YouTube is in damage-control mode after several large companies, including Disney, Nestlé, McDonalds and Epic Games, pulled ads in response to a report accusing the platform of harboring a pedophile ring hiding in plain sight.
Multiple major corporations have temporarily suspended all YouTube advertising after learning their ads were playing before videos featuring minors as young as five performing sexualized versions of everyday activities. The advertisers were informed by Wired on Wednesday that their ads were playing before videos similar to the clips highlighted in blogger Matt Watson’s video exposé, posted earlier this week. Most responded with shock.
“We’re absolutely horrified and have reached out to YouTube to rectify this immediately,” a spokesperson from advertiser Grammarly told Wired, while a World Business Forum spokesperson declared it “repulsive that pedophiles are using YouTube for their criminal activities.”
Watson’s report, which has been viewed nearly two million times, revealed comment sections packed with hundreds, even thousands of users sharing time-stamps of their favorite moments – usually catching the girls in especially compromising positions – and their contacts on encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, which recently endured its own child porn scandal. Watch one video, Watson claimed, and YouTube’s recommendation algorithm leads you down a pedophilic rabbit-hole. Some of the clips have millions of views.
“We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments,” YouTube told Bloomberg in an email after several major advertisers had already “paused” their ad campaigns upon learning their videos were associated with the offending content. A YouTube spokesperson claimed less than $8,000 had been spent on the videos in the last 60 days and promised to refund the money.
YouTube also released an updated “Community Guidelines” policy on Tuesday, promising “consistent penalties” for breaking the platform’s rules and a detailed explanation of what kind of content actually breaks those rules.
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The reporter was banned without explanation after reporting on PayPal’s morally ambiguous enforcement decisions.
PayPal banned Big League Politics reporter Luke Rohlfing from its platform mere months after he exposed the online payment processor’s funding of an illegal immigration group that has provided services to those that encourage illegal immigration.
Rohlfing says he did not use his PayPal account to receive donations, receive payments, or otherwise conduct business as a reporter, but simply used it to expedite payments and increase security on various websites. Still, PayPal said in its email to Rohlfing notifying him of his account’s termination that the decision was based on his “activities” and relating to his “usage of PayPal services.”
The email also instructed him to remove all mention of PayPal as a payment processor from his website, even though Rohlfing has no website.
As Rohlfing continued to press her for information, the representative identified only as Elaine responded “For more details regarding the WHY [sic] of this action that PayPal took regarding your account, you may submit a subpoena to our corporate address.”
Rohlfing has already begun communicating with a lawyer, and says he plans to pursue legal action against PayPal.
This action comes only months after Rohlfing exposed PayPal for allowing an organization that openly encourages and provides material support to migrant caravans seeking to enter the United States illegally to use its platform.
In the past month, President Donald Trump has been faced with the challenge of dealing with a caravan of illegal immigrants storming the border. The caravan, mostly coming from Central America, is being organized by a group called Pueblo Sin Fronteras, translated to “People Without Borders.”
While there is no surefire way to track the exact funding of the group, it clearly has support with at least good media coverage from media outlets with ties to George Soros. But it is clear who is facilitating the transactions from supporters, and that is PayPal.
Big League Politics informed PayPal about the group hosting a link to a PayPal account accepting donations to support the caravans.
PayPal promised to contact Rohlfing via email to discuss their decision to allow a group that advocates breaking the law to exist on its platform, but never did. Instead, Rohlfing was summarily banned from the payment processor months later.
Speaking to his compatriots at Big League Politics, Rohlfing explained that in his view, “PayPal is demonstrating yet again that they are left-wing authoritarians with an axe to grind,” expanding that, “First they banned users from purchasing legal firearms, and now they are shutting down anyone who reports news they don’t like.”
“Make Peter Thiel in charge of PayPal again,” Rohlfing concluded.
ATLANTA, GA—While Empire actor Jussie Smollett has been having a tough week so far, there appears to be a silver lining: cable news channel CNN has offered Smollett a job as an investigative reporter and on-air anchor after witnessing his skills at fabricating a story entirely out of thin air.
