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POPULAR ACTOR TRAVELS TO Calais Jungle To Garner Sympathy For “Migrants”…Refugees Attack Them…Beat Them Up…Steal Their Phones | Why would this actor go to a place where violence, crime and murders are a regular occurrence and believe they wouldn t jump at the opportunity to steal whatever he or his crew had that was of any value? Remember, these are people who are leaving their homeland because they were being persecuted, so their violent behavior should be ignored by their host country right? I mean, they ve been through so much already. Who could blame them for stealing from, and beating the a*ses of celebrities who come to help them?A security team guarding Jude Law was attacked by migrants as the Hollywood star visited the jungle camp in Calais.The 43-year-old actor was in France with a film crew and Brit-winning singer Tom Odell , 25, to witness the horrors of the squalid makeshift village, which is due to be demolished.But shortly after the cameras stopped rolling, their minders were ambushed by some of the migrants and had their phones stolen.It is understood Jude was already on the production team s bus when the thugs struck.For entire story: Mirror UK | 1real |
Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK Facing New Muslim Challenges |
Look at what is happening now across the European continent! Europe is being occupied by invading hoards of millions of Muslims as we speak, demanding more mosques to be built with state money (tax payer money), chanting Allahu Akbar in the streets, teaching Muslim prayers in schools, banning Christmas street lights and more!
Some of these migrants even took it to a step further, now posing as “children”. Some stupid Europeans actually believe them and adopted them as their own children. 20-30 even up to 40 year old men! Imagine adopting a 30 year old man as your “child”…
Despite having nationalist political parties surging across the continent, there has been no major victory!!! The nationalists do NOT own a single country in Europe! France is still under socialist Hollande, Austria, Netherlands, Italy, Greece everyone is still under socialist/liberal leadership.
Despite having the UK historically exiting the EU with their famous Brexit vote, the UK is still under “principled conservative” leadership, you know that conservatism similar to Paul Ryan (open borders). The country fell on Theresa May’s hands after Boris Johnson who helped Nigel Farage make Brexit happen cucked-out and refused to take the leadership. Theresa May is super similar to David Cameron, the former Prime Minister who resigned after Brexit. Both David and Theresa are like Jeb! Bush or Paul Ryan clones. Same “principled conservative” rhetoric but with open borders.
Europe is basically lost and no one can do anything about it at this point. Even a classic revolution is impossible at this point. There’s no spirit, we don’t have a strong leader here in Europe like they do in America, with Donald Trump, our European nationalist leaders are all weak, soft cucks. The people are too materialistic, they chase money, music, movies, games like nothing else matters.
Here’s the average European daily conversation in BOTH West AND East Europe: “Look at my new car! Do you like it?? You wanker, who cares about Muslim immigration, check out my new Iphone 7! And have you heard that new Beyonce song which tells whites to fuck themselves? Wow its so awesome! By the way I’m going to Ibiza next week! Bloody hell mate, let’s play my new FIFA 17 PS4 game before you go, it has awesome graphics mate! It’s better than PES 17!!!” This is no exaggeration and this is exactly how European people behave these days. All Europeans, UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Austria, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, even Russia, EVERYONE! Total cuckoldry!
Some people like to think that East Europe is somewhat purer and holier than the West but it’s not anymore. Especially Americans have this idea that Eastern Europe is not as tainted as the West. Its the same thing, the eternal chase of entertainment.
The question is what’s next? How would Christians survive as minorities among these peaceful people? Perhaps we should pack our bags and start a new white flight to Russia. As long as Putin is in power we know he is gonna protect the rights of European Christian people and ensure their survival. Lets hope and pray he would allow us to invade his country. While Russia is no different in those terms, at least they have a leader who watches over them and protects them while they have fun. Another option would be to pack our bags and move to America if Trump wins and IF Trump would allow us to go there…. because we do know he’s very anti-immigration. Should Hillary “win” (steal the election) may God help us all because WW3 is upon us.
So here’s a bunch of new Muslim challenges Europe is now facing:
GERMANY – Children Forced to learn Muslim prayers and shout Allahu Akbar
Pupils at a primary school were forced to chant “Allahu Akhbar” and “there is no God but Allah”, an appalled father has claimed.
The father of the pupil at the girl’s primary school in German ski resort Garmisch-Partenkirchen discovered that his daughter had been forced to learn the Islamic prayer when he discovered a handout she had been given.
He claimed she had been “forced” by teachers to memorise the Islamic chants and forwarded the handout to Austrian news service unsertirol24.
The handout read: “Oh Allah, how perfect you are and praise be to you. Blessed is your name, and exalted is your majesty. There is no God but you.”
It had been given to the girl during a lesson in “ethics” at the Bavarian school.
ITALY – Thousands of Muslims Pray in the Streets of Rome near Colosseum, Shout Allahu Akbar, Demand more Mosques
Thousands of Muslims gathered in protest outside Rome’s Colosseum Friday after Italian authorities shut down a number of so-called “garage mosques” to avoid young people becoming radicalized.
The Muslim community of Rome chose the iconic Colosseum, a worldwide symbol of Christian persecution and martyrdom, to stage their demonstration against the alleged shutting down by police of illegal places of Muslim worship in the city.
Many Roman citizens were visibly disturbed by the protest, noting that in its propaganda videos, the Islamic State has repeatedly employed images of the Colosseum when threatening to conquer Rome and the “Crusaders.”
Two months ago, Italian police set up a high-security perimeter around the Colosseum, after the Islamic State issued a new threat to “conquer” Rome in its latest video.
UNITED KINGDOM – British press wants more 40-year-old migrant “children” posing as 16-year-old
Won’t you take pity on this poor, innocent little child?
This image of a “16-year-old” migrant crying – which is currently plastered on the front page of The Guardian – is nothing short of laughable.
“A 16-year-old from Ethiopia cries while he awaits registration at a processing centre in the makeshift refugee camp near Calais,” the photo’s caption reads. The image is placed under a headline reading: “Councils resist pressure to take children from Calais.”
The “child migrant” is clearly in his 40’s, yet their editors evidently believe their readers are so incredibly stupid they’ll actually believe they’re looking at a 16-year-old boy.
This comes amid a recent report where grown men pose as children in the UK , get adopted by British families then threaten to “love” them in exchange for their care. Some were even caught drawing ISIS flags on 1st grade coloring books.
SWEDEN – Christmas Street Lights BANNED to Avoid Offending Muslim Migrants
Towns across Sweden have banned Christmas street lights in the name of “security,” but the real reason is almost certainly because the country has completely capitulated to Islam after importing countless Muslim migrants over the last two years.
According to an SVT report, The Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) will not allow municipalities to erect Christmas street lights on light poles that the authority manages, meaning that many towns will have no festival lights at all on major streets.
Despite there being no safety issue with the street lights for decades, this new rule has been instituted right after record numbers of Muslim migrants flooded into the country – just a coincidence I’m sure.
In reality, the Christmas lights ban is almost certainly an effort to avoid offending Muslim migrants who are causing chaos in cities like Malmo, where the firebombing of cars and businesses in or near Muslim ghetto ‘no-go areas’ is becoming a routine occurrence.
| 1real |
’Homefront: The Revolution’ Spring Update: Multiplayer Goes Free-to-Play, Last Expansion Released - Breitbart | The Spring Update for Homefront: The Revolution offers gamers who haven’t bought the game a huge free trial while bringing improvements to existing players and the “Beyond the Walls” expansion for Season Pass holders. [With the latest update, players on Xbox One and Playstation 4 who don’t own Homefront: The Revolution can now play the game’s online cooperative mode for free, with no . A free trial allows gamers to play through the entire first Red Zone, “which totals up to 4 hours of gameplay,” of developer Dambuster Studio’s shooter. For Season Pass holders, the final expansion, “Beyond the Walls,” is now available, “set in a new rural environment beyond the walls of Philadelphia that feels much more similar to the original Homefront’s setting. ” Players must lead resistance fighter Ethan Brady out of Philadelphia into rural Pennsylvania to “make contact with NATO and discover their daring plan to defeat the KPA once and for all. ” | 0fake |
Twitter has been looking into the future: read the best 16 predictions | Next Prev Swipe left/right Twitter has been looking into the future: read the best 16 predictions Predictions are notoriously unreliable, even when they’re backed up by expert knowledge and thorough research. It’s fair to say that the good people of Twitter have used neither of these but they’ve still come up with some startling visions of the future.
Here are the best 16 tweets. 1. The year is 2017, Marmite is the UK's official currency, old people are burned as fuel, an evil clown is PM, Brexit still means Brexit.
— Mitten d'Amour (@MittenDAmour) October 12, 2016 2. The year is 2018. Facebook is just one long clip of James O'Brien talking to some Leave-voting idiot and hammering his head on the desk.
— Alan White (@aljwhite) October 13, 2016 3. The year is 2020.
A Buzzfeed article titled "President Trump's Wars Summarised In 13 AMAZING Cat GIFs" wins the Pulitzer Prize.
— Dai Lama (@WelshDalaiLama) September 27, 2016 4. | 1real |
While Working On A Trump Speech Steve Bannon’s Pants Literally Caught Fire (TWEETS) | A new report from the New York Times revealed some interesting goings-on with Team Trump. For one, Donald Trump had his Twitter account taken away by his aides. Even they know that Donald cannot control his temper.Stephen Bannon, who took over as Donald Trump s campaign manager while taking time off from Breitbart.com, has empowered the racist Alt-Right movement, giving them a voice in politics.While at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Manchester, Donald Trump s aides gathered to form a dialogue of what the GOP presidential nominee should say and what he should not say about FBI director James Comey s vague and bizarre letter that he sent to Congress which suggested that something pertinent was found in Anthony Weiner s emails regarding Hillary Clinton s private server controversy.The New York Times reports:They sent Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, onstage with a mission: stall.That s when Bannon s pants caught on fire.As the aides agonized over which words to feed into the teleprompter, they become so engrossed that a hot light set up next to the machine caused Mr. Bannon s Kuhl hiking pants to begin smoldering. I think my pant leg is on fire, he said after noticing the acrid smell.Steve Bannon's pants literally caught fire when he was helping to craft a Trump speech. https://t.co/TSCwqE62a4 pic.twitter.com/VCrFipyqdy McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) November 6, 2016Trump's campaign adviser Steve Bannon is such a liar, his pants literally caught fire https://t.co/AGzdPQPew7 pic.twitter.com/vggDgWQFnL Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 6, 2016On Sunday, conservatives were dealt a devastating blow after Comey confirmed that the agency is not recommending charges against the Democratic presidential nominee.In fact, a senior law enforcement official confirmed to NBC News that nearly all emails found on Anthony Weiner s laptop were already reviewed by the FBI. Most of them were duplicates and the others were unrelated to government business.The investigative team had been working around the clock to process and review emails found on former New York congressman Anthony Weiner s laptop using a program that targeted only the emails to and from Clinton s closest aide, Huma Abedin, within the time when Clinton was secretary of state.They got nothing and that makes one wonder why Comey sent that letter to Congress to begin with. Actually, we know why and the man needs to resign.Featured image via Kirk Irwin/Getty | 1real |
In Desperate Pursuit of the Zero-Stress Job - The New York Times | I was 26 and on the platform of the uptown 6 train in New York. My messenger bag had flipped over my head. A constellation of trampled, blackened gum wads hovered inches from my face. My hands and feet: numb. I hadn’t tripped. No one had pushed me. I’d been moving through the human flow of rush hour like everyone else, heading from my day job at an educational publisher to my night job writing copy for a marketing firm. I’d been it for a year while my wife was in graduate school, balancing two sets of deadlines and workloads, coming home close to midnight for most of each week. As strangers helped me to a nearby bench, then pointed out the line of blood running from my elbow, I knew what had happened. I’d been warned. Two years earlier, I had walked into an emergency room with what I thought was a migraine, and discovered that a benign tumor had ruptured on my pituitary gland, which sends signals to the body’s other glands to brew hormones. As a result, my body was no longer making any hormones, including adrenocorticotropic hormone, or ACTH. That in particular has worried my specialists. My body no longer responds to stress like everyone else’s. It fails to send ACTH into the bloodstream to battle the adrenaline gusts that fuel situations. Basically, I don’t have a response, and stress can trigger sharp fatigue, low blood pressure, deranged cognition or an “adrenal crisis,” which, in its worst cases, can wash over my body like a stroke, and can even be fatal. I was ordered to take cortisol pills at strategic times each day, and to never, ever break that schedule. Every few weeks I went to my endocrinologist for hormone tuneup sessions, and at the start of each one she asked, “How’s your stress?” The lies I told her (“Not a problem! ”) were noble, I thought, and I even came to believe them myself. I was fine. Stress was fine. Stress was everywhere — how could it not be? At my day job, I took smoke breaks with on our building’s rooftop and rushed through conversations made of almost nothing but stress comparisons: the creeping deadlines, the tasks we juggled, all of us proud of our ability to spread ourselves ever thinner. At my moonlighting job, my were struggling actors, filmmakers and writers who used their days to audition, or pitch magazines, or assemble their reels. The stress we compared there was more about what we didn’t have, and what we were suffering through to get it. I convinced myself that I was good at stress. I knew its rhythms (I thought) and I liked the exhaustion it produced, whether or not it was healthy. Stress was seductive in that way — a currency that proved my worth far more than my low paychecks did. But that subway platform fall shook something in me. It drew a boundary I couldn’t unsee. In the weeks and months afterward, I had more episodes like that one. They were more pointed, and nearly as debilitating. A misstep in an email to clients, a break from a project plan, even the tiniest workplace realities triggered a similar paralysis. I typed emails with numb hands, grew unable to track the simplest details, then grew anxious at the mistakes I’d caused, frozen in a high, swampy anxiety that I had created and couldn’t escape. I was exhausted and confused. I couldn’t sleep. “Take more cortisol when you know stress is coming,” my doctor said. But who can truly know that? Stress’s most insidious power is its ability, like water, to find the cracks and then flood right through them. I had to make a change, but to what? Stress seemed to be the lifeblood of a productive career. What did it mean, now, to have to avoid it at all costs? The best answer I could find: Quit everything. In the eight years after that platform fall, I quit 12 jobs. Freelance jobs, staff jobs, administrative jobs, management jobs. Some I hated, some I loved, but I became a serial quitter, working hard until the stress snowballed enough to pose a serious threat, and then I was gone. I became a master of the notice. I took a perverse pride in it — I’m the best quitter in the game nobody quits jobs better than I — while I knew my reputation was being irreparably damaged. I gained a reputation among friends as a career flake, and I felt myself acquiring a new label — one I had never had before: lazy. By my the constant shifts from job to job were hard on my finances, my résumé and ultimately my marriage. I’d taken that poisonous job stress and relocated it to my home, and it flooded through the cracks there, too. My wife began to lose trust in my explanations for why I needed to leave every job, and soon I did as well. My hormone condition was below the skin, and so hard to track. It turned me timid and unsure in a way I hadn’t been before. Was my illness the real problem, or was it me? “Find something easy that you don’t mind being bad at,” my wife said. It made a brilliant kind of sense, so I took a coordinator gig at a nonprofit with a tiny staff and a simple focus. Maybe it was a case of busted confidence, or knowing my health’s boundaries and the danger of crossing them, but the results at that job were the same as what had come before. By the time my wife woke, at 3 a. m. to my pacing at the foot of our bed, thinking aloud through a thick, adrenal fog about some minor detail I’d forgotten to handle for an event the next day, we both began, sadly, to consider that my most productive career choice might be to chase no career at all. One resignation and one transition document later, I was back on another search, weary and defeated, when job No. 13 came my way: developing tests for a education center. The work reminded me of the kind I had done in my 20s, at the educational publisher and the TV marketing company. But the people here were calm and quiet and tended to leave at 5 p. m. My boss was a former college Spanish teacher who ended each conversation by saying, “It is what it is,” or, “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. ” She said she’d train me on everything, that she had a good feeling. Still, I feared letting her down. So when, weeks in, I found I had formatted some specs incorrectly on a very large product delivery, I fell at once into a spell of anxiety and inner fracture. and nauseated (again) I rushed to her office to confess my errors, then prepared to quit (again). She took a deep breath. “Do you know what my husband does for work?” she said. “He’s a military surgeon. He sees people die. Every single day. ” “Here it comes,” I thought, and braced for an implication about my work ethic, or my toughness. “Stress is a part of life. Deal with it,” she would say, as though I hadn’t spent the last eight years doing exactly that. “This job? Nobody dies at this job,” she said. “Everything can be fixed. ” After that, she and I calmly worked out a plan. We did the same thing the next day, and the day after that, until soon my work became what proved to be the rarest of all career currencies: just a job. Nothing more, nothing less, and I hung on to it like grim death. | 0fake |
Suffering from pneumonia, Clinton falls ill at 9/11 memorial, cancels California trip | (This version of the Sep. 11 story corrects the condition to hypothyroidism in paragraph 28) By Amanda Becker NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton is suffering from pneumonia, the Democratic presidential candidate’s personal doctor said on Sunday after she fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial, an episode that renewed focus on her health less than two months before the election. Clinton canceled a trip she was scheduled to take to California on Monday for fundraising and other campaign events, an aide said, declining to provide further details about her schedule for the week. Clinton, 68, was diagnosed on Friday but her condition only came to light several hours after a video on social media appeared to show her swaying and her knees buckling before being helped into a motorcade as she left the memorial early Sunday. Clinton had a medical examination when she got back to her home in Chappaqua, New York, according to a campaign aide. Her doctor, Lisa Bardack, said in a statement that she has been experiencing a cough related to allergies and that an examination on Friday showed it was pneumonia. “She was put on antibiotics and advised to rest and modify her schedule. While at this morning’s event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely,” Bardack said. Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis comes at a crucial time in the White House race against Republican rival Donald Trump, who refrained from commenting on her health on Sunday. The first of three presidential debates is on Sept. 26 and the election is on Nov. 8. Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile said she was encouraged that Clinton “already is feeling better” and looked “forward to seeing her back out on the campaign trail and continuing on the path to victory.” Several Clinton allies said the incident underscored the candidate’s resilience. “After being diagnosed with pneumonia, Hillary Clinton ran a two-hour national security meeting, gave a press conference, and spent an hour and a half in the heat at a September 11 event,” said Peter Daou, who worked for Clinton in the past and now has a communications firm. “It was an impressive feat of physical strength that undermined weeks of health conspiracies.” Clinton abruptly departed the high-profile, televised event at Ground Zero and was taken to her daughter Chelsea’s home in Manhattan. She emerged around two hours later on a warm and muggy morning, wearing sunglasses and telling reporters that she was “feeling great.” The video that showed her swaying and buckling with aides holding her up came from an unverified Twitter account under the name Zdenek Gazda, who did not respond to a request for comment. The Clinton campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the authenticity of the video. Political strategists said the campaign should confront the health issue head-on to tamp down any concerns, particularly as Republican rival Donald Trump and some of his high-profile supporters have repeatedly argued that she lacked the “stamina” to battle adversaries abroad. Bud Jackson, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist, said the statement from the doctor was a good start. He said the incident should encourage more transparency from the campaign about her health. “I think they did the right thing. They had her examined and put out a statement. It means less speculation,” he said. As the solemn ceremony began at the site of the World Trade Center that was attacked by two hijacked airliners 15 years ago, there was patchy sunlight, with temperatures at about 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.6 Celsius). But the high humidity early into the ceremony caused it to feel much hotter in the crowd at times. Clinton wore a high-collared shirt and a dark pant suit and donned sunglasses for the morning event. Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis follows a wave of conservative conspiracy theories that circulated in recent weeks suggesting that Clinton’s coughing was a sign of deeper problems. Clinton’s speech at a campaign rally earlier this month in Cleveland was interrupted by a coughing spell. During the speech, she quipped, “Every time I think about Trump I get allergic.” She then resumed her speech. Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior associate at the UPMC Center for Health Security in Pittsburgh who is not treating Clinton, said coughing is a cardinal symptom of pneumonia. Recovery from pneumonia, the 8th leading cause of death in the United States, can be variable, he said, adding it takes a week for most patients to get better. Adults above the age of 65 are at heightened risk. Past presidential candidates have released much more detailed information about their health than either Trump, 70, or Clinton. For example, John McCain, the failed 2008 Republican presidential nominee, allowed reporters to see 1,173 pages of medical records after concerns were raised about a cancer scare. Clinton has been in the news before for serious health issues. In December 2012, she suffered a concussion and shortly afterward developed a blood clot. In a letter released by her doctor in July 2015, Clinton was described as being in “excellent health” and “fit to serve” in the White House. It noted that her current medical conditions include hypothyroidism and seasonal pollen allergies. The diagnosis and illness on Sunday come after some tough days for Clinton, as national polls showed her lead over Trump diminishing. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely voters showed an 8-point lead for Clinton had vanished by the last week of August. On Saturday, Clinton came under fire from Republicans and on social media for saying Friday night that “half” of Trump’s supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables.” She later said she regretted using the word “half.” [nL1N1BM0BH] Trump has also been under pressure to release detailed information on his health and medical history. Instead, in December, Trump’s doctor wrote in a short letter that was made public that his blood pressure and laboratory results “were astonishingly excellent” and that he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” | 0fake |
News: Missed Opportunity: President Obama Just Found Out That He Was Allowed To Sleep In The White House After Years Of Living In A Hotel Near The Reagan Airport | Email
The president has to be kicking himself over this one.
As his term in office comes to a close, it seems as if Barack Obama may have missed out on a pretty spectacular opportunity. Earlier today, the president was told that he had been allowed to sleep in the White House this whole time, after he spent nearly two full terms living in a hotel by Reagan National Airport.
Sorry, Mr. President, but it’s true. You really blew your chance on this one.
Having booked an extended stay at the airport Hilton upon his inauguration back in 2009, Barack and his family have resided in an atrium-view room with two double beds and complimentary wi-fi for the past eight years. But earlier this week when a senior advisor asked the president why he had chosen to live by the airport instead of the White House, you could tell that Obama hadn’t realized the choice was his to make until that very moment.
Yes, Obama’s accomplished a lot over the years, but he’s got to be wondering how much more progress he might have made living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He would have had a lot more time to work on signature policies like the Affordable Care Act if he hadn’t wasted so much of his mornings commuting from the airport to the Oval Office on the D.C. Metro. There’s no doubt the countless Hilton Rewards Points Obama has accrued is a nice perk, but that doesn’t soften the blow of leaving the neoclassic mansion built exclusively to house the commander in chief and his family empty for two full terms.
This is something Obama is going to regret for a long time to come.
“Nobody ever explicitly told me that I could live there until now,” said a clearly disappointed Obama, as he waited patiently for a set of fresh towels. “While Sasha and Malia love being on the same floor as the pool here, I now wish we had stayed at the lavish, 20,000-square-foot private residence in the White House for the past eight years. One time in 2011, I slept underneath my desk after a late night, and I was worried someone was going to find me there in the morning and yell at me. Now I’m being told we apparently have a personal chef and dozens of butlers. This sucks.”
Sorry, Barry, but this one’s kind of on you. Our advice to whoever the next president is? Don’t miss your chance like he did. | 1real |
New Exoplanet Discoveries Reveal Red-Dwarf Stars as Likely Hosts to Large Populations of Earth-Like Water Worlds | In August 2016, the announcement of the discovery of a terrestrial exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri (artists impression above) stimulated the imagination of experts and the general public. This star is the nearest star to our sun, though it is 10 times less massive and 500 times less luminous. This discovery, together with the discovery in May 2016 of a similar planet orbiting an even lower-mass star (Trappist-1), convinced astronomers that such red dwarfs (as these low-mass stars are called) might be hosts to a large population of Earth-like planets.
Computer simulations of the formation of planets orbiting in the habitable zones of low mass stars such as Proxima Centauri by astrophysicists at the University of Bern show that these planets are most likely to be roughly the size of the Earth and to contain large amounts of water.What might these objects look like? What could they be made of? Yann Alibert and Willy Benz at the Swiss NCCR PlanetS and the Center of Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern carried out the first computer simulations of the formation of planets expected to orbit stars 10 times less massive than the sun.
“Our models succeed in reproducing planets that are similar in terms of mass and period to the ones observed recently,” Alibert says regarding the results of the study, forthcoming as a letter in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. “Interestingly, we find that planets in close-in orbits around these type of stars are of small sizes. Typically, they range between 0.5 and 1.5 Earth radii with a peak at about 1.0 Earth radius. Future discoveries will tell if we are correct,” the researcher adds.
In addition, the astrophysicists determined the water content of the planets orbiting their small host stars in the habitable zone. They found that around 90 percent of the planets harbour more than 10 percent water. For comparison, the Earth has a fraction of water of only about .02 percent. The situation could be even more extreme if the protoplanetary disks in which these planets form persist longer than assumed in the models. In any case, these planets would be covered by very deep oceans at the bottom of which, owing to enormous pressure, water would be in form of ice.
Water is required for life as we know it. So could these planets be habitable? “While liquid water is generally thought to be an essential ingredient, too much of a good thing may be bad,” says Willy Benz. In previous studies, the scientists in Bern showed that too much water may prevent the regulation of the surface temperature and destabilize the climate. “But this is the case for the Earth; here, we deal with considerably more exotic planets that might be subjected to a much harsher radiation environment, and/or be synchronous,” he adds.
To start their calculations, the scientists considered a series of a few hundreds to thousands of identical, low-mass stars, and around each of them, a protoplanetary disk of dust and gas. Planets are formed by accretion of this material. Alibert and Benz assumed that at the beginning, there were 10 planetary embryos in each disk with an initial mass equal to the mass of the moon. In a few day’s computer time for each system, the model calculated how these randomly located embryos grew and migrated. What kind of planets are formed depends on the structure and evolution of the protoplanetary disks.
