of Seattle.

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FEC Dems again eye regulating Drudge, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook | Washington Examiner

The campaign by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission to regulate the internet, from Twitter and Facebook to Drudge, is back after some liberal commissioners threw in the towel amid GOP opposition. Seizing on an exit report card of the agency by ex-Commissioner Ann Ravel, the left is complaining that the internet isn't being regulated for political content and spending, but should be.

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Think Book of Mormon

California Earthquakes: San Andreas Fault Could Cause Coast To Instantly Sink Below Sea Level

Add "sinking below sea level" to California’s list of natural disaster worries. Portions of the Golden State could be at risk of abruptly dropping into the sea during a severe earthquake like the “Big One” scientists have been predicting for years, according to a study published Monday.

By assessing seismic activity, scientists have estimated in the past that a massive earthquake should strike California along the 800-mile San Andreas Fault line once every 150 years, meaning the hotspot should see one very soon. Now they’ve forecast that — along with the devastation the earthquake itself would cause — portions of the state could very possibly plummet below sea level.

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1st sex reassignment inmate says women's prison is 'torture' | The Sacramento Bee

The first U.S. inmate to have taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgery says she's been mistreated since being transferred to a California women's prison, where she now has a beard and mustache because officials have denied her a razor.

[Joel]

Hacked text messages allegedly sent by Paul Manafort's daughter discuss 'blood money' and killings, and a Ukrainian lawyer wants him to explain

On February 20, 2014, Ukrainian riot police opened fire on thousands of demonstrators who had gathered in central Kiev. They were protesting President Viktor Yanukovych's last-minute decision to back out of a deal with the European Union that would have distanced Ukraine from Russia and fostered closer ties with the West.

A human-rights lawyer representing the victims of the mass police shootings, Eugenia Zakrevska, now wants to know who was advising or influencing Yanukovych when he ordered Ukrainian security forces to crush the protests with force.

One familiar name that has emerged in recent weeks is Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager who advised Yanukovych for nearly a decade.

Late last month, hackers broke into Manafort's daughter's iPhone and published four years' worth of purported text messages — roughly 300,000 messages — on the dark web, an encrypted network that can be accessed only with a special browser.

Now, Zakrevska is calling on Manafort "to clarify the allegations contained in the text messages and to contact us with any information he may have" about the events that occurred in central Kiev between February 18 and 20, 2014, she told CNN earlier this month.

Reached for comment on Friday, Zakrevska told Business Insider that there was still "no answer to my request, and I don't expect it so quickly."

Manafort did not respond to request for comment from Business Insider. He confirmed to Politico late last month that his daughter Andrea had been hacked, and he corroborated some exchanges while declining to comment on others.

'That money we have is blood money'
In a series of texts reviewed by Business Insider that appear to have been sent by Andrea to her sister, Jessica, in March 2015, Andrea said their father had "no moral or legal compass."

"Don't fool yourself," Andrea wrote to her sister, according to the texts. "That money we have is blood money."

"You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly," she continued, according to the reviewed texts. "As a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered."

Andrea did not respond to a request for comment.

Paul was a top adviser to Yanukovych from 2004 to 2014. Ukrainian authorities have said Yanukovych created the conditions that led to the security forces opening fire. Ukraine's interior minister issued a warrant for Yanukovych's arrest shortly after the uprising. He fled to Russia and was granted asylum.

Manafort has not been linked to the killings.

Manafort, a Republican operative who had advised authoritarian leaders like the Democratic Republic of Congo's Mobutu Sese Seko and the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos, is credited with revamping Yanukovych's image and helping him win the presidency in 2010.

Manafort advised Yanukovych until he was ousted amid the protests. Manafort resurrected the Party of Regions in late 2014, rebranding it as the Opposition Bloc and expanding it to include parties that had been opposed to the protests and, later, to the new pro-EU president, Petro Poroshenko.

'Ukraine is late in paying him'
In a series of texts to a friend in March 2015, Andrea appears to have said Ukraine was "late in paying" her father.

"He is cash poor right now," the text said. "And now Ukraine is late in paying him."

In a later exchange with a man who appeared to be Andrea's cousin — and one of her father's former employees — Collin Bond, Andrea appears to have said her mother and father couldn't go through a "public divorce" because Manafort had "too many skeletons" and "his work and payment in Ukraine is legally questionable."

