The answer is simple – it comes from the Judgment Fund which is the mother of all slush funds. Nothing in the world is comparable to it other than dictators stealing the treasury of a nation. In the U.S., Congress has made such secret payments legal and routine.

The Judgment Fund pays judgments against the United States and settlements agreed to by the Department of Justice. It is a fund that does not disclose the receipt of the payments or settlements even when the actions establish major agency policy or when requested by congressional appropriators. It is a fund without accountability or transparency since the federal agencies making the payments will not provide Congress or taxpayers information about who was paid by the fund.

How does the Judgment Fund work? It is a permanent, indefinite, and unlimited congressional appropriation continuously available to pay money judgments entered against the United States and settlements of cases in or likely to be in litigation with the United States. As an indefinite appropriation, it is so secret that Congress no longer even debates what the amounts are for. The funds are appropriated, no matter what the amount. The Department of the Treasury just pays the claims when the proper paperwork is presented to it.

How did such a fund come about? Prior to 1956, Congress actually appropriated funds to pay for every single judgment against the United States. Under this procedure, Congress was actually aware of what claims were being made against the United States and was able to evaluate the actions of the agencies being sued.

In 1956 Congress passed the Judgment Fund Act to provide for payment of most judgments against the United States without the need for individual appropriations. The congressional justification was to enhance the efficiency of the appropriations process. In 1961 Congress amended the statute to pay for settlements in addition to judgments but with a ceiling on such payments of $100,000. In 1977 Congress eliminated the ceiling and now the fund is available to pay any covered judgment or settlement, regardless of amount.

The Judgment Fund functions as an automatic withdrawal from the nation’s treasury. Moreover, the payments made to satisfy a judgment against the US or to settle the alleged illegal activity of the agency, do not come out of the agency’s budget.  There is no penalty to the agency for misconduct or illegal activity since payments do not have to be reimbursed unless Congress appropriated funds to the agency for such payments. Simply, agencies are not required to pay for their misconduct or unlawful activities.

What payments have been made under the Judgment Fund? While the Department of the Treasury provides a list of payments and the amounts, it does not identify who received the payments. In a 2016 article, Politico described how federal agencies, using the Judgment Fund, hid more than $4.3 billion in payment to settle sexual harassment complaints. In 2020, the Judgment Fund paid out nearly 7,500 payments totaling over $14 billion.

Even after the House and Senate, Committees on Appropriations requested details concerning the names of claimants, the amounts to be paid and a description of the facts, the Treasury continued its refusal to provide the information to Congress. Moreover, the Obama administration settled over sixty lawsuits with environmental groups. It is likely it utilized the Judgment Fund since there was no other money appropriated to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to settle lawsuits. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know since the EPA, like all federal agencies, refuses to release the names of the recipients

Are there limits to these secret payments? Unless there is a specific statute authorizing payments in a different manner, there are no limits to payments from the Judgment Fund. According to a September 7, 2016, House Judiciary Committee report, Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, the Obama administration likely used the Judgment Fund to settle the $1.7 billion payment to the Islamic Republic of Iran for claims made on the sale of military equipment before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This is the incident in which the US flew planeloads of cash, in foreign currencies, to Iran as part of what could be termed a ransom payment for American prisoners.

It is time for Congress to take seriously one of its main legislative responsibilities; its control over the nation’s purse as required by Article I, section 9, clause 7 of our Constitution. It can no longer leave the Executive branch with blank checks to be used when needing money to make secret payments, most times for wrongdoing. It is time for our government to be honest with us about what it spends and the recipients of its spending. After all, it is our money!

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By Eric Lieberman

The NSA and the FBI under the Obama administration infringed upon foundational civil liberties many times over several years, according to recently declassified documents reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The memos — which were originally obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) through Freedom of Information Act litigation — detail the improprieties, specifically the massive, indiscriminate surveillance of people’s communications. They were first reported on by The Hill.

