It’s Good To Be The King

Tech firms let Russia analyze software widely used by U.S. government

"In order to sell in the Russian market, the tech companies let a Russian defense agency scour the inner workings, or source code, of some of their products. Russian authorities say the reviews are necessary to detect flaws that could be exploited by hackers. But those same products protect some of the most sensitive areas of the U.S government, including the Pentagon, NASA, the State Department, the FBI and the intelligence community, against hacking by sophisticated cyber adversaries like Russia."

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New Jersey Requires a Permit To Preach In Public

"The preachers sued, arguing they were deprived of their right to free expression. They also claimed they were discriminated against on the basis of religion. But true to form, the New Jersey government closed ranks and doubled down on their position. As a state agency, New Jersey Transit argued that they have immunity from civil claims of rights violations. And the worst part is, a U.S. circuit court of appeals agreed with the state of New Jersey. They said state permitting laws trump basic rights like free speech."

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Deutsche Bank, Trump’s biggest creditor, awarded conviction reprieve

"The Labor Department has granted Deutsche Bank a waiver from punishment allowing it to continue to manage retirement accounts for another three years, according to an announcement in the Federal Registry last month. Four other banks convicted in the case were also granted waivers. Deutsche Bank has been a big lender to Trump over the years, and the president still has loans with the bank that were originally worth $300 million."

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Double standard: Mugabe ‘was leasing out land to whites’, says report

"As recently as late October, Mugabe said black owners who invited whites back to rent and work seized fields would lose their farms. But the Zimbabwe Independent reports that the former first family was doing exactly that: leasing out part of Mazowe Citrus Estate to a company in which some of the main shareholders were white."

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Purged Saudi royals must cough up 70% of their wealth to be freed

"Riyadh seems to have found the way to curb the budget deficit caused by lower oil prices. As the Financial Times report, Saudi officials are offering the arrested royals a deal – pay up to 70 percent of your wealth and go free. The Saudi government could appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars from the arrested to refill depleted state reserves, according to the media."

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Criminalizing Hate Speech Causes More Problems than It Solves

"The Spanish government decided that criticizing the actions of state agents is hateful and therefore punishable as hate speech. This is by no means an isolated incident. Many countries that American progressives admire and make calls for the US to emulate have stringent hate speech prohibitions and are using those prohibitions to crack down not on racial or gendered attacks, but on political speech. Recent examples include France, Canada, Germany, and the UK."

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Fire Congress, Impeach Trump: The CIA Flips Off America

"These files are not in compliance with the law no matter what the main stream media says. They are an in-your-face flipped bird to the American public. They basically tell us that the CIA is saying that they don’t have to comply with the law of the land and that they will not tell us their secrets and that there is nothing we can do about it. I’ve been here before."

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Saudi King Purges Billionaire Prince Bin Talal, Dozens Of Others

"Prominent billionaire, member of the royal Saudi family, and one of the biggest shareholders of Citi, News Corp. and Twitter - not to mention frequent CNBC guest - Al-Waleed bin Talal, along with ten senior princes, and some 38 ministers, has been arrested for corruption and money laundering charges on orders from the new anti-corruption committee headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, while Royal princes’ private planes have been grounded."

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AG Sessions Says Rosenstein Can Investigate HIMSELF in Uranium One Criminal Probe

"The investigation was supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who is now President Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who is now the deputy FBI director under Trump. Rosenstein and Mueller also sat on the CFIUS committee that approved the sale of 20% of US uranium reserves to Russia despite knowing Russia had bribed the Clintons for the illicit sale."

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