Bond worked as a political consultant and election-law attorney for Manafort's consulting firm, Davis Manafort Partners Inc., from 2005 to 2010, according to a LinkedIn page with his name. A description of his work at the firm says he "worked with a team that guided the client to victory in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election."

Bond did not respond to request for comment.

"He is a sick f---ing tyrant," Andrea appears to have said to Bond about her father. "And we keep showing up and dancing for him. ... We just keep showing up and eating the lobster. Nothing changes."

Ledgers uncovered by an anticorruption center in Kiev in 2016 suggested that the Party of Regions had designated $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments for Manafort between 2007 and 2012. Manafort's lawyer has denied that he ever collected the earmarked payments.

The New York Times reported on Monday that a Ukrainian member of parliament had accused Manafort of trying to hide $750,000 in payments from the Party of Regions by funneling it to offshore accounts. Manafort's spokesman told The Times that the allegations were "baseless" and should be "summarily dismissed."

[Joel]

[Joel]

Suspected U.S. Airstrike Hits School Sheltering Displaced People In Syria

Dozens of civilian casualties are reported.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 33 people were killed in an airstrike that hit a school sheltering displaced people near the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa, a group that monitors the war in Syria said on Wednesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it believed the strike was carried out by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State.

Observatory activists had counted at least 33 bodies at the site near the village of al-Mansoura, west of Raqqa, Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters. The air strike took place on Monday night, he said.

The U.S.-led coalition has escalated its aerial campaign against the militant group around Raqqa this month, causing numerous civilian casualties, Abdulrahman said.

The nearest Islamic State installation to the site of the air strike was a religious school 3 km (1.9 miles) away, he said.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition has previously said that it does everything it can to avoid civilian casualties and that it investigates those that are reported as a result of its air strikes.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led group of militias backed by the U.S.-led coalition, is fighting to isolate Raqqa ahead of an anticipated assault on the city, which Islamic State has used as a command node to plan attacks abroad.

The head of the YPG militia, the strongest in the SDF, said last week that the offensive to retake Raqqa would begin in early April but a spokesman for the U.S. Pentagon said no decision had yet been made.

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Columnist: ‘It should be illegal’ to be a stay-at-home mom – TheBlaze

Australian columnist Sarrah Le Marquand argued that choosing to be a stay-at-home mother should be “illegal” in an op-ed published this week in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

According to Bloomberg, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a recent report that there are consequences for the Australian economy because many women of child-bearing age are choosing to stay at home with their children or work part-time.

“There are potentially large losses to the economy when women stay at home or work short part-time hours,” the report said.

Le Marquand wrote that “hysteria ensued, with commentators from coast to coast howling in indignation at the very idea that the uppity OECD would insinuate Australia might have a tiny bit of a problem with our female workforce participation rates.”

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Top Dem calls for investigation into House Intelligence chairman | TheHill

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Thursday called for an investigation into House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who bypassed the panel to brief President Trump on information related to U.S. surveillance of his transition team.

During an interview on CNN's "New Day," Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, called the Intelligence panel a "very special committee."

"They are privileged to information that most members of Congress may never see and so you expect them to be extremely confidential," he added.

"What he did was basically to go to the president, who's being investigated, by the FBI and others and by the intelligence committee, to give them information."

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REPUBLICANS REBELLING AGAINST HEALTH CARE RISK TRUMP'S WRATH

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hard-line House Republicans considering voting against the House GOP health bill are bracing for payback from a president who claims his favorite biblical passage is "an eye for an eye." Many appear ready to risk it.

The scheduled roll call vote for the bill backed by President Donald Trump is a crucial first test of whether Republicans are willing to defy the White House and face the wrath of a president who has bragged about never forgetting a slight. Trump has shown he's willing to use his megaphone and practiced counter-punch against his allies. But the vote comes as Trump's poll numbers have slouched and his White House is consumed with damaging distractions.

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Vehicles Becoming Favored Terrorist Attack Weapon - WSJ

LONDON—The assailant in a deadly attack here Wednesday that left four people dead, including the attacker, used a weapon increasingly common in recent terrorist attacks: a road vehicle that typically draws little notice but can kill with devastating effect.