The NSA intercepted hundreds of thousands of people’s personal information, including email addresses and phone numbers, throughout then-President Barack Obama’s tenure. It was ostensibly empowered by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows federal intelligence agencies to collect data on foreigners without a warrant. Due to the broad powers enumerated in the law and the inherent makeup of surveillance, the electronic communications of law abiding Americans are often picked up as well. Operators of the surveillance are required to immediately destroy any information that is not part of the intended target, but often fail to do so. They are also officially obligated to keep the scope of the interception to a few pieces of data, not a haphazard amount, and to ensure that a person who is inappropriately swept up in a warrant isn’t identified.

“According to section 3(b)(5) of NSA’s Section 702 minimization procedures, ‘computer selection terms used for scanning, such as telephone numbers, key words or phrases, or other discriminators, will be limited to those selection terms reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information,’” reads a formerly top secret NSA quarterly FISA compliance report from March 2015.

“NSA reported that on [redacted] 2014, an analyst conducted an overly broad search against data acquired from multiple authorities including Section 702. NSA advises that the analyst realized his error immediately, canceled the query, and deleted the corresponding results,” the memo reads, adding that the analyst was once again reminded of the FISA requirements. This specific outlined incident was just one of many listed in just one of the many quarterly reports issued by the NSA, signifying the extent of violations.

Several consequential improper disclosures have occurred in recent months, including the “unmasking” of elected officials like former national security adviser Mike Flynn, subsequently causing more lawmakers to question its validity than before.

“Our country’s founders required the government to get a warrant before searching Americans’ private papers,” ACLU Staff Attorney Patrick Toomey told TheDCNF. “The same holds true for Americans’ phone calls, emails, and internet browsing today, whether a person is communicating with a friend around the corner or a family member around the world. The NSA should not be spying on us.”

The agency claims that of course some incidental surveillance will occur, and errors only happen less than 1 percent of the time.

“Quite simply, a compliance program that never finds an incident is not a robust compliance program,” said Michael T. Halbig, the NSA’s chief spokesman, according to The Hill. “…The National Security Agency has in place a strong compliance program that identifies incidents, reports them to external overseers, and then develops appropriate solutions to remedy any incidents.”

Stewart Baker, the first assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, told TheDCNF that it’s difficult to authorize Section 702 without enabling the collection of Americans’ communications. He provides a telling example of a hypothetical email address like “Mahmoud@gmail.com” in which it doesn’t explicitly show if Mahmoud, who may be conversing with nefarious Yemeni nationals, is an American or not.

Baker asserts that if the NSA knew that Mahmoud was an American, it would “usually ‘mask’” his email address with some label like “USPerson No. 1 email address.”

“Section 702 is an effective program that can’t really work if we try to exclude American’s communications,” Baker continued, adding that the “‘unmasking’ provisions could be tightened up” and “they were effectively loosened as part of the sharing imperative arising from 9/11.”

One NSA analyst, for example, conducted the same search query about a particular American “every work day” for months.

The NSA announced in April that it stopped the practice of scooping communications American citizens have with foreign surveillance targets. But it is not clear how it will do so if it continues implementing surveillance under Section 702 of FISA, which is set to expire at the end of the year.

“The content of our emails and texts contains incredibly personal information about our work, our families, and our most intimate thoughts,” Michelle Richardson of the Center for Democracy Technology, a nonprofit, said in a statement provided to TheDCNF. “The NSA should never have been vacuuming up all of these communications, many of which involved Americans, without a warrant. While we welcome the voluntary stopping of this practice, it’s clear that Section 702 must be reformed so that the government cannot collect this information in the future.”

Not everyone is interested in reforming the surveillance measure, though. Spearheaded by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a large group of Republican senators introduced legislation in June to indefinitely extend the statute for national security purposes.

