Pamela Williams writes: I am total shock with what Vice President Pence told Fox News About WIKILEAKS Vault 7 CIA news. But I am in more shock that FBI Director James Comey, the man President Trump kept on as FBI Director, is outright telling the DOJ to ignore President Trump’s accusations of being wiretapped. Comey is making a firm point of telling everyone to ignore Trump’s wiretapping claims… it did not happen. I hate to see two more government entities pop up and cause anymore trouble for President Trump and the American people.

However, I will admit here I did not trust VP Pence to begin with. I cannot explain it exactly, but I can say he is too pro-establishment. We know that President Trump praised WIKILEAKS throughout the Election. If not for Julian Assange, we would not know about the DNC turning on one of its own, Bernie Sanders. We would not know about the crimes of Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and others.

WIKILEAKS has been and still is a friend of the American people. They are now volunteering to help businesses devise methods of protecting their data from the CIA and from being hacked period. I think that qualifies a pardon by President Trump for Julian Assange. That is what I am praying for.

What Assange has done serves Americans and people the world over. He exposed the criminals within our government, that should not be a crime. It’s contradictory to oppose the CIA wiretapping of the President and at the same time condemn the person who alerted us to countless instances of that identical thing happening to all of us. Bottom line is there is a difference between a criminal and a whistleblower. Assange is a whistleblower.

Jordan, which was created out of thin air by Winston Churchill in 1921 in order to accommodate British imperial interests, has always led a precarious existence. Today’s dangers are manifold. ISIS lurks in Syria and Iraq, just beyond Jordan’s border, and is attractive to a small but real minority of Jordanians. Jordan’s once-robust trade with Syria and Iraq has nearly collapsed — and with it, Jordan’s lucrative transit role.

In a region that is bountiful in oil and gas, Jordan is one of the very few countries to have almost no petroleum resources. City-dwellers receive water just one day a week, and country-dwellers often even less. Tourism has declined due to the Middle East’s notorious volatility, and the king’s recent assertion of authority is alienating the people, who are demanding more democracy.

Then there’s Israel. “Where are the fruits of peace?” is a common refrain about Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Jordanian politicians and press outlet may not say so, but the answer is blindingly obvious. Whether it’s the fact that Jordan uses Haifa as an alternative to the Syrian trade route, the purchase of inexpensive water from Israel or the provision of plentiful gas (which is already being delivered), Jordan benefits directly and substantially from its ties with Israel. Despite this, a perverse social pressure against “normalization” with Israel has grown over time, intimidating absolutely everyone and preventing relations with the Jewish state from reaching their potential.

One Jordanian asked me why Israelis accept being treated like a mistress. The answer is clear: Jordan’s welfare ranks as a paramount Israeli priority, so successive Israel governments accept — even if through gritted teeth — the calumnies and lies told about it in the Jordanian press and on the streets.

All eyes were obviously on the US shale producers, now that the oil inventory level has been increasing for nine weeks in a row. This increase was caused by another production increase in the US, where the daily output now came in at 9.1 million barrels. That’s the highest level in more than one year, but what really caught the attention was the EIA outlook for 2018. The agency now anticipates the US oil production to increase by an additional 7% before the end of 2018.

This obviously has caused some consternation in the oil markets. After all, the OPEC members didn’t reduce their production volumes to bring the US shale producers ‘back into the game’, and the tensions are running high. No drastic measures have been taken yet, but the Saudi oil minister did warn the United States that ‘Saudi Arabia will not be used by others’.

The message is clear. Either the non-OPEC producers will reduce the production growth rate, or OPEC might very well decide to not extend the current agreement to reduce their own output. After all, the reduced OPEC production rate was only instated to put a bottom under the oil price, while waiting for the world demand to pick up with the existing supply rate.

It has obviously never been the intention of OPEC to support the American oil industry, as this would reduce the impact of the lower OPEC production rate, and it’s now less likely the OPEC members will continue to honor the deal. More oil on the supply side could kill the market, and put some marginal producers on the verge of bankruptcy – again.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told Israeli President Reuven Rivlin he would ask the Royal House to arrange a visit this year during Johnson’s visit to Israel this week, The Times of London reported Thursday. Senior diplomats then told the Daily Express such a visit was “likely” to occur this year, the centennial anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

Signed on November 2, 1917, by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, the Balfour Declaration stated that the British government “views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and would use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

The declaration, issued while the area that is now Israel was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire, represented a pivotal victory for Zionists and has been credited with helping pave the way for the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

For example, consider what just happened in the United Kingdom…

In what their lawyer calls a “modern-day heresy trial,” a British court has convicted two street preachers of a public order offense for preaching the Bible in public. The public prosecutor in the case claimed that publicly quoting parts of the King James Bible in modern Britain should “be considered to be abusive and is a criminal matter.”