CNN producers were reportedly impressed throughout the ongoing saga of Smollett’s apparent hoax attack on himself. They realized early on the facts didn’t add up but were fascinated with how well the actor kept the narrative going. An HR rep quickly reached out to Smollett to see if he’d be interested in taking on a position at the news organization after news broke that the entire thing was probably fabricated.
“Smollett has exactly the kind of skills we look for at our fine organization,” said CNN correspondent Brian Stelter. “He picked a narrative, made up all the relevant facts and details, and stuck with his story in spite of glaring holes in the plot. It’s hard to find people who understand our core values here at CNN, but Smollett seems to be just the guy for us.”
The actor has accepted the offer and is now undergoing training to learn how to weave even more intricate narratives ex nihilo, according to insiders.
Empire actor Jussie Smollett has hired high-powered attorney Mark Geragos amid reports he orchestrated a racist and homophobic attack on himself last month in Chicago. Fox 32 Chicago reporter Rafer Weigel, citing sources at the Chicago Police Department, tweeted Wednesday that an indictment of Smollett may come in “a matter of hours. Not days.”
Geragos recently represented former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick in his lawsuit against the professional football league.
The report comes as police are seeking to re-question Smollett amid allegations that he staged the attack with the brothers — Abimbola “Abel” and Olabinjo“Ola” Osundairo — who were extras on Empire. According to CBS Chicago’s Charlie De Mar, Smollett directed one of the brothers to purchase the rope which was used in the alleged staged attack at the Crafty Beaver hardware store. De Mar also said Smollett paid the brothers $3,500 and promised an additional $500 later.
Smollett told police that two masked individuals had sprayed him with an unknown chemical substance as they hurled racist and anti-gay insults at him on January 29. The actor also claimed that his attackers had looped a thin rope around his neck and screamed “This is MAGA country!” before darting from the area.
Meanwhile, the Fox Broadcasting Company, the network behind Empire, said in a statement Wednesday that Smollett is a “consulate profession” who will remain a regular on the show.
Not only is Smollett believed to have staged the assault, but may also be behind a threatening letter sent to him on the set of Empire.
Chicago’s local CBS affiliate, WBBM Channel 2, reported Tuesday evening that the actor “orchestrated” the assault after the letter failed to garner an adequate reaction.
FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service officials are currently probing whether he played a role in the letter’s January 22 delivery. The letter, which contained powered aspirin and the phrase “Die black fag,” is undergoing analysis at an FBI crime lab, ABC News reported.
In a statement to ABC News, Smollett’s lawyers said their client was “angered” and “further victimized”by claims that staged his own attack.
“As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with,” Smollett’s lawyers, Todd Pugh and Victor Henderson, said. “He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”
“One of these purported suspects was Jussie’s personal trainer who he hired to ready him physically for a music video,” the statement continued. “It is impossible to believe that this person could have played a role in the crime against Jussie or would falsely claim Jussie’s complicity.”
All-powerful tech giant Google has apologized for forgetting to tell users that it’s Nest Secure home security system had a built-in microphone. Nothing to see here, guys!
Google’s Nest Secure system allows users to connect dozens of motion detectors, magnetic door alarms and security cameras to a centralized control unit. The unit monitors the user’s home, sending alerts if anything is amiss. Its initial tech specifications mentioned nothing about the potential spy devices hidden inside.
Naturally, Google caused a stir when it announced earlier this month that owners could use their Nest Secure hub to ask Google Assistant questions like “activate my alarm,” “do I need an umbrella today?,” or “are you spying on my every move?”
Even after announcing the Google Assistant integration, the company didn’t mention the hidden microphone. Only after an outcry from suspicious users and privacy advocates did Google admit that, yes, Nest Secure had a built-in microphone all along, and no, it’s not a big deal.
“The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs. That was an error on our part. The microphone has never been on and is only activated when users specifically enable the option,”Google said.