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By Nick Givas

Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota appeared on “Morning Joe” Monday and said that the alleged Russian election interference was the fault of the Obama administration, and the reason former President Barack Obama didn’t investigate further was because he didn’t want to put “his thumb on the scale” for then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Host Joe Scarborough said that the public deserved to know in September 2016 that Russia was meddling in the election, and asked why Obama didn’t do more to prevent the attack. Franken stayed close to the talking points accompanying a Washington Post story that said Obama was looking to avoid the appearance of favoritism.

“I actually think that the president thought that, since Trump was saying the election is rigged, that he didn’t want to seem like he was putting his thumb on the scale,” Franken said.

Scarborough continued pressing for a more direct answer as to why Obama didn’t stop the hack from happening, causing Franken to repeat his theory, saying, “He didn’t want to look like the Thumber-in-Chief.”

Franken claimed that the blame lies with the former Obama administration: “They obviously didn’t play it right. Look where we are now.”

WATCH:

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By Michael Bastasch

The Obama administration had a “back channel” to communicate with Russian officials, according to a new report detailing Moscow’s efforts to delegitimize the U.S. presidential election results.

The news comes after Trump White House aide Jared Kushner was criticized for allegedly trying to open a back channel line of communications with Russian officials during the transition last year.

Former intelligence officials called Kushner’s alleged back channel “dangerous,” but now Bloomberg reports the Obama administration had its own back channel to Moscow.

The White House contacted the Kremlin on what Bloomberg described as a “modern-day red phone” after Russian operatives tried to infiltrate software and databases used by state election officials.

Bloomberg reports (bold is my own):

The scope and sophistication so concerned Obama administration officials that they took an unprecedented step — complaining directly to Moscow over a modern-day “red phone.” In October, two of the people said, the White House contacted the Kremlin on the back channel to offer detailed documents of what it said was Russia’s role in election meddling and to warn that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.

The “red phone” wasn’t literally a phone, but a secure messaging channel for ” urgent messages and documents,” according to Bloomberg. NBC News first reported on the red phone in December, noting the red phone has existed in various forms for the last 50 years or so.

In fact, the Obama administration said the red phone communications must have worked to keep Moscow from launching cyber attacks against election systems.

“Look at the results,” one Obama administration official told NBC in December. “There was nothing done on Election Day, so it must have worked.”

But that may have not been the case.

Bloomberg reported:

The White House provided evidence gathered on Russia’s hacking efforts and reasons why the U.S. considered it dangerously aggressive. Russia responded by asking for more information and providing assurances that it would look into the matter even as the hacking continued, according to the two people familiar with the response.

“Last year, as we detected intrusions into websites managed by election officials around the country, the administration worked relentlessly to protect our election infrastructure,” said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for former President Barack Obama. “Given that our election systems are so decentralized, that effort meant working with Democratic and Republican election administrators from all across the country to bolster their cyber defenses.”

Bloomberg reported the cyber attacks “paint a worrisome picture for future elections” since the “newest portrayal of potentially deep vulnerabilities in the U.S.’s patchwork of voting technologies comes less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey warned Congress that Moscow isn’t done meddling.”

“They’re coming after America,” Comey recently told congressional investigators. “They will be back.”

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By Michael Bastasch

An article published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine claims that the fear and anxiety minority groups are suffering in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election victory could make them sick, or even kill them.

“Elections can matter for the health of children and adults in profound ways that are often unrecognized and unaddressed,” co-author David Williams, a professor of public health and African and African American studies at Harvard University, said in a press release.

Much of the research Williams and his co-authors rely upon was limited or had non-representative samples. Steve Milloy, the publisher of the blog Junk Science, called the study “political junk science.”

Williams and his co-author, psychiatrist Morgan Medlock, argue that Trump’s campaign ignited racist and anti-immigrant sentiments simmering under the surface during the Obama administration. The authors cited Southern Poverty Law Center research claiming an “increase in incidents of harassment and hateful intimidation since Trump’s election.”