So what did they say that was so bad? Well, apparently one of the things that authorities were extremely concerned about is the fact that they were claiming that Jesus is the only way to God…

Prosecutor Ian Jackson also told the court, “To say to someone that Jesus is the only God is not a matter of truth. To the extent that they are saying that the only way to God is through Jesus, that cannot be a truth.”

I was absolutely stunned when I read that, but none of us should be surprised. We always knew that great persecution of true believers was coming, and now Christians are actually being put in prison in the western world for simply sharing the gospel publicly.

But there is a faith that is growing even faster than Islam. It is called Wicca, and it is currently growing at an astounding pace. According to writer and publisher of the Economy blog, Michael Snyder,Wicca emerged as a faith in the middle of the 20th century, but the origins of many Wiccan practices actually go back for thousands of years, and some researchers believe that certain aspects of Wicca can actually be traced all the way back to ancient BABYLON.

Wicca ‘is a modern pagan, witchcraft religion’. But more Americans than ever are embracing the darkness, and each year this comes to a fever pitch on Halloween night.

There are “scheduled realities” to the US nuclear weapon systems, US Air Force General Paul Selva, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. Ohio-class submarines, Minuteman III ballistic missiles and B-52 strategic bombers are all rapidly approaching the end of their useful lifespan, according to Selva and three other senior officers testifying.

“Our nuclear deterrent is nearing a crossroads,” Selva said. “We are now at a point where we must concurrently modernize the entire nuclear triad and the infrastructure that enables its effectiveness.”

The B-52 fleet was built in the 1950s, and the bombs and missiles they use were designed and built in the 1970s with a 10-year lifespan, Selva said. “We know today they remain relevant, but we can’t continue to maintain them,” he told lawmakers. “A decade from now, those weapons will not be able to penetrate Russian air defenses, and therefore there is an urgency to their replacement.”

Just last year in the run-up to the Brexit vote, the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister and pro-EU campaigner Nick Clegg blasted UK Independence Party’s (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage for misleading the voters on the issue of a proposed EU Army ahead of the referendum, saying Farage was spreading a ‘dangerous fantasy that is simply not true.’ That ‘dangerous fantasy’ is now coming true.

The German media coverage tried to paint Brexit vote and the election of President Trump as the triggers for this sudden pan-EU military consolidation, but the facts on the ground tell a very different story. As early as May 2016, NATO officials were accusing France of neglecting its commitment to NATO by diverting resources to build an EU Army. To counterweight Germany’s influence within the EU, France was positioning itself to play a greater role in a future EU Army.

Germany is equally hawkish on building EU’s military muscle. Last month, Roderich Kiesewetter, a leading German MP from Chancellor Merkel’s CDU party, called for a “European nuclear deterrence” which would rely on British and French nuclear arsenal, and be bankrolled by Germany.

Berthold Kohler, the editor of Germany’s leading newspaper ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’ went even further and asked Germany to build its own nuclear arsenal as President Trump’s election victory has cast “doubts over America’s nuclear guaranty” and the “French and the British arsenal were too weak at this point".

The move, backed by political figures in Germany and Poland, has been put forward to address concerns that US President Donald Trump wants to cut his country's financial contribution to protecting Europe from any potential Russian threat.

Some supporters even want the UK's Trident missile system included in the force, although they admit Brexit makes British involvement in the initiative highly unlikely. But Tory backbencher Dr Julian Lewis, chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, condemned the plan as a federalist plot to undermine the Nato alliance.

Dr Lewis said: "This is an idea that first came to attention 20 years ago - I thought it was insanity then and I think it is insanity now. It only goes to show how determined the fanatical EU federalists are that they wish to try and create a separate force from Nato and nowhere nearly as powerful as Nato."

