Excellent article about those who collude in and cover up the crimes of the rich and powerful.

The FDA has known for two years about the many foods contaminated with the toxic chemicals in Roundup – but have neglected to warn the public.

“There has always been some suspicion that pharmaceutical companies would rather keep people sick and on drugs than cure them in one shot and lose the ability to create return customers.”

RT | April 28, 2018

The withdrawal of some 28,000 US troops stationed in South Korea may be on the table in future negotiations between the US and North Korea, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said on the heels of a landmark inter-Korean summit.

Asked if US forces will remain in South Korea provided Seoul and Pyongyang replace their 1953 truce with a formal peace treaty, Mattis indicated that the continued US military presence in South Korea may become a part of the bargain with the North.

“Well, that’s part of the issues that we’ll be discussing in the negotiations with our allies first and, of course, with North Korea,” he said, speaking alongside Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak at the Pentagon on Friday.

Mattis then appeared to take a step back, saying that “for now, we have to go along with the process… and not try to make preconditions or presumptions about how it’s going to go.”

Responding to the question of whether he trusts North Korea’s assertions of a new-found aim for peace and denuclearization, Mattis noted that “we are optimistic right now that there’s opportunity that we have never enjoyed since 1950 [the beginning of the Korean war],” but added that he doesn’t have “a crystal ball” to foretell where the current rapprochement leads.

The statement comes in the wake of Friday’s historic meeting between North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, where they signed a declaration reiterating their commitment to the complete denuclearization of the whole peninsula and expressed hope that they can seal a peace accord by the end of the year through multi-party negotiations involving Washington and, possibly, Beijing.

Pyongyang previously indicated that it would only be ready to disarm if its safety is guaranteed and saber-rattling by the US, which has held numerous drills with South Korea at the North Korean border over the years, stops.

While it is the first official acknowledgment by Washington that its large garrison stationed in South Korea may become a concession to Pyongyang, US President Donald Trump reportedly touted the idea during a fundraiser in March. At the time, Trump linked the prospect of the US troops withdrawal to economic issues.

“We have a very big trade deficit with them [South Korea], and we protect them. We lose money on trade, and we lose money on the military. We have right now 32,000 soldiers on the border between North and South Korea. Let’s see what happens,” he said, The Washington Post reported, citing an audio recording of the meeting.

The US president, who is expected to hold his own summit with the North Korean leader in May or June, offered cautious praise of the talks, noting on Twitter that “good things are happening, but only time will tell.”

via Withdrawing US troops from S. Korea may be discussed with allies & North – Mattis

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 27, 2018

Just as I repeatedly predicted, President Trump, the CIA, and the National Archives decided to continue keeping those 50-year-old JFK-assassination records of the CIA and other elements of the U.S. national-security establishment secret from the American people. On yesterday’s deadline, Trump dutifully issued an executive decree ordering at least three more years of official secrecy.

My new prediction: When the new deadline arrives on October 26, 2021, it will be extended again. The American people will never — repeat never — be permitted to see those records.

Last October, I also correctly predicted that Trump would accede to CIA demands to extend the time for secrecy when the original deadline that had been sent 25 years ago arrived for releasing those 50-year-old records.

Now, before you call me Nostradamus, let me point out that it doesn’t take a psychic or even a rocket scientist to predict that the CIA would do whatever is necessary to keep those records secret, even after 50 years. That’s what guilty people do — they do whatever is necessary to keep their guilt concealed.

Secrecy was always an essential aspect of the regime-change operation that took place on November 23, 1963 (just as secrecy was essential to the U.S. regime-change operations that took place in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Congo, and Chile from 1953-1973). That’s why official investigations were shut down immediately after suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was himself assassinated. It was imperative to the success of the operation that secrecy be maintained. Otherwise, it was a virtual certainty that investigations would pierce through the pat lone-nut theory and discover that the assassination was instead a highly sophisticated regime-change operation, one involving the frame-up of a U.S. intelligence agent, former U.S. Marine Oswald, who had been secretly trained to pose as a communist agent as a way to infiltrate the Soviet Union (America’s WW II partner and ally that had been converted into an official Cold War enemy) and, later, to help destroy domestic “communist” organizations like the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Keep in mind the top-secret assassination manual that the CIA started developing in 1954, as part of its regime-change operation against the president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, who, like Kennedy, was democratically elected in a national election. That manual, which didn’t come to light until the 1990s, established that the CIA was specializing not only in the art of assassination but also in the art of covering up any CIA involvement in the assassination. Keep in mind also that they were willing to assassinate Arbenz, an innocent man, because they had concluded that he was a grave threat to “national security.”

If you haven’t already read FFF’s ebook JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne, I highly recommend you do so. Horne served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board, which was the enforcement commission of the JFK Records Act, which mandated the release of all records held by the CIA and other federal agencies relating to the assassination.

JFK’s War explains motive. Kennedy’s war with the Pentagon and the CIA was much worse (from their standpoint) than anything Arbenz had done and, for that matter, what Mossadegh in Iran had done, Lumumba in Congo had done, what Castro in Cuba had done, and what Allende in Chile would do. Just as all those foreign leaders were believed to be threats to U.S. “national security” and, therefore, were made targets of U.S. regime-change operations, including assassination, why should it surprise anyone that Kennedy himself would be made a target of a domestic regime-change operation given that what he was doing, from the standpoint of the U.S. national security establishment, was much worse than anything that those other leaders had done or would do? Or to put it another way, if foreign leaders who pose a threat to U.S. “national security” are going to be removed from power, why wouldn’t a domestic leader who posed an even greater threat to U.S. “national security” be removed from power?