“Other research using relatively small, nonrepresentative samples has documented that incidents of racial discrimination experienced by teenagers predicted flatter diurnal cortisol slopes and lower cortisol awakening response in young adulthood, elevated levels of endocrine, cardiovascular, and metabolic parameters at age 20, as well as epigenetic patterns of aging at age 22,” the authors wrote.

They went even further, pointing to studies whose designs can’t draw causality to argue that “living in communities with high levels of racial prejudice is associated with an elevated risk of disease and death.”

“The highest mortality risk was observed among people who themselves scored low on survey measures of self-reported racial prejudice but who resided in highly prejudiced communities,” the authors wrote.

The authors also argued that the anticipated repeal of the Affordable Care Act and other social service cuts “have members of economically marginalized groups, who are likely to be disproportionately affected, very concerned.”

“History has taught us that such cuts in health and social service programs can have pervasive negative effects on health,” the authors wrote.

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By Andrew Follett

A top White House economic adviser said Thursday that keeping the Obama administration’s global warming pledge to the United Nations would be “highly crippling” to economic growth.

“We know that the levels that were agreed to by the prior administration would be highly crippling to the US economic growth,” chief economic adviser Gary Cohn said aboard Air Force One Thursday, referring to former President Barack Obama’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Paris climate agreement.

Obama pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. But that plan would be economically harmful, according to Cohn, and experts say they would not reduce emissions enough comply with the Paris agreement.

President Donald Trump promised to cancel the 2015 United Nations pact while on the campaign trail. Now, Trump says he will make a decision on the agreement following the G7 summit in Italy this week. Nearly 200 countries agreed to a U.N. deal in 2015.

“The president has told you that he’s going to ultimately make a decision on Paris and climate when he gets back,” Cohn said. “He’s interested to hear what the G7 leaders have to say about climate.”

Trump “wants to do the right thing for the environment,” Cohn said. “He cares about the environment. But he also cares very much about creating jobs for American workers.”

Even if Trump keeps the U.S. in the Paris global warming agreement, it will almost certainly fail.

The significant reductions to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions required by the agreement are extremely difficult to achieve due to the immense costs involved. Scientists estimate that simply limiting global warming to the Paris agreement targets would require the annual installation of 485,000 wind turbines by 2028. Only 13,000 turbines were installed in 2015, despite the enormous tax breaks and subsidies offered to wind power.

“It would require rates of change in our energy infrastructure and energy mix that have never happened in world history and that are extremely unlikely to be achieved,” Glenn Jones, a professor of marine sciences at Texas A&M who co-authored the study on the feasibility of the agreement, told Science Daily. “For a world that wants to fight climate change, the numbers just don’t add up to do it.”

The likely costs of the kind of wind and solar power program the scientists say would be necessary to actually slow global warming would be measured in the tens of trillions of dollars, and even then success would be far from assured. The scientists conclude that other methods of reducing CO2 emissions, such as significantly increasing the number of nuclear reactors, would run into political opposition from environmental groups.

Scientists’ conclusions are mirrored by Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy’s comments during a that the Clean Power Plan (CPP), her agency’s signature regulation aimed at tackling global warming, was meant to show “leadership” rather than actually prevent projected warming.

EPA repeatedly argued that the point of the Clean Power Plan was to show the world America was serious about tackling global warming in order to galvanize support for United Nations delegates to sign the Paris Agreement.

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By Saagar Enjeti

The Pentagon lost track of nearly a billion dollars worth of weapons bound for Iraqi Security Forces in the fight against ISIS, documents obtained by Amnesty International reveal.

The weapons transfer program is a lynchpin of U.S. strategy against ISIS and within Iraq. The Obama administration began the current policy after the rise of ISIS in 2014, trying to build the local capacity of partner forces in Iraq rather than rely on U.S. troops. Part of building up these forces entailed billions of dollars in weapons transfers to the Iraqi forces.