“Habitable or not, the study of planets orbiting very low-mass stars will likely bring exciting new results, improving our knowledge of planet formation, evolution, and potential habitability,” summarizes Benz. Because these stars are considerably less luminous than the sun, planets can be much closer to their stars before the surface temperature becomes too high for liquid water to exist. Considering that this type of star also represents the overwhelming majority of stars in the solar neighbourhood and that close-in planets are presently easier to detect and study, it is easy to understand why the existence of this population of Earth-like planets is of importance.
The Daily Galaxy via University of Bern
Source: Daily Galaxy
| 1real |
What Does Washington ‘Plan B’ in Syria Really Mean? | The Vineyard of the Saker | 10 Comments on "What Does Washington ‘Plan B’ in Syria Really Mean?" Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text</b> results in bold text <i>italic text</i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. vot tak 4 hours 7 minutes ago
If there is some hesitancy in the israeli-american-eu terrorist ops in Syria, something which I’ve not seen evidence for, I think this may be due to the zionazis being unsure they will be able to force a clinton regime on their american colony. If Trumps wins, they run the risk of exposure if he decides to not go along with israel’s war against Syria.
Western Countries Use Militants to Achieve Own Goals in Syria – Assad’s Aide
“The United States and its western partners are using militants to achieve their goals in Syria and stand behind the collapse of the initiatives on peace settlement, Syrian presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said Saturday.” 1 | 1real |
Syria Is Another Pipeline War | Posted on October 30, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog
By Gaius Publius , a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius , Tumblr and Facebook . Originally published at at Down With Tyranny . GP article archive here .
Proposed pipeline routes through the Middle East to gas markets in Europe. The purple line is the Western-supported Qatar-Turkey pipeline. All of the nations it passes through — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey (all highlighted in red) — have agreed to it … except Syria. The red line is the “Islamic Pipeline” from Iran through Iraq into Syria. See text below for further explanation. (Source: MintPress News ; click to enlarge)
Summary first: We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase.
I’m not sure most Americans have figured out what’s happening in Syria, because so much of what we hear is confusing to us, and really, we know so little of the context for it. Is it an insurgency against a brutal ruler? Is it a group of insurgencies struggling for power in a nearly failed state? Is it a proxy war expressing the territorial and ideological interests of the U.S., Russia, Turkey and Iran?
Or something else?
According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. it is something else — a war between competing national interests to build, or not build, a pipeline to the Mediterranean so natural gas can be exported to Europe. Inconveniently for Syria, that nation lies along an obvious pipeline route.
Which makes it another war between interests for money — something not very hard to understand at all.
Here’s Kennedy’s argument via EcoWatch. This is a long piece, well worth a full read, but I’ll try to present just the relevant sections here.
The Historical Context: Decades of CIA-Sponsored Coups and Counter-Coups in Syria
Kennedy’s introductory section contains an excellent examination of the history of U.S. involvement in Syria starting in the 1950s with the Cold War machinations of the Eisenhower-appointed Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA. Together, they effectively ruled U.S. foreign policy.
Kennedy writes (my emphasis):
Syria: Another Pipeline War
… America’s unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria—obscure to the American people yet well known to Syrians —sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic Jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIS. So long as the American public and policymakers are unaware of this past, further interventions are likely to only compound the crisis. Moreover, our enemies delight in our ignorance.
… [W]e need to look at history from the Syrians’ perspective and particularly the seeds of the current conflict. Long before our 2003 occupation of Iraq triggered the Sunni uprising that has now morphed into the Islamic State, the CIA had nurtured violent Jihadism as a Cold War weapon and freighted U.S./Syrian relationships with toxic baggage.
During the 1950’s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a cold war neutral zone and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab Nationalism—which CIA Director Allan [sic] Dulles equated with communism—particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies which they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA’s Director of Plans, Frank Wisner, and Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in September of 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect.”
The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 —barely a year after the agency’s creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers and crafted a fragile secularist democracy based on the American model. But in March of 1949, Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Kuwaiti, hesitated to approve the Trans Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. In his book, Legacy of Ashes , CIA historian Tim Weiner recounts that in retaliation, the CIA engineered a coup , replacing al-Kuwaiti with the CIA’s handpicked dictator , a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za’im. Al-Za’im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him , 14 weeks into his regime.
Kennedy then details the history of coups and counter-coups in and against Syria, and concludes this section with this:
Thanks in large part to Allan Dulles and the CIA, whose foreign policy intrigues were often directly at odds with the stated policies of our nation, the idealistic path outlined in the Atlantic Charter was the road not taken. In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating CIA’s clandestine mischief in the Mid-East . The so called “Bruce Lovett Report,” to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials.
The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today.” … A parade of Iranian and Syrian dictators, including Bashar al-Assad and his father , have invoked the history of the CIA’s bloody coups as a pretext for their authoritarian rule, repressive tactics and their need for a strong Russian alliance. These stories are therefore well known to the people of Syria and Iran who naturally interpret talk of U.S. intervention in the context of that history.
While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Syrians see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective.
So much for our supposed interest in “humanitarian” intervention in Syria. From a Syrian point of view, it has never been thus. It has been about pipelines since 1949, and they understand that, even if we don’t.
The Current Conflagration
Kennedy then turns to the present, or the near-present. Refer to the map above as you read:
A Pipeline War
In [the Syrians’] view, our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000 when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey .
Qatar shares with Iran, the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo, until recently, prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad and ensured that Qatar’s gas could only reach European markets if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs.
The EU, which gets 30 percent of its gas from Russia, was equally hungry for the pipeline which would have given its members cheap energy and relief from Vladimir Putin’s stifling economic and political leverage. Turkey, Russia’s second largest gas customer, was particularly anxious to end its reliance on its ancient rival and to position itself as the lucrative transect hub for Asian fuels to EU markets. The Qatari pipeline would have benefited Saudi Arabia’s conservative Sunni Monarchy by giving them a foothold in Shia dominated Syria.
The Saudi’s geopolitical goal is to contain the economic and political power of the Kingdom’s principal rival, Iran , a Shiite state, and close ally of Bashar Assad. The Saudi monarchy viewed the U.S. sponsored Shia takeover in Iraq as a demotion to its regional power and was already engaged in a proxy war against Tehran in Yemen, highlighted by the Saudi genocide against the Iranian backed Houthi tribe.
Which puts the Qatari pipeline squarely opposite to Russia’s national interest — natural gas (methane) sales to Europe.
Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin’s view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally.”
That was likely the last straw vis-à-vis the U.S. Which brings us to another pipeline, the so-called “Islamic Pipeline” (see map above):
“Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Mid-East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Another, competing pipeline which would run through Syrian territory, but this time carrying Iranian gas instead of Qatari gas. Thus the demonizing of Assad as evil in the mold of Saddam Hussein, instead of just a run-of-the-mill Middle East autocrat, as bad as some but better than others. Kennedy includes a good section on the history of the al-Assad family’s rule of Syria, including this information from top reporters Sy Hersh and Robert Parry:
According to Hersh, “He certainly wasn’t beheading people every Wednesday like the Saudis do in Mecca.” Another veteran journalist, Bob Parry, echoes that assessment. “No one in the region has clean hands but in the realms of torture, mass killings, civil liberties and supporting terrorism, Assad is much better than the Saudis.”
In September 2013, the Sunni states involved in the Qatar-Turkey pipeline were so determined to remove Syrian opposition to the pipeline that they offered, via John Kerry, to carry the whole cost of an U.S. invasion to topple al-Assad.
Kerry reiterated the offer to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL27): “With respect to Arab countries offering to bear the costs of [an American invasion] to topple Assad, the answer is profoundly Yes, they have. The offer is on the table.”
Obama’s response:
Despite pressure from Republicans, Barrack Obama balked at hiring out young Americans to die as mercenaries for a pipeline conglomerate . Obama wisely ignored Republican clamoring to put ground troops in Syria or to funnel more funding to “moderate insurgents.” But by late 2011, Republican pressure and our Sunni allies had pushed the American government into the fray.
The rest is a history of provocation and over-reaction — a great deal of both — and chaos and death in Syria. Kennedy provides much detail here, at one point adding:
[Syria’s] moderates are fleeing a war that is not their war . They simply want to escape being crushed between the anvil of Assad’s Russian backed tyranny and the vicious Jihadi Sunni hammer that we had a hand in wielding in a global battle over competing pipelines . You can’t blame the Syrian people for not widely embracing a blueprint for their nation minted in either Washington or Moscow. The super powers have left no options for an idealistic future that moderate Syrians might consider fighting for. And no one wants to die for a pipeline.
I’ll leave it there, but again, do read the entire piece if you want to truly understand what’s going on in Syria, and what is about to go on.
Bottom Line
Bottom line, it’s as Kennedy said: “No one wants to die for a pipeline” … but many do and will.
I’ll offer three thoughts. One , if we weren’t so determined to be deeply dependent on fossil fuels, this would be their war, not ours. Two , we are deeply dependent on fossil fuels because of the political machinations of the oil companies, their CEOs, and the banks and hedge funds who fund them, all of whom pay our government officials — via campaign contributions and the revolving door — to prolong that dependence. We’re here because the holders of big oil money want us here.
And three , keep all this in mind during the term of the next president. It will help you make sense of the phony warrior- cum -humanitarian arguments we’re almost certain to be subjected to.
We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase. | 1real |
Clinton condemns 'apparent terrorist attacks' in New Jersey, New York, Minnesota | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Sunday condemned what she called the “apparent terrorist attacks” in Minnesota, New Jersey and New York. The three attacks on Saturday involved a stabbing in a Minnesota mall that wounded nine people, a bombing in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 29 and a pipe bomb explosion in New Jersey. | 0fake |
Attorney general nominee offers careful backing of Obama policies | Attorney general nominee Loretta E. Lynch carefully backed the Obama administration’s policies on immigration and drug enforcement Wednesday, sidestepping political tripwires before lawmakers deeply critical of the department she has been picked to lead.
During an all-day confirmation hearing that highlighted Republican anger with the administration, Lynch declined repeated opportunities to disavow actions taken by the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
Instead, the first African American woman nominated to be attorney general cast herself as a career federal prosecutor determined to uphold the rule of law and willing to provide honest counsel to the president even when he might disagree.
In calm, polished replies, Lynch also acknowledged Republican concerns and pledged to foster a better relationship with lawmakers if confirmed.
“You’re not Eric Holder, are you?” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) asked at one point.
Lynch, 55, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said she supports the use of the death penalty as an effective punishment and considers waterboarding “torture and thus illegal.” She said it was the Justice Department’s job to enforce the laws Congress passes, but when pushed about Holder’s decision not to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act, she said there are “rare instances” when careful analysis of existing laws raises constitutional issues.
Immigration proved to be the most significant flash point during the hearing, with Republicans voicing continuing outrage over the administration’s executive actions.
At the start of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which was interrupted many times as senators left to vote, Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked whether the president could defer deportations “for millions of individuals in the country illegally and grant them permits and other benefits, regardless of what the U.S. Constitution or immigration laws say.”
Lynch said that it was important for the Justice Department to ensure that any executive action be legal but that she was not involved in the decisions leading up to the president’s actions.
Referring to a Justice Department memo on the president’s authority on immigration matters, she said, “I don’t see any reason to doubt the reasonableness of those views.”
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who has said he plans to vote against Lynch, said he was “very disappointed and frustrated” with her responses.
“I have a huge concern regarding what I think is the president’s illegal, unconstitutional executive amnesty, and I have a huge concern of the fact that you think it is within the law,” Vitter said. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) agreed with Vitter and said after the hearing that he will vote against Lynch.
Lynch is the first Obama Cabinet nominee to face a confirmation hearing since Republicans took over the Senate this year. The department she has been selected to oversee has been a regular target of Republicans’ ire on a range of issues, including investigations into the Internal Revenue Service and the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and a botched gun-trafficking operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked his colleagues not to “turn this exceptional nominee into a political point-scoring exercise” by badgering her on immigration and the controversy over the investigation into the IRS.
He described Lynch as “one of the keenest legal minds that our country has to offer, someone who has excelled at every stage of her education and her career, while cultivating a reputation as someone who was level-headed, fair, judicious and eminently likable.”
Holder — whose six-year tenure overshadowed Wednesday’s hearing — had a particularly rocky relationship with Congress. Lynch has chaired the Justice Department committee that advises him on policy decisions.
Among the points of contention between the administration and Congress has been the Justice Department’s policy on marijuana in response to the legalization of the drug in Colorado and Washington state. The department announced that it would not challenge those state laws and said that in prosecutions it would prioritize marijuana offenses such as distribution to minors.
Asked about her own views on marijuana, Lynch said she does not support legalization.
Sessions asked Lynch whether she agreed with a remark made by President Obama — and published last year in the New Yorker magazine — that the drug was no more dangerous than alcohol.
“I certainly don’t hold that view and don’t agree with that view of marijuana,” Lynch said. “I certainly think that the president was speaking from his personal experience and personal opinion, neither of which I’m able to share.”
When pressed on the legality of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance programs, Lynch replied that she believed they were “constitutional and effective.”
If Lynch is confirmed as the 83rd attorney general, she will take the reins of the Justice Department at a moment of high tension between law enforcement and minority communities across the country.
In her testimony, she emphasized her strong bonds with law enforcement and her desire to heal the rifts between police and the communities they are tasked with protecting.
One of her priorities, she said, will be to work to strengthen “the vital relationships between our courageous law enforcement personnel and all the communities we serve.”
“In my career, I have seen this relationship flourish — I have seen law enforcement forge unbreakable bonds with community residents and have seen violence-ravaged communities come together to honor officers who risked all to protect them,” Lynch said. “As attorney general, I will draw all voices into this important discussion.”
Lynch was accompanied by her husband, Stephen Hargrove; her father, the Rev. Lorenzo Lynch, who traveled from Durham, N.C., and sat behind her; and her only surviving brother, Leonzo Lynch, who is a preacher in Charlotte. Her other brother, Lorenzo Jr., a former Navy SEAL, died in 2009. She placed his Navy SEAL trident pin on the witness table in front of her while she testified.
A group of two dozen of Lynch’s fellow U.S. attorneys from across the country were in Washington, watching the hearing together on television from the Justice Department building. In the audience at the hearing was a group of Lynch’s Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters, dressed in bright red.
Lynch told the committee about her family and the values instilled in her by her parents, both from North Carolina.
“My mother, Lorine, who was unable to travel here today, is a retired English teacher and librarian for whom education was the key to a better life,” Lynch said. “She recalls people in her rural community pressing a dime or a quarter into her hands to support her college education. As a young woman, she refused to use segregated restrooms, because they did not represent the America in which she believed.”
“She instilled in me an abiding love of literature and learning, and taught me the value of hard work and sacrifice,” Lynch said.
Lynch’s father, a fourth-generation Baptist preacher, opened his Greensboro church in the early 1960s to those planning sit-ins and marches, standing with the protesters while carrying her on his shoulders.
“As I come before you today in this historic chamber, I still stand on my father’s shoulders, as well as on the shoulders of all those who have gone before me and who dreamed of making the promise of America a reality for all and worked to achieve that goal,” Lynch said. “I believe in the promise of America because I have lived the promise of America.” | 0fake |
Couple defy Hurricane Maria on roof to save pets - lots of them | YAUCO, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Hurricane Maria battered this quiet Puerto Rican outpost and covered it with mud, but it couldn t separate Sandra Harasimowicz from her beloved pets. She and her husband Gary Rosario said they clung to the side of a house for hours last week to save their seven dogs from a hurricane that reduced their picturesque neighborhood in Puerto Rico to a desolate mud pit. Harasimowicz, 43, a native of Poland said the couple were trapped neck-deep in water after Hurricane Maria tore into their home in the southwestern town of Yauco last Wednesday, sending them and their dogs scrambling onto a neighbor s roof to escape. The storm, which has killed at least 10 people across the U.S. territory, turned the couple s street into bed of debris-strewn silt after a nearby river burst its banks. The surging flow entered their house like it was the end of the world, Harasimowicz told Reuters on Monday. Trying to keep the animals close in the hurricane while holding tight to solar panels on the neighbor s roof, Harasimowicz said she watched aghast as one of the dogs jumped four times into the raging torrent that had swamped the street. Each time Rosario, who is Puerto Rican and a national guardsman, leapt in after the errant dog to haul it back to safety. I thought I was going to lose him; he just did it because he s such an animal lover, said Harasimowicz, whose family lives in the city of Poznan in western Poland. I said: That s it, I m losing the animals and I m losing my husband. The mother of two explained how the couple had earlier stashed their eight cats on top of the kitchen cupboards to ride out the storm when the floodwaters started rising to their chins. The couple had already sent their children, aged 6 and 12, to stay with a friend nearby before Maria struck. But after failing to find a refuge for the cats and dogs, Harasimowicz said they felt they should remain there with the animals, in part because they did not believe the storm would be so severe. Basically, we underestimated, Harasimowicz said. Maria knocked out power and telecommunications across the island of 3.4 million, unleashing chaos and disorder that residents believe will take months from which to recover. Residents of the Yauco estate known as Urbanizacion Luchetti returned to find furniture, refrigerators and washing machines had moved around their homes in the mud bath. Floors were caked in a musty-smelling brown sludge. Furnishings were ruined. Everyone says they want to leave here, said neighbor Jose Velazquez, 57, reviewing the mess Maria had made of his home. At the end of the street, the rotting body of a pit bull lay on its side by a house railing, maggots teeming at its neck. Harasimowicz and Rosario returned home Wednesday night when the flooding began to recede, spending the night on top of a bunk bed with their pets. But they were horrified as the waters began rising again. Believing they had no choice in order to survive, the couple broke into a neighbor s house with a hammer so they could occupy its rooftop annex with their pets. By then, they had acquired another dog that had wandered up seeking shelter from the storm. It was either break in or die, said Rosario, a jovial 49-year-old who on Monday was taking stock of his ruined home and the family s gaggle of pets, all of which survived. The couple have bathed and washed their clothes in rainwater collecting on the roof, and are now planning their next move. After 12 years in Puerto Rico - seven of them in Yauco - Harasimowicz said she has had enough. Never again, she said. This is over for me. | 0fake |
Angel Messages For October 31 to November 6, 2016 [Video] | Leave a reply
Doreen Virtue – It’s a week of you getting unstuck and making great progress . . . provided that you listen to and take action upon your inner divine guidance. You are guided to take quiet time for yourself so you can really hear God’s guidance for you, because exciting and positive healings and manifestations are awaiting you.
With the Messages From Your Angels Oracle Cards at http://bit.ly/MessagesCards
SF Source Doreen Virtue | 1real |
TOP OBAMA OFFICIAL: We Find Illegal Aliens But Here’s Why We Don’t Deport Them [Video] | THIS IS MADDENING! We have a president and congress who do nothing but promote illegal entry into America TREASON! The Obama Administration has been releasing thousands of criminal illegal aliens onto our streets. In just the last three years, ICE released 86,288 criminal aliens. Senator Jeff SessionsSenator Jeff Sessions questioning Thomas Homan, the Executive Associate Director, Enforcement And Removal Operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Homan admits they find illegal aliens but cannot deport them because of President Obama, whose policies protect whole classes of illegal aliens.SESSIONS DELIVERS OPENING STATEMENT ON DECLINING DEPORTATIONS AND INCREASING CRIMINAL ALIEN RELEASES WASHINGTON U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and The National Interest, delivered the following statement on the Administration s actions that have resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of aliens removed from the United States over recent years, and thousands of otherwise removable aliens being released from custody: Thank you to everyone for being here today, and thank you to Senator Blumenthal for serving as ranking member.First I d like to extend my condolences to the Director of ICE, Sarah Salda a, and her family on their recent, tragic loss. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them during this difficult time.Throughout its tenure, the Obama Administration has made numerous public statements, issued multiple memoranda, and represented in testimony before Congress that it has limited resources and therefore can remove only a certain number and category of illegal aliens. Specifically, the Administration repeatedly claimed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had the resources to deport only approximately 400,000 illegal aliens from the United States each year.So, their reasoning went, they were compelled to focus on criminal illegal aliens and other aliens who pose threats to the country s security. Because of this focus, the President argued he had no choice but to grant executive amnesty to millions of illegal aliens which would allow them to stay in the country and obtain work permits and other federal benefits.Yet, as we will examine in today s hearing, rather than truly prioritizing the removal of certain types of illegal aliens over others, the Obama Administration has simply refused to execute the laws passed by Congress and signed into law.It has ordered immigration law enforcement officers to ignore plain law and acquiesce to the presence of millions of illegal aliens in the United States, including criminals and those who have already been ordered deported to leave the country.If the Obama Administration was truly prioritizing the removal of certain illegal aliens over others, it would be reasonable to assume that with the same or more resources, the number of deportations would remain relatively steady each year.However, the simple fact is that since these policies were implemented, deportations have plummeted particularly deportations from the interior of the country as opposed to the border and most sharply under guidelines issued by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson in November 2014.As this dramatic decline has occurred, Congress has increased funding each year for the purpose of immigration enforcement.This is not prioritization and this is not prosecutorial discretion. This is a total refusal to carry out the laws passed by Congress that the Constitution obliges the President to faithfully execute.Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has been releasing thousands of criminal illegal aliens onto our streets. In just the last three years, ICE released 86,288 criminal aliens.At the same time, the Administration touts the decrease in the number of apprehensions at the border as a sign of border security. But as we will hear in testimony today, we simply do not apprehend every illegal alien who crosses the southern border. Not even close. Moreover, we are seeing near-record levels of certain categories of aliens unaccompanied alien minors and family units who face no chance of actually being deported under this Administration. This simply sends a message that anybody, anywhere in the world, if they can get into the United States across our southern border, for example, they will be allowed to stay in the country. Other than Mexico, they re allowed to stay in the country. And that is why so many are coming. It s not the law that s on the books, but the policies that are being carried out at our border. This is not how the immigration system was intended to work, it s not how the immigration system must work, this is a lawless policy and it has to be ended.So today s hearing will focus on a central claim the Obama Administration makes to excuse its lawless immigration policies namely that limited resources compelled the implementation of its lawless immigration policies. We will also assess the impact of this lawlessness on the integrity, the very moral foundation of our immigration system. If it s not properly executed and carried out, it has no integrity and it lacks morality.This Administration for too long has been trying to hide from the American people the true nature of what it has been doing. Today, we will set the record straight. Efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity are essential in this government. The taxpayers don t spend money for ICE and the border patrol to have supervisors somehow keep the officers from doing their duty. Accountability is critical. Congress has a duty to ensure accountability of the agencies it supervises, and that is what we will do today. | 1real |
WikiLeaks Initiates Phase 3: The Dump That Will Take Hillary Down | WikiLeaks Initiates Phase 3: The Dump That Will Take Hillary Down Dawn Parabellum Corrupt democrat, Hillary Clinton
WikiLeaks is putting Hillary Clinton and the corrupt Democrats who surround her on notice. With a warning sounded last night about the initiation of “phase 3” from the website, which has been leaking devastating emails about Hillary’s insiders, the “election dump” promises to be the one that brings her to her knees.
Wikileaks announced on Twitter that it would soon launch “phase three of [its] election coverage.” The tweet also asked those who wish to see more dumps to donate to the site to assist with their funding. The tweet read, “We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week.” We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: https://t.co/MsNZhrTzTL @WLTaskForce pic.twitter.com/XferJnMGux
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 30, 2016
This dump is supposed to be even more damaging to the already flailing political career of Hillary Clinton. Wikileaks supporters now include a number of disgruntled Republican voters and Bernie Sanders supporters.
Immediately after the site announced this dump, several WikiLeaks followers replied with tweets expressing hope that phase three would ultimately damage Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton ‘s campaign for good. However, some expressed concern that it could be too little, too late. @wikileaks @WLTaskForce by next week, I assume you mean tomorrow, and not 3 days before the election. Near 30%+ in some states already voted
— Mel (@melimel521) October 30, 2016
New archives of emails released to the public would definitely devastate the Clinton campaign even further, and after the FBI’s announcement that they will reopen the investigation against Hillary, it could be the straw which breaks the camel’s back.
So far, no amount of corruption or criminal activity has gotten devout Democrat voters to see Hillary for who she is: a power hungry sociopath. She has been caught rigging elections across the globe and cheating to get the Democrat nomination. It’s even been proven, thanks to WikiLeaks, that she cheated during the debates against Donald Trump .
There is some speculation that the emails released this time won’t all be Hillary Clinton related, eluding to the possibility of even more Democrats and their corruption being exposed. Hillary Clinton’s rigged podium helped her cheat during the debates with Donald Trump
Hackers who have taken responsibility for the hacks of John Podesta’s emails may have more up their sleeves. Guccifer 2.0, who claims to be a lone Romanian male, was also involved in the hack on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Hopefully, these leaks will finally get Democrat voters to realize who they have been bowing down to over the past few years. Accessing the leaked emails is not difficult, in fact, I personally check the new dumps daily. If Democrats cared half as much about honesty and integrity as they did about making sure we have the first female president, Hillary would already be no more than a stain on American history. | 1real |
Highlights: The Trump presidency on January 27 at 2:43 PM EST/1943 GMT | (Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday: U.S.-BRITAIN Trump says he wants good relations with Russia and declined to say whether he was ready to lift sanctions on Moscow, which visiting British Prime Minister Theresa May said must stay in place. U.S.-MEXICO A day after Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled a Washington trip, Trump says they had a friendly phone call but asserted he will renegotiate trade deals and other aspects of the countries’ ties because Mexico has “beat us to a pulp” in the past. The White House says that Trump and Pena Nieto recognized their differences on Trump’s plan to build a wall on the southern U.S. border but have agreed to “work these differences out.” Trump is poised to sign an executive order on Friday to temporarily halt refugees from some Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, a White House official says. Trump’s executive order taking away federal funding from “sanctuary cities” has an exemption for one of his favorite constituencies, the police, who would be protected from cuts. But opponents say that could be grounds for a legal challenge. U.S.-RUSSIA Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are likely to discuss the sanctions that Washington imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine when the two leaders speak by telephone on Saturday, a senior White House aide says. U.S. Senator John McCain, addressing speculation about lifting sanctions, hopes the administration will reject that “reckless course” and calls Putin a murderer and thug. Vice President Mike Pence fires up tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists in Washington for the 44th March for Life, celebrating a political shift in their favor with Trump’s election. U.S.-U.N. Nikki Haley, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, pledges to overhaul the world body and warns U.S. allies that if they do not support Washington, then she is “taking names” and will respond. Trump’s move to revive the Keystone XL oil pipeline is part of his plan to boost U.S. drillers and create new U.S. jobs, but the project’s biggest winners may be Canadian. Vice President Mike Pence reportedly tells Republicans a “full evaluation of voting rules” will likely be part of the Trump administration’s investigation into what the president claims is widespread voting fraud. | 0fake |
Obama opens up on Iran: What he's learned about war, Republicans, and his foreign policy | Toward the end of our meeting with President Obama, one of us asked whether the Iran nuclear deal might change the future of that country's poisonously anti-American politics, and Obama drifted from the technical and political details he'd otherwise focused on into something of a more reflective tone.