The tech giant has since amended the device’s tech specs to include the mic. However, privacy advocates and those afraid of inviting Big Brother into their bedrooms weren’t buying Google’s explanation.
Even if neglecting to tell users about the microphone before enabling it with an online update were somehow totally cool, who would trust Google with that kind of access to their homes?
After all, this is the same Google whose Street View cars “accidentally”stored data from WiFi networks they drove past between 2007 and 2010. It’s also the same Google whose sister company installed thousands of free WiFi kiosks throughout New York City that potentially tracked users’ movements; and the same Google that uses facial recognitiontech on users without consent.
Perhaps most terrifying is an internal video leaked from Google last year, describing a future in which Google hoards user data and uses it to push those users towards behavior that “reflects Google’s values.”
Google claimed the video –which the public was never intended to see– was designed to “provoke discussion and debate,” and was “not related to any current or future products.”
But they were totally going to tell you about the microphone some day, swear.
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A 2016 DOJ criminal investigation was suppressed and buried by the DOJ/FBI that involved a major NY Democratic power broker, Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.
The investigation revolved around the illegal sale of controlled US Homeland Security technology to Russia and China in the years before the 2016 election.
The DOJ terminated its internal investigation despite clear and irrefutable evidence of criminal activity and hid it from the public!
The Gateway Pundit will expose this scandal in a series of posts this week.
Today is our initial report on this egregious scandal and coverup.
This story begins with the Clintons and their Clinton Foundation. It includes Russia and China, and ends with another FBI/DOJ cover-up of Clinton crimes. The FBI did such a good job covering this up, that it has not been reported – until today.
This story started before the 2016 Presidential election. In and around 2007, Martin L. Edelman a New York attorney with Paul Hastings LLP, a Bill and Hillary Clinton close friend, and one of their largest donor bundlers met Mati Kochavi, who reportedly made his fortune in NYC real estate market. They came up with the idea of forming a group of companies and purchasing other companies that would develop and sell Homeland Security and intelligence solutions in the US and world-wide.
Edelman (below) became the Chairman of the Board and Kochavi the CEO of their company named AGT International.
AGT International – the firm that the Clintons helped create did all it could to generate revenues, even if it meant flagrantly breaking US law. In 2014, AGT described itself on its website as the following:
Today’s world has more devices and sources of information than ever before, but are they truly interconnected? AGT International is revolutionizing public safety and security by connecting previously unlinked devices and data, making relevant information accessible and actionable for decision-makers and citizens alike.
We use our deep domain expertise to collect, analyze and identify the most relevant data; and our solutions provide enhanced visibility to empower people, governments and businesses to predict, visualize and manage cities and other complex environments.
Since its launch in 2007, AGT ($1B annual revenues) has been a pioneer, making the world safer by leading the integration of devices and new information sources. In the last five years we have connected a greater variety of sensors than anyone else in our industry while successfully delivering some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated public safety and security projects.
AGT International leverages three of the most compelling current technology trends to revolutionize public safety and security: the Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics and Cloud Computing. Our advanced proprietary software powers cloud-based knowledge solutions that make connected sensors and data accessible and delivers services that aid complex problem solving.
AGT is privately held with headquarters in Switzerland. The company is proud of its diversity: more than 50 nationalities are represented among its 2,400 employees.
AGT’s International Management Team –
AGT International incurred massive growth and went from $0 to over $8 billion in contracts and $1 billion in revenues in about 5 years. The Clintons were compensated for their support and endorsement by Kochavi and Edelman through payments to the Clinton Foundation. These payments totaled millions of dollars.
AGT Statistics from company presentations –
AGT Introduction – slide detailing company offering and experience –
In 2016 at the time when there was a DOJ investigation into AGT and its illegal actions related to selling its highly sensitive defense and Homeland Security products to Russia and China, AGT updated its website and purged some references to the sensitive nature of its products. The company also shutdown most of its operations in the US.