Internal department of defense audit documents obtained by Amnesty found negligent record keeping procedures including:

• “Fragmentary record-keeping in arms depots in Kuwait and Iraq. Information logged across multiple spreadsheets, databases and even on hand-written receipts.

• Large quantities of equipment manually entered into multiple spreadsheets, increasing the risk of human error.

• Incomplete records meaning those responsible for the equipment were unable to ascertain its location or status.”

Iraq is a battlefield fraught with dozens of different malign actors who may have gained access to the weapons, including ISIS. These actors include Iranian backed Shiite militias who maintain deep ties to the Iraqi government, along with corrupt fraudsters who may sell ill accounted for weapons on the black market.

“The need for post-delivery checks is vital. Any fragilities along the transfer chain greatly increase the risks of weapons going astray in a region where armed groups have wrought havoc and caused immense human suffering,” an Amnesty researcher said in a press release.

The Pentagon revelation is particularly troubling following years of reports that ISIS continues using abandoned U.S. weapons. A 2015 Amnesty International report found that a large percentage of ISIS’s stockpile is composed of “weapons and equipment looted, captured or illicitly traded from poorly secured Iraqi military stocks.”

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By Eric Lieberman

Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 2-1 Thursday in favor of unrolling net neutrality regulations put in place under the Obama administration.

The decision continues FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s push to fully repeal certain rules over the internet. The final results came as no surprise, as the two Republican commissioners, including Pai, voted for the “Restoring Internet Freedom” proposal, and the one Democratic commissioner dissented.

Net neutrality is the vague principle that internet service providers do not have exclusive rights to discriminate against certain forms of traffic (including spam), nor to offer faster speeds to higher paying customers. Supporters praise it for allowing various kinds of traffic to get equal treatment. Critics, however, claim that net neutrality is a government takeover of the internet, which has thrived under highly restrained oversight.

“For nearly two decades, the internet flourished under a bipartisan, light-touch regulatory framework,” Pai said in an official statement. “This success wasn’t an accident. In 1996, President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and established a national policy ‘to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet…unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”

Multiple organizations, from policy shops to advocacy groups and corporations, emailed The Daily Caller News Foundation (TheDCNF) to voice their support for Pai’s decision.

“This is an important step towards protecting innovation and investment in developing the internet of the future,” says FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon. “Obama’s internet regulations were basically a government takeover of the internet that threatened to replace the permissionless innovation that has worked so well with a new set of internet conduct standards designed and approved by the FCC.”

Ryan Radia, Research Fellow and Regulatory Counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees.

“The FCC’s net neutrality rules are the opposite of what American consumers want and need online and there is little evidence of the harms these regulations claim to prevent,” says Radia. “If the FCC rule is left intact, it will prevent you from getting free stuff like sponsored data from your wireless provider. Just think, if you like unlimited HBO with your AT&T plan or unlimited music streaming from T-Mobile, then you should demand that these net neutrality regulations be eliminated.” (RELATED: America’s Favorite Cell Phone Perk Is Back, FCC Head Says, Because Of Obama Regs Roll-Back)

Not everyone is pleased, though. Activists in favor of net neutrality have been staking out Pai’s home for the past week.

The protesters explicitly told TheDCNF that they were demonstrating against the FCC’s then-imminent decision to officially unroll net neutrality rules implemented under Democratic control in the past couple of years. (RELATED: Net Neutrality Activists Tied To Violent Groups, Convicted Al-Qaida Terrorist)

“Net Neutrality rules ensure that consumers can control what they say and do online, but Chairman Pai prefers to give that control instead to Comcast, AT&T, Charter and Verizon,” said Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy. “That is an outcome that no American wants regardless of party or ideology.”