"I just don’t know," he said, leaning back a bit in his chair for the first time since he'd arrived. "When Nixon went to China, Mao was still in power. He had no idea how that was going to play out.
"He didn’t know that Deng Xiaoping would suddenly come in and decide that it doesn’t matter what color the cat is as long as it catches mice, and the next thing you know you’ve got this state capitalism on the march," Obama said, paraphrasing the famous aphorism by Mao's successor that capitalistic policies were acceptable if they helped China. "You couldn’t anticipate that."
It was surprising to hear Obama, normally more restrained in how he discusses the Iran nuclear deal, refer to it, however cautiously, as a moment when the arc of history might curve.
It was one of several interesting moments during an intimate 90-minute meeting Obama held with 10 journalists in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on Wednesday. What follows is a description of that conversation and what it reveals about how the president sees the nuclear deal and the larger problems of the Middle East, as well as the opposition to the deal, a subject he returned to frequently and at times with a visceral frustration that seemed to verge on disgust.
But Obama's primary message was one of certainty. That the meeting was on the record — such gatherings, a routine event at the White House, are normally off the record — spoke to this, as did his easy manner and his eagerness to discuss fine-grained details of the deal, as well as criticisms.
"Of all the foreign policy issues that I've addressed since I've been president," he said, "I've never been more certain that this is sound policy, that it's the right thing to do for the United States, that it's the right thing to do for our allies."
Since world powers had reached the agreement on limiting Iran's nuclear program, three weeks earlier in Vienna, Obama has calibrated his remarks on the deal to a narrow political mission: Get it enough support to get past Congress. That has meant emphasizing only ways in which the deal will serve US (and Israeli) security interests to limit Iran's nuclear program, and downplaying everything else.
To hear him draw a connection between the nuclear deal and China's transformation, then, was striking. It suggested that Obama, though he has repeatedly insisted he does not expect the character of Iran's regime to change, does see it as a possibility, one potentially significant enough that it evokes, at least in his mind, President Nixon's historic trip to China.
At the same time, the lesson Obama seemed to draw from the comparison was not that he, too, was on the verge of making history, but rather that transformations like China's under Deng, opportunities like Nixon's trip, can have both causes and consequences that are impossible to foresee. His role, he said, was to find "openings" for such moments.
He cited his 2012 trip to Myanmar — the first ever by a sitting president, and part of his effort to reopen the dictatorship to the world — and his detente with Cuba.
With regards to Myanmar, also known as Burma, "we still don’t know yet how that experiment plays itself out," he said. In listing Myanmar's reforms since his trip, he mistakenly referred to dissident Aung San Suu Kyi running for president — in fact, the regime has barred her from running — before realizing his error and correcting himself. It was an unintentionally revealing comment, hinting at the ways that reforms can reverse and "openings" can close.
"We don’t know whether it’s going to get over the hump and suddenly Burma is completely transformed, or whether it retrenches as the generals in that country get scared about losing their privileges and prerogatives," he went on. "But what we’ve done is we’ve created a possibility for change."
His point seemed to be that he could imagine such a possibility for an opening in Iran as well, though the results were uncertain. He said of Iran's future, echoing his point about Myanmar, "We don’t know how it’s going to play itself out."
From there, Obama drifted back to discussing what he had brought us to the White House to discuss, which was his case for the Iran nuclear deal, which meant reasserting, as he had many times before, that the deal did not assume Iran's good behavior on nuclear issues but rather that it was a means for enforcing it.
He was careful at all times not to premise the deal on Iran's good intentions, much less the country undergoing any sort of transformation. Still, in that unguarded moment, he seemed to suggest a hope that the deal could help create "a possibility for change" all the same.
Several times, Obama was asked — and resisted answering — a simple question: What is his plan if the deal falls apart?
Congress, for example, could block the deal, something that looked more possible by Friday, when Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer announced he would oppose it. Yet while Obama was eager to talk about why killing the deal would be bad, all the ways that it would allow Iran's nuclear program to proceed and set back US foreign policy, he refused to say what he would do if that happened. At one point, when one of the journalists present began asking about his plan B, Obama cut him off, joking that he wanted to save the journalist from wasting his question.
Politically, it's understandable that he'd refuse to answer: if he says he has no Plan B, he would look foolish, but if he says he has a good plan B, he would make it easier for Republicans to justify killing the deal. Yet it's an important question.
The closest he got to providing an answer was when he was challenged on whether the only alternative to the deal was really war, as he's frequently asserted. He did not describe a clear plan B, but he did rule out a number of options.
"I do not say that a military option is inevitable just to be provocative, just to win the argument. Those are the dictates of cold, hard logic," he said.
If Congress killed the deal, "doubling down on unilateral sanctions" against Iran would not be enough, he said, to get another deal. And he was "quite certain" that it would not be possible to "force our P5+1 partners [the world powers that are party to the nuclear deal] or other countries, like India or South Korea or even Japan" to go along with Congress's demand to set a new, higher bar for what the nuclear deal has to accomplish.
If that happens, he said, "we’ve sort of run out of options at that point. ... At minimum, what we’ve done is we’ve put Iran in the driver’s seat." In one scenario, he said, Iran could pull out of the deal and resume its nuclear development immediately: "The scenario that everybody talks about happening 15 years from now happens six, nine, 12 months from now."
In another scenario, Iran would declare its intention to abide by the deal. Sanctions would fall away, Russia and China would exploit the opening to hijack the process, and the US would possibly, he said, be excluded from the inspections regime and enforcement systems set up by the deal. In other words, the US would get shut out of the very process of monitoring Iran's behavior that it had set up.
"In that scenario, then, Iran is going to get some of that sanction relief anyway, and our credibility in terms of now being able to exercise any influence on how the Security Council thinks about this thing has been completely eroded," he said. "I’d have to talk to the lawyers as to what standing we would even have, since Congress would have rejected this deal, for us to be a party to it, in which case we’re not in the room, potentially."
Any of these, he said, would make it easier for Iran to grow its nuclear program and harder for the US to do anything about it: "In almost every scenario, our ability to monitor what’s happening in Iran, our ability to ensure that they are not breaking out, our ability to inspect their facilities, our ability to force them to abide by the deal has gone out the window."
Obama would not spell out what he planned to do in such a scenario, but he did say he would try to piece together a new sanctions coalition, though he was not optimistic about it. "Maybe it’s possible that for a certain period of time we can hang on to the Europeans — not certain; maybe. Maybe we can twist some arms to have some of our Asian allies hang on," he said. | 0fake |
Not Just Hillary, Entire Obama Administration Exposed for Using Private Email to Avoid FOIA Requests | By Jack Burns WikiLeaks is helping President Obama keep his 2008 campaign promise — to be the most transparent administration in U.S. history — whether he likes... | 1real |
Police Official Found Dead on Long Island, and Suicide Is Suspected - The New York Times | A New York City police official was found dead on Friday in a car on Long Island, where he is believed to have shot himself, the authorities said. The official, Inspector Michael Ameri, the commanding officer of the Police Department’s Highway District, was found in Suffolk County with what appeared to be a gunshot wound, Stephen P. Davis, the department’s top spokesman, said in a statement. The authorities in Suffolk County said detectives were investigating a death that was reported shortly before 1 p. m. in Babylon. Inspector Ameri, 44, was a friend of Deputy Inspector James Grant, the commander of the 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, who had been reassigned as part of a wave of discipline amid a sprawling federal inquiry into municipal corruption in New York. Inspector Grant was placed on modified duty last month. There has been no indication that Inspector Ameri was under investigation. It was unclear whether investigators were seeking Inspector Ameri’s cooperation with their inquiry focused on Inspector Grant. Mr. Davis declined to comment on the investigation. “We’ve consistently said this is an ongoing investigation and we would not comment whatsoever,” he said. A law enforcement official said that as of Friday, Inspector Ameri’s duty status had not changed. On Friday evening, police cars were parked in front of Inspector Ameri’s home in West Babylon. Inspector Ameri was the commanding officer of the 78th Precinct in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, from 2011 to July 2014, when he left to lead the Highway District. “We are saddened to learn of the passing of Inspector Michael Ameri,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with his family during this difficult time. ” City Hall officials said that Mr. de Blasio knew Inspector Ameri in passing from the time when the inspector was commander of the 78th Precinct. Roy T. Richter, the president of the union that represents police captains, inspectors and deputy chiefs, said the group was “heartbroken” by Inspector Ameri’s death and asked “that you keep his family in your prayers during this traumatic time. ” “Inspector Ameri is known as a dedicated police officer who excelled in all of his command assignments,” he said. | 0fake |
U.S. lawmakers push Yucca nuclear dump facing transport crunch | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday debated resurrecting the stalled Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel dump in Nevada, a project critics say is hindered by the lack of an easy transport route. Representative John Shimkus, an Illinois Republican, has proposed draft legislation to restart the licensing of Yucca Mountain. The government has already spent billions of dollars for initial construction of the project, which has been pending since Ronald Reagan was president. Former President Barack Obama opposed Yucca and stopped its licensing process in 2010. But President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget provides $120 million to restart licensing and for development of interim nuclear waste sites until Yucca can be completed. More details about the Trump administration’s support of Yucca could come when a broader budget is released in May. Currently, spent nuclear fuel, which can be deadly if left unshielded, is stored at reactors across the country, first in cooling ponds and then in thick casks. The Yucca site itself, about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Las Vegas, faces a cumbersome and costly licensing process that could take years to complete and questions from critics about how long spent fuel can remain without radiation leaking into an aquifer. Yucca supporters say there is little groundwater at the desert site and what is there is contained by barriers and does not flow to any river or drinking water supply. An even trickier problem will be getting the spent fuel to Yucca Mountain safely by train and truck from nuclear reactors sites all across the country. “Transportation is the Achilles heel of the Yucca Mountain repository site,” said Bob Halstead, the head of Nevada’s agency for nuclear projects. One train route studied by the Department of Energy, known as Caliente, has been at least partially blocked by Obama’s 2015 designation of a national monument called Basin and Range. Another route, known as Mina, is opposed by the Walker River tribe, which withdrew permission in 2007 for the government to ship waste through its reservation. Many casino owners and gaming associations also oppose the transport of spent nuclear fuel near the city of Las Vegas, saying publicity about the shipments could harm property values and tourism. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has pointed out that nuclear waste has been transported safely in the country for more than 40 years, which Yucca backers are quick to cite. Shimkus, whose state of Illinois has more reactors than any other, says Yucca is ideal because of its remoteness. There are no nuclear power reactors in Nevada, and the state’s entire Congressional delegation, which includes members of both parties, opposes Yucca. Representative Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, said a major accident would harm human health, cost hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs, and damage the Las Vegas economy. “Do you honestly believe that shipping over 5,000 truck casks of high-level nuclear waste over a span of 50 years won’t result in at least one radiological accident?” Rosen said at the hearing. The bill contains a measure directing the energy secretary to consider routes avoiding Las Vegas. But the provision is unenforceable under existing laws, Halstead said. Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican, met with Energy Secretary Rick Perry in Washington on Wednesday. Sandoval said he reiterated his opposition to Yucca and urged Perry to explore a “realistic, safe alternative,” to the U.S. nuclear waste problem. | 0fake |
Former FBI chief Mueller appointed to probe Trump-Russia ties | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department, in the face of rising pressure from Capitol Hill, named former FBI chief Robert Mueller on Wednesday as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow. The move followed a week in which the White House was thrown into uproar after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Democrats and some of the president’s fellow Republicans had demanded an independent probe of whether Russia tried to sway the outcome of November’s election in favor of Trump and against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump, whose anger over the allegations has grown in recent weeks, took the news calmly and used it to rally his team to unite, move on and refocus on his stalled agenda, a senior White House official said. “We are all in this together,” Trump told his team, the official said. Trump said in a statement after the Justice Department announcement he looked forward to a quick resolution. “As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know - there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity,” he said. Mueller said in a statement tweeted by CBS News: “I accept this responsibility and will discharge it to the best of my ability.” Trump, who said in a speech earlier on Wednesday that no politician in history “has been treated worse or more unfairly,” has long bristled at the notion that Russia played any role in his election victory. The Russia issue has, however, clouded his early months in office. Moscow has denied the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that it meddled in the campaign. Pressure on the White House intensified after Trump fired Comey, who had been leading a federal probe into the matter, and allegations that Trump had asked Comey to end the FBI investigation into ties between Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and Russia. That raised questions about whether the president improperly attempted to interfere with a federal investigation. The issue spilled over onto Wall Street on Wednesday, where the S&P 500 and the Dow had their biggest one-day declines since September as investor hopes for tax cuts and other pro-business policies faded amid the political tumult. The Justice Department announcement came after the market close. “My decision (to appoint a special counsel) is not the finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement announcing the special counsel. “I determined that a special counsel is necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome,” he said. Trump heard about Mueller’s appointment from his White House lawyer Don McGahn about 25 minutes before it was made public, the senior White House official said. Trump assembled his inner circle in the Oval Office - Vice President Mike Pence, chief of staff Reince Preibus, economic adviser Gary Cohn, senior strategist Steve Bannon, and others - and gave them a pep talk, dictating the statement that was soon released. Trump told them the appointment would allow them to refer questions to Mueller, giving them space to focus on policies such as tax reform. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill generally welcomed the Justice Department action and praised Mueller for his integrity, but House and Senate Republican leaders said they would go on with their own investigations of the Russia matter. “A special counsel is very much needed in this situation and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein has done the right thing,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said he was confident Mueller “will conduct a thorough and fair investigation.” A discordant note was sounded by Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, who praised Mueller’s credentials but said: “I don’t think they should have appointed someone.” “I have not seen any evidence of actual collusion. Where is the actual crime that they think they need a special prosecutor to prosecute,” Chaffetz told Fox News. Mueller, 72, was decorated as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War. A former federal prosecutor, he is known for his tough, no-nonsense managerial style. Appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, he became FBI director one week before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was asked by Democratic President Barack Obama in 2011 to stay on for two more years and was replaced by Comey in 2013. Mueller was credited with transforming the FBI, putting more resources into counterterrorism investigations and improving its cooperation with other U.S. government agencies. Although Mueller will serve at the pleasure of Rosenstein, the job comes with independence and autonomy. Some past independent investigations have stretched for years. Kenneth Starr, who investigated former President Bill Clinton, probed allegations surrounding Clinton’s past real estate deals but later expanded the inquiry into his relations with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky, leading to Clinton’s impeachment by the House. The White House was conducting interviews on Wednesday of candidates to replace Comey as head of the FBI. A senior administration official said former Democratic vice presidential candidate and Senator Joe Lieberman, one of those interviewed by Trump, was among the leading candidates. Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, said others being interviewed were acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating and former senior FBI official Richard McFeely. | 0fake |
ALL WHITES IN BACK…Democrats Prove Their Obsession With Race In One RIDICULOUS Photo | Nothing says embracing diversity like dividing interns by color and kicking the white interns to the back of the photo.It s pretty fitting that the race obsessed US Rep. from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee would post such a telling photo on Twitter The Democratic Interns on Capitol Hill 2016 #DemInternSelfie pic.twitter.com/ZzUMl4hKoc Sheila Jackson Lee (@JacksonLeeTX18) July 20, 2016The photo of Dem interns was supposed to be in response to a Paul Ryan selfie that the Democrats, who can never see past the color of one s skin, posted to show how much more diverse they are.So diversity is kicking White interns to the back of the photo?H/T Weasel ZippersSomething about this picture is eerily similar to the picture taken of the crowd taken that exposed the segregation of women and men during London s new Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan s speech on the benefits of Britain sticking with the EU. The Muslim women were noticeably segregated from the men as the photo showed them standing behind the men like second class citizens.The Left is all for diversity, as long as it s their kind of diversity | 1real |
Myanmar tells U.N. Rohingya refugees can return from Bangladesh | GENEVA (Reuters) - Myanmar told the United Nations refugee agency on Monday its top priority was to bring back Rohingyas who have fled to Bangladesh, but much work was needed to consolidate stability in its troubled northern region of Rakhine. Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Monday to set up a working group to plan the repatriation of more than half a million Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled to Bangladesh to escape an army crackdown, the Bangladeshi foreign minister said. Win Myat Aye, Myanmar s Union Minister, Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, addressed the U.N. refugee agency s (UNHCR) Executive Committee after U.N. refugee chief Filippo Grandi called for resolving issues related to Rohingya citizenship and rights. Our next immediate priority is to bring back the refugees who have fled to Bangladesh, Win Myat Aye told the Geneva forum. The repatriation process can start any time for those who wish to return to Myanmar. The verification of refugees will be based on the agreement between the Myanmar and Bangladesh governments in 1993, he said. Those who have been verified as refugees from this country will be accepted without any problem and with full assurance of their security and their access to human dignity. The status of Rohingya remains unsettled in Myanmar where they are denied citizenship and classified as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots in Myanmar that go back centuries, with communities marginalized and subjected to bouts of communal violence over the years. Many refugees are gloomy about the prospects of going back to Buddhist-majority Myanmar, fearing they will not be able to furnish the documents they anticipate the government will demand to prove they have a right to return. Win Myat Aye accused terrorist organizations of launching coordinated attacks on police posts on Aug. 25 that sparked the exodus. He said in addition to a humanitarian perspective, handling the situation also required considerations from security and political angles . Although the security situation has improved in the affected areas and (there has been) no more armed clashes since Sept. 5, much needs to be done to consolidate the stability in the region, he said. Giving preferential treatment to one group in terms of providing humanitarian assistance or media advocacy could worsen the sentiment of the other group, he said. | 0fake |
Fight over Alaska Arctic drilling has just begun, opponents vow | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, won a decades-long battle on Wednesday to open part of an Arctic wildlife reserve in her state to oil and gas drilling, but Democratic senators and conservationists vow the war has only begun. The tax bill passed by Congress contains language pushed by Murkowski and supported by President Donald Trump to hold two lease sales in the 1.5 million-acre (600,000-hectare) 1002 area on the northern coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. Democrats and environmentalists deplore the prospect of development in ANWR, home to polar and grizzly bears, 200 species of birds, and where Gwich’in natives depend on migrating herds of porcupine caribou. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, said the fight over the drilling was not over. “In fact I would say today is the beginning,” said Cantwell adding that Democrats would make sure the Trump administration follows all environmental laws before allowing drilling. Murkowski said ANWR oil would provide jobs, reduce U.S. imports of crude and help fill the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a source of oil for the U.S. West Coast. The pipeline is now operating at a quarter of its capacity, after Alaskan production slumped in recent years. Trump, expected to quickly sign the tax bill into law, said he had not been aware that fellow Republican politicians had long been trying to get at the oil in ANWR. “A friend of mine who is in the oil business said: ‘I can’t believe it. ANWR. They’ve been trying get it for 40 years,’” Trump said at the start of a Cabinet meeting. Trump said opening ANWR, a move supported by some members of the native Iñupiat tribe, would put the country, already the world’s top oil and natural gas producer, at a new level. But environmentalists said there were many stages, such as applications by companies to conduct seismic tests in the refuge, at which they could block drillers with lawsuits over endangered species and other environmental laws. Suzanne Bostrom, a lawyer at Trustees for Alaska, a nonprofit environmental law firm, said opponents would scrutinize applications by energy companies for exploration, development, leasing and oil and gas production. “We will be working every step of the way to make sure that the coastal plain is protected,” said Bostrom. The Interior Department will carry out environmental reviews of the lease sales, one to be held within four years and another within seven years, that opponents will track. Environmental lawyers have had success in stopping drilling in the harsh and frigid Arctic. In 2015, Royal Dutch Shell ended a $7 billion quest to find oil offshore Alaska partly because environmental groups uncovered a little-known law that limited the number of drilling wells. Analysts at British bank Barclays said environmentalists could delay the lease sales and project approvals and “may discourage investment” entirely. Still, the bank said if new surveys show promising ANWR deposits, the region could attract producers that drill in frontier regions in Latin America and the Middle East. Senator Edward Markey, a longtime opponent of Arctic drilling, said the Republican tactic of including the drilling in a bill that only needed 50 votes in the Senate could backfire and help Democrats pick up seats in the 2018 congressional elections. Nobody knows how much oil the refuge contains, but the U.S. Geological Survey estimated in 1998 that the 1002 area held about 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable crude. But a global oil glut that has kept domestic oil prices at levels below $60 a barrel may prevent wide success in ANWR. In a lease sale this month for land in Arctic Alaska, less than 1 percent of the 10.3 million acres (4.2 million hectares) received bids from oil companies. | 0fake |
Putin, security council discuss keeping Russia air force presence in Syria | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the country’s security council on Friday and discussed keeping Russia’s air force presence in Syria following the U.S. missile strikes, the Kremlin said. “The meeting expressed deep concern about the unavoidable negative consequences stemming from the aggressive action for the fight against global terrorism,” it said in a statement. It added that the council had discussed keeping a Russian airforce presence in Syria to support the anti-terrorist operations of the Syrian army. | 0fake |
House Speaker Ryan urges conservative unity in election year | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday called on his fellow conservatives to unify in an election year, warning them to refrain from the kind of infighting that frustrated and eventually drove out his predecessor, the more moderate John Boehner. Ryan, in remarks to Heritage Action, one of the influential conservative groups that vexed Boehner with constant demands for more spending curbs and smaller government, said divisions among Republicans played into the hands of Democrats. “Let’s not fight over tactics. Don’t impugn people’s motives,” said Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who took over the top post in the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives last October. But as he spoke, discontent was brewing among conservative Republicans in the House over the U.S. budget for the coming year. Late last year, more than 160 Republicans out of 246 voted against a two-year budget deal Boehner reached with the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama. On Wednesday, Ryan did not mention Boehner by name. He urged conservatives not to use their disagreements, including over appropriations, as a litmus test for supporting each other. “It’s fine if you disagree ... But we can’t let how someone votes on an amendment to an appropriations bill define what it means to be a conservative,” Ryan said. He cautioned conservatives against standing in “a circular firing squad.” Heritage Action is an affiliate of the conservative Heritage Foundation research group. Boehner blamed such outside groups for pushing him into a 16-day government shutdown in 2013. He retired last September, weary from fighting with more conservative members who have increased their numbers in the chamber in the past few years. Ryan could soon see Republican unity tested over decisions on fiscal policy, also a theme in the campaign for the November presidential election. The budget deal reached late last year exceeded strict spending caps by $80 billion over two years, to pump up defense and domestic programs. It is to be used as a framework for budget and appropriations legislation this year. Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus did not vote for it. Ryan, trying to allay concerns, hosted the Freedom Caucus in his office Tuesday evening for “‘budget and beers,’” a spokeswoman said. Freedom Caucus member Representative John Fleming of Louisiana said the meeting was cordial, with Ryan listening to the group’s objections to higher spending. “We didn’t walk out with any agreements,” Fleming said. Also on Tuesday, Obama and Ryan had their first formal meeting as they search for areas where they may be able to overcome policy differences. | 0fake |
Trump says unnamed country plans to build, expand five U.S. auto plants | INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Wednesday an unnamed foreign leader told him at the United Nations last week that the country would soon announce plans to build or expand five automobile industry factories in the United States. “I just left the United Nations last week and I was told by one of the most powerful leaders of the world that they are going to be announcing in the not too distant future five major factories in the United States, between increasing and new, five,” Trump said in a speech on tax reform in Indianapolis. He added the factories were in the automotive industry. Trump did not name the country or its leader. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and 12 other leaders in New York at the U.N. General Assembly meeting last week, but did not meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel who was in Germany ahead of an election. Automakers in Japan and Germany have both announced investments in the United States this year, with companies coming under pressure from Trump’s bid to curb imports and hire more workers to build cars and trucks in the U.S. Investments to expand U.S. vehicle production capacity also reflect intensified competition for market share in the world’s most profitable vehicle market. In August, Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said it would build a $1.6 billion U.S. assembly plant with Mazda Motor Corp (7261.T). Toyota also said this week it was investing nearly $375 million in five U.S. manufacturing plants to support U.S. production of hybrid powertrains. Last week, German automaker Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE) said it would spend $1 billion to expand its Mercedes Benz operations near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to produce batteries and electric sport utility vehicles and create more than 600 jobs. Rival German luxury automaker BMW AG (BMWG.DE) said in June it would expand its U.S. factory in South Carolina, adding 1,000 jobs. And last month, Volkswagen AG’s (VOWG_p.DE) brand president Herbert Diess said the company expected to bring electric SUV production to the United States and could add production at its Tennessee plant. | 0fake |
Can Trump Deliver What Obama Didn’t? “People Wanted Major Change In 2008… They Still Want It” |
This article was written by Michael Krieger and originally published at his Liberty Blitzkrieg site .
Editor’s Comment: At the heart of things, Americans are fed up with the economic state of affairs, and with the political/financial corruption that brought us to that point. Though political philosophies differ greatly, there was a huge populist movement behind Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both. There are millions and millions of people who want nothing more than to clean house in Washington, stop the people who are shafting them, and be left alone to enjoy their lives.