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Donald Trump: TIME Interview on Truth and Falsehoods | Time.com

President Trump spoke with TIME Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer on March 22 for a cover story about the way he has handled truth and falsehood in his career.

This is a transcript of the exchange, with some minor edits. The transcript does not include requests he made of his staff during the interview, or a comment he made after asking to go off the record.

[Joel]

FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites

WASHINGTON Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories — some fictional — that favored Donald Trump’s presidential bid, two people familiar with the inquiry say.

Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.

The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said. Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the bot attacks are part of an FBI-led investigation into a multifaceted Russian operation to influence last year’s elections.

Investigators examining the bot attacks are exploring whether the far-right news operations took any actions to assist Russia’s operatives. Their participation, however, wasn’t necessary for the bots to amplify their news through Twitter and Facebook.

The investigation of the bot-engineered traffic, which appears to be in its early stages, is being driven by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, whose inquiries rarely result in criminal charges and whose main task has been to reconstruct the nature of the Kremlin’s cyber attack and determine ways to prevent another.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the inquiry into the use of bots.

Russia-generated bots are one piece of a cyber puzzle that counterintelligence agents have sought to solve for nearly a year to determine the extent of the Moscow government’s electronic broadside.

“This may be one of the most highly impactful information operations in the history of intelligence,” said one former U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Bureau director James Comey confirmed Monday at a House Intelligence Committee hearing what long has been reported: that the FBI is investigating possible links between individuals in the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian campaign to influence the election and whether there was any coordination between the two.

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, one of multiple congressional panels examining Russia’s intervention, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that there was “circumstantial evidence of collusion.” There also is “direct evidence . . . of deception, and that’s where we begin the investigation,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California.

U.S. intelligence agencies charged in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the offensive, in which cyber operatives also hacked tens of thousands of emails from Democratic National Committee staff, Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta and other Democrats.

A top priority of investigators is to determine who delivered those hacked emails to WikiLeaks, a London-based transparency site that published them online, the sources said. News stories about the emails embarrassed Clinton at key points in the campaign. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied that the Russian government was the source of the email dump.

As for the bots, they carried links not only to news stories but also to Democratic emails posted on WikiLeaks, especially those hacked from Podesta and made public in October, said Philip Howard, a professor at the Oxford University Internet Institute who has researched the bot attacks.

Howard said that, as an example, bots had spread links to fictional stories that accused Clinton of involvement in running a child-sex ring in the basement of a Washington pizza parlor. The posts inspired a North Carolina man to drive to Washington and fire an assault weapon in the restaurant, according to police reports.

Howard’s study of bot-generated Twitter traffic during last fall’s Trump-Clinton campaign debates showed that bot messages favorable to Trump significantly outnumbered those sympathetic to Clinton.

He said his research showed that Americans who call themselves “patriotic programmers” also activated bots to aid Trump. In interviews, they described coding the computer commands in their spare time, Howard said.

Unlike counterintelligence investigators with more cyber-sleuthing capabilities, Howard has not established that Russia was the source of the bot attacks he studied.

Russia also used “trolls,” hundreds of computer operatives who pretended to be Trump supporters and posted stories or comments on the internet complimentary to Trump or disparaging to Clinton. Sources close to the inquiry said those operatives likely worked from a facility in St. Petersburg, Russia, dedicated to that tactic.

“Russian bots and internet trolls sought to propagate stories underground,” said Mike Carpenter, a former senior Pentagon official during the Obama administration whose job focused on Russia. “Those stories got amplified by fringe elements of our media like Breitbart.”


“They very carefully timed release of information to shift the news cycle away from stories that clearly hurt Mr. Trump, such as his inappropriate conduct over the years,” he said, referring to the October release of a video in which Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals. That event corresponded with a surge in bot-related traffic spreading anti-Clinton stories.

An additional Russian tool was the news from its prime propaganda machine, Russia Today, with a global television and digital media operation and a U.S. arm, RT America.

Last Nov. 19, Breitbart announced that its website traffic had set a record the previous 31 days with 300 million page views, driven substantially by social media.

Breitbart, which has drawn criticism for pursuing a white nationalist agenda, was formerly led by Stephen Bannon, who became chief executive officer of Trump’s election campaign last August and now serves as Trump’s strategic adviser in the White House. The news site’s former national security editor, Sebastian Gorka, was a national security adviser to Trump’s campaign and presidential transition team. He now works as a key Trump counterterrorism adviser.