Moreover, in January the Famine Early Warning System (FEWSNET) – a US government-funded organization created in 1985 specifically to predict famines and humanitarian emergencies – estimated that 70 million people affected by conflicts or disasters worldwide will need food assistance in 2017. This number has increased by nearly 50 percent in just the past two years.

What explains this rapid rise in the number of people who need emergency food assistance? And why, in an era of declining poverty and hunger worldwide, are we suddenly facing four potential famines in unconnected countries?

Famines are extreme events in which large populations lack adequate access to food, leading to widespread malnutrition and deaths. More of these deaths are caused by infectious disease than starvation because severe malnutrition compromises human immune systems. This makes people much more susceptible to killer diseases such as measles, or even common conditions such as diarrhea. Young children are especially vulnerable.

For many years experts believed that famines were caused by a shortfall in food availability. Then in 1981 economist/philosopher Amartya Sen published “Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation,” which showed that famines actually resulted when food was available but some groups could not access it. Although many people believe today that famines occur mostly in Africa, the deadliest famines of the 20th century were in Europe (Ukraine) and Asia (China).

Today we recognize famines happen only with some degree of human complicity. Some analysts assert that famines are crimes of either commission or omission, because human decisions and actions determine whether a crisis deteriorates into a full-blown famine. They also contend that we cannot eradicate famine without holding people who cause it accountable.

Famines typically have multiple causes. They can include climatic factors such as drought, economic shocks such as rapid inflation, and violent conflict or other political causes. Their impacts are more severe when underlying factors make some groups more vulnerable.

Sorry! I’ll read that again. International Women’s Day is the moment when we solemnly measure how far we have moved from that dismal stereotype of womanhood and toward women claiming an equal place in the workforce and leaving half the care work to men. According to UN Women, we have not advanced nearly far enough along this path, and the agency is calling on states to “step it up” for gender equality.

The Washington Women’s March sisterhood and their allies around the world are organising a women’s strike to drive the point home. For 99 percent of the world’s women, it’s safe to say, this will be another ordinary day: they will go to work or look after the children, and perhaps hear something on the evening news about the pay gap, or how few women CEOs there are, or how little housework the men do.

However, there is one small group, at least, who will be celebrating: 100-plus “biz mums”, mostly from Australia, will have a lovely day on social media talking about the creative ways they have entered the workforce by starting their own business. They don’t seem bothered by the gender gap.

But our big sisters at United Nations headquarters in New York definitely are. [The] UN HQ slogan is, “Step It Up for Gender Equality towards a Planet 50-50 by 2030.” The difference between a man and a woman means that together they can do something that is impossible for each alone.

The trouble with the UN/feminist programme is that they treat these momentous realities as irrelevant to the rest of life and, in particular, to the world of work. They want an absolute equality that only comes at the cost of woman’s unique “productivity” – her motherhood, as we see in the clamour for abortion rights. And the price is too high.

And I don’t even like to use the term “conspiracy theorist” much, because the truth is that most “conspiracy theorists” are simply citizen journalists that are attempting to expose things that the mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about. And one of the things that the mainstream media has always been hesitant to address is the unconstitutional surveillance that US intelligence agencies systematically conduct on their own citizens.

But now the mainstream media is being forced to talk about government surveillance because Wikileaks has just exposed it for all the world to see. According to Wikileaks, the CIA has been secretly running “its ‘own NSA’ with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified”.

It is known as the Central Intelligence Agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, and it has produced “more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other ‘weaponized’ malware”. In fact, the computer or phone that you are reading this article on may be infected with one of their programs right now. The documents that were released by Wikileaks show that government spooks can remotely take control of Apple iPhones, Google Android phones, Microsoft Windows operating systems and Samsung smart televisions, and once in control of those devices they can use them to spy on their owners.

The ironic thing is that while Barack Obama and members of Congress have been accusing Russia of conducting cyberattacks, the truth is that US intelligence agencies have been perhaps the biggest offenders of all.

This is an absolutely massive scandal, and I truly hope that it gets the attention that it deserves in the days ahead. Now that all of this is out in the open, America has two choices. We can end this unconstitutional surveillance and go back to being a nation that respects privacy, or we can allow it to continue and keep heading down the road toward becoming a “Big Brother” surveillance society far worse than anything that George Orwell ever warned about.