Meanwhile We Give Them Everything

Another Achievement Of The Trump Administration!

U.S. Leapfrogs 

Singapore, Hong Kong 

to Win World’s Most 

Competitive Economy

By 

Michelle Jamrisko

May 23, 2018, 2:00 PM EDT

•  
  Faster growth propels U.S. to top for first time since 2015
•  
  Singapore earns third place in annual rankings by Swiss group

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World's Most Competitive Economies 2018

World's Most Competitive Economies 2018

The U.S. dethroned Hong Kong to retake first place among the world’s most competitive economies, thanks to faster economic growth and a supportive atmosphere for scientific and technological innovation, according to annual rankings by the Switzerland-based IMD World Competitiveness Center.

Back on Top

U.S. retakes competitiveness crown from Hong Kong in 2018 world rankings

Note: 2017 rankings in parentheses Source: IMD World Competitiveness Center

Hong Kong, scoring first in categories for government and business efficiency, held an edge over regional rival Singapore, which kept its No. 3 spot from 2017. Rounding out the top five were the Netherlands, which jumped one spot, and Switzerland, which tumbled three slots as it endures a slowdown in exports and concerns about its potential relocation of research and development facilities.

The U.S., which reclaimed the No. 1 spot for the first time since 2015, scored especially well in international investment, domestic economy and scientific infrastructure sub-categories while earning below-average marks in public finance and prices.

The renewed top ranking aligns with the positive U.S. growth narrative over the past year. Growth averaged 2.9 percent in the four quarters through March, versus 2 percent in the prior period.

Regaining Strength

U.S. growth has slowly, surely gained momentum in the past year

Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis

Notable improvements in the rankings from last year included Austria, which advanced seven spots to 18th position, and China, which jumped five spots to No. 13. For China, the world’s second-biggest economy, investment in both physical and intangible infrastructure and adjustments to regulation helped boost its performance, according to Arturo Bris, director at the IMD.

As with Bloomberg Innovation Index rankings earlier this year, economies in northern Europe outperformed. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were among the top 10 in IMD’s rankings, while the United Arab Emirates was the sole Middle Eastern nation to be included.

At the bottom of the rankings were some usual suspects, with embattled Venezuela still ranked as the worst. Mongolia maintained its spot as second-to-last of the 63 economies. Brazil showed an improvement, with some healing in growth and hiring.

IMD used 258 indicators on economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure, and gave weight to “hard” data, including trade statistics, twice as heavily as “soft” sentiment data. The group has published the results every year since 1989.

RANKING

COUNTRY

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

U.S. Hong Kong Singapore Netherlands Switzerland Denmark U.A.E. Norway Sweden Canada Luxembourg Ireland China Qatar Germany Finland Taiwan Austria Australia U.K. Israel Malaysia New Zealand Iceland Japan Belgium South Korea France Czech Republic Thailand Estonia Lithuania Portugal Poland Chile Spain Slovenia Kazakhstan Saudi Arabia Latvia Cyprus Italy Indonesia India Russia Turkey Hungary Bulgaria Romania Philippines Mexico Jordan South Africa Peru Slovak Republic Argentina Greece Colombia Ukraine Brazil Croatia Mongolia Venezuela

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Deportees Should Go Back Home And Their Country Should Accept Them, Otherwise, Cut Off All Aid, Relations And Immigration

TrumpTrain

Trump Admin Cracking Down On These Countries For Not Accepting Back Immigrants

• 08/25/2017 
• Source: Daily Wire
 
• by: Hank Berrien

45 21 3  126

image: https://structurecms-staging-psyclone.netdna-ssl.com/client_assets/trumptrain/media/picture/5996/044a/6970/2d57/ab22/0700/300x200_Rex_Tillerson_official_Transition_portrait.jpg?1503003763

By Office of the President-elect [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Trump Administration may impose visa restrictions on government officials and their families who come from four Asian and African nations that won’t repatriate immigrants who have violated section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

A State Department official told Voice of America, “We follow a standard process to implement a visa suspension as expeditiously as possible in the manner the secretary determines most appropriate under the circumstances to achieve the desired goal. That process includes internal discussions with, and official notification to, affected countries.”

Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea and Sierra Leone were identified as being stubborn about taking the deportees back. They would join China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Iran, Guinea, Cambodia, Eritrea, Burma, Morocco, Hong Kong and South Sudan as nations listed by the Department of Homeland Security as recalcitrant.

Mamady Condé, Guinea’s ambassador to the United States, admitted that roughly 2,000 Guineans live in the United States illegally. Bockarie Kortu Stevens, Sierra Leone’s ambassador to the U.S., denied the idea that many or most Sierra Leoneans are in the United States illegally. Census data claims roughly 49,000 Sierra Leoneans live in the United States.

Read more at http://trumptrainnews.com/articles/trump-admin-cracking-down-on-these-countries-for-not-accepting-back-immigrants#mrKZ7XioihV85oPO.99

Fake News Keep Perpetuating Snowden Lies

Mainstream media caught printing more ‘fake news’

Posted on March 31, 2017 by Bob Livingston

Personal Liberty Poll

Exercise your right to vote.

When NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden left the U.S. with documents detailing the massive government intelligence apparatus spying operation on American citizens, the establishment political and nattering classes and the propaganda media called Snowden a traitor, citing a period of 11 “missing days” for his period in Hong Kong  as evidence he was a Russian or Chinese spy.

All the so-called “media of record” — the big newspapers and broadcast outlets — ran with the story, turning into what The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald describes as a “cottage industry of media conspiracists” that “devoted itself to accusing Edward Snowden of being a spy for either Russia and/or China.”

Based on reports from “a source familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency report on the Snowden affair,” proclaimed The Wall Street Journal’s Edward Jay Epstein  — the paper that advertises itself as “America’s most trusted news source” – U.S. investigative agencies were unable to find any hotel record or credit card charges indicating his whereabouts during those 11 days from May 20 until May 31. It also reported that “a U.S. official” claimed CCTV cameras showed Snowden entering the skyscraper that housed the Russian consulate on three occasions, but they were in June.

This has been the narrative since Snowden last walked out of the NSA almost four years ago.

But new documents released by the Mira Hotel to Snowden’s lawyers show that Snowden was exactly where he said he was the whole time. He checked into the Mira Hotel on May 21, 2014 under his own name and stayed there continuously until June 10.

The Intercept reported on the documents more than a week ago, but none of the so-called U.S. “media of record”  have bothered to update their articles or report the new information, least of all “America’s most trusted news source” (which saw Epstein, one of the originators of the Snowden-is-a-spy memes, publish a book on Snowden titled, “How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft”). This even though several Snowden supporters, including The New York Times’ Charlie Savage, have repeatedly tweeted at Epstein and The Journal about the new documents.

It would have taken little journalistic legwork from a multinational media company with assets in Hong Kong to establish whether Snowden was staying or had stayed where he claimed to be. But rather than expend the energy, the mainstream media parroted unnamed “official” sources within the Deep State.

A side note: Is it at all plausible that America’s vaunted intelligence agencies were so inept they weren’t able to determine whether Snowden stayed in the hotel he claimed even though he was there under his own name? If you believe that, then you probably believe the MSM/Deep State narratives on 9/11, Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, Pulse nightclub, and the other bogus Deep State-enabled terrorist attacks.

These same media organizations – which are at least Deep State parrots if not outright Deep State propagandists – tell us today that Russia hacked the election and President Donald Trump is a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And the MSM wonder why thinking people don’t believe anything they report!

Snowden is not and never was a spy for Russia, China or anyone else. He is an American patriot who did more than anyone in decades to unmask the massive operation the U.S. government has to vacuum up all information on all Americans all the time.

He’s hero and a true patriot, not a traitor; and should be treated as such.

Whistelblowers Have NO Rights. Ask Those Who Have Asked For Protection.Hillary Is A Fool.

Clinton Praises Security State, Says Snowden Helped Terrorists

April 25, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

 31 11

 

 4 81

Former Secretary Of State and possible 2016 Presidential contender Hillary Clinton suggested that National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden‘s decision to take refuge in Russia should call into question his motives for leaking surveillance secrets.