People feel so strongly about this that they have been overwhelmingly willing to support completely unknown and fresh faces (like Obama was in 2008), politically inexperienced (like Trump) and politically ostracized figures in the margins of the existing government (like Bernie or Ron Paul). Donald Trump has the opportunity to embody this sentiment of the people and be a great president. As Michael notes in this article, Obama had that same opportunity, but proved to be a tool of the elite, and a puppet for Wall Street, et al.
Will Trump prove to be a tool of the elites as well? It is simply too early to say. In the best case scenario, he could break ties with the controllers for the sake of his own legacy and the American people and actually take an honest shot at downsizing the mess of Washington’s mismanaged control over our lives… Its a Herculean task, but if he attracts some/any of the right people, it may be possible. Let’s hope so…
Americans Roll the Dice With President Donald Trump
by Michael Krieger
The forgotten men and roomen of our country will be forgotten no longer.
– President elect Donald Trump in his victory speech
They said it couldn’t happen, but those of us who have been intimately studying what’s been going on since the financial crisis knew he could win. So here we are, in the midst of a historical populist revolt that brought a man who has never held public office to the Presidency.
I have so many thoughts to share, putting them down in a coherent manner within a single post is going to be a real challenge. As such, I’ve decided to separate this piece into sections. Let’s start with the following.
What Happened?
This one’s pretty easy. In Monday’s post, Final Thoughts on the U.S. Presidential Election , I wrote:
The bigger question is, who do I think will win? On that question, I don’t have a strong opinion at the moment. Ultimately, it depends on whether Americans go into the voting booth and see status quo vs. blowing up the status quo, or if they see Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton. If they see the former, odds are in Trump’s favor. If they see the latter, it’s a matter of which personality Americans find least repulsive.
It turns out enough Americans saw the election as a referendum on the status quo to propel him to victory. We know it wasn’t because people liked him personally, they just wanted to (understandably) blow up the establishment. So why am I so confident of this?
Let’s take a look at some of the following reported by the AP :
There were grim strains woven into voter sentiments as they cast their ballots.
Nearly 7 in 10 voters said they were unhappy with the way the government is working, including a quarter who were outright angry.
Six in 10 voters said the country is seriously on the wrong track and about the same number said the economy was either not good or poor.
Two-thirds saw their personal financial situation as either worse or the same as it was four years ago. One in three voters said they expect life to be worse for the next generation.
Americans held their noses as they picked between the candidates: More than half of voters cast their ballots with reservations about their candidate or because they disliked the others running.
That was true both for those backing Trump and those supporting Clinton, the exit polls showed.
After a long, hard-fought campaign, just 4 out of 10 voters strongly favored their candidate.
Moreover, how about this from Reuters :
Americans who had cast their votes for the next president early on Tuesday appeared to be worried about the direction of the country, and were looking for a “strong leader who can take the country back from the rich and powerful,” according to an early reading from the Reuters/Ipsos national Election Day poll.
Again, none of this is surprising to those of us who are aware of the ever increasing levels of theft, corruption and fraud now endemic to the U.S. economy. Indeed, the man who should have been the Democratic nominee for President laid it out perfectly all the way back in July 2015 when he tweeted:
I think the discontent of the American people is far, far greater than the pundits understand.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 8, 2015
The driving force behind Trump’s victory wasn’t racism, homophobia or sexism. This is a country that elected a black man President twice in a row. The driving force was desperation, economic angst, hopelessness, and more than anything else, a deep hatred for the U.S. status quo. As Trump accurately described the voters who put him over the top, they are “ the forgotten men and women.”
A Historic Opportunity
Donald Trump has a historic opportunity to be a great President. Barack Obama was presented with a similar opportunity eight years ago and he immediately squandered it by surrounding himself with miserable, status quo economic and foreign policy insiders. He ditched the people who believed in him and voted for him, and in doing so cemented his legacy as that of a man who coddled oligarchs, kept banking criminals out of jail and further incinerated the Middle East. He’ll also be seen as the man whose tremendous disappointments as commander-in-chief led to the emergence and elevation of Donald Trump.
People wanted major change in 2008 and they didn’t get it. They still want it. The only big question now is whether or not Trump will deliver, and whether it will be unifying change as opposed to more surveillance, militarization of police, torture, attacks on civil liberties, etc. Since Trump has a clear authoritarian streak, he runs the risk of going down the wrong path. However, that path will lead to only one thing; an even more broken America and another failed Presidency.
I was never able to personally get behind Trump, in large part due to the above concerns, as well as the fact that he’s a big government, centralization type of guy, and that’s not the kind of government I support. That said, I want this country to thrive and I want Trump to succeed. Indeed, we need him to succeed.
As such, I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity he presented to his critics during his victory speech in order to outline what I think he needs to do to make America great.
Let’s start with the facts and a simple admission: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. This is a clear signal that at least half the country doesn’t like him, and a large number of them, are in fact, terrified of him. Unless you’re an aspiring mob boss, you don’t want half the population to feel this way about you. So what should Trump do?
I think he needs to focus on creating a consensus amongst the American people around issues at least 80% of us can agree on. In my Final Thoughts piece, I outlined five of them:
Rather than dwelling on the differences between these two populist movements (Sanders and Trump), let’s consider some of the areas where they overlap.
1. Trade — Opposition to NAFTA and current “trade” deals such as TPP, TTIP, and TISA have been central to both the Sanders and Trump campaigns.
2. War and militarism — Whether you believe Trump is sincere or not, opposition to Obama/Clinton interventionist overseas wars were key talking points for both Trump and Sanders.
3. The system is rigged — The painful acknowledgment that the U.S. economic system is a rigged scam that fails to reward hard work, and is more akin to a parasitic, predatory oligarchy with very limited social mobility, has been a key campaign theme for both Trump and Sanders. The economy is increasingly dominated by near-monoploy giants who relentlessly push for more power and more profits irrespective of the cost to society, whether that cost be war, poverty or social unrest.
4. Money in politics — The rigged economic system described above aggregates wealth into an increasingly small number of hands. Those hands then buy off politicians and rig the political process. A rigged economy and rigged political system perpetually feeds itself and endlessly grows at the expense of the public like a terminal cancer. Both Trump and Sanders emphasized this problem.
5. Rule of law is dead — Sanders focused on Wall Street bankers, while Trump focused on Hillary and her inner circle of cronies, but the overall point is the same. Rich and powerful oligarchs are above the law. We all know this, but Washington D.C. refuses to do anything about it.
The Democratic Party as we know it is now dead. This means tens of millions of Sanders supporters are out there, pissed off at Hillary, and the Democratic establishment in general. These engaged citizens can be brought into the fold if Trump focuses on unifying issues such as the ones listed above, and leaves his authoritarian anti-civil liberties tendencies behind. I really hope he does this, but I have my doubts.
If he doesn’t focus on unifying issues, he’ll be as divisive as Obama and the country will flail endlessly from one failed President to another like the sad, nuclear armed Banana Republic it has become.
People = Policy
Trump will be a failure unless he brings the right people into his inner circle. This is of the utmost importance. Indeed, I knew for certain Obama was a total fraud the moment he appointed Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner to key positions within his administration. This is the area I think Trump is most vulnerable to making some very big mistakes. Indeed, I was very bothered by the effusive compliments he showered upon one of the nation’s worst political figures, Chris Christie, during this victory speech. Nevertheless, since this post is about being as productive possible, I will name someone I’d like to see close to President Trump: Scott Adams.
Like many of you, I’ve been following Scott closely this entire election. I’ve listened to many of his periscopes and heard enough to appreciate his intellect, deep understanding of human nature, judgement, and desire to get the nation on the right track. Of all the high profile Trump supporters, he is the one I’d want to be closest to the ear of Trump. I don’t know if Scott would accept a position if it were offered to him, but I hope he would.
Furthermore, there are others who would be beneficial for a President Trump to have around who are already throwing their hats in the ring. For example, take Eric Scott Hundsader of HFT-fighting fame:
Dear @realDonaldTrump
I’d like to throw my hat in the ring for a position at the SEC/CFTC.
— Eric Scott Hunsader (@nanexllc) November 9, 2016
If Trump really wants to shake things up, he needs to think outside of the box and look far beyond the Chris Christies of the world, and consider some very sharp people he’s never heard of. If he surrounds himself with the old, tired political characters we already know, I fear very little will change for the better.
A Warning
Since Trump has repeatedly commented on the precarious and vulnerable state of financial markets, I assume he has a somewhat decent grasp of what he’s about to face. That said, no one can truly prepare for what’s coming. If I’m correct, and a nearly forty year sovereign bond bubble is in the early stages of bursting, this represents a potential financial extinction level event. I don’t care who you are, being President during a time like this will be replete with challenges and extreme danger. He better not take this financial super cycle lightly, and he should also prepare for a cyclical economic downturn. It won’t be Trump’s fault when it arrives, but it’ll be his to deal with.
Irrespective of my serious concerns, I desperately want Trump to succeed. America needs him to succeed. I’m confident that Trump will never read a single word of this, but it’s also possible someone with access to him will. If so, please consider my observations. The Republic depends on him unifying the people and helping to foster an environment in which every American has a opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
This article was written by Michael Krieger and originally published at his Liberty Blitzkrieg site .
| 1real |
Kenya police disperse protesters as Odinga tempers vote protest call | NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan police fired teargas and shots in the air to scatter a small number of demonstrators in Nairobi two days before elections, as the main opposition leader appeared to pull back from a call for protests during the vote. In the western city of Kisumu, around 2,000 demonstrators marched on the election board offices, witnesses said, heeding Raila Odinga s appeal for protests against Thursday s repeat presidential ballot, before dispersing peacefully. Odinga is boycotting the contest against incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta. He says it will not be free and fair as the election board had made insufficient progress towards reforms he demanded after the original election held in August was annulled. Odinga had urged his supporters to ensure the new vote did not take place, repeatedly saying there would be no elections . But on Tuesday he told the BBC he was not calling for protests on election day itself. We have not told people to protest on polling day. We have not said that at all. We have told people to stay away, he said in a radio interview. When called for clarification, Odinga s spokesman said he was saying peaceful protests would still take place and that the opposition would fully explain their plans on Wednesday. At least 49 people have died in political violence since the August ballot, evoking unwelcome memories of the aftermath of a disputed 2007 vote, when more than 1,200 people were killed. On Tuesday evening, the bodyguard of the deputy chief justice was shot and wounded as he bought flowers by the side of the road, police said. The motive for the shooting was unclear, but it is likely to add to the tense atmosphere surrounding the vote. Judges have received threats since they nullified the August result. The political stand-off has blunted growth in East Africa s richest economy, a nation which values its stability and relative freedom in a region plagued by conflict. Kenya s Supreme Court is still hearing several cases challenging the legality of Thursday s election. One, brought by human rights activist Khelef Khalifa and two others, seeks to delay the vote on grounds that the election board is not sufficiently prepared. The Supreme Court, the only body that can now legally postpone the poll beyond the end of the month, will hear the case on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the election board canceled a planned briefing with journalists on preparations for the polls. Last week, the head of the election board said it was not clear a free and fair vote could take place due to intimidation and political interference. He spoke after the resignation of an election commissioner, who then fled the country and released a statement saying she had been threatened, although she did not say by whom. A day before the Aug. 8 vote, another member of the election board was found tortured and murdered. On Monday, the International Crisis Group, a global think-tank, called for a delay in the election. Proceeding under current conditions would deepen Kenya s ethnic cleavages and prolong a stalemate that has already claimed dozens of lives and come at a high economic cost, it said. Both the election board and the government have said the vote will go ahead, irrespective of whether Odinga contests it, and only a court ruling could legally delay the re-run ballot beyond the end of October. On Tuesday, police fired teargas and bullets into the air to break up protesters in the capital Nairobi. In Kisumu, an Odinga stronghold, demonstrators said that the polls should not take place, but were unclear on how they should be stopped. All we know is that there will be no elections. As to how this will be done, we are waiting for the big announcement by Baba (Odinga) tomorrow, said one demonstrator, market trader James Ouma. Around him, marchers waved branches and blew whistles. Last week Odinga supporters disrupted at least three official pre-polling events. Police said some election board staff were seriously injured. Kenyatta won the first election on Aug. 8, by 1.4 million votes, but the Supreme Court annulled that outcome on Sept. 1 over procedural irregularities. Odinga s team then presented a list of demands to the election board. Some have been met - opposition monitors will now have access to the board s computers as results come in, a key official has gone on an extended holiday, and numerical results vulnerable to typographical errors will not be transmitted, rather only scanned copies of paper forms from tallying centers. The board said it was impossible to meet other demands - such as changing the technology provider - in the short time frame allotted for new elections. Under Kenya s constitution, fresh elections must be held within 60 days of nullified ones. | 0fake |
Brain Concussions in Children and Adults: What to Know About Vaccine Damage | By Catherine J Frompovich When I was in private practice as a consulting natural nutritionist, often I had moms ask my opinion about their young boys playing football. That was long before “sports... | 1real |
U.S. Women Jump, Spin and Soar to Gymnastics Gold - The New York Times | RIO DE JANEIRO — Led by the world’s best gymnast, Simone Biles, the powerhouse American women’s gymnastics team romped to the gold medal at the Rio Olympics Tuesday. The team of Biles, Laurie Hernandez, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and Madison Kocian lived up to expectations as prohibitive favorites by putting up the highest total score on every apparatus. Russia won silver and China bronze. The margin of victory was a whopping 8 points. The medal, the Americans’ third team gold after 2012 and 1996, came in the final Olympics for the national team coordinator, Martha Karolyi, a crucial player in the rise of American gymnastics for more than 30 years. Here’s how they did it. The Americans opened up with the vault. Two of them, Raisman and Biles, tried the difficult Amanar, in which the vaulter does two and a half twists with a blind landing. Raisman scored a 15. 833, and Biles did even better at 15. 933, despite making a hop on her landing. After one rotation, the Americans were already out in front, by 0. 7 points over Russia, who performed on the bars. The bars were the one chance of the day to compete for team members Douglas, the 2012 champion, and Kocian, a bars specialist and a 2015 world champion in the event. Both delivered. Douglas got lots of height on her release skills and hit her handstands, then stuck her double layout dismount to get a 15. 766. Kocian performed one of the most difficult routines at the Games, and nailed it, scoring a stellar 15. 933. The United States extended its lead to a comfortable 4 points over China. Russia slipped to third. No serious mishaps for the Americans on the sometimes perilous beam. Raisman hit her double Arabian dismount for a 15. 0 Hernandez gave a disciplined performance for a 15. 233. The incomparable Biles survived a balance check and made just a small hop on her dismount — one of the hardest in the world, a double tuck — for a 15. 3. Because they were the top qualifiers, the Americans got to end on floor exercise. That was considered an advantage because the Americans’ floor scores tend to be high, and crowd support for the floor is big. But with a nearly lead over China, it hardly mattered. Hernandez gave her typical charismatic performance, starting with a wink for the crowd. The scoring system tends to favor difficult tumbling over choreography. Hernandez, however, has helped to bring artistry and dance back into American gymnastics, to the applause of many. Biles’s second tumbling pass includes a double layout with a and a blind landing, a move dubbed the Biles because she was the first gymnast to land it in competition. Great performances have come to be expected from the American women’s team. They didn’t even need a great performance to win on Tuesday. But they delivered one anyway. | 0fake |
Palestinian cabinet convenes in Gaza in move to reconcile with Hamas | GAZA (Reuters) - Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah chaired the first meeting of the Palestinian cabinet in the Gaza Strip for three years on Tuesday, in a move toward reconciliation between the mainstream Fatah party and Islamist group Hamas. Hamas seized Gaza in 2007 in fighting with Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas and has ruled the impoverished desert enclave of two million people since. The cabinet session was the first in Gaza since 2014, Hamdallah told ministers, and a major step in a reconciliation process promoted by neighboring Egypt and other U.S.-allied Arab countries. Today, we stand before an important historical moment as we begin to get over our wounds, put our differences aside and place the higher national interest above all else, Hamdallah said. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh echoed the optimism, saying: There might be some difficulties on the road, but we will conclude reconciliation, regardless of the cost. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Palestinians against engaging in bogus reconciliations and he referred to Iranian funding for Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2008. In a statement, Netanyahu said any Palestinian administration should recognize the State of Israel, disband the Hamas military arm, (and) sever the connection with Iran . Hamas, considered a terrorist group by Israel and the West, last month disbanded its Gaza shadow government after Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates clamped an economic boycott on its main donor, Qatar. But while Hamas has handed over administrative responsibilities to a unity government originally formed three years ago, its armed wing remains the dominant force in Gaza. A first sign of discontent surfaced on Tuesday with Hamas criticizing Abbas s decision to await the outcome of talks Fatah plans to hold with the group on Oct. 10 before lifting sanctions he has imposed on Gaza. The government has assumed its responsibilities in Gaza and therefore delay is not justified, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said. There is no excuse for delaying or undermining measures that would ease the suffering of Gaza s people. Abbas halted payments for Israeli-supplied electricity to the enclave in June, a step that has led to long daily blackouts, and cut salaries for Gaza civil servants. Abbas told Egyptian TV station CBC on Monday there could be only one state, one regime, one law and one weapon in Gaza, reiterating a long-held position that security should be in the hands of only the Palestinian Authority (PA), which he heads, and that the PA must control border crossing points. In a pre-recorded address to the Palestinian cabinet, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged unity. I assure you we have no time to waste, and that history will hold accountable those who waste the current opportunity to bring about peace, Sisi said. Both Israel and Egypt - whose intelligence chief arrived in Gaza to meet Hamas leaders, Hamdallah and officials from other Palestinian factions - maintain a partial blockade of Gaza, citing security concerns. Israeli-Palestinian talks have been frozen since 2014 over issues such as Fatah-Hamas reconciliation and Israeli settlement-building in occupied territory. Visiting the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, Netanyahu said thousands of housing units would be added to the community of 40,000 people near Jerusalem. He gave no timeframe. Israel has built about 120 settlements in the West Bank. About 350,000 settlers live there and a further 200,000 in East Jerusalem, among about 2.6 million Palestinians. Most countries consider the settlements illegal and an obstacle to peace as they take up territory Palestinians need for a viable state. Israel disagrees, citing biblical, historical and political connections to the land and security interests. | 0fake |
Trump nominates businessman with Asia background as Navy secretary | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated Philip Bilden, a former military intelligence officer and private equity executive with broad experience of Asia, particularly China, as the civilian head of the U.S. Navy. Trump has vowed to build up the U.S. Navy to 350 ships from the current 290, a move aides say is aimed at countering China’s rapid rise as a military power in the Asia-Pacific. The Trump administration on Monday raised the prospect of worsening tensions with China when it vowed to prevent Beijing from taking over territory in international waters in the South China Sea, something Chinese state media has warned would require Washington to “wage war.” Bilden emerged recently as a favorite for the position of Navy secretary over the early front-runner, former U.S. Representative Randy Forbes, a leading critic of China who chaired the House Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee. Bilden’s nomination, which must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, follows that of another businessman, Vincent Viola, an Army veteran and founder of a high-speed trading firm, to be secretary of the Army. Neither Bilden or Viola has experience in government. A White House statement described Bilden as “a highly successful business leader, former Military Intelligence officer, and Naval War College cybersecurity leader.” It said he would “bring strategic leadership, investment discipline, and Asia-Pacific regional and cyber expertise to the Department of the Navy.” “Maintaining the strength, readiness, and capabilities of our maritime force is critical to our national security,” Bilden said in the White House statement. “If confirmed, I will ensure that our Sailors and Marines have the resources they need to defend our interests around the globe and support our allies with commitment and capability.” Retired Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme commander, said Bilden was an excellent choice. “(He) is deeply knowledgeable about China, but I would not say he is close to China. Many times he has spoken to me about the need to take a firm line in the South China Sea,” he told Reuters. James Carafano, at the Heritage Foundation think tank said Bilden had a deep knowledge of cyber threats, “and understands the threat posed by rising naval powers such as China.” The administration statement said Bilden served in the U.S. Army Reserve as an intelligence officer from 1986 to 1996. He recently retired as a co-founding member of HarbourVest, a global private-equity firm having established its Asian presence in Hong Kong. He is a director of the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation and a trustee of the Naval War College Foundation, where he chairs the Center for Cyber Conflict Studies. | 0fake |
French unions block fuel depots in protest against labor reforms | PARIS (Reuters) - French trade unionists blocked access on Monday to several fuel depots in protest against an overhaul of employment laws, seeking to test the government s will to reform the economy. In southern France, protesters unions set up a road-block in front of Total s La Mede refinery, while in western France fuel depots were blocked near Bordeaux and the coastal city of La Rochelle. Union members also held go-slow operations on highways near Paris and in northern France. We re determined. We re going to stay as long as possible while hoping that other blockades take place elsewhere, maybe that ll make Mr. Macron move, Force Ouvriere union official Pascal Favre told Reuters. Eager to avoid fuel shortages, centrist President Emmanuel Macron s government deployed police at some sites before dawn to ensure by force that protesters could not block access. It s not in blockading the country s economy and by preventing people from working, that one best defends one s cause, junior economy minister Benjamin Griveaux told RTL radio. The labor reform is due to become law in the coming days after Macron formally signed five labor form decrees on Friday, in the first major economic reforms since he took power in May. The new rules, discussed at length in advance with unions, will cap payouts on dismissals that are judged unfair, while also giving companies greater freedom to hire and fire employees and to agree working conditions. While unions have failed to derail the reform, the considerable political capital Macron had after his landslide election victory in May is quickly evaporating. Macron suffered his first electoral setback on Sunday when his Republic on the Move (LREM) party won fewer seats than expected in elections for the French Senate. | 0fake |
A MUST WATCH! “It’s Time To Show America Is Bigger And Better Than Ever Before!” – Donald J. Trump [Video] | #PresidentElectTrumpABSOLUTELY MUST WATCHToday there is hope for the American people.We will #MakeAmericaGreatAgainPlease RT pic.twitter.com/WSbpcKr8np Brian Fraser (@bfraser747) November 9, 2016 | 1real |
[VIDEO] HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS Will Be The Cause Of Death For Europe…Will We Allow America To Be Next? | What happens to Europe if the refugee surge of mostly muslim men doesn t stop?France is becoming unrecognizableSweden now has NO GO Zones where police won t even venture into for fear of their own safety. Muslim street gangs in Sweden are now fighting with hand grenades on the streets. Opponents of immigration in Sweden are branded as racists. Many of Sweden s residents are liberals who have aggressively outlawed traditional religion. They have replaced it with their own brand of religion with which includes and obsession with anti-racism.Over 1 million migrants have arrived in Germany this year:They march to Austria and Budapest:This video pretty much sums up the immigration crisis in Europe and how demanding these refugees are once they make their way (illegally) into several countries around Europe: | 1real |
UK foreign minister criticized for resurrecting 'Brexit benefit' mantra | LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign minister Boris Johnson was accused by a government statisticians of misusing state data after he repeated a pro-Leave campaign mantra that Britain would have an extra 350 million pounds a week after Brexit. The figure had been a central part of the campaign s let s take back control message, with suggestions that the money could instead be used to fund state healthcare. Johnson was one of the few prominent members of the campaign not to abandon the pledge after it won the summer 2016 referendum on EU membership. David Norgrove, of the UK Statistics Authority, said he was surprised and disappointed that Johnson was still quoting a figure that confused gross and net contributions. It is a clear misuse of official statistics, Norgrove said in a letter to the minister on Sunday. He said the number quoted did not include the rebate that Britain receives from the EU, nor did it include payments from Brussels to support, for example, agriculture and scientific research. Johnson, whose carefully tussled blonde hair and apparent bumbling manner has made him one of Britain s most recognizable politicians, mentioned the figure again in a Saturday newspaper article that laid out his vision for post-Brexit Britain. Once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly 350 million pounds ($476 million) a week, he wrote. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS (National Health Service). Johnson later added he was surprised and disappointed by Norgrove s letter, which he said was based on what appeared to be a wilful distortion of the text of my article , according to the BBC. Britain had no control of EU spending in Britain or of a rebate that was part of a funding arrangement agreed with other EU states, Johnson said. Figures published by the Office for National Statistics in April 2016 showed Britain s weekly net contribution to the EU to be about 190 million pounds a week. | 0fake |
China busts underground bank in Guangzhou: China Daily | SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese police have broken up a secret banking operation used to transfer assets abroad, the official China Daily reported on Tuesday. The underground bank, hidden in a food market in the southern city of Guangzhou, is suspected of being involved in cross-border transactions worth more than $70 million in the past month alone, the paper said, citing a statement from Guangzhou s public security bureau. China is cracking down on underground banks and other foreign exchange violations in a bid to prevent and resolve risks from cross-border capital flows and bolster the yuan, the country s forex regulator said in July. Last year, Chinese police busted more than 380 underground banks, involving more than 900 billion yuan ($135.97 billion), and arrested more than 800 suspects, according to the Ministry of Public Security. Guangdong province busted three large underground banks earlier this year involving cross-border transactions worth 3 billion yuan and resulting in the detention of 30 suspects, China Daily said. | 0fake |
LOL! AMAZON USERS WRITE GUT-BUSTING Reviews For HILLARY’S Disastrous New “Stronger Together” Book | The extremely exhausted Hillary and her extremely boring VP pick have written a book that is currently #5,301 on the Amazon books bestseller list. It s really quite laughable that with only a little more than one month until the general election, Hillary can be found desperately hawking a book nobody wants to read at a rally in a tiny community center gymnasium in Orlando with only 300 people. That would be funny in and of itself, but Hillary s desperation to sell a horrible book to a tiny and lethargic crowd (who are likely being paid to occupy seats) is not even the best part of the story.It turns out, the book reviews written by Amazon users are a must read! They re hilarious, revealing, and for the most part, when they are describing Crooked Hillary to a tee These are some of the most clever and funniest reviews you will ever see for a political book! Enjoy A special thank you to GP and @FessEnden4 for making our day!Hillary in Orlando hawking her deplorable book from the stage. Best part is the Amazon reviews of it: https://t.co/cDcuE3aUnm HYSTERICAL! pic.twitter.com/LydcL1lkIz Fess Enden (@FessEnden4) September 21, 2016 | 1real |
CNN Host STUNNED By Republican’s PATHETIC Defense Of Trump’s Tweets (VIDEO) | For a crash course in why reality television star Donald Trump is unfit to be the next President of the United States, one only needs to look through his Twitter history. Unfortunately, the less intelligent Americans in our country (aka conservatives) have a very different take on the immature attacks that Trump spews on a daily basis with his tiny orange fingers, and their reasoning is painful to listen to.CNN host Chris Cuomo had his brain melted by Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) on New Day on Wednesday morning when he dared to ask Collins what he thought about Trump s recent onslaught of tweets against the New York Times, who Trump has been blasting for making him look bad.TwitterCuomo asked if this was presidential behavior: Do you think that this is a healthy way for him to govern going forward? Collins, who was the first member of Congress to give Trump his endorsement, gave an answer that took Cuomo by complete surprise when he shrugged Trump s behavior off and said it was just the President-elect s way of relaxing. Well, I can tell you this, the pressure that has got to be on President-elect Trump is immense. The enormity of the job ahead of him, and so I would have to say if this is his way of relaxing, god bless him. Cuomo fired back, Relaxing?! in complete disbelief. Collins said: Absolutely. If this is what he has some fun with and he finds this relaxing, and his entertainment, let him go with it. Uh isn t a President supposed to be more concerned with running a country than entertainment ? Apparently not, according to Collins: I would not second-guess anything he s doing that he would use to make himself call it unwinding, relaxing, and I think that s part of it. It s Donald Trump being Donald Trump. You don t want this stuff all bottled up. So frankly I don t have a problem with this in the least. I think America actually wants to continue to see a real human being in the White House, and I put this in to the you know, this is his way of unwinding, and taking some stress off. So I think it s a good thing. Absolutely terrifying. Trump has already gone back on his promise that he would be very restrained on Twitter now that he s going to be President, making it clear that he lacks self-control. And as expected, Republicans don t have the backbone to stand up to him for the good of the country.You can watch Collins shock Cuomo with his stupidity below:Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Comment on Leaked Audio Catches Clinton Red-Handed Talking About Rigging Elections by john smith | Home / Be The Change / Government Corruption / Leaked Audio Catches Clinton Red-Handed Talking About Rigging Elections Leaked Audio Catches Clinton Red-Handed Talking About Rigging Elections The Free Thought Project October 29, 2016 2 Comments
Decade-old audio exposes then-Senator Hillary Clinton saying the US should have manipulated Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 to prevent a Hamas victory. The presidential candidate lamented that the US didn’t “determine who was going to win.”