Breitbart’s chief executive officer, Larry Solov, did not respond to phone and email requests seeking comment.

Bannon and Gorka have controversial profiles. Bannon has been accused of taking anti-immigrant and racist positions. Last week, the Jewish newspaper Forward reported that Gorka had taken a lifelong loyalty oath to a Hungarian far-right group that for decades was allied with the Nazi Party.

The White House declined to respond to questions about Gorka.

Breitbart is partially owned by Robert Mercer, the wealthy co-chief executive of a New York hedge fund and a co-owner of Cambridge Analytica, a small, London-based firm credited with giving Trump a significant advantage in gauging voter priorities last year by providing his campaign with at least 5,000 data points on each of 220 million Americans.

InfoWars is published by Alex Jones, a Texas-based conservative talk show host known for embracing conspiracy theories such as one asserting that the U.S. government was involved in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. During the 2016 campaign, InfoWars.com was a loyal Trump public relations tool. Trump was on Jones’ show and praised his reporting.

“It’s the major source of everything,” Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant and campaign adviser, said last fall. Stone, who has regularly appeared on Jones’ show and was on Monday, has said he invites an FBI investigation into his campaign role. The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked Stone to preserve documents in connection with the Russian election inquiry.

Jones responded to questions from McClatchy on his talk show.

“I’m not gonna sit here and say, ‘I’m not a Russian stooge,’ because it’s a (expletive) lie,” he said, denying any contact with the Kremlin operatives about bots. He said this issue stemmed from “this whole ridiculous narrative of the &!@$#%$@ left.”

“It’s as if we didn’t build InfoWars,” he said. “It’s as if we don’t have a huge audience.”

Noting he had appeared on RT “probably 100 times or more,” he said sarcastically, “There’s my Russian connection.”

Boosted by bots, the surge in readership for such websites amplified Clinton’s negatives. Some stories falsely described her health problems as dire. Jones said Monday that people gravitated to his website “because we were the first to report Hillary Clinton falling down.” He referred to Clinton appearing to collapse last Sept. 11 after visiting the World Trade Center memorial. She was diagnosed with pneumonia.

“The full impact of the bots was subterranean and corrosive,” Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, told McClatchy in an interview. “The distribution channels were being flooded with this information. . . . We perhaps underestimated the strategy of pushing fake news out through social media and how it impacted the race.”

Donna Brazile, the former interim director of the DNC, said that neither the party committee nor the Clinton campaign had used bots to widen the reach of their anti-Trump messages.

At least one of the congressional committees investigating the Russian meddling is looking into the bots.

The Senate Intelligence Committee “intends to look actively at ‘fake’ news and the ways that Russian bots and trolls were used to influence the election,” said Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s ranking Democrat.

Russia’s offensive might have been anticipated from a speech a top Kremlin official made in February 2016.

In the speech in Moscow, Andrey Krutskikh told a conference of Russian computer security officials that the Putin government would be unleashing a cyber nuclear attack reminiscent of Russia’s 1949 development of the atom bomb. Krutskikh, whose speech was first reported by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius and independently confirmed by McClatchy, also reportedly said the offensive would cause U.S. officials to gain respect for Russia’s cyber capabilities.

“Russia has again figured out from its old Soviet playbook that its greatest weapon in the world is information,” said Lauren Goodrich, senior Eurasia analyst at the Stratfor Corp., a global intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas. “Its information and disinformation campaigns have skyrocketed.”

She said the Kremlin’s budget for “public information” had quadrupled this year as it mounted similar cyber attacks on behalf of right-wing candidates in France, Germany and other European countries.

Breitbart and InfoWars have a credibility issues but so does the FBI.

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Fort Collins fights to keep topless ban

Fort Collins plans to appeal a federal judge’s decision to temporarily halt enforcement of the city’s ban on women appearing topless in public.

Attorneys representing the city on Tuesday notified the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that they will appeal a preliminary injunction granted in February by U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson that blocks a section of the city’s public nudity law.

In granting the preliminary injunction, Brooke stated he would likely rule in favor of members of the group Free the Nipple who sued the city claiming the ordinance violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution by discriminating against women.