“When he emerged and when he absconded with all that material, I was puzzled because we have all these protections for whistle-blowers. If he were concerned and wanted to be part of the American debate, he could have been,” she told an audience at the University of Connecticut on Wednesday. “But it struck me as—I just have to be honest with you—as sort of odd that he would flee to China, because Hong Kong is controlled by China, and that he would then go to Russia—two countries with which we have very difficult cyberrelationships, to put it mildly.”

Of course, Clinton’s claim that the government would have protected Snowden had he taken a different route are made dubious considering how former whistle-blowers like Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe have been treated.

Furthermore, Snowden told Vanity Fair this month that he tried to take his concerns up the chain of command, but was ignored.

Clinton’s criticism of Snowden was preceded by a praise of the Nation’s post-9/11 security network—though she was careful not to single out any specific program.

“People were desperate to avoid another attack, and I saw enough intelligence as a senator from New York, and then certainly as secretary [of State], that this is a constant—there are people right this minute trying to figure out how to do harm to Americans and to other innocent people,” Clinton said. “So it was a debate that needs to happen, so that we make sure that we’re not infringing on Americans’ privacy, which is a valued, cherished personal belief that we have. But we also had to figure out how to get the right amount of security.”

The former top diplomat also suggested that the U.S. is one of many countries involved in heavy surveillance and that Snowden’s leaks open the Nation up to terrorist attacks.

“It’s not like the only government in the world doing anything is the United States,” she said.

“I think turning over a lot of that material—intentionally or unintentionally—drained, gave all kinds of information, not only to big countries, but to networks and terrorist groups and the like. So I have a hard time thinking that somebody who is a champion of privacy and liberty has taken refuge in Russia, under Putin’s authority.”

Clinton also questioned Snowden’s recent decision to appear on a Russian news show with Putin.

Snowden Believes He Has Been Successful And That He Is Doing What The Constitution Says He Should.

NSA leaker: 'Mission's already accomplished'

 

8 minutes ago

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WASHINGTON (AP) — After six months when he was rarely heard from except through the documents he leaked, fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden says his "mission's already accomplished" after leaking NSA secrets that have caused a reassessment of U.S. surveillance policies.

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Snowden told The Washington Post in an interview published online Monday night that he was satisfied because journalists have been able to tell the story of the government's collection of bulk Internet and phone records, an activity that has grown dramatically in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished," he said. "I already won."

"As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated," Snowden told the Post. "Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself."

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines offered no comment on the interview Tuesday, nor did the State Department. White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said via email Tuesday: "Mr. Snowden faces felony charges here in the United States and should be returned to the U.S. as soon as possible, where he will be afforded due process and all the protections of our criminal justice system."

President Barack Obama hinted Friday that he would consider some changes to NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records to address the public's concern about privacy. His comments came in a week in which a federal judge declared the NSA's collection program probably was unconstitutional. A presidential advisory panel has suggested 46 changes to NSA operations.

View gallery

W. Mark Felt, left, answers questions for reporters outside District Court in Washington, Monday, De …

Snowden was interviewed in Moscow over two days by Post reporter Barton Gellman, who has received numerous leaks from Snowden. The interview was conducted six months after Snowden's revelations first appeared in the Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Gellman described Snowden as relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.

In June, the Justice Department unsealed a criminal complaint charging Snowden, a former NSA contractor, with espionage and felony theft of government property. Russia granted him temporary asylum five months ago.

The effects of Snowden's revelations have been evident in the courts, Congress, Silicon Valley and capitals around the world, where even U.S. allies have reacted angrily to reports of U.S. monitoring of their leaders' cellphone calls. Brazil and members of the European Union are considering ways to better protect their data and U.S. technology companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are looking at ways to block the collection of data by the government.

Snowden, now 30, said he is not being disloyal to the U.S. or to his former employer.

"I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA," he said. "I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realize it."

Snowden is scheduled to speak again to the public this week, when he delivers the annual "Alternative Christmas Message" on Wednesday for Britain's Channel 4, in a slot typically reserved for provocative or offbeat addresses.