Edelman and Kochavi were both involved in the business. For example, an AGT Management Meeting that includes executives from all of its business units, included Martin Edelman from Paul Hastings at the top of the list –
AGT’s flagship platform was called “Wisdom” and “Urban Shield”. The C4I (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence) system and some of the other derivatives technologies were ITAR regulated.
Former President Bill Clinton endorsed AGT CEO Kochavi through public appearances and by using himself and Hillary to help the venture with political clout and support in the US. For example, in July 2012 President Clinton joined Kochavi and Maria Bartiromo on Wall Street Journal Review promoting Kochavi’s business venture –
Emails released by WikiLeaks show the significance of the relationship between Edelman and Kochavi and the Clintons. In an email dated November 18, 2011, describing the various donors to the Clinton Foundation there is a paragraph describing their relationships –
Mati Kochavi President Clinton recently turned down a 2 year, $8 million offer to become Honorary Chairman of Mati Kochavi’s new media business venture. Mati is a former client of Teneo who we were referred to through Marty Edelman. I went back to Mati and proposed a new structure without any business connectivity other than 4 speeches for $1 million and $250k to the foundation should President Clinton choose to accept it. That would also include any broadcasting of foundation events or anything President Clinton would like exposure for on his website. This offer will be presented to President Clinton in Walker speech invitations which he can choose to decline or accept with no role or relationship with the company.
The email lists over $50 million in donations to the Clintons in return for personal work and lists $66 million more in expected future donations from various sources, including Edelman and Kochavi.
In another email released by WikiLeaks, Edelman sent an email to Hillary Clinton and shared the message that a Middle East Shiek was coming to Washington, D.C. –
Sheikh Muhammid apparently coming 1st week in may. List of visits includes secstate, sectreas. Just heard. Marty
The Sheikh most likely referred to by Edelman, is Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan from the Abu Dhabi Royal family. It’s suspected that the Sheikh provided capital through the Mubadala investment Company to Edelman and Kochavi to start up their AGT venture. Not surprisingly, the Clinton Foundation also received millions in donations from related entities in the Middle East –
Former US President Bill Clinton has been paid $5.625 million since 2011 by Dubai’s GEMS Education to lead the company’s charity arm, according to tax returns released in the US this month [August 2015].
Many Americans are aware of the stories of corruption surrounding the Clinton Foundation since the 2016 election. The Foundation received millions in return for the sale of a significant portion of US uranium to the Russians. Democrat Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton denied any wrong doing during the 2016 debates and even spoke of the Clinton Foundation as a superb philanthropic venture.
Future President Donald Trump disagreed with Hillary and stated that the Foundation was a fraud – the people of Haiti, for example, whom the Clintons had ‘helped’, didn’t want the Clintons back –
Hillary denied “pay to play” involving the Clinton Foundation where the Clintons would demand donations to their ‘Foundation’ and in return promise to perform agreed upon actions for these payments. Hillary was not honest.
The Clintons took in millions from Edelman, Kochavi and Sheikhs in the Middle East. In return the Clintons made promises and performed actions for a price. Unfortunately, the actions taken by the Clintons and the companies and individuals who donated to them were often illegal.
In our next post we’ll discuss these actions that the family of companies known as AGT International took in order to build their business worldwide.
In a third post we’ll discuss how the FBI/DOJ got involved but then suppressed and eventually terminated their investigation shortly before the 2016 Presidential election.
Facebook has suspended several accounts operated by Maffick Media without prior warning, right after CNN ran a report about the company’s perceived ties to the Kremlin.
In what seems to be a new step in the social media giant’s fight against perceived ‘Russian propaganda’, Facebook took down, without prior notice, several pages offering video content. The social media network said it would ask the administrators of Soapbox, Back Then and Waste-Ed to disclose their “Russian affiliations.” Facebook also suspended another Maffick page, In the Now, which was originally a show aired by RT.
“People connecting with Pages shouldn’t be misled about who’s behind them. Just as we’ve stepped up our enforcement of coordinated inauthentic behavior and financially motivated spam over the past year, we’ll continue improving so people can get more information about the Pages they follow,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.