Kennedy’s war with the U.S. national-security establishment had to be kept secret, for obvious reasons. If Americans had discovered that that war was going on, they would have become even more suspicious over the pat facts that pointed to a lone-nut assassination. Thus, Americans were led to believe, falsely, that everything had been hunky dory with Kennedy and that Lyndon Johnson, the Pentagon, and the CIA were just continuing his foreign policies, especially by revitalizing the Cold War, which Kennedy had vowed to end, expanding troops in Vietnam, which Kennedy was withdrawing, and ending all negotiations with Soviet Premier Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, which Kennedy had secretly initiated, something the American people wouldn’t discover for decades.

Ask yourself an obvious question: If President Kennedy really was the victim of a random assassination by some lone nut who had no motive to kill him, would it really have been necessary to shroud the Warren Commission hearings in secrecy, based on the ridiculous claim of “national security”?

No matter how good the Pentagon and the CIA were at regime-change operations — and there is no doubt that they were extremely good (as reflected by their success in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other places), a domestic regime-change operation is extremely difficult, especially one involving a frame-up of an innocent man. There are obviously lots of pieces to that type of sophisticated operation, including the assassination, the frame-up, and the cover-up. . .

via The JFK Cover-Up Continues

Dan Feehan has successfully bought the Democratic nomination for Minnesota’s first congressional district (MN-CD1). Dan, having lived outside the state since the age of 14, has allegedly misled the public on his FEC form, claiming residence at his cousin’s address. Here is Dan’s FEC filing form. One can see that it his cousin who lives at this address. In her endorsement of Dan, she mentions living with her husband and two children, and claims Dan as a cousin, not a housemate. His wife still works in Washington D.C. and his kids live there too.

Mr. Feehan has no chance to win in November. While nobody likes a candidate from Washington D.C., people hate Washington money even more. To be fair to Dan he hasn’t taken super PAC money, somehow. But he has raised 565,000 dollars, an outrageous sum for a congressional race. 94% of this money has come from outside the district, and 79% from outside the state. Where does this money come from? Well, according to the campaign, from people around the country who want to keep Minnesota blue. If this was the case, why not wait to give money until Minnesota voted for a candidate in the primary and then donate? And who on earth has this much money to pour into an obscure race outside of their state?

Even if we were to pretend that this money was benign small donations from interested citizens one would have to ask: what about the people in the district? Shouldn’t they have a right to choose who represents them? For all the hoopla around Russian interference, shouldn’t citizens be just as concerned about interference from Washington?

Rich people from outside of the district bought this seat. Perhaps they aren’t super PACs, or at least they found a loophole. But they are rich enough to decide this local race. Why they chose this seat is beyond me. Perhaps because they knew a slick military man who lived here for part of his childhood. Regardless of the reason, this congressional race was decided in Washington a long time ago. The rural people of Minnesota’s first congressional district, who have little time and money to spare, can only give so much to the race. We stand no chance against the Washington elites with bottomless bank accounts. In a country with grotesque inequality, the rich decide who is elected to office. And because of this, the rich get richer.

MN-CD1 is a district is full of farmers who are being left behind by the Washington establishment. Dan speaks in vague mantras only. In contrast look at local candidate Rich Wright’s thoughtful and specific goals for farmers. To quote from his website: “1. Ensuring adequate safety nets for farmers, including crop insurance that fully covers unforeseen losses. 2. Helping young farmers enter agriculture as a career. 3. Investing in diverse farming, such as organic and sustainable crops, to meet demand. 4, Appropriating funds for rural development and infrastructure.” Big city neoliberals think they have the answers, which is fine, but they have no right to decide elections for the people of MN-CD1.

Establishment Democrats have failed to reach rural communities. They do not consider farmers or any citizen of the rural communities to be an important part of their platform, or even their constituency. They have often been quite insulting and dismissive to rural communities. And of course, under the rule of both corporate parties, life for family farmers is becoming more and more challenging. Fox News may call it the liberal war against the family, but it is really the corporate war against the family. The Democrats aren’t brave enough to seriously go after what passes as “family values” in this country, they only go after a family’s means to live. . .

Dan Feehan is of the same breed that most post-Trump Democrats are. Clean cut, military experience, stern, anti-gun, anti-crazy Orange monsters, anti-negativity, and anti-discrimination of rich people who fall under a marginalized group. What are they for? No one knows. If pushed they want “good” education, health care, jobs, environment, etc. But they want Big money too for various reasons, but the ones cited are: because that is the only way to win, because rich people are smart and poor people are dumb, and because money is speech. So they cannot and will not make any concrete commitments. Hence energy becomes “all inclusive”, as if balancing clean and dirty energy was a college admissions department diversity issue, rather than a question of life or death for the entire planet. Healthcare becomes not a right, but a requirement with a giant handout to insurance companies. Near full employment (with the near being very important, when we consider leverage) comes with part-time, short-term, and low paying work. . .

via How To Buy A Seat In Congress 101