Brit Hoagland and Sam Six are seeking a permanent injunction against the city’s topless ban.

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Renters Now Rule Half of U.S. Cities - Bloomberg

Detroit was once known as a city where a working-class family could afford to own a home. Now it’s a city of renters.

Just 49 percent of Motor City households were homeowners in 2015, down from 55 percent in 2009 and the lowest percentage in more than 50 years. Detroit isn’t alone, of course: The rate of U.S. home ownership fell steadily for a decade as the foreclosure crisis turned millions of owners into renters and tight housing markets made it hard for renters to buy homes. Demographic shifts—millennials (finally) moving out of their parents basements, for instance, or a rising Hispanic population—further fed the renter pool.

Fifty-two of the 100 largest U.S. cities were majority-renter in 2015, according to U.S. Census Bureau data compiled for Bloomberg by real estate brokerage Redfin. Twenty-one of those cities have shifted to renter-domination since 2009. These include such hot housing markets as Denver and San Diego and lukewarm locales, such as Detroit and Baltimore, better known for vacant homes than residential development. 

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Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore Lead Nation in Population Loss; Maricopa County Has Biggest Gain

(CNSNews.com) - The counties containing Chicago, Detroit and the independent city of Baltimore were the biggest population losers in the United States from 2015 to 2016, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

Cook County, Ill., where Chicago is the county seat, had the largest population loss of any county in the country from 2015 and 2016.

Between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016, Cook County lost a net of 21,324 people to hit 5,203,499, according to the Census Bureau.

Even while it was experiencing the largest net population loss of any county in the country, Cook Count was seeing an influx of migrants from foreign countries and more births than deaths.

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Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore Lead Nation in Population Loss; Maricopa County Has Biggest Gain

(CNSNews.com) - The counties containing Chicago, Detroit and the independent city of Baltimore were the biggest population losers in the United States from 2015 to 2016, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

Cook County, Ill., where Chicago is the county seat, had the largest population loss of any county in the country from 2015 and 2016.

Between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016, Cook County lost a net of 21,324 people to hit 5,203,499, according to the Census Bureau.

Even while it was experiencing the largest net population loss of any county in the country, Cook Count was seeing an influx of migrants from foreign countries and more births than deaths.

[Joel]

#QuestionWikiLeaks … Because No One Is Above Questioning

#IntelGroup has always prided itself on its continuous pursuit of truth and justice . Regardless of where that road for truth and justice has lead us or who it has habitually pissed off.

“We think for ourselves . We aren’t waiting for someone to give us our opinion . And we don’t coast along with popular opinions . “

That was a comment from the founder of IntelGroup @88blackhatss . He went on to say that “people always seem to have a problem with whatever doesn’t fit the narrative they are pushing”

Our Group has been and will continue to cement itself as proud InfoSec counmnity members . As members of the collective of Anonymous we value the numerous relationships we have built thru the years . As of late , some of those relationships have become strained . Mainly because we started to call into question wikileak’s actions .
By no means are we bashing or trying to discredit wikileaks and the extraordinary work they have done . Only a fool would or could ignore Wikileaks’s contributions to the world. But we believe no one man or group should be above questioning .
And well … we started asking questions .

We started using the hashtag #QuestionWikileaks , as a way to call into question some very odd things wikileaks has been doing lately . We’ve all come to know and love. wikileaks as our go to source for groundbreaking leaks from all over the globe . They have been nearly 100 percent accurate in the thousands of leaks they have released . Which needless to say buys you a lot of loyalty and respect .

And while we respect wikileaks , we are forced to call into account their actions going back to the 2016 elections . Some thing’s don’t add up and we have reason to believe wikileaks which is the creation of Julian Assange , selectively used information to help persuade the American people of the United States Of America to vote Trump .

It is of no secret that the very theatrical leak of the the Podesta emails damaged the Hillary Clinton Campign . We call it theatrical because wikileaks released leak after leak , day after day delivering a slow knife thru Clinton that resembled that of a person exacting revenge on someone at the height of their enemies career .

READ MORE HERE

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Graham: ‘I Wonder If My Meetings Are Being Surveilled by the Intelligence Community’

(CNSNews.com) - Hours after House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced he has new information about the incidental, but legal, collection of information on members of the Trump transition team, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the revelation is “disturbing.”