However, no official requests were filed with Maffick Media, the German-based company operating all three pages. They were not notified before the fact, which prompted an angry response (posted on Maffick’s front page at the time of writing) in which they branded Facebook policies “new McCarthyism.” All three pages remained offline on Monday.
The accounts were suspended shortly after CNN aired a report with the catchy headline “Kremlin funds viral videos aimed at millennials,” in which it listed all three pages as part of the Kremlin’s “influence campaign” targeting unsuspecting young American adults. CNN stated that German-based Maffick Media is “mostly owned” by Ruptly video news agency – a subsidiary of RT – and is thus in the Kremlin’s back pocket.
An open secret
CNN also repeatedly accused Maffick of concealing its suspected ties to Russia to mislead its audience. While, indeed, none of the pages bore a glowing stamp that said “paid for by the Kremlin,” they were never told that they were required to do so. Besides, no special effort was made to hide the funding sources – as proved by the CNN reporters themselves, who used an online commercial registers database to acquire documents showing that Maffick is 51 percent (which CNN generalized as “mostly”) owned by Ruptly.
The remaining near-half belongs to Maffick CEO Anissa Naouai, an American journalist of Tunisian descent. Before launching her independent project, Naouai founded the show In The Now, which was aired by RT International (and whose Facebook page was also suspended), and before that, worked as a reporter and presenter for RT. She says the company only fully employs people in Berlin and hires Americans as freelancers. Notably, In The Now had over 2.5 billion views on Facebook.
Incidentally, CNN’s own report was based on a tip from the German Marshall Fund, financed by the US, German, and other governments. Among the Fund’s other accomplishments is the questionable Hamilton 68 ‘Russian propaganda tracker’– a website that labels Twitter accounts as ‘Russian influence’ operations and tracks their activities based on an undisclosed methodology that is impossible to verify – but is still embraced by multiple US mainstream media outlets as a reliable tool.
Unexplained ban
Facebook’s decision to shut down the pages run by Maffick has gone unexplained so far. The company did not break any of the social media network’s rules, which as of now do not demand that anyone post funding details on their Facebook pages. On top of that, numerous other media companies supported with government money – including NPR, PBS, BBC, DW, CBC, and AJ+ – never had to deal with similar treatment, Maffick notes.
Maffick was singled out for the sole reason that Russia is the supporting government, the company says.
Maffick Media says it is editorially independent – but, as per the CNN report, “much of [its] content seemed to be perfectly aligned with much of the propaganda coming out of the Kremlin” – that is to say, the content does not align with the mainstream view of American policies.
If I oppose a US war, does that automatically mean I am going to be accused of being aligned with the Kremlin? With this Russia hysteria we are experiencing now I feel like this is a very, very dangerous McCarthyist tactic to start saying that leftist views, anti-war views are just the Kremlin government’s talking points.
This is what Rania Khalek, the American host of Soapbox – one of the video shows Maffick ran on Facebook – told CNN when asked about her alleged connections to Moscow.
Each of the suspended pages had tens of thousands of followers on Facebook, while their videos were viewed “tens of millions of times,”according to CNN – a level of popularity which possibly spurred Facebook to take such drastic and swift measures to silence them.
Lara Logan, foreign correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes, said Breitbart News offers “the other side” of news media relative to what she described as a mostly left-wing and partisan Democrat news landscape in the U.S. and abroad.
She offered her remarks in an interview published last Friday with the Mike Drop podcast, hosted by retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland.
Ritland characterized U.S. news media as “absurdly left-leaning” and supportive of Democrats, further describing the status quo of American news media’s left-wing and partisan Democrat biases as a “huge fucking problem” and “disaster for this country.”
Logan concurred, “I agree with that. That’s true.” She described U.S. and international news media as “mostly liberal,” adding, “most” journalists are left.
“The media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just the U.S.,” assessed Logan.