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” then-New York Senator Clinton told the Jewish Press, a New York-based weekly newspaper, several months after the January election.
“And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,” she said.
Until Friday, the comment Clinton made on September 5, 2006, only existed on a private audio cassette belonging to journalist Eli Chomsky. An editor and a staff writer for the Jewish Press, he interviewed Clinton at the newspaper’s office in Brooklyn.
Chomsky, who shared and played the tape for the Observer, says it is the only existing copy of that meeting with Clinton, during which the Palestinian parliamentary election was among top topics. The comments have been posted on SoundCloud.
Speaking to the news portal, he recalled being confused by the fact that “anyone could support the idea — offered by a national political leader, no less — that the US should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.” 2006 audio emerges of Clinton proposing election rigging in Palestine; censored by Israeli press for past 10 years https://t.co/LsMYcUzJR4
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 28, 2016
The interview took place nine months after the Hamas movement claimed 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats, pushing aside the US-favored Fatah movement and securing the right to form a new cabinet. That victory was neither welcomed in Israel, nor in the US. In Washington, where Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, officials repeatedly stated that they would not work with a Palestinian Authority that included Hamas.
Then-President George W. Bush spoke of the elections as symbolizing the “power of democracy,” but refused to deal with Hamas as long as it opposed Israel’s existence and espoused violence.
That day in September 2006, Clinton made “odd and controversial comments,” all now saved on the 45-minute record that Chomsky “held onto all these years.”
“I went to my bosses at the time,” Chomsky told the Observer. “The Jewish Press had this mindset that they would not want to say anything offensive about anybody — even a direct quote from anyone — in a position of influence because they might need them down the road. My bosses didn’t think it was newsworthy at the time. I was convinced that it was and I held onto it all these years.” Share | 1real |
Trump’s Camp Manager DESTROYS Hillary By Pointing Out 1 Thing We All Missed | Trump’s Camp Manager DESTROYS Hillary By Pointing Out 1 Thing We All Missed Posted on October 30, 2016 by Amanda Shea in Politics Share This Fox News Host (left), Trump’s Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway (right)
From the moment the FBI announced they’re investigating Hillary Clinton again, her ship of supporters quickly became lighter with people bailing out to protect themselves from being associated with her as a criminal. Donald Trump’s campaign couldn’t have asked for better vindication that the witch could soon be incarcerated, but the Republican candidate’s campaign manager just put the final nail in Clinton’s coffin.
In the wake of this latest development that could save Western civilization, Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News to discuss it, but she delivered more than viewers were expecting. In a statement that didn’t just decimate Hillary’s campaign, she brought the entire Clinton family down with it in one perfectly stated sentence.
When the FBI cracks a case back open that they had previously closed, there’s a legitimate reason to be terrified for the outcome of that investigation, and it’s almost guaranteed to end in incarceration. Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom validated this when he said after the announcement that the final bomb is about to drop on Hillary within the next ten days. Adding to everything coming back to haunt Hillary since Friday, is what Conway said on Fox News:
“What we are reminded of is this cloud of corruption that always follows Hillary Clinton and we are having this entire conversation about a renewed FBU investigation because Hillary Clinton did what she always does, put Hillary first…we can never get the stench and the stain of the Clintons off if us it turns out.”
Call it karma or the combined forces of WikiLeaks, James O’Keefe, and now the FBI, who are all working together to bleach this “stain” from the White House, but things just aren’t looking good for Hillary who had it coming. Hopefully, the FBI who failed the American people after the first investigation that ended with her still being able to run for president, make good on that mistake by actually arresting her after round two.
The investigation now is entirely different than the first, considering the fact that it was reopened. For that reason alone, Hillary shouldn’t feel comfortable about the outcome. | 1real |
Israel willing to resort to military action to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons: minister | TOKYO (Reuters) - Israel is willing to resort to military action to ensure Iran never acquires nuclear weapons, the intelligence minister said on Thursday in Japan where he is seeking backing for U.S. President Donald Trump s tougher line on Tehran. Trump said on Oct. 13 he would not certify Iran is complying with an agreement on curtailing its nuclear program, signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, opening a 60-day window for Congress to act to reimpose sanctions. If international efforts led these days by U.S. President Trump don t help stop Iran attaining nuclear capabilities, Israel will act militarily by itself, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said in an interview in Tokyo. There are changes that can be made (to the agreement) to ensure that they will never have the ability to have a nuclear weapon. Israel has taken unilateral action in the past without the consent of its major ally, the United States, including air strikes on a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and in Iraq in 1981. A strike against Iran, however, would be a risky venture with the potential to provoke a counter strike and roil financial markets. An Israeli threat of military strikes could, nonetheless, galvanize support in the United States for toughening up the nuclear agreement but it could also backfire by encouraging hardliners in Iran and widening a rift between Washington and European allies. So far, none of the other signatories to the deal - Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, Iran and the European Union - has cited serious concerns, leaving the United States isolated. Japan relies on the U.S. military to help defend it against threats from North Korea and elsewhere. Tokyo s diplomatic strategy in the Middle East, where it buys almost all its oil, is to maintain friendly relations with all countries, including Iran. I asked the Japanese government to support steps led by President Trump to change the nuclear agreement, said Katz, who is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s right-wing Likud party. The question of whether Japanese companies will begin to work in Iran or not is a very important question. Katz s visit to Tokyo comes ahead of a planned trip by Trump from Nov. 5 for a summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Officials at Japan s Ministry of Foreign Affairs were not immediately available to comment. Israel, Katz said, wants the nuclear agreement to be revised to remove an expiration date, and to impose tighter conditions to stop Tehran from developing new centrifuges used to make weapons-grade nuclear material. He also urged sanctions to stop Iran from establishing Syria as a military base to launch attacks on Israel and action to put a halt to Tehran s development of ballistic missiles. We will not allow Iran to transform Syria into forward base sea harbors, air bases and Shia militias, he said. We will act together with the United States and other countries in the world until they stop the ballistic missiles that threaten Israel. The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday backed new sanctions on Lebanon s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia. | 0fake |
WI GOV. SCOTT WALKER: If You’re Able-Bodied and Want Welfare, You’re Going To Be Drug-Tested | If you live in Wisconsin and want your working neighbors to fund your existence, you may need to start peeing in a cup to prove your dependency on the government isn t related to your dependency on drugs. The governor of Wisconsin is a love em or hate em kind of leader. Conservatives love him for making public sector unions pay more of their own benefits, liberals hate him for daring to stand up to the powerful, organized mega-donors of the Democrat Party. Governor Walker is about to shake things up again in the blue state of Wisconsin, and liberals are not gonna be happy Gov. Scott Walker is moving forward with an effort to drug test some food stamp recipients, with testing expected to begin in as little as a year absent action from lawmakers or the federal government.Wisconsin s Republican governor has submitted a plan to state lawmakers for drug testing able-bodied recipients of the state s Food Share program. If the state Legislature doesn t object within 120 days, the plan will go into effect, though it will take at least a year for actual testing to begin.The program won t necessarily have a massive effect, however. The Walker administration estimated in October that only about 220 food stamp recipients statewide or just 0.3% of able-bodied adults would test positive in the first year. Employers have jobs available, but they need skilled workers who can pass a drug test, Walker said in a statement. This rule change means people battling substance use disorders will be able to get the help they need to get healthy and get back into the workforce. A year ago, Walker had asked then President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration to clear the way for the change in the food stamp program, which is overseen by the state but largely funded by federal taxpayers. So far that hasn t happened but a Walker spokesman said Monday that the governor believes the state can proceed without any federal action. Our position is we have the authority to implement the rule, spokesman Tom Evenson said.The now-departed appointees of President Barack Obama didn t see it that way. In January 2017, right before Trump took over the White House, the former U.S. official in charge of the replacement program to food stamps said such testing would require a change in federal law. The law clearly does not allow it, said Kevin Concannon, undersecretary at the federal Food and Nutrition Service within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Walker s office forwarded that request to us and it was very clear, we consulted the legal counsels here and the law absolutely does not allow it. The Trump administration, however, may not see the issue in the same light. Journal Sentinel | 1real |
NORWEGIAN GOVERNMENT RETURNS 5 Children To Family After Removing Them From Home For “Christian Radicalism And Indoctrination” | How does one reconcile this insane interference by the government over how a legal Norwegian family practices their Christian faith, while opening their borders to radicalized Muslim male refugees ? A Christian family has been reunited with their children after losing an appeal in Norway in Dec, 2015, to have their children returned, after the government forcibly removed five children from their home. The public is reacting with outrage.Marius Bodnariu, a Romanian, and his Norwegian wife Ruth, former members of the Pentecostal Church in Bucharest, moved to Naustdal, Norway 10 years ago, where they raised five children. As reported by Marius brother Daniel, on November 16, Norway s child welfare services took away the Bodnarius two oldest children, showing up at their school and removing them from class without their parents knowledge. Police later that day arrived at the Bodnarius home and also forcibly removed the two older boys, leaving Ruth with her three-month-old baby, who was taken away the following day by police as well.Two days later, child welfare services notified the parents that their children were in the care of two separate foster families and were integrating well. One of the officials reportedy said to Ruth, The kids don t even miss you. What kind of parents are you? Marius and Ruth were later informed by the government that they were guilty of Christian radicalism and indoctrination. Apparently, the children s removal was instigated by the school principal, who complained to child welfare services that the Bodnarius were very Christian and their belief that God punishes sin creates a disability in the children. Accordingly, the principal believed the parents needed guidance from the government in raising their family. The principal also cited concerns over discipline in the family home, as occasional corporal punishment is used. But after physical examination of the children (the three-month-old was subjected to x-rays and a CT scan), no physical abuse was discovered. Child welfare services is claiming, however, that Marius is physically abusive, while he and Ruth are vehemently denying the claims.A hearing held November 27 dismissed the Bodnarius appeal to be reunited with their children. The court ruled instead that they were to remain in the care of their foster parents, while Marius and Ruth could visit their three-month-old son twice a week for two hours. They could see their two older sons as well, but the court refused to grant them visitation rights for their daughters. The parents are considering further legal action.Meanwhile, a petition begun in support of the family has collected nearly 30,000 signatures, and a Facebook page has been set up documenting the family s ordeal.On December 2, Romanian senator Titus Corlatean spoke on the Bodnarius behalf to the Commission for equality and nondiscrimination of the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council (PAEC) in Paris. Corlatean condemned what he deemed abusive conduct on the part of the Norwegian government, and asked that the Assembly investigate. He also noted prior actions on the part of Norway s child welfare services that involved splitting children from their parents based on groundless accusations.Marius brother writes:I testify, and vehemently vouch, for Marius and Ruth having given birth to and raised a normal family with Christian values. These parents love their children and have taken every imaginable step in raising their children with loving caring in all aspects of their well-being. The tearing apart of their family by the Barnevernet [child welfare services] is a living nightmare for Marius and Ruth. Their hope is founded, and rests, in God; He can change any situation and He is always in control! Via: Church Militant | 1real |
Trump, Liberal Hypocrisy & Humanity’s Future | 21st Century Wire says Here s an epic discussion for your Sunday afternoon.Last week, Stuart J. Hooper travelled to Los Angeles and met with YouTube star Hamish The Illusion Patterson; who holds a particularly interesting view on reality.The two also had an epic discussion on the current state of politics, hidden technology, our future on Mars, and the hypocrisy of so-called liberals protesting against Trump who had no problem at all with what Obama was doing, like sending Libya back to the stone age, in the past eight years.Check out the full discussion here: You can follow Hamish on Youtube, Facebook and Instagram.SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
U.S. Congress tangles with Facebook, other social media firms over Russia probe | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite public promises of cooperation from Facebook and other social media companies, congressional investigators are battling over how much data the companies should hand over to them on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Congressional sources said this week that Facebook Inc (FB.O) has been slow to cooperate. The company and others have said they are turning over information, but also that they are legally obligated to protect their users privacy. On visits to Capitol Hill on Wednesday and Thursday, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook s chief operating officer, met with leaders of the House Intelligence Committee and said the company wanted to help investigators and would turn over more information. Things happened on our platform that shouldn t have happened in the lead-up to the election, Sandberg told the Axios website on Thursday. So far, however, the congressional sources said investigators have found it hard to extract all the relevant information from Silicon Valley about alleged Russian activity. But the committees have so far seen no need to issue subpoenas for the data, the sources added. Facebook and other major internet companies including Alphabet Inc s Google (GOOGL.O) and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) have faced a stream of recent revelations about how Moscow sought to use their platforms to sow discord in the United States and influence the election in favor of the Republican White House candidate, Donald Trump. Facebook disclosed last month that it had found some 3,000 politically divisive advertisements believed to have been bought by Russia before and after the presidential campaign. The company has now shared with congressional investigators the ads, information on how they were paid for, and how they were targeted, a Facebook spokesman said. Sandberg told congressional investigators on Thursday that in addition to the ads, the company would provide the rest of the information from accounts linked to Russia, the spokesman said. The sources said investigators were also pressing Twitter, Google and other companies for similar data, and urging Twitter to conduct a more comprehensive search of its data banks. We have a set of strict ads policies including limits on political ad targeting and prohibitions on targeting based on race and religion, a Google spokeswoman said, asked about the issue. We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries. A Twitter spokesperson did not respond to an email requesting comment. Twitter has likely not released all potentially relevant data to congressional investigators in part because of their policy requiring a court order and their track record of defending user privacy by fighting such requests, Adam Sharp, former head of news and government at Twitter, said in an interview. Twitter engineers are trying to regenerate some of the lost data, and may be able to retrieve some of it, said a person familiar with the company s technology. The use of social media platforms was part of what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was a broader Russian effort to meddle in the election campaign, an allegation the Kremlin has denied. Several congressional committees, as well as special counsel Robert Mueller, are investigating Russian interference, including any potential collusion between Trump associates and Moscow. Trump has denied any such collusion. In September, Facebook disclosed that it had evidence that an operation based in Russia had spent $100,000 on thousands of sponsored posts promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year period through May 2017. Facebook said it believed the messages were likely bought by people in Russia before and after the 2016 election. Sources familiar with Facebook s contacts with Congress said that as recently as July this year, company officials were denying the existence of any paid Russian messaging, and only later acknowledged that the company had found $100,000 in sponsored traffic linked to 478 Facebook accounts. The sources said investigators think the paid messaging was generated by a group called the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg. U.S. officials have called it a troll factory that creates false identities or copies real ones to spread real, skewed, and fake information for the Kremlin. Congressional sources said some of the Facebook messaging went to groups with seemingly legitimate names such as Heart of Texas, Defend the Second, and United Muslims of America, which they said all had as many as 250,000 followers. These groups now appear to have been bogus, or set up to look like legitimate political organizations, and investigators want to learn more about the groups, their followers, and their origins, the sources said. They said Facebook lawyers have argued that turning over additional data could compromise its promise of privacy to its users. However, congressional investigators say that if Russian messengers used fake identities, they would have no legal claims to privacy. | 0fake |
Mexico wants NAFTA consensus despite tension: finance minister | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Friday that Mexico’s peso was reacting with volatility to “tension” in NAFTA talks, but Mexico wanted to reach a consensus to modernize the trade pact to benefit all three member countries. Meade, speaking on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, said that Mexico was benefiting from a flexible and liquid exchange rate. The peso was hovering near a five-month low on Friday. “The main scenario that we’re working on is that there is scope in the negotiation of the agreement for a consensus that benefits the three countries. That’s what’s driving us in a negotiation we’re taking part in good faith,” Meade said. | 0fake |
More worries in Congress over cuts at U.S. State Department | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two senior U.S. senators asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday to explain “questionable management practices” at his department that they believe are weakening the country’s diplomatic power, adding to a chorus of concern in Congress. Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen delivered a letter to Tillerson asking him to begin consulting with lawmakers on decisions that have an impact on recruiting, retaining and staffing the State Department, removing a hiring freeze and resuming promotions. McCain is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Shaheen is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on State Department management. “While we support reasonable steps to improve the efficiency of the State Department, such efforts must be fully transparent, with the objective of enhancing, not diminishing, American diplomacy,” the senators wrote. They said declining morale, recruitment and retention of staff, a lack of experienced leadership and reports that diplomacy is becoming less effective “paint a disturbing picture.” Many members of Congress, Democrats as well as some of President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans, have rejected Trump’s proposal to cut the State Department budget by about 30 percent. Tillerson has embraced the plan, and imposed a hiring freeze while analyzing the agency’s operations and deciding how to reorganize them. On Tuesday, the Republican chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee both blasted the agency for cuts in staff and what they described as a failure to have a plan for a proposed organization. The panel’s top Democrat, Senator Ben Cardin, reiterated his concerns on Wednesday. “Our national security is being jeopardized by the employment and career decisions being made at the State Department,” he told reporters. It was not immediately clear how lawmakers could press the administration to change its policies, especially because Trump’s fellow Republicans, most of whom vote consistently with the president, hold majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. A State Department representative said the department had received the letter and would “appropriately respond.” Tillerson has said his reorganization plan aimed to increase efficiency and to cut costs, with a target of saving at least 10 percent, or about $5 billion, over the next five years from fiscal-year 2017 levels. Cardin said the impact of disorganization at the State Department was being felt internationally. “I could mention almost every place in the world,” he said. | 0fake |
Pope arrives in Colombia on mission to promote peace | BOGOTA (Reuters) - Pope Francis arrived on a five-day trip to Colombia on Wednesday with the hope his presence will unite a nation deeply divided by a peace deal that ended a five-decade war with Marxist FARC rebels. An Alitalia flight carrying the Argentine pontiff landed at the Catam military air base in Bogota and will head to the Vatican Embassy after being greeted by President Juan Manuel Santos. | 0fake |
Here's Why All These Political Cattle Calls Matter | Here's Why All These Political Cattle Calls Matter
Stop us if you've heard this one before — the vast field of GOP presidential hopefuls is gathering in a critical early state this weekend to give speeches, woo voters and court activists. That's what's been happening nearly every weekend since the beginning of the year, with Republican groups, influencers and politicians each hoping to attract top-tier candidates to their event.
With national Republicans trying to limit debates this year, the multifaceted events have become the new normal for both candidates and the media. On Saturday, both announced and likely GOP candidates will head to Iowa for the next one, where freshman GOP Sen. Joni Ernst will hold her inaugural "Roast and Ride."
So far, there have been at least a dozen different cattle calls since January. And if it feels like there's been a lot of cattle calls this year, maybe that's because there's a lot of cattle. For lesser-known candidates in such a crowded field, the different events offer a chance to try to and catch fire with often little investment or infrastructure needed.
"You have a megaphone from the inside out," said longtime Iowa GOP strategist Tim Albrecht. "There's no other place these candidates can go where they will see 200 media confined to one location. That's potentially 200 stories they wouldn't have otherwise gotten. With these kinds of events, it's a very low bar to participate and to even be invited."
And in Iowa – a state where GOP voters insist on meeting their candidates early and often – the guaranteed national attention has also been a boon for state and local Republicans.
"Everybody is a beneficiary of these events, whether it's the local county party, the state party the campaigns and the voters," Albrecht said, "because this gives Iowans the opportunity to see these candidates and potential candidates on the same stage, back to back, to directly compare how each of them would handle a particular situation. These are a wonderful way for Iowans to gauge candidates on an Iowa stage who eventually want be on the world stage."
To national observers, the cattle calls have become the new debates and a way for hopefuls, who haven't been getting as much attention, to boost their profile, so they can ultimately make it onto the debate stage later this year.
"A lot of the folks in the field not named [former Florida Gov.] Jeb Bush, [Wisconsin Gov.] Scott Walker, or [Florida Sen.] Marco Rubio, they don't have very high name ID," national GOP strategist Ford O'Connell said. "That's why the cattle calls are taking on an added importance in the way we haven't seen before."
The field will naturally be winnowed down after the first few states vote early next year. But until then, if candidates aren't able to get momentum before the debates, "donors aren't going to open up their wallets," O'Connell said.
The burst of early events in 2015 helped some candidates jump to the head of the pack nationally. Albrecht pointed to Walker's breakout performance at the Iowa Freedom Summit this past January as one example. While he noted that Iowans had been wowed by his speeches already the previous year, the first major cattle call gave the Wisconsin governor the momentum he needed.
"There was serious buzz after that event," said Albrecht, a former top aide to Gov. Terry Branstad, R-Iowa. "Scott Walker has real star power."
He also pointed to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina — who performed well at last month's Iowa Lincoln Day Dinner and had a big crowd outside her room — and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who needs a comeback after not living up to the hype in the state four years ago — as candidates who have shone at the events.
Both will be at Ernst's event this weekend — only Perry and Walker will be riding motorcycles along the GOP senator, though. Seven candidates will be in attendance, including Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Fiorina and Perry have yet to see much evidence of what activists say have been good performances. Both are still mired in single digits in both early state polls and national surveys, the latter of which will determine whether they make it onto the debate state during the first faceoff in August.
That makes their continued performance in such cattle calls all the more important along with building their political operations.