“I meet with foreign leaders all the time as a senator,” Graham told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Wednesday evening. “I wonder if my meetings are being surveilled by the intelligence community. If so, I think when I'm involved, that would be inappropriate, because I may be talking of things of policy that I don't want the executive branch to know about.”

[Joel]

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Maduro's awkward TV shows raise hackles amid Venezuela crisis

CARACAS (Reuters) - A single mom tells Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, on live television that she cannot afford to adequately feed her four kids, and he quickly changes the subject to joke about her foreign-sounding name, Joandry Smith.

A girl complains that hungry classmates are fainting at school, and Maduro chides her for not doing more for them. A boy says he missed a big soccer game because he was hospitalized, and Maduro recommends he find it on YouTube.

The unpopular leftist president's hours-long televised visits to clinics or schools are meant to soften his image, but foes say they instead highlight his disconnect from a national economic crisis in which millions of people are missing meals.

"As much as they try and hide reality, it always gets out and hits them 'live on TV,'" opposition leader Henrique Capriles said in a recent speech to a local community.

[Joel]

Air strikes on Isis-held Mosul 'leave 230 civilians dead', reports local media

US Central Command says it is researching reports of extensive loss of civilian life in third such alleged incident in recent weeks

Approximately 230 people are reported to have been killed in what is thought to have been a US-led coalition air strike on an Isis-held neighbourhood in Mosul.

A correspondent for Rudaw, a Kurdish news agency operating in northern Iraq, said that 137 people – most believed to be civilians – died when a bomb hit a single building in al-Jadida, in the western side of the city on Thursday. Another 100 were killed nearby.

“Some of the dead were taking shelter inside the homes,” Hevidar Ahmed said from the scene.

A spokesperson for Central Command, which coordinates US military action in Iraq, told The Independent they were aware of the loss of civilian life as reported by Rudaw and the information had been passed on to the civilian casualty team for “further investigation”.

“[The US-led coalition] takes all reports of civilian casualties very seriously and assesses all incidents as thoroughly as possible. Coalition forces work diligently to be precise in our air strikes and ensure that all strikes comply with the [internationally agreed] Law of Armed Conflict,” Captain Timothy Irish said.

A daily assessment report from Central Command stated that five strikes near Mosul on Thursday had destroyed five Isis units and a sniper team, as well as 11 fighting positions, vehicles and artillery equipment.

No other fighting force in the country has the capability to launch an aerial attack of the scale reported.

Iraqi coalition ground forces, backed by a US-led coalition bombing campaign, began the gruelling Operation Inherent Resolve to remove Isis from Mosul in October 2016.

The jihadi fighters now hold onto approximately a quarter of the city on the western bank of the River Tigris that cuts through Mosul from north to south.

An estimated 400,000 Iraqis are trapped in the remaining Isis-held areas, the UN’s refugee agency said on Thursday. Those caught up in the fighting face growing food shortages or being hit by crossfire if they try to leave.

Isis has used civilian homes to shelter fighters and weapons throughout the battle for the city, rigging buildings and streets with explosives to impede Iraqi troops’ progress.

The fighting has come at a heavy price for both Mosul’s residents and Iraqi soldiers: thousands of Iraqi civilians have died in the fighting, and a cumulative total of more than 200,000 displaced from their homes.

At least 6,878 civilians were killed in violence mainly inflicted by Isis around the country last year, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) has said.

Many Mosul residents report their loved ones have died as a result of “friendly fire” rather than Isis’s warfare tactics.

AirWars, a UK-based non-profit monitoring the effect of anti-Isis air strikes on civilians, said last week that they believed 370 civilians died in US-led coalition bombing in the first week of March alone.

Over the border in Syria in the last week, the US has been accused of killing civilians in two separate bombing incidents: 33 died in a strike near Raqqa which was supposed to target Isis positions, and more than 50 after a strike hit a mosque in Aleppo province rather than an al-Qaeda meeting point.

Removing Isis from Mosul, which is Iraq’s second largest city, will effectively spell the end of Isis as a land-holding force in the country, driving the remnants of the group back to their de facto capital of Raqqa.

While losing the city will be a decisive blow, the jihadi organisation is expected to pose a renewed threat in the form of an insurgency war against Iraqi forces.