Logan grouped Breitbart News and Fox News as dissident outlets relative to the “mostly liberal” news media landscape. She said:
Visually, anyone who’s ever been to Israel and been to the Wailing Wall has seen that the women have this tiny little spot in front of the wall to pray, and the rest of the wall is for the men. To me, that’s a great representation of the American media, is that in this tiny little corner where the women pray you’ve got Breitbart and Fox News and a few others, and from there on, you have CBS, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, Politico, whatever, right? All of them. And that’s a problem for me, because even if it was reversed, if it was vastly mostly on the right, that would also be a problem for me.
My experience has been that the more opinions you have, the more ways that you look at everything in life — everything in life is complicated, everything is gray, right? Nothing is black and white.
News media homogeneity cripples many people’s desire for getting to the truth about political goings on, determined Logan:
How do you know you’re being lied to? How do you know you’re being manipulated? How do you know there’s something not right with the coverage? When they simplify it all [and] there’s no grey. It’s all one way. Well, life isn’t like that. If it doesn’t match real life, it’s probably not. Something’s wrong. For example, all the coverage on Trump all the time is negative. … That’s a distortion of the way things go in real life.
Logan warned:
One ideological perspective on everything never leads to an open free diverse tolerant society. The more opinions and views … of everything that you have, the better off we all are. So creating one ideological position on everything throughout your universities, throughout academia, in school and college, in media, and everywhere else, that’s what concerns me. I don’t have to agree with everybody.
Logan added, “Although the media has historically always been left-leaning, we’ve abandoned our pretense — or at least the effort — to be objective, today. … We’ve become political activists, and some could argue propagandists, and there’s some merit to that.”
Logan cast Breitbart News as a useful barometer of “the other side” of news media:
This is the problem that I have. There’s one Fox, and there’s many, many, many more organizations on the left. … The problem is the weight of all these organizations on one side of the political spectrum. When you turn on your computer, or you walk past the TV, or you see a newspaper headline in the grocery store If they’re all saying the same thing, the weight of that convinces you that it’s true. You don’t question it, because everyone is saying it. Unless you seek out Breitbart on your computer, you’re probably not even going to know what the other side is saying.
Most news media outlets ignore the origins of ostensibly grassroots political activism, stated Logan. She pondered the geneses of such campaigns, speculating on technology firms’ roles in amplifying such campaigns:
We don’t even question if what we see on social media is real or not. We don’t even question if a grassroots movement is really grassroots. You know, there’s a way to start a grassroots movement. You write an algorithm, and you create all this outrage, and you’re basically throwing out all the sparks that light the fire, so then it becomes a grassroots movement because it takes nothing to set that in motion. But did it really begin as one? And if it didn’t begin that way, but was manipulated and paid for by someone and serves someone’s political purpose, is it really what we believe it is?
…
People were manipulated into doing that. … Who’s behind it? Who’s doing it, and why are they doing it? And what else are they doing? Those things are profoundly significant, and we’re not even trying to find out who it is. That really bothers me.
Logan dismissed news media claims allegedly rooted in singular anonymous government sources as unreliable. “That’s not journalism, it’s horseshit,” she said.
“Responsibility for fake news begins with us,” said Logan, referring to journalists and reporters.
Logan recalled for Media Matters for America (MMFA) targeted her following a 60 Minutes report she filed related to the September 11, 2012 Islamic terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. “I made one comment about Benghazi,” remarked Logan, ” [then] I was targeted by Media Matters for America, which was an organization established by David Brock, who has dedicated himself to the Clintons. It was their known propaganda organization.”
In February of 2011, Logan was sexually assaulted — and nearly murdered — by numerous men in Cairo, Egypt, while reporting on the ousting of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. She shared some details of the attack’s nature, including
“Piece by piece, they tore all my clothing off, and just tore my body almost to pieces, and tore my insides apart,” recounted Logan. “I saw people taking pictures. … I remember fighting, being raped, and being able to sometimes push people away, and then I remember just realizing that there were too many of them — and it was over and over and over again — and that there was always someone else when you could fight one person.”
Towards the end of the interview, Logan quipped, “This interview is professional suicide for me.”
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