Certain lawmakers, though, applauded Pai’s intentions after he gave a speech in April further indicating his plan to undo internet regulations. (RELATED: FCC Chair: ‘Hysterical Prophecies’ Led Dems To Almost Break The Internet In Just Two Years)

“We have long said that imposing a Depression-era, utility-style regulatory structure onto the internet was the wrong approach, and we applaud Chairman Pai’s efforts to roll back these misguided regulations,” Republican Sens. John Thune, Roger Wicker, Marsha Blackburn and Greg Walden said April 26 in a joint statement. “Consumers want an open internet that doesn’t discriminate on content and protects free speech and consumer privacy.”

The senators call on a bipartisan legislative response to the FCC’s decision in order to create a solidified policy.

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By Eric Lieberman and Ted Goodman

Hundreds of thousands of potentially fake posts supporting a government takeover of the internet’s most essential infrastructure bombarded a Federal Communications Commission’s forum for public comments on net neutrality in the past month.

The Daily Caller News Foundation (TheDCNF) pulled a random sample of nearly 10,000 “pro-net neutrality” comments and called the people who provided input to verify their authenticity.

Of the respondents, 44 percent answered “yes” when asked if they could recall submitting a public comment supporting the regulations imposed by the FCC under the Obama administration. In contrast, 39 percent denied having submitted a comment, or were unable to recall doing so. Around 17 percent refused to answer the question, or hung up before proper communication.

The FCC has received more than 1.6 million comments as of Wednesday morning, according to the agency’s own website. If “pro regulatory” comments represent one half of that amount, then math indicates that more than 300,000 of the “pro-net neutrality” comments could have been falsely submitted.

Fake “anti-net neutrality” comments also made their way on the forum as more than 128,000 identical posts under different names were discovered, according to ZDNet. Like TheDCNF, ZDNet contacted the listed people, who later told the tech publication that they had not published messages on the FCC’s website. ZDNet, though, reportedly called around “two-dozen people” and only directly spoke to a handful of them.

TheDCNF’s data shows that despite what many people think, there was not an outpouring of backlash (or at least not nearly as much as originally reported) against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to undo net neutrality rules implemented in recent years.

Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers have no right to discriminate against certain forms of traffic (like spam), nor to offer faster speeds to higher paying customers. For supporters, it means all kinds of traffic gets equal treatment. For critics, net neutrality is a government takeover that will prevent companies from investing in faster infrastructure.

“This regulation by the FCC is a textbook example of Washington’s desire to regulate anything and everything, and will do nothing more than wrap the Internet in red tape,” Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said in April of 2015, according to The Atlantic, somewhat around the time the new net neutrality rules came into effect. “The internet has successfully flourished without the heavy hand of government interference. Stated simply, I do not want to see the government regulating the internet.”

The rule enabling net neutrality, Title II, was first designed in the 1930s to help regulate a powerful monopoly. The FCC successfully reclassified the internet from a Title I service to a Title II in the last couple of years while under Democratic control, which essentially gave it the authority to mandate and enforce net neutrality rules. (RELATED: FCC Chair: ‘Hysterical Prophecies’ Led Dems To Almost Break The Internet In Just Two Years)

Proponents of net neutrality say the internet should be classified as a Title II regulation, essentially rendering it a public utility under the purview of the federal government. They also claim that the volume of comments supporting such a classification vastly outweighs the remarks against such a classification, the latter of which Pai is championing.

TheDCNF’s own analysis reveals that a large portion of those comments were likely phony.

Comedian John Oliver sparked extra interest in the technical topic after lambasting the FCC and its plan to unravel internet regulations on his weekly show May 7. He registered the website “gofccyourself.com” to make it easier for people to share their insight.

Oliver’s campaign to discredit Pai and his transparent process for public input unleashed a deluge of bogus complaints from bot accounts. Racist comments and death threats even found their way on what was supposed to be a productive and democratic platform.

Oliver implored his viewers to stop making derogatory comments in an online video published Sunday.