"Everything's been turned on its head, because of the capping of the debates and the calendar," O'Connell warned. "You know if you're not on the first one or two debate stages, it's going to be hard to get past New Hampshire." | 0fake |
Bill Clinton Evokes Past, but From the Periphery of His Wife’s Campaign - The New York Times | PUEBLO, Colo. — After obliging a request for a selfie from a woman in the lobby, Bill Clinton left his hotel here on Friday and rode to his rally, where he made the case that Hillary Clinton cared more about restoring jobs to forgotten workers than Donald J. Trump did. Mr. Clinton said that his wife got things done, as evidenced by “a lady in a hotel lobby right here. ” “I said, ‘Who do you think we ought to elect? ’” Mr. Clinton said, supposedly recounting his conversation with the woman. “She said, ‘You don’t have to ask me that. I’m from Belfast. I remember what she did to help make the peace in Northern Ireland. ’” It was Mr. Clinton, not his wife, who played a major role in brokering a peace accord. And the woman in the lobby, Lorraine Gordon, who immigrated from Belfast and is now an American citizen, never said those things. Like so many white Americans who adored Mr. Clinton but despise his wife, Ms. Gordon and her husband have already cast their ballots for Mr. Trump. “I don’t trust Hillary,” said Ms. Gordon, 57, who added that she resented illegal immigrants because she went through a long and expensive naturalization process. Her husband, John, 62, an engineer, added that “there’ll be more jobs” with Mr. Trump in charge. Since January, Mr. Clinton has done nearly 500 public events, a good deal of them designed to capture the affection white voters had for him and then transfer it to Mrs. Clinton. But that happens to be the demographic that constitutes Mr. Trump’s base. Indeed, the man who was arguably the greatest political mind of his era has become something of a peripheral player, even within his wife’s campaign. He has spent much of his time seeking support on the Democratic margins among those white voters he refuses to believe have abandoned him — and his wife — for good. “They took a leave of absence from normal politics because, you know, they went a long time without a raise,” Mr. Clinton explained in a brief, interview with a reporter in the hotel lobby. “So that’s cyclical. ” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign managers and pollsters, aided by sophisticated data models and experience in the elections of 2008 and 2012, have shifted their focus away from the “Bubba” voters and to the winning Obama coalition of young progressives and Hispanics who are powering Mrs. Clinton. And while members of his campaign say they cannot imagine a more valuable political spouse to have, in interviews as well as hacked emails released by WikiLeaks, Mr. Clinton has sometimes come off as an old master struggling to get with the new program. According to two advisers to the Clintons, who declined to be identified because they were describing internal conversations, Mr. Clinton has at times doubted the approach of her campaign manager, Robby Mook, and has required mollifying assurances from senior staff members. Sometimes staff members, or one of his numerous Democratic allies in the country, have gone to Mr. Clinton to complain about decisions being made by Mrs. Clinton’s top campaign officials, causing irritation all around. One of the Clinton advisers said Mr. Clinton feared that her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, would commit voter fraud in the Iowa caucuses by busing college students into the state, and urged the campaign to divert valuable energy away from organizing and onto defense against dirty tricks. Mr. Clinton saw his wife’s coming blowout loss in New Hampshire, where his unexpectedly strong showing in 1992 helped propel him to the nomination, as a crisis that desperately needed to be staved off, despite polling that showed Mrs. Clinton would quickly rebound as the race moved to more diverse states. “He still thinks that should be spending more time in — earlier in January,” his chief of staff emailed Mr. Mook last December. Mr. Clinton’s travel schedule, while robust, has operated on a second tier, with Clinton surrogates such as President Obama and his wife, Michelle, Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts appearing in the most prime locations. At times, the campaign even seems to prefer him off the radar. Before Mrs. Clinton’s debate with Mr. Sanders in October 2015 in Nevada, Jake Sullivan, Mrs. Clinton’s top policy aide, responded to an email from Huma Abedin, her top personal aide, confirming that Mr. Clinton would be joining his wife on the plane to Las Vegas with the words, “This is not a positive development. ” Asked about Mr. Clinton’s role and standing in the campaign, his aides said his trips to Massachusetts and Missouri, both of which Mrs. Clinton narrowly won in the primaries, were based on his feedback and that the campaign’s data showed Mr. Clinton was decisive in delivering victory. And Mr. Mook said Mr. Clinton has been nothing but helpful. “He’s been an integral part of this campaign throughout,” said Mr. Mook in a statement. “Once or twice a day I’m able to get his feedback and advice, and I could not be more grateful to have someone who is at once a mentor, a political junkie and a brilliant tactician for our campaign. ” Mr. Clinton acknowledged that he was glad the campaign was finally drawing to a close but added, “I’m having a good time, as you can see. ” But it has not always seemed like much fun. One of Mr. Clinton’s closest allies said he had been demoralized by an election that had resuscitated talk of his sexual affairs, alleged and otherwise. He has generally stuck to the script but sometimes unintentionally causes trouble, as when he met with Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, on a tarmac in Phoenix, an encounter Mr. Trump has used to accuse Ms. Lynch of rigging the State Department email investigation for Mrs. Clinton. In a January email, Mr. Clinton’s press secretary, Angel Ureña, let Mrs. Clinton’s staff know that one trip by Mr. Clinton to New Hampshire had resulted in no such drama: “Fair to say we didn’t break anything. ” And on the trail, his age can show, with drifting sentences coming out of a dried mouth. At a rally at the New Belgium brewery in Fort Collins, Colo. where a propeller plane with the words “Go Trump” painted under its wings buzzed overhead, Mr. Clinton relayed how he had told hurting coal miners who disliked his wife, “You guys did well when I was president, let’s come in and talk. ” But his few applause lines came when he mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement and Mr. Sanders, and when he doled out progressive red meat about free college. In a Denver nightclub, Mr. Clinton made his case under a giant disco ball. Brooke McReynolds, 24, said she was impressed, but found his attention to the white working classes “a dying . ” Still, she said, “He’s getting there. ” And yet when Mr. Clinton returns to form, he remains something to behold. At his Pueblo rally, Mr. Clinton had the crowd as he lamented Mr. Trump’s degradation of politics. (“It looks more like reality TV and doesn’t do anything to change reality. ”) He got them laughing when he told men who feared a female president to get over it because when women work on weekends, “We’ll have more time to watch football. ” And a hush fell over the crowd when Mr. Clinton slipped inside the mind of the white voters who had left his family to support Mr. Trump. “Look, his base is where I grew up. I was born in Arkansas to a mother of lineage,” Mr. Clinton said. These were good, trustworthy people, he said, “but always and forever we have been manipulated by scoundrels. ” Mr. Trump, he said, followed in a long line of exploiters who “just — rub — salt — in our wounds. ” A white man standing beside his young son in the back shouted the refrain often heard at Mr. Trump’s rallies: “Lock that bitch up. ” Mr. Clinton continued as if he had not heard a thing. | 0fake |
Commentary: Trump can't fight Islamic State without wading into Syria's war | Over the course of the U.S. presidential campaign, Donald Trump changed his mind on many issues. But he’s been consistent on one foreign policy question: he wants to end American support for Syrian opposition groups fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Trump argues that the United States should expend all of its efforts on fighting Islamic State instead. "I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 11, in his first interview after he won the White House. “My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria. … Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.” Even if Trump goes ahead with his threat to cut off aid to Syrian rebels fighting the Assad regime – especially those supported by a covert CIA program which provides training and anti-tank missiles – the president-elect will face another major test of his Syria policy soon after he’s inaugurated on Jan. 20. The United States is supporting two military campaigns simultaneously in Syria: one against Assad’s government and the other against Islamic State. Trump has made clear that he doesn’t view the fight against Assad as a U.S. priority. But will Trump continue a separate Pentagon support and training program for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of rebel groups, which is leading a ground offensive to oust Islamic State from the city of Raqqa, capital of its self-proclaimed caliphate? That campaign started on Nov. 6 with a mobilization of about 30,000 rebels to encircle Raqqa and cut it off from all sides, to deny Islamic State the ability to resupply weapons and fighters. The battle to push the jihadists out of Raqqa could take months. If it falters under a fledging Trump administration, Islamic State would have a safe base from which it would unleash new attacks in Syria and Iraq, and against the West. U.S. military planners pushed for the Raqqa offensive to start soon after the long-awaited invasion to recapture Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, from the militants began in mid-October. Pentagon officials say they fear that Islamic State operatives, including some who fled the Mosul offensive, will use Raqqa to plot attacks against Western targets. “There’s a sense of urgency about what we have to do here because we’re just not sure what they’re [jihadists] up to, and where, and when,” the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Lt. General Stephen Townsend, said at a news conference on Oct. 26 in Baghdad. “But we know that this plot planning is emanating from Raqqa.” Trump says he wants to avoid direct U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict, which has expanded into a regional proxy war. Russia and Iran, along with allied militias like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, are helping Assad consolidate control and recapture territory he lost to the rebels and jihadist groups. Assad and his backers have rarely fought directly against Islamic State, which controls Raqqa and other parts of eastern Syria. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States are backing various rebel factions that are fighting Assad and his allies, and, at times, Islamic State. Under Barack Obama’s administration, the CIA has funneled up to $1 billion a year in weapons, including light arms, ammunition and anti-tank missiles, to Syrian rebel groups fighting the Assad regime that were deemed moderate by U.S. officials. But some of these rebels have been forced into battlefield alliances with jihadists, including al Qaeda affiliated groups. While the offensive against Islamic State in Raqqa began in the waning days of the Obama administration, it needs support from the incoming Trump administration to bear fruit. But the Raqqa operation is already alienating American allies, especially Turkey, which is critical of the Syrian Democratic Forces. The SDF is a coalition of Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and Turkmen rebel groups that is anchored by the People’s Protection Units (known by its Kurdish acronym, YPG), which includes thousands of Syrian Kurdish fighters. Turkish leaders view the YPG and other Syrian Kurdish groups as allies of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (known as the PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish government since the 1980s, seeking autonomy for Kurdish areas. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists that Washington must not allow the YPG to take a leading role in expelling Islamic State from Raqqa, a largely Sunni Arab city. During the presidential campaign, Trump argued the United States should arm and help Kurdish factions, both in Iraq and Syria. “I’m a big fan of the Kurdish forces,” he said in July. If Trump follows through on his praise of the Kurds, that would be good news for the SDF and its largest militia, the YPG. But once in office, Trump would also have to balance the objections of allies like Turkey and Erdogan, its increasingly autocratic president. Among his first top appointments, Trump named Michael Flynn, a retired general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as his national security adviser. Flynn, who once worked as a paid lobbyist for a prominent Turkish businessman, has expressed strong support for Erdogan’s government and argued that Washington should be more sympathetic to its concerns. In late August, Turkey sent several hundred of its special forces into Syria, and began carrying out air strikes to help rebel factions allied with Ankara consolidate control of territory near the Turkish-Syrian border. The Turkish-backed rebels have fought both Islamic State jihadists and occasionally the U.S.-backed YPG militia. In October, Erdogan said he told Obama in a phone call that Turkey was capable of ousting Islamic State from Raqqa on its own. Other Turkish officials argued that the campaign to retake Raqqa should not begin until Iraqi forces complete their offensive against Islamic State in Mosul, which has slowed in recent weeks. But U.S. officials are keen to isolate Raqqa and use Syrian forces to encircle it, mainly because of worries about Islamic State operatives fleeing from Mosul and plotting new attacks against the West. That concern is genuine because the jihadist group – even as it was weakened over the past year, after intensive U.S.-led bombing and defeats by its opponents in Iraq and Syria – has shown a significant ability to adapt and inflict new terror. In the coming months, Islamic State will find new ways to endure an American-orchestrated offensive on Raqqa. It will try to take advantage of the change in U.S. administration. And once he’s in office, Trump will discover that fighting and containing Islamic State inevitably means wading into Syria’s complicated war. | 0fake |
Davis says no Brexit deal 'incredibly unlikely' | BERLIN (Reuters) - It is incredibly unlikely that Britain will not be able to negotiate a deal with the European Union on its departure from the bloc, Brexit Secretary David Davis said on Thursday. Davis told a business conference in Berlin he hoped the European Commission would be able by Christmas to proceed to the next stage of Brexit negotiations - on future ties between Britain and the EU. Davis added that he expected Prime Minister Theresa May to remain in office for the duration of the Brexit negotiations and beyond. | 0fake |
Lockheed CEO tells Trump she will work to drive down cost of F-35 | (Reuters) - The chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp told President-elect Donald Trump on Friday that she was committed to driving down the cost of the company’s F-35 fighter jet, a day after Trump took aim at the cost of the F-35 in a Twitter post. CEO Marillyn Hewson said she spoke with Trump on Friday afternoon and assured him that she had heard his message “loud and clear” about reducing the cost of the F-35. Trump, in a tweet posted late on Thursday, suggested that an older aircraft made by rival aerospace company Boeing Co could offer a cheaper alternative to the F-35. “Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!” Trump said. Hewson, in a statement posted on Twitter, said she had had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Friday. “I gave him my personal commitment to drive the cost down aggressively,” she said in the statement. Lockheed shares closed down 1.3 percent on Friday, nearing their lowest levels since the Nov. 8 election. They were the biggest drag on a basket of defense-related stocks. Boeing’s stock ended near the unchanged mark. Trump had met with the chief executives of both Lockheed and Boeing on Wednesday. Boeing’s F-18 is an older generation aircraft that lacks the stealth capabilities of the F-35. One U.S. official said it was impossible to tell what Trump meant by his tweet, given the importance of stealth technology as a way to counter advanced defenses of near-peer states, like Russia or China. “Somebody needs to ask Donald Trump how he’s going to be able to confront China without aircraft capable of penetrating anti-access and area denial systems, including air defenses,” the official said. Most defense analysts do not consider the two jets as comparable aircraft. “Impractical if not irrational,” Richard Safran, a defense analyst at Buckingham Research, said by email. “First, the F/A-18 is a carrier-based naval fighter. Certainly it could not meet the U.S. Marine Corps need for vertical lift. It would not be suitable for the Air Force either - the extra weight of a carrier fighter makes it less than ideal for the Air Force.” “Unless the rules of physics have changed, you cannot make a non-stealthy, two-engined, carrier-based aircraft from the 1980s into a single-engine, multi-role stealthy fighter from the 2000s,” Vertical Research Partners analysts wrote in a note on Friday. Still, Trump’s dissatisfaction with the program, which has been dogged by problems while costs have escalated to an estimated $379 billion, is a clear risk for Lockheed. The F-35 program is a critical sales generator for the company, accounting for 20 percent of last year’s total revenue of $46.1 billion. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher said on Thursday in an email that the company was committed to providing the capability and affordability to meet national security needs. On Wednesday, Trump met the CEOs of Lockheed and Boeing at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg told reporters there that he had guaranteed costs would not get out of control for a replacement to Air Force One, the presidential plane, another project Trump calls too expensive. Trump told reporters he wanted to cut the F-35 program’s costs. Trump’s jockeying for leverage via his Twitter account is likely to be a hurdle for all U.S. defense contractors, Roman Schweizer, aerospace and defense analyst at Cowen & Co, wrote in a client note on Thursday. Trump unleashed his tirade about the hefty cost for U.S. aircraft earlier this month, first lashing out at Boeing over the cost of replacement Air Force One presidential planes and days later at Lockheed over the F-35. Since Trump’s first tweet about Air Force One on Dec. 6, Lockheed shares have slumped around 6.4 percent, costing its shareholders collectively about $5 billion in lost market value. “We have no idea how this plays out but believe ‘Twitter risk’ for defense companies could be a significant issue over the next four years,” Cowen’s Schweizer wrote. “This is Lockheed Martin’s time in the barrel.” | 0fake |
Venezuela government and foes resume talks, breakthrough unlikely | SANTO DOMINGO/CARACAS (Reuters) - Members of Venezuela s leftist government and opposition coalition began a new round of talks in the Dominican Republic on Friday aimed at resolving the OPEC nation s long-running and often bloody political standoff. Various mediation efforts have failed in recent years: foes accuse President Nicolas Maduro of exploiting dialogue to buy time, while he says the opposition prefers violence. Few Venezuelans expect a breakthrough this time, with opponents demoralized at seeing Maduro consolidate power and position himself for possible re-election in 2018. The Democratic Unity coalition - which failed to dislodge Maduro in months of street protests this year that led to about 125 deaths - is pressing primarily for a guarantee of free and fair voting next year. It also wants a foreign humanitarian aid corridor to alleviate one of the worst economic crises in modern history, as well as freedom for several hundred jailed activists, and respect for the opposition-led congress. We ve come to seek solutions to Venezuela s problems: food, medicines, free elections, and the need to restore democracy, lead opposition negotiator Julio Borges said. It s a difficult path. The opposition s bargaining power has been weakened by a surprising defeat in October gubernatorial elections. Furthermore, the multi-party group is divided, with more militant sectors opposing the talks. The dialogue they are planning to start is a parody ... an instrument for the regime to gain time and keep itself in power, said Antonio Ledezma, an opposition leader who escaped house arrest this month to seek asylum abroad. Maduro has instructed negotiators to focus on opposition to U.S. sanctions against his government. He was strengthened by the October vote and anticipates another win in mayoral elections set for December, which the opposition is mainly boycotting. President Donald Trump has slapped individual sanctions on a raft of officials for alleged rights abuses, corruption and drugs crimes, as well as economic measures intended to stop the Venezuelan government issuing new debt. Maduro wants any potential deal with the opposition to include joint pressure on Washington to back off. He has blamed the U.S. measures for Venezuela s economic problems, which in fact began several years ago amid failed statist policies and a plunge in global oil prices. We came to demand the immediate end of the economic aggressions against Venezuela, said chief government negotiator and Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez. There is no indication, however, that Trump would be prepared to ease pressure on Maduro, whom he has called a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator. On the contrary, U.S. officials say Washington could strengthen sanctions unless Maduro enacts democratic changes. The government also wants recognition for Venezuela s Constituent Assembly, an entirely pro-Maduro superbody elected in July despite an opposition boycott and widespread international condemnation. With an eye to its push to refinance more than $120 billion in foreign debt, Maduro would like the opposition-led congress to agree to approve any negotiations with bondholders, a potential loophole to get round the U.S. sanctions. Foreign ministers from Chile, Mexico, Bolivia, Nicaragua and host Dominican Republic were acting as guarantors at the talks over two days at the Foreign Ministry building in Santo Domingo. Major near-term breakthroughs remain unlikely given the complexity of issues on the table and the distance between each side s preferences, said Eurasia group consultancy. | 0fake |
At least 17 killed in Cameroon separatist clashes: Amnesty | BAMENDA, Cameroon (Reuters) - At least 17 people have died in clashes between security forces and protesters in Cameroon s English-speaking regions, Amnesty International said, as violence broke out in an area where a separatist movement is gathering strength. The clashes began on Sunday after local groups called protests against what they say is their marginalization by the Francophone-dominated government of the country s long-time ruler, Paul Biya. Witnesses said security forces opened fire, often at close range. Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International s Lake Chad region researcher, told Reuters that the victims died across several towns in the two Anglophone regions bordering Nigeria. The worrying escalation witnessed over the weekend has now reached a crisis point, Allegrozzi said. A local mayor confirmed that one of the victims was a 13-year-old girl who died from bullet wounds. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, the leader of the separatist movement called the Governing Council of Ambazonia said the final death toll was likely to exceed 30. Government officials did not respond to requests for comment. A daytime curfew was in place in the city of Bamenda on Monday, where security forces set up barricades along virtually empty avenues. A Reuters witness saw police wearing balaclavas beat and detain a young man who resisted arrest. Cameroon, today an oil and cocoa producer with a population of more than 23 million people, was ruled by Germany until the end of World War One, then divided between the French and British victors. The deep cultural and linguistic divides spurred protests for greater autonomy nearly a year ago and authorities have responded by locking up opponents and cutting internet access. The government of France on Monday called on all sides to reject violence. But opposition leader John Fru Ndi, who ran against Biya in past elections, said the president might struggle to ease tensions before next year s election. The 84-year-old Biya, who has held power since 1982, is expected to seek another term. There were solutions available but he missed his chance, he said in an interview at his home in Bamenda on Monday. Biya has condemned the latest outbreak of violence. | 0fake |
Insane! Huge Financial Disaster On The Horizon With Obama’s Housing Bubble And Easy Lending In The Name Of “Fairness” | I ll bet most Americans have no idea that we re in another huge housing bubble thanks to Obama s desire for everyone to own a home. Remember Barney Frank and his pals forcing this bubble to get bigger and bigger and then pointing the finger at Republicans? Well, that s what s next unless the lame Republicans take the bull by the horns and get control of our debt. BILL CLINTON S HUD SECRETARY ANDREW CUOMO DISCUSSING FAIR HOUSING: THIS IS A MASSIVE SHELL GAME THAT OBAMA CONTINUES:Just this September, HUD awarded $38 million to fight housing discrimination so the shell game continues but here s more of the rest of the story:OBAMA S HOUSE OF CARDS: Eric Holder and Tom Perez who re Obama administration political shills, did the dirty work in targeting banks. The excerpt below is from a fantastic piece in the New York Post that spells out the Obama administration s efforts with minority home ownership and perceived injustices that just aren t there. Typical Obama to rewrite the rules or just not follow them to get what you want. That isn t stopping the administration from trying to correct perceived injustices. Cordray says CFPB will rewrite the rules for how the private credit bureaus collect, maintain and analyze such data. He is working on reforming the system with the liberal Center for Responsible Lending and other housing activists who believe it denies minorities the credit they deserve. The federal government also isn t shy about fining and suing banks to get its way. CFPB also has been working closely with the Justice Department to enhance fair lending enforcement. Justice has pressured banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination, court documents show. Attorney General Eric Holder, who served as Reno s deputy, has filed a record number of fair-lending enforcement actions against lenders. More than 60 investigations are active or said to be in the pipeline, and dozens of banks have already settled, including giants Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Prosecutions have already generated more than $550 million in rebates, loan set-asides and other subsidies from banks that have settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist by the media. Leading the charge is Holder s top civil-rights cop, Thomas Perez, another Clinton retread. Perez has compared bankers to Klansmen, arguing that while bankers may discriminate with a smile and fine print, it s every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood. STEPHEN MOORE: The Fed, the White House and Congress are setting up the next financial bubbleMy 13-year-old son told me at the dinner table the other day that Franklin Roosevelt was one of America s greatest presidents because he ended the Great Depression. He s usually a good student, so I checked where he got this tripe and sure enough the fairy tale was right there in his American history book.Sure enough his text book tells kids that the New Deal ended the Great Depression and even saved capitalism. Of course the New Deal exacerbated the pain and financial devastation of a stock market crash, and unemployment lingered in double digits for a decade after Roosevelt was elected until the start of World War II.Here s the latest story line: bailouts, trillions of dollars of government spending and debt, easy money, and re-regulation of Wall Street ended the 2008 Great Recession. The myth took on new life last week when Ben Bernanke took a bow in The Wall Street Journal for in his mind saving the economy with his $3 trillion of quantitative easing and zero interest rate policy. No, actually this is what created the crisis. Don t be surprised if Mr. Bernanke receives a Nobel Peace Prize.As Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute and other scholars have thoroughly documented, the crash of 2008 was caused by the Federal Reserve s easy money policies for nearly a decade, government housing policies that led to preposterous mortgage loans being issued, and massive overleverage of government, companies, and households.Why does any of this history matter? Since Washington doesn t understand what went wrong in 2007 and 2008, so the Fed, the White House and Congress are recreating the very same conditions for another financial bubble. If it pops, we could replay the same devastating effects as occurred during the first bubble in 1999 and 2000. It is doing so in four ways:First, the Dodd-Frank regulations are causing one of the greatest consolidations of the banking industry since the Great Depression. Those indispensable small savings and loans that Jimmy Stewart operated in the movie It s a Wonderful Life are disappearing from the American landscape. This is because only really big banks have the size to spread the costs of Dodd-Frank compliance officers and costs. So we have created a competitive advantage that allows the sharks to swallow the minnows. Meanwhile, the too big to fail safety net to Bank of America, Citi, and other titans exacerbates this cost advantage of big banks and thus makes bailouts even more likely in the future.Second, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are engaged in the same low interest rate lending mania of 2004-07 and the Obama administration is on a Bush-like home-ownership push. Some Republican House heroes like Jeb Hensarling of Texas wanted to eliminate taxpayer subsidies to Fannie and Freddie but the housing lobby kept them alive. So now the two government enterprises are back issuing taxpayer guarantees on mortgages with as little as 3 percent down payment. Have we learned nothing at all?Third, the Fed refused to raise interest rates off zero in September, and, hello, that easy money policy is how we got into the mess in 2000 and then in 2008. Wall Street cheered Janet Yellen s decision to keep the cheap dollars flowing. Isn t this all starting to sound familiar?Finally, there is the saturation of debt. When the crisis hit in 2008 the national debt stood at a little under $10 trillion. Now we are at $18 trillion. Government is hopelessly overleveraged. The interest rate exposure is enormous with each one percentage point rise in long term rates causing the servicing costs of the debt to rise by about $1 trillion over 10 years. Meanwhile, on top of that, the Fed owns at least $1 trillion in mortgage debt and so if housing markets fall again, taxpayers get double walloped.The point is that government and politicians have no learning curve. All of the conditions of financial wreckage are reappearing. This is why congressional Republicans absolutely should put up a fight on the debt ceiling by requiring more budget discipline as a condition of higher debt levels. They should require at least 8-10 percent downpayments on all government insured mortgages. They should repeal all or part of the Dodd-Frank bill that is destroying community banks, while promising voters they will never again bail out a bank or financial institution. Finally, they should be urging the Fed to restore sound money by gradually raising short term interest rates. And the presidential candidates should start warning voters that Washington is rebuilding another financial house of cards.If they don t, when the financial crash comes and Americans see their life savings disappear, the media and the history books will again blame Republicans for the destruction from the rampant financial negligence of government. Stephen Moore is an economic consultant with Freedom Works and a Fox News contributor.VIA: WT | 1real |
VERY DECEPTIVE CLINTON ADS Have Trump Saying The ‘F WORD’ But He Never Said It [Video] | Has anyone else out there seen this commercial? It comes on about every hour in my town. I knew something about this was wrong and now we know IT S FALSE If you care about a candidate with a dirty mouth then what about Hillary s dirty hands ? I choose the candidate who s honest and not canned. We re all adults here and this commercial is a desperate attempt to make Trump look bad. It fails! | 1real |
Trump Foreign Policy Guru: Jesus Says ‘This Is the Last Election’ If You Don’t Vote Trump (VIDEO) | Brace yourself for this, folks. Trump foreign policy adviser Michele Bachmann has just returned from Jesusland, that little imaginary country that exists in her head where her brain should be, with some dire news. Apparently, Supreme Overlord God Jergenson (we assume that s his last name anyway) is giving the people of the United States a choice between life and death this election, Trump or Clinton and if we don t choose life, well, there just won t be anymore elections. Well, I don t want to be melodramatic but I do want to be truthful, Bachmann says melodramatically in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. I believe without a shadow of a doubt this is the last election. This is it. This is the last election. And the reason why I say that David is because it s a math problem, Bachmann tells interviewer David Brody. It s a math problem of demographics and a changing United States. If you look at the numbers of people who vote and who lives in the country and who Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to bring in to the country, this is the last election when we even have a chance to vote for somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles. This is it. Hillary Clinton I m not judging her spiritually or where she is at but we know where she s going to come down on Supreme Court justices, she s pro-Planned Parenthood. She s for everything I m against. I think it s very clear. We ve got a day and night contrast, Bachmann says.And, of course, she s right. Where Clinton is a classy, intelligent, grounded, sane human being, Bachmann is a vapid mess of a person who thinks The Lion King was gay propaganda and the Founding Fathers ended slavery (yes, seriously).Bachmann says she knows Trump can be a bit crude but urges people to get over it because Hillary Clinton is pure evil: This isn t even close between what Donald Trump stands for and espouses and what Hillary Clinton stands for and espouses. People look at Trump and he can be coarse and a little crude and all the rest and I say, Get over it! Get over it because what he is going to do is uphold religious liberty and advance the constitutional republic that our founders gave us. According to Bachmann, Clinton has said herself that she is going to grant wholesale amnesty to people from the Third World who are here in the United States. She says that the projected 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States is a fake number, then provided her own hipper, cooler fake number she got from Donald Trump about thirty to forty million illegal aliens currently in the United States. What Hillary Clinton s ultimate goal is, is to secure her reelection, Bachmann says. The very first thing she will do as President Hillary Clinton is this: she will have a wholesale amnesty so that Republicans will never again have the chance at winning Florida or Texas. If we can t win Florida or Texas, it s game over. From there, Clinton will ensure Republicans never win the White House by changing the demographics of the United States so that no Republican will ever win again. But it s worse than that. A Trump loss would so displease God that he d just kill us all anyway to prevent a Clinton presidency: God says to every nation for all of time, I set before you life and death, what are you going to choose? If you look at the book of Genesis, you don t even have to get beyond Chapter 3 to see God gives us life. The first thing he gives mankind is life. What does man choose? Death. We choose rebellion and death. You go from Genesis all through the Bible to the book of Revelation; man stupidly makes the same decision over and over again by rejecting life and choosing death. What I m telling you is that s what we re looking at now in this country. I know all of this sounds scary, but choose death this November unless, of course, you want to see the sort of life we would have under an insane racist who will likely throw us into nuclear war within his first 90 days.Watch the interview below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Where Burning Effigies (Not Just Guy Fawkes’s) Is Part of the Fun - The New York Times | LEWES, England — Though it is never flattering to be burned in effigy, Donald J. Trump was in good company on Saturday when his image went up in flames not far from those of the British prime minister, Theresa May, and of a pope. In the streets, firecrackers exploded, blazing crosses were carried and the air filled with smoke as the people of Lewes, in southeast England, paraded in a dazzling array of costumes on Nov. 5, the anniversary of a failed plot to blow up Parliament in London in 1605. More than four centuries later, many throughout Britain still commemorate the event — known as Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night (after one of the plotters) — though its distinctiveness is being usurped as it sometimes merges with Halloween, a relatively recent import here, or the Hindu festival of Diwali. But not in Lewes. “It is the only thing in the whole year which marks us out from everyone else,” said Graham Mayhew, the mayor and a historian. “People are very proud of it and determined to protect it,” he said, adding that residents “love the fact that nobody else does this. ” On a field on the outskirts of the town, giant bonfires burned and fireworks exploded from the head of one of at least two effigies of Mr. Trump — this one suspended below a model of a wall adorned with Mexican flags. The spectacles are organized by the town’s seven bonfire societies, some of them more than 160 years old. Mr. Mayhew, interviewed before the event, said the subjects should not take their immolation personally. “You are not to take it seriously. It’s a statement of people’s reaction to the news,” he said. “It is not meant as an incitement. It’s like a political cartoon — it is exposing certain things to ridicule. ” Lewes (pronounced ) has several claims to historical fame, being at one time the home of Thomas Paine, the radical American author of “Common Sense,” who is memorialized with a plaque on the town’s White Hart Hotel marking the place where he “expounded his revolutionary politics. ” But it is best known now as the unofficial center of Britain’s Bonfire Night tradition, commemorating a moment of deliverance for Protestant England: the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, a plan by Roman Catholics to blow up Westminster Palace and everyone in it, including King James I. Guido, or Guy, Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were captured and suffered gruesome executions. Four centuries later, Lewes celebrates the event in a night carnival with strange, sometimes sectarian, undertones. Through the streets pass those dressed as smugglers, Zulu warriors, Native Americans, Vikings and regimental English soldiers, carrying flags with symbols such as the skull and crossbones. Then there is the effigy of Pope Paul V (the pontiff in 1605) alongside banners reading “no popery” and flaming crosses. Lewes also commemorates the killing of 17 Protestant martyrs who met their horrific deaths in the town well before the Gunpowder Plot. They were victims of the Marian Persecutions of the 16th century, which took place when Queen Mary (or “Bloody Mary”) sought to stamp out Protestantism. There is also an act of remembrance for those who died in the major wars of the 20th century. Mr. Mayhew conceded that there was “a bit of a hangover from the strong religious feeling of the 19th century,” when was rife, though he added that “most people would be horrified by the idea that they would have religious prejudice. ” Local Roman Catholics “tolerate it,” he said. “Sometimes feathers get ruffled. Some of the local priests have taken it more to heart. But everybody recognizes it is part of tradition. ” “It’s not right wing. It’s not left wing. It is a great celebration of ” he added. The town has a long history of Nonconformism, a form of Protestantism that dissents from the established Church of England, but Lewes seems more attached to the trappings of sectarianism than its reality. In the book “Burn Holy Fire,” Jeremy Goring recounts an episode in 1981 when Ian Paisley, a Protestant lawmaker from Northern Ireland, came to Lewes on Bonfire Night “and tried to fan the flames of conflict by distributing leaflets. ” “His intervention backfired badly, for the following year he himself was burned in effigy,” Mr. Goring wrote. The giant crosses ignited to remember the Lewes martyrs appear to be a innovation. According to Jim Etherington, a local historian and the author of “Lewes Bonfire Night,” their prominence increased in recent decades mainly because the police objected on safety grounds to fireworks in the parade, but seemed more relaxed about fiery crosses. The first recorded reference to November celebrations in Lewes dates from 1697, and over the next century and a half the “Bonfire boys” became increasingly unruly. In 1806, 18 were arrested, and there was a Bonfire Night riot in 1829. By the there was pressure for more orderly celebrations, leading to the creation of the first bonfire societies, which developed in idiosyncratic ways. Members of the Commercial Square Bonfire Society, for example, adopted American Indian costumes because a handful had spent time in America building railroads in the West. “During their time there, they observed the dreadful treatment of the Native American population,” the Lewes Bonfire Council website says. Though not exactly secretive, the bonfire societies are not very communicative, either, and the choice of effigies is known only by a handful of people before the unveiling in November. Brian Pugh, another local author, ties the strength of the Bonfire Night tradition to an innate rebelliousness. It is captured by a local saying, “We don’t be druv,” which translates as “We won’t be pushed around and are a bit rebellious,” he said. Perhaps a bigger puzzle is the fact that the Gunpowder Plot — and the accompanying rhyme “Remember, remember the fifth of November” — is still commemorated in Britain more than four centuries after it failed. What is so strange about that, wrote James Shapiro in “1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear,” is that “the fifth of November recalls a collective experience, a day of communal deliverance on which nothing actually happened. ” He added: “Nobody has fully explained the deep hold that ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November’ continues to have on the British psyche (though its grip seems to be slackening and the image of Guy Fawkes may soon be associated more with the visages on the masks worn by Anonymous protesters). ” It will, however, be some time before Lewes forgets, even if a lot of people here may be hazy about some of the things they are remembering, and perhaps have simpler motives. “What other opportunities do you have,” asked Mr. Etherington, “to dress up in weird and wonderful costumes, when the town has been cleared of traffic?” | 0fake |
Black Hawk crashes off Florida; human remains found | (CNN) Thick fog forced authorities to suspend the air search Wednesday for seven Marines and four Army aircrew, feared dead after their Black Hawk helicopter crashed into waters off the Florida Panhandle.
The helicopter was first reported missing at about 8:30 p.m. (9:30 p.m. ET) Tuesday. Hours later, searchers found debris around Okaloosa Island near Eglin Air Force Base, base spokesman Andy Bourland said.
This debris washed up on both the north and south sides of Santa Rosa Sound, which connects mainland northern Florida and a barrier island.
The air search is expected to resume midday Thursday, the spokesman said. A spokeswoman for the Coast Guard said that boats will continue scouring the waters throughout the night Wednesday, weather permitting.
Human remains have washed ashore in the area near Eglin.
Base spokeswoman Jasmine Porterfield didn't specify what was found, noting the search-and-rescue mission remained underway. Still, there was little hope for a miracle, with Gen. Martin Dempsey -- chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- expressing his condolences.
He said the crash was "a reminder to us that those who serve put themselves at risk, both in training and in combat."
"We will work with the services to ensure that ... their family members will be well cared for."
The Air Force, Coast Guard and civilian agencies participated in the intensive search focused on where they believe the aircraft went down, in waters east of the town of Navarre and the Navarre Bridge and near Eglin testing range site A-17.
Porterfield said approximately 100 people were involved in canvassing the ground and the waters, looking for debris: "It's a huge effort underway."
"We're working closely with all the parties involved to locate our Marines and the Army crew that were onboard," added Capt. Barry Morris, a spokesman for the U.S. Marines Corps Special Operations Command . "And, really, just our thoughts (and) prayers are with the Marines, the soldiers and the families of those involved in the mishap."
No one is saying what caused the accident, with Eglin spokeswoman Sara Vidoni indicating only that there's no indication of anything suspicious.
There was heavy fog in the area when the aircraft went missing, though the Eglin spokeswoman said it's too early to tell whether that had anything to do with the crash.
"There is training in all conditions -- that's part of the military mission," Vidoni said. "They were out there doing what the military does."
According to Morris, the service members -- all men -- were involved in a seven-day training exercise of amphibious operations. It involved small boats and inserting and extracting Marines from the water via helicopter. Morris would not say in which phase of the training the Marines were on Tuesday night.
The UH-60 helicopter wasn't alone when it went down. A second Black Hawk -- assigned to 1-244th Assault Helicopter Battalion based in Hammond, Louisiana -- safely returned to the base, some 40 miles east of Pensacola.
The aircraft were both assigned to the Louisiana Army National Guard out of Hammond and taking part in what the U.S. military called a "routine training mission involving the Marine Special Operations Regiment" out of Camp Lejeune.
"Whatever the trouble was with the one aircraft, it did not involve the second helicopter that was participating in the exercise," Bourland said.
Seven Marines based out of Camp Lejeune
The Army aircrew members belonged to the Army National Guard unit out of Louisiana, part of a unit that Gov. Bobby Jindal said "have fought courageously overseas in defense of our nation and here at home."
By 11:15 a.m., relatives of all four of those guardsmen had been notified, though their names won't be released publicly until the Coast Guard recovers their bodies or calls off the search, said Col. Pete Schneider, a Louisiana National Guard spokesman.
"They have protected what matters most during times of crisis," Jindal said. "These soldiers represent the best of Louisiana, and we are praying for them and their families."
The pilots were instructor pilots, Maj. Gen. Glenn Curtis told reporters. He said the whole crew had several thousand combined hours of operation flying the Black Hawk.
This week's crash involved a UH-60 Black Hawk, a twin-engine helicopter introduced into Army service in 1979 in place of the iconic UH-1 Huey. Other branches have modified the Black Hawk for their own uses, including the Navy's SH-60 (the Sea Hawk), the Air Force's MH-60 (the Pave Hawk) and the Coast Guard's HH-60 (the Jayhawk).
The Army's UH-60 helicopter, which has a maximum speed of 173 mph, has an airframe "designed to progressively crush on impact to protect the crew and passengers," according to the service.
As Morris, the Marine spokesman, pointed out, those who get on such aircraft or take part in other military exercises aren't always out of danger just because they're off the battlefield.
"We have a requirement to conduct realistic military training," he said. "And unfortunately this mishap happened." | 0fake |
Comment on Rep. Gowdy on impact of FBI’s new Clinton inquiry by Toby | ‹ › Debbie Menon is an independent writer based in Dubai. She is Editor-in-Chief of VeteransNewsNow.com Her main focus are the US-Mid-East Conflicts. Her writing has been featured in several print and online publications in the Middle East. She is committed to exposing (AIPAC) the Israel Lobby's control of American policy for the Middle East. Control which amounts to treason by the Zionist Lobbies in America and its stooges in Congress, and that guarantees there can never be a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflicts, only catastrophe for all, in the region and the world. Her focus is Israel’s drift towards greater oppression of the Palestinian people; the political deceptions and crisis in Syria and Ukraine; the cold hard facts about America’s so-called ‘war on terror’ and grim future; countering the propaganda war towards Iran & Russia and calling attention to, the new, developing, promising, strategic alliances as a consequence. Her mission is to inform and educate the public on issues of the US/Middle East conflicts that are unreported, underreported, or distorted in the Zionist owned American Media. Her writing reflects the incredible resilience, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, who are now facing the prospect of a final round of ethnic cleansing. Her mission is to inform and educate internet viewers seeking unfiltered information about real events on issues of the US/Middle East conflicts that are unreported, underreported, or distorted in the American media. Her purpose is to look at the current reality from a different and critical perspective, not to simply rehash the pro-US/Israel perspective, smoke and mirrors that has been allowed to utterly and completely dominate Mainstream discourse. PS: For those of her detractors that think she is being selective and even “one sided,” tough, that is the point of her work, to present an alternative view and interpretation of the US-Israel-Middle East conflict, that has been completely ignored in mainstream discourse and denied the US public. Oh, and she is not Muslim or Palestinian and not married to one either! She is practicing Roman catholic. Rep. Gowdy on impact of FBI’s new Clinton inquiry By Debbie Menon on October 31, 2016 Rep. Trey Gowdy is a straight shooter. He shows a glimmer of hope. BRAVO! Senator Trey Gowdy is an American attorney, politician and former prosecutor. He currently serves as the U.S. Representative for South Carolina’s 4th congressional district.
Senator Trey Gowdy is right, the timing is a direct and natural consequence of decisions Hillary made, period.
Jim Comey’s obligation is to the public.
Senator (Harry) Reid is simply “just another” one of the political hacks who populate that massive brothel we call Capitol Hill. Senator Reid and others are aware of the treasonous and criminal nature of the Clintons.
Let’s not divert and scapegoat Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband. Hillary Clinton is probably guilty of many things which have not surfaced as openly or as clearly, but Hillary is guilty as sin of malfeasance of office and negligence, for the very fact that she exposed her country’s secrets to hackers, knowingly using a “private server” to conduct State Department business with the outside world and should be called to account for it. Period. Gowdy: Clinton wiped her private server clean
Comey told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents.
It is people like Bill & Hillary who have become “Too Big to Fall” and the basic problems and causes of the fundamental failures in US Government. Two of the major rotten apples in the barrel, and these are probably two of the most obvious who should be prosecuted not only as examples to the others, but for delivery of the justice which they have earned…and which the citizens of America deserve!
Instead of rewarding them by returning them to the Oval office, they should be investigated, and they should be held accountable. Americans can live in a State of Law and Justice, or a State of suppression, injustice, corruption and subjugation to powerful politicians. It is their choice! | 1real |
null | "Ms Peterson please participate in the voting process of Cuba or China.Thanks"-The Electoral College | 1real |
Unions fight to preserve Obama’s immigration actions, their members | Two of the country’s most powerful and politically influential labor unions are backing President Obama in the recent court challenge to his 2014 executive action on illegal immigration, saying they support the president’s effort because "undocumented workers" need more workplace protection and their participation helps the U.S. economy.
The AFL-CIO and the National Education Association on Monday each filed so-called amicus briefs in a federal appeals court case in which Texas and 26 other states are challenges the president’s 2014 memorandum on illegal immigration.
The memorandum essentially expands work authorization and delayed-deportation programs for illegal immigrants. And it provides similar opportunities for the parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
The AFL-CIO’s 36-page brief essentially argues that Texas lacks the so-called “legal standing” to challenge the memorandum and that the administration didn’t violate procedural requirements in issuing the order.
However, the union also makes very clear its interest in the outcome of the proceedings.
“First, through existing collective bargaining relationships, AFL-CIO affiliates represent many undocumented workers in workplaces throughout the country,” according to the brief by the AFL-CIO, the country’s bigger union collective, with 56 unions representing roughly 12 million workers and retired workers.
Union lawyers argue such workers have substantive protection under labor and employment law but not to a “full range of remedies” when such laws are violated.
Such workers are not entitled to back pay under the National Labor Relations Act and are vulnerable to employer retaliation if they complain about violations, the lawyers argue.
“Secondly, this lack of legal remedies and vulnerability to retaliation creates an incentive for some unscrupulous employers to employ large numbers of undocumented workers at sub-standard wages and working conditions,” they continue in the brief. “Law-abiding employers must compete with these employers, making it more difficult for AFL-CIO affiliate unions to raise wages and improve working conditions.”
Many critics of Obama’s plans to reform federal immigration law without a vote in Congress say he is providing “amnesty” to those who have entered the U.S. illegally. They also say his plans -- backed by Americans companies and labor unions -- take away jobs from U.S. citizens.
"The labor unions, like Democratic politicians, have decided to rely on importing the citizens of other nations to gain power in this one. Of course this cancels out jobs and votes for Americans," a GOP congressional aide told FoxNews.com on Saturday.
In 2004, the AFL-CIO spent $5.1 million in lobbying and gave $8.7 million in political-related contributions, with no money going to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets.org.
The entire case, Texas et al v. USA, started in February when a federal judge granted the states a preliminary injunction, which temporarily stops Obama’s 2014 plan from going into effect.
The U.S. government wants the injunction lifted so Obama's actions can proceed but meanwhile has appealed the Texas court ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans, in which the amicus briefs have been filed.
Obama's actions would prevent as many as 5 million people who are in the U.S. illegally from being deported.
The 27 states also argue that the 2014 action is unconstitutional and would force them to invest more in law enforcement, health care and education.
The injunction is intended to stall Obama's actions while the lawsuit progresses through the courts.
Obama's orders to expand a program that protects young immigrants from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children was set to take effect Feb. 18. The part that would extend deportation protections to the parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents was slated to begin on May 19.
The 44-page amicus brief from the American Federation of Teachers includes seven other groups including ASPIRA -- the largest national Latino organization in the country.
The document largely makes the case that all children in the U.S. should have access to education for their “psychological, emotional, and physical well-being” and that children in families in which at least one member is an illegal immigrant should not be forced to live apart from their parents.
A coalition of groups including the Service Employees International Union, the second-largest public service union and a big supporter of Democratic political candidates and organizations, filed an amicus brief in the original case.
“The November 20, 2014 executive action on immigration would have beneficial effects on the U.S. economy and U.S. workers,” the brief states in part. “Temporary work authorization for those immigrants who are eligible for deferred action will raise not only their wages, but the wages of all Americans, which will in turn increase government tax revenue and create new jobs.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | 0fake |
‘Make Rape Legal’ Blogger Whines To Cops From Mommy’s House Over Alleged Threats | Daryush Valizadeh, a neo-masculinist movement leader and blogger who tried to hold events around the nation and world for like-minded men this coming Saturday is running scared. First, he announced that he could not guarantee the safety and privacy of other misogynist douchebags at his Return of Kings meet-ups, so he announced that this International Tribal Day would be cancelled, as would all future events. The internet, politicians, and various other organizations and public figures rightly condemned the gatherings organized by a man whose misogynistic writings include calls to make rape legal.Now, Roosh V., as he is known, is alleging that he is being threatened. Like most bottom-feeding lowlifes, it appears that this loser lives in his mommy s house, despite being a grown man who has been quite successful at peddling his anti-woman garbage under the guise of being a pick up artist. He contacted authorities after the cancellation of the worldwide meet-up events, and told police that at least one threat said, We will kill you if you come to our city. Now, death threats serve no purpose, and they are illegal. No one should be sending him or anyone else threats, though the urge is certainly more than understandable in this particular case. What he expected to happen, exactly, when he decided to organize events steeped in dangerous ant-woman teachings, I ve no idea. Of course any reasonable person would be disgusted and outraged at the prospect of such people gather in their cities and neighborhoods.One organization that had planned to protest the New York City meeting of Roosh V s event said that while they are glad that the horrific meeting was cancelled, their work is far from done: They took to their Facebook event page to say the following: We showed the entire MRA, PUA and neo-masculine movements that they are not welcome, and should we see them in person, they ll never forget the experience (to put it politely). But we are vehemently of the opinion that we shouldn t just pat ourselves on the back and call it a day. No, rape culture still permeates our society, and we re f*cking tired of it! Any reasonable person realizes that Men s Rights Activists, Pick-Up Artists, and neo-masculinists are all the result of rampant misogyny and rape culture. These people are despicable, and need to go the way of the dinosaur, along with the rape culture that created them in the first place.Featured image from screen capture from Raw Story | 1real |
Trump Will Skip GOP Debate As Feud With Fox News Boils Over | Trump Will Skip GOP Debate As Feud With Fox News Boils Over
This post was updated Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. ET
The stage is set for Thursday's Fox News Channel final debate ahead of the Iowa caucuses — but front-runner Donald Trump won't be there.
After teasing earlier Tuesday evening that he "probably won't bother" with the debate, Trump's campaign confirmed he won't participate, citing unfair treatment from the network:
As someone who wrote one of the best-selling business books of all time, The Art of the Deal, who has built an incredible company, including some of the most valuable and iconic assets in the world, and as someone who has a personal net worth of many billions of dollars, Mr. Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one. FOX News is making tens of millions of dollars on debates, and setting ratings records (the highest in history), where as in previous years they were low-rated afterthoughts.
Unlike the very stupid, highly incompetent people running our country into the ground, Mr. Trump knows when to walk away. Roger Ailes and FOX News think they can toy with him, but Mr. Trump doesn't play games. There have already been six debates, and according to all online debate polls including Drudge, Slate, Time Magazine, and many others, Mr. Trump has won all of them, in particular the last one. Whereas he has always been a job creator and not a debater, he nevertheless truly enjoys the debating process - and it has been very good for him, both in polls and popularity.
Trump's objections stem from last year's first GOP presidential debate, when anchor and moderator Megyn Kelly pressed him about his derogatory comments about women. Trump was outraged, and later said on CNN that Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever" with her angry questioning.
On Tuesday evening, Trump doubled down when speaking to reporters in Iowa, dismissing Kelly as a "third-rate reporter" who is "frankly not good at what she does."
Fox News hasn't backed down on picking Kelly again as one of its moderators, alongside Bret Baier and Chris Wallace. And earlier Tuesday, the network slammed Trump for trying to bully it into changing the moderators.
"We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings," a Fox News spokesman said in a statement.
That tongue-in-cheek statement seemed to push Trump to follow through on his threat to not participate in the debate.
In lieu of attending the debate, Trump's campaign said he would "instead host an event in Iowa to raise money for the Veterans and Wounded Warriors, who have been treated so horribly by our all talk, no action politicians. Like running for office as an extremely successful person, this takes guts and it is the kind mentality our country needs in order to Make America Great Again."
Fox News shot back in a statement late Tuesday evening, saying it was the Trump campaign who had threatened Kelly.
"We're not sure how Iowans are going to feel about him walking away from them at the last minute, but it should be clear to the American public by now that this is rooted in one thing – Megyn Kelly, whom he has viciously attacked since August and has now spent four days demanding be removed from the debate stage," a Fox News spokesperson said. "Capitulating to politicians' ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards, as do threats, including the one leveled by Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski toward Megyn Kelly. In a call on Saturday with a Fox News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a 'rough couple of days after that last debate' and he 'would hate to have her go through that again.' Lewandowski was warned not to level any more threats, but he continued to do so. We can't give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees. Trump is still welcome at Thursday night's debate and will be treated fairly, just as he has been during his 132 appearances on FOX News & FOX Business, but he can't dictate the moderators or the questions."
Earlier in the day, Trump posted an Instagram video, calling Kelly "biased." On Twitter, he asked followers to vote on whether he should debate.
His absence would change the balance of the debate and give his rivals free shots to attack Trump.
With Trump off the stage for the 9 p.m. ET debate, that means it's Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who will be center stage, followed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who was kept off the main stage at the last debate.
At 7 p.m. ET, the earlier undercard debate will feature former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore — who hasn't been on a debate stage since August.
Cruz issued his own debate challenge to his main Iowa rival — a 90-minute one-on-one debate next Monday, the day of the Iowa caucuses.
"Give the Republican primary voters the right to see a fair and policy-focused debate, not simply insults," Cruz said on the Mark Levin radio show, according to Politico. | 0fake |
Sixty-Five Percent Of Young Hispanics See The GOP As ‘Hostile’ | According to polls conducted in November by CNN, NBC News and Gallup, 45 percent of Latino voters now say they see the GOP as hostile. Compare that to responses from November 2012, when the same polling organizations found that 18 percent of polled Latinos held the same views.Over the past three years the number of Latino voters who say they view the Republican Party as hostile has more than doubled.Even more telling, more than three times as many young Latino voters have a negative view of the party today. The recent polls show that 65 percent of Latino voters, between the ages of 18 and 35, now see the Republican Party as hostile toward them.This is bad news for the Republican Party, which cannot win the general election without Latino voters.According to GOP election strategists, in order to win the White House in 2016, republicans need at least 45 percent of the Latino vote.Republican party strategist Whit Ayres broke it down nicely, in March of last year. As Ayres points out here:Clearly that s not going to happen when the party frontrunner is Donald Trump, a man whose entire platform is built on racist hate and religious bigotry.While it s tempting to single out Trump as the culprit behind the numbers, if Trump is to blame for anything it s the fact that he s brought the party s long-existing racist undertones into the spotlight.The GOP has been using dog-whistle politics to rile up their racist, religiously bigoted base for decades. The Trump campaign is simply the predictable progression of the Southern Strategy.But as Addicting Info explains here and here, in catering to race hated and right-wing religious extremists, republicans have created a no-win situation.The party has built a base that only responds to dog-whistles. That means that the only way to motivate regular GOP voters is by scapegoating immigrants, minorities and people who do not subscribe to the doctrine of right-wing Christian fanaticism.At the same time, every time republican candidates spew the kind of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric that appeals to their base, they further alienate voters outside of their base.How do you bring new people into a political party that is united by the idea of keeping other people out?You don t.Demographically speaking, however, there just aren t enough angry, bigoted white people left in America to keep the Republican Party going. For these reasons (and many others) the republican party is on its way to oblivion, which is exactly where it belongs.Featured image from Wikipedia, public domain | 1real |
‘Not-Racist’ Steve King Doubles Down: Nope, Whites Are Definitely The Superior Race | You know what s even more stupid than blaming Melania Trump s plagiarism on My Little Pony? Claiming that whites are the superior race. What s even worse than that? Doing it again.On Monday, Iowa Rep. Steve King replaced his dog whistle with a microphone and openly declared that whites are the superior race. Responding to criticism that the Republican National Convention is filled with loud, unhappy, dissatisfied white people during an appearance on MSNBC, King snapped: This whole business does get a little tired. I would ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization? Than white people? Chris Hayes asked. Than than western civilization itself that s rooted in western Europe, eastern Europe and the United States of America, and every place where Christianity settled the world, King replied after realizing that he had actually uttered the words he was thinking. That s all of western civilization. On Tuesday, King clarified his remarks, explaining that while whites are the superior race, people of other races have also made contributions to civilization. It s pretty close [to what I said]. What I really said was Western civilization and when you describe Western civilization that can mean much of Western civilization happens to be Caucasians. But we should not apologize for our culture or our civilization, King told ABC News. The contributions that were made by Western civilization itself, and by Americans, by Americans of all races stand far above the rest of the world. The Western civilization and the American civilization are a superior culture. King says he was responding to, and correcting, political blogger Charlie Pierce but he s happy that he was able to start a dialogue about how awesome white people are: But what we have is people who are trying to parse something, to hyperventilate about that. I m OK if they do that because it starts the dialogue so we can open up more minds so people can think about what s right for America. So, there you have it: whites have contributed far more than other races, according to King, but he s now willing to admit that maybe others have done stuff too.Watch King s original remarks below:Featured image via Getty Images/Andrew Burton | 1real |
California Senate passes gun control package | SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - The California Senate on Thursday passed a sweeping package of gun control bills that would require background checks for ammunition purchasers, ban possession of high-capacity magazines and establish a firearms violence research center. The bills, whose passage through the Assembly are far from assured, are at the heart of a political duel between Senate leader Kevin de Leon and Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, who are proposing competing plans in advance of key election campaigns. “Gun violence has reached epidemic proportions across our nation,” de Leon, who represents Los Angeles, said as he introduced the bills on the Senate floor on Thursday. “We cannot stand by while our communities suffer from this horrific violence.” The package of eight bills would ban the possession of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds, make stealing a gun a felony, limit the lending of guns among family members, and close a loophole in the state’s assault weapons ban. It is uncertain whether the bills will pass the Assembly, where Republicans and conservative Democrats have blocked some of the same measures in the past, or be signed by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, who has vetoed some gun control measures. The Senate bills were fast-tracked through the legislature this week, even as state officials are counting signatures and preparing to place on the November ballot a referendum by Newsom that would accomplish many of the same goals. The competing measures are a sore point between the two powerful politicians that could spill into the November election campaign as well as the race to replace Brown in 2018. De Leon, who said Thursday that Newsom based his ballot initiative on de Leon’s own proposals, has asked the lieutenant governor to agree to withdraw his ballot measure should the Senate bills pass. But Newsom, who is running for governor, has refused. His campaign strategist, Dan Newman, said Thursday that the initiative was more comprehensive than the legislative package and should go before voters in the fall. Newsom is expected to make the gun control initiative a centerpiece of his campaign to replace Brown in 2018, along with a proposed referendum to legalize recreational use of marijuana. De Leon has not endorsed Newsom. He is close to possible Newsom rivals in the governor’s race, including former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. | 0fake |
Radio Derb transcript for October 29th is up: The arrogance of power, Etc | 1real | |
Jimmy Walker Wins the P.G.A. Championship, Capping a Year of New Faces - The New York Times | SPRINGFIELD, N. J. — For Jimmy Walker, Sunday was his fourth successive day atop the leaderboard at the P. G. A. Championship. He had played throughout with an unruffled calm, a countenance that belied his inner unease about the outcome of the tournament. Walker was a tenderfoot when it came to the crucible of the last hours of a major championship. He had missed the cut in his last two majors, never finished higher than tied for seventh at any major and was perhaps best known on the PGA Tour for his unusual hobby: astrophotography. Now, in Sunday’s final round, he was being chased by golf heavyweights, like Jason Day, the world’s player and the defending P. G. A. champ. Undaunted, Walker had kept his competitors at arm’s length with a round at the venerable Baltusrol Golf Club, and as he walked to the final tee, he held a lead. Then Day, in second place, eagled the 18th hole, and Walker suddenly had to par his final hole or face a playoff. Or worse, second place. Walker understood the situation completely. “Brutal,” he said. But Walker drove his tee shot in the fairway and then made the gutsy decision to go for the green. His second shot was slightly wayward, but after a delicate pitch and a nervy Walker had proved his championship poise. With a steely round of 67, which left him 14 under par for the tournament, Walker became the fourth major champion of the 2016 golf season. Walker said Day’s dramatics had not surprised him. “I was hoping to relax — I could have used it — but I wouldn’t have expected any less from Jason,” he said. Of his choice to hit a fairway wood on the final hole instead of laying up short of the 18th green, Walker said he was only playing the percentages. “I bet 19 out of 20 times, you make five by going for that green,” Walker said. But with a major championship on the line? Walker shrugged and smiled. His second shot sent his ball into deep rough next to a bunker that he would have to cross with his next shot to hold the green. “Not a great lie played that a little safe,” he said of the pitch he flew high over the bunker and 35 feet beyond the hole. Walker’s first putt scooted three feet past the hole, setting up yet another nervy moment. “A little tester,” he said of the second putt. “Just buried it. Just awesome. ” Walker became the first winner of the P. G. A. Championship since Phil Mickelson, who won at Baltusrol in 2005. Joining Walker as major winners this year were the Masters champion Danny Willett Dustin Johnson, who won the United States Open and Henrik Stenson, the British Open champ. Daniel Summerhays finished third Sunday at 10 under. Three golfers were tied for fourth at nine under: Branden Grace, Hideki Matsuyama and Brooks Koepka. “I was trying to make a run at Jimmy all day,” said Day, who finished at 13 under after also shooting a 67. “I just couldn’t do it until the very end. ” Walker, 37, has not had an easy path to the highest echelon of golf. Though he first played on the PGA Tour in 2005, he was frequently sent back to the equivalent of the minor leagues and had to requalify for the tour three times. It was not until 2011 that he began to establish himself. Still, Walker, who played at Baylor, competed in 187 tour events before claiming his first victory at the end of 2013. He went on to win two of the next seven events. This year on the Tour has not been his best, with his highest finish a tie for fourth. Walker, who was at 11 under after the first three rounds, began his final round with nine consecutive pars. Each hole seemed to have a sameness to it. Walker was usually in the fairway, and his approaches left him manageable distances for birdie opportunities. If he did not capitalize on them, he also did not make any grievous mistakes. But the missed birdie putts might have been starting to grate on him. When he found himself in a greenside bunker at the 10th hole, Walker fidgeted over the shot for close to 20 seconds. Then he found a way to make a birdie without putting by holing a flipped sand wedge. That moved him to 12 under. With a new bounce in his step, Walker went to the next green and rolled in a downhill birdie putt to extend his lead over Day to two strokes. Moments earlier, Day, whose driver was so erratic he had switched to a off the tee, drained a putt on No. 11 to close to a stroke back from Walker. But for the next several holes, Day’s approach shots to greens were increasingly wayward and left him with exceedingly long birdie putts that he could not convert. He did not seriously challenge Walker again until No. 18, where he rolled in a putt for his eagle. A few minutes earlier, Walker had taken a lead over Day, sinking an birdie putt on No. 17. It proved to be a pivotal stroke gained. The golf on Sunday began at 7 a. m. under unfamiliar circumstances because tournament officials had made the unusual decision to continue the third round on Sunday morning and begin the fourth at almost the same time. For several hours, it made for a confusing leaderboard, with many in the field playing their final round without knowing how the third round would end up. The wet conditions led P. G. A. officials to decide to play the tournament’s final 18 holes under the rule, also known as “lift, clean and place. ” It was feared by some players that the rule would lead to unusually low scores, perhaps even a score of 62, which would have been a record for a major championship. But the scoring, while low, was not uncustomary for the event. The golfer with the field’s lowest total score did not think the rule had much effect on his play. He was more focused on what his victory signified. “For me, I feel like it was a matter of time,” Walker said. “It was a long time coming, and this was a long day. But I’ll take it. It all ended well. ” | 0fake |
VP Mike Pence Tells U.S. Naval Academy Grads the ‘Best Way to Ensure Peace’ - Breitbart | Vice President Mike Pence delivered words of encouragement to the class of 2017 at the United States Naval Academy on Friday. He told them to look toward their future, to write a heroic story of service, selflessness, and leadership with their lives, and that President Donald Trump is the best friend the armed forces of the United States will ever have. [“People follow people they trust,” said Pence. He admonished the graduates to cultivate in themselves what he considers to be among the most important qualities of leadership: “humility, orientation to authority, and . ” He told them to consider others more important than themselves and to be servant leaders. As for the president, Pence said, “President Donald Trump is the best friend the armed forces of the United States will ever have,” promising the graduates that no matter where they serve, Trump will always have their backs. He said that he and the President pledge to provide the armed forces with the resources they need. “Let me be clear, the era of budget cuts of the armed forces of the United States is over,” said Pence. He mentioned the $54 billion increase in defense spending in the President’s FY2018 budget, noting that a portion is allocated to “rebuild[ing] the Navy with 8 new battle force ships headed for the sea. ” The Vice President stated that President Trump is reaffirming America’s role as leader of the free world. While we must always work and hope and pray for peace. The best way to ensure peace is for our adversaries and our enemies to know America is prepared to lead and fight and win any contest, any struggle, anywhere on behalf of freedom. He told the graduates that they will be the “instruments of American policy. ” President Trump is currently on his first trip overseas as president, visiting Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican. While in Saudi Arabia, Trump pushed for countries to fight against terrorism, mentioning terror 31 times in his speech to Arab leaders. Pence commented that just yesterday the Navy conducted Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. The Vice President urged the graduates to “act every day not for self, but for country. ” Pence encouraged the graduates, “if you’re of a mind, have faith that He who planted this miracle of Democracy on these wilderness shores and has seen her through every trial and has seen you through the challenges of the last four years, will never leave you, never forsake you and that no matter where your path may lead, He will always be there to calm the storm and guide you home. ” He concluded, “May God bless you with fair winds and following seas. God bless the Navy and the Marines and God bless the United States of America. ” Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana | 0fake |
UK Security Agencies Unlawfully Collected Data For 17 Years, Court Rules | Video: UK security agencies unlawfully collected data for 17 years, court rules By admin legal eagle
Big deal. Anyone going to jail like if it was a private citizen committing the crime ? No? then shut up. News to your inbox
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Arrivals and Departures – Wednesday (Runway 36) – EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2016 | Support Us Arrivals and Departures – Wednesday (Runway 36) – EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2016 | 1real |
Donald J. Trump’s 10 Point Plan to Put America First: A Response | Tweet Widget by Tanya Golash-Boza
How will Donald Trump’s rhetoric on removing what he calls “illegal aliens” be put into actual policy? One thing is certain: It will take a lot more than even a tripling of the current ICE force of 5,000 to surpass President Obama’s record-breaking deportations. “ICE would still rely on local law enforcement to do the bulk of arrests.” Congress would also have to revise existing immigration laws. Donald J. Trump’s 10 Point Plan to Put America First: A Response by Tanya Golash-Boza
"It will be difficult for a Trump administration to exceed the 2011 levels and it will take time to rebuild this deportation machine."
With the election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States, many undocumented immigrants and their family members are concerned about their future in this country. How much worse will the United States get with a Trump Presidency? Although politicians do not always live up to their campaign promises, it is worth taking a look at Trump’s proposals to see how likely and/or feasible they are.
1. “Begin working on an impenetrable physical wall on the southern border, on day one. Mexico will pay for the wall. ”
There is already a 700-mile wall along the border. Much of the remaining area where there is not a wall is impassable. Building more walls or fencing along the border will require Congressional appropriations. Congress may balk at the extraordinary cost, especially given the fact that border crossings are at a historic low . Whatever money ends up being spent will be a colossal waste of funds.
2. “End catch-and-release. Under a Trump administration, anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of our country.”
Detention centers are currently at full capacity, both at the border and in the interior. Detaining more immigrants would require building more facilities or finding places to detain people. This is possible, but will be costly. Stock in the two major private prison companies (CCA and GEO group) shot up with the announcement of Trump’s win. These companies likely are willing to sell additional detention capacity to the Department of Homeland Security, but there are limits to how much capacity they can provide immediately. It is also possible for the Trump administration to use tent camps in the borderlands deserts to enhance capacity. If it were up to Trump alone, this is not inconceivable. It is incumbent upon us to ensure that the United States does not go back down that shameful route.
3. “Move criminal aliens out day one, in joint operations with local, state, and federal law enforcement. We will terminate the Obama administration’s deadly, non-enforcement policies that allow thousands of criminal aliens to freely roam our streets.”
The Obama administration will have deported three million people by the time he leaves office, far more than any previous administration. Here, Trump is referring to the deportation of people with criminal convictions who live in the United States. These are called interior removals, and these reached a historic high in 2011, largely due to cooperation between local police and immigration law enforcement agencies. Returning to these high levels of interior removals would require cooperation with local law enforcement, who may not be on board. It will be difficult for a Trump administration to exceed the 2011 levels and it will take time to rebuild this deportation machine.
4. “End sanctuary cities.”
Trump could threaten to take away federal funding from sanctuary cities, which would likely lead to massive protest.
5. “Immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties. All immigration laws will be enforced - we will triple the number of ICE agents. Anyone who enters the U.S. illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country.”
Trump can (and likely will) end the Deferred Action to Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has provided employment permits and relief from deportation for undocumented youth. The most likely scenario is that the Trump administration will not renew these permits and they will gradually expire.
There are currently about 5,000 ICE agents in the United States. Trump could triple that number to 15,000. That still would not be enough agents for ICE to engage in very many direct arrests, which require a lot of manpower. ICE would still rely on local law enforcement to do the bulk of arrests.
6. “Suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur, until proven and effective vetting mechanisms can be put into place.”
This is likely a plan to try and exclude people from certain national origins from entering the United States as all places where visas are issued have extensive screening. Trump likely could do this relatively easily.
7. “Ensure that other countries take their people back when we order them deported.”
The countries he may be referring to here are Cuba, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. These account for a relatively small number of deportees.
8. “Ensure that a biometric entry-exit visa tracking system is fully implemented at all land, air, and sea ports.”
A biometric entry system is largely in place. A biometric exit system would be much more complicated and costly to implement. It’s not impossible, but would require a lot of Congressional appropriations.
9. “Turn off the jobs and benefits magnet. Many immigrants come to the U.S. illegally in search of jobs, even though federal law prohibits the employment of illegal immigrants.”
Trump could expand e-verify , which is already in effect at many places of employment. DACA recipients who are employed may lose their jobs. This strategy would push undocumented immigrants to work under the table or to commit identity fraud. It would not make them leave.
10. “Reform legal immigration to serve the best interests of America and its workers, keeping immigration levels within historic norms.”
It is up to Congress to pass laws regarding immigration flows. A Republican-controlled Congress could re-haul immigration policy to reduce the number of visas that we issue annually, or change the nature of those visas from family-based to skills-based visas. Immigration reform has been stalled in Congress for the entirety of the Obama administration.
It is very unlikely that Trump will live up to his promise to deport all 11 million undocumented migrants. President Obama deported about three million people during his administration and it will be challenging for Trump to exceed those numbers. If Trump does exceed those numbers, he will do so by building on the massive deportation machine that President Obama has built. This effort will require a massive expansion in the number of ICE agents, the number of detention beds, and the number of immigration judges – an extremely costly endeavor. Tanya Golash-Boza is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced. Her most recent book is Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism (New York University Press, 2015) | 1real |
Syrian Kurdish leaders back longer U.S role in Syria | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian Kurdish leaders voiced support on Wednesday for a longer-term role for U.S. forces in Syria once Islamic State is defeated, after the United States signalled it would not pull out before there was progress towards a political solution. Comments by U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Monday have drawn heavy criticism from the Iran-backed Syrian government, which says Washington is making up a new excuse for keeping its illegal occupation forces in Syria. Limiting Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq is a key U.S. aim. Syrian Kurdish groups have emerged as the main partner on the ground for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in northern and eastern Syria, areas which the Syrian state and Iran have vowed to take back. Kurdish fighters, with Arab allies, U.S. advisers and coalition jets, have driven Islamic State from swathes of territory including their former headquarters in Raqqa city. The Kurdish YPG militia and its political allies have carved out autonomous cantons in the north, and now control nearly a quarter of Syria. Their influence angers neighbour Turkey, which considers the YPG an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party that has fought a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil. The main Syrian Kurdish political party, the PYD, welcomed a longer-term U.S. role in Syria. The U.S. presence should continue until there was a political solution to the Syrian crisis which erupted in 2011, it said. In a written message to Reuters, the PYD s co-chief, Shahoz Hasan, agreed this would be beneficial. Without achieving a political solution to the Syrian crisis, and with the continuation of the Turkish and Iranian intervention in Syria, and with the continued presence of al Qaeda groups in Syria, the continued operation of the coalition is better, Hasan said. Senior Syrian Kurdish politician Fawza Youssef said a U.S. role would be very important for the future. The United States and the coalition forces played a major role in fighting Daesh, and to reach a fair political settlement, we see a need for international guarantees, said Youssef, a senior member of the Kurdish-led authority running the cantons in northern Syria. She pointed to an increase in humanitarian aid to northern Syria by Washington and the coalition since the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured Raqqa - a sign of a widening U.S. role. Turkey said on Monday the United States had 13 bases in Syria and Russia had five. As all sides in Syria battled Islamic State, the U.S.-backed forces have mostly avoided direct confrontation with the Syrian government, backed by Iran and Russia. But Iranian and Syrian officials are now signalling their intention to take back areas captured from IS by the SDF. Syria s main Kurdish groups say they want a federal system for the whole country, and hope for negotiations with Damascus to shore up their autonomous rule. Their territorial grip has expanded since joining forces with the United States to fight IS, though Washington opposes their autonomy plans. Mattis described this week a role for American troops long after Islamic State militants lose control of all the territory they hold. Mattis said the U.S. military s longer-term objective would be to prevent the return of an ISIS 2.0 . But he also suggested that U.S. forces aimed to help set the conditions for a diplomatic solution in Syria. We re not just going to walk away right now before the Geneva process has traction , he said, a reference to U.N.-backed peace talks. The U.S.-led coalition has repeatedly said it does not seek to fight Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s military. In response to the Mattis comments, the Syrian government said on Tuesday that Washington was presenting a new excuse to keep its forces in Syria by linking this presence to a political settlement, having previously said its goal was to fight IS. Foreign ministry comments affirmed the government s position that the presence of U.S. and other forces in Syria without government approval was an act of aggression. | 0fake |
E-mails - Hillary Clinton and the Muslim Brotherhood, by Thierry Meyssan | E-mails - Hillary Clinton and the Muslim Brotherhood by Thierry Meyssan The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mails is not directed at a case of negligence in the face of security regulations, but at a conspiracy attempting to eliminate any trace of her correspondence which should have been archived on the servers of the Federal State. It could include exchanges about illegal financing or corruption, and others concerning the links between the Clintons, the Muslim Brotherhood and the jihadists.
Voltaire Network | Damascus (Syria) | 1 November 2016 ελληνικά Español français Türkçe русский Deutsch Hillary Clinton and her chief of staff Huma Abedin. The reprise of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mails no longer concerns questions of security, but rather acts of skulduggery and cheating which could be as serious as high treason.
Technically, instead of using one of the secured servers of the Federal State, the Secretary of State had ordered the installation of a private server in her home, in order to be able to use the Internet without leaving any trace on a machine belonging to the Federal State. Mrs. Clinton’s private technician had voided the server before the arrival of the FBI, so that it was impossible to know why she had set up such a network.
First of all, the FBI noted that the private server was not protected by the same security system as the State Department server. Thus Mrs. Clinton had only committed a security fault. Secondly, the FBI confiscated the computer of former Congressman Anthony Weiner, the ex-husband of Huma Abedin, Hillary’s chief of staff. The FBI found e-mails from the Secretary of State on his computer.
Anthony Weiner is a Jewish politician who is very close to the Clintons, and who harboured the ambition of becoming mayor of New York. He was obliged to resign following a very Puritan scandal – he had sent erotic SMS’s to a young woman who was not his wife. Huma Abedin officially separated from him during the scandal, but in reality, did not leave him.
Huma Abedin is a US citizen who was raised in Saudi Arabia. Her father is director of an academic revue – of which, for many years, she was the sub-editor – which regularly prints comments from the Muslim Brotherhood. Her mother is president of the Saudi association of female members of the Brotherhood, and worked with the wife of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Her brother Hassan works for Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the religious authority of the Brotherhood and spiritual counsellor of Al-Jazeera.
During an official journey to Saudi Arabia, the Secretary of State visits Dar al-Hekma college, accompanied by Saleha Abedin (mother of her chief of staff), president of the association of the Sister members of the Brotherhood. Huma Abedin is today a central figure of the Clinton campaign, alongside the campaign director, John Podesta, ex-General Secretary of the White House under the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Podesta is also the appointed Congressional lobbyist for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – for the modest amount of $200,000 per month. On 12 June 2016, Petra, the official Press agency of Jordan, published an interview with the crown prince of Arabia, Mohamed Ben Salmane, in which he affirmed the modernity of his family, which had illegally financed Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign to the tune of 20%, despite the fact that she is a woman. The day after this publication, the agency cancelled the dispatch and claimed that its Internet site had been hacked.
According to the official Jordanian Press agency, Petra, published on 12 June 2016, the Saudi royal family illegally financed 20% of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. Mrs. Abedin is not the only member of the Obama administration linked to the Brotherhood. The US President’s half-brother, Abon’go Malik Obama, is the Treasurer for the Brotherhood’s missionary work in Sudan, and also President of the Barack H. Obama Foundation. He is under the direct orders of the Sudanese President, Omar el-Béchir. A Muslim Brother is a member of the National Security Council - the highest executive position in the United States. From 2009 to 2012, this was the case of Mehdi K. Alhassani. We do not know who succeeded him, but the White House denied that a Muslim Brother was a member of the Council until the proof surfaced. A Muslim Brother, Rashad Hussain, is also US ambassador to the Islamic Conference. The other Brothers who have been identified occupy less important functions. However, we must name Louay M. Safi, a current member of the Syrian National Coalition and ex-advisor to the Pentagon.
President Obama and his half-brother Abon’go Malik Obama in the Oval Office. Abon’go Malik is the Treasurer of the Missionary work of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan. In April 2009, two months before his speech in Cairo, President Obama secretly received a delegation of the Brotherhood in the Oval Office. During his induction, he had already invited Ingrid Mattson, the President of the Association of Muslim Brothers and Sisters in the United States.
From their side, the Clinton Foundation had employed Gehad el-Haddad as director for his «Climate» project - he is one of the world leaders of the Brotherhood, and had until that time been director of a Koranic TV programme. His father was one of the co-founders of the Brotherhood, when it was created by the CIA and MI6 in 1951. Gehad left the Foundation in 2012, when he became the spokeman for candidate Mohammed Morsi in Cairo, and then the official spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood world-wide.
Given that all the jihadist leaders in the world have either come from the Muslim Brotherhood or the Sufi Order of the Naqshbandîs – the two components of the Muslim World League, the Saudi anti-Arab nationalist organisation – we would like to know more about Mrs. Clinton’s relations with Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood.
As it happens, in the team of her challenger, Donald Trump, we note the presence of General Michael T. Flynn, who attempted to oppose the creation of the Caliphate by the White House, and resigned from the direction of the Defense Intelligence Agency in order to signal his disapproval. He works alongside Frank Gaffney, a historical «Cold Warrior», now qualified as a «conspiracy theorist» for having denounced the presence of the Brotherhood in the Federal State.
It goes without saying that from the FBI’s point of view, any support for jihadist organisations is a crime, whatever the policy of the CIA may be. In 1991, the police – and Senator John Kerry – had provoked the ecollapse of BCCI, a Pakistani bank (although it is registered in the Cayman Islands), which the CIA used for all sorts of secret operations with the Muslim Brotherhood and also the Latino drug cartels.
Thierry Meyssan Translation
Pete Kimberley | 1real |
Kid In Texas Brings Gun To School, Promptly Shoots Himself (VIDEO) | The trend of tragic gun violence in America s schools continues, this time with a child from Dallas, Texas who brought a gun to school and shot himself. The kid was 15 years old, and he was at the school outside of school hours for a conference. According to Dallas Independent School District s police chief, Craig Miller, the reason the gun was not detected on the school s metal detector was because it wasn t being checked the way it usually is during normal operating times: The metal detectors are monitored differently after school starts. With this incident, perhaps they should rethink that policy. The lucky thing is that the kid s injuries are not life-threatening, and the shooting was accidental. The .22 caliber pistol was apparently on his person in his first period class, and it went off, shooting him in the arm and leg, causing serious, but not life threatening injuries. The school tweeted out the following statement regarding the shooting:The student was injured when he inadvertently shot himself with a single-shot revolver after the first class period had ended.The student arrived at school today with this for (an) unplanned conference with school administrators. Because of the circumstance, the procedures for the metal detectors was not applied.The school was then placed on lockdown, and everyone on the scene was ordered to shelter in place. According to local officials, that term means the following: Shelter-in-place means to take immediate shelter where you are at home, work, school, or in between. The lockdown was taken out of effect that afternoon, but many questions remain as to why and how a gun got onto that campus and into that school. When asked for answers by understandably concerned parents, Craig Miller said