“There were some racist comments on there,” Oliver conceded. “And let me just say, if any of those came from anyone who watches this show, stop it. Do not fucking do that. Writing racist things on the internet is not how you win the net neutrality debate. It’s how you win the presidency,” he continued, as a screenshot of President Donald Trump’s Cinco De May taco bowl tweet appeared above his right shoulder.

Some of the acrimonious remarks aren’t very surprising since several net neutrality activists are associated with groups that are connected with violence. One activist leader, Evan Greer, for example, worked three years to free an al-Qaida terrorist convicted of planning to shoot up a Boston shopping mall, according to his LinkedIn profile. (RELATED: FCC Chair: Regulating The Internet Is Similar To Censoring College Speakers)

Knowing that around 39 percent of the 10,000 respondents of TheDCNF’s calls said they couldn’t remember making a comment helps corroborate the FCC’s official announcement that criticisms were artificially sent through automation.

The FCC originally stated that a large portion of the comments, as well as the vitriolic content, was delivered through a DDoS (distributed-denial-of-service) attack. A DDoS assault is when a perpetrator directs several internet-connected devices and the respective unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses (the numerical label assigned to every device) to targeted online systems, which inundates them. (Imagine a tsunami, rather than the typical waves, hitting a beachfront).

“These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host,” reads the FCC’s official press release, published May 8. “These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC.”

Due to the latest exclusive data made available to TheDCNF, it’s clear that so many of these comments were not authentic, and were artificially manufactured to fake dissidence against Pai’s policies to deregulate the internet industry.

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By Michael Bastasch

When Obama administration officials claimed man-made global warming played a role in causing the Syrian civil war and rise of the Islamic State, “nothing could be further from the truth,” according to a UK-based professor.

Clionadh Raleigh, a political geography professor at the University of Sussex, recently gave an hour-long talk at Oxford University, where she laid out the reasons why global warming is not causing conflicts to break out in the developing world.

“Cooperation is far more likely in difficult conditions, those that have been exacerbated by climate changes and those that are highly vulnerable to climate change,” she said in her talk, published on Youtube Thursday.

“But cooperation doesn’t make headline news,” Raleigh said, “so we rarely hear about it and instead wars, such as those in Syria, are connected to climatic changes that have been going on for decades within those areas.”

“And very key reasons for why those wars broke out — forty years of oppression and autocracy — are often ignored because the people doing the studies want to forward a climate argument, and they will do so regardless of the other very obvious reasons for a conflict to emerge,” Raleigh said.

WATCH:

Raleigh is responding to studies published in recent years linking global warming to violent conflict around the world. The basic theory is that global warming will drive resource scarcity in vulnerable regions of the world, sparking conflicts.

A 2013 study by U.S.-based academics argued violent conflict in certain parts of the world could increase 50 percent by 2050 as the Earth warms.

A 2016 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claimed the Syrian drought, “which is implicated in the current conflict, has become more than twice as likely as a consequence of human interference in the climate system.”

Politicians and environmentalists seized on these studies to bolster their calls for action on global warming. Former Vice President Al Gore, for example, blamed global warming for the Syrian civil war and the “Brexit” vote.

Former President Barack Obama claimed global warming contributed to the Syrian civil war, acting through a severe drought that hit the country as the Arab Spring movement swept through the Muslim world.

“There’s already some really interesting work — not definitive, but powerful — showing that the droughts that happened in Syria contributed to the unrest and the Syrian civil war,” Obama said at the South By South Lawn event in 2016.

Raleigh rejects this theory — as do many other military and political science experts.

“It acts as if conflict occurs for natural reasons — people will naturally become violent under conditions of adverse weather conditions, and nothing could be further from the truth,” Raleigh said during her Oxford talk.

“There is very rarely, if any evidence, of a direct relationship between climatic changes and the effects they have on water access, not even on land,” she said.

“The climate link is indirect, if at all,” she said, adding climate is “only one stress of many on developing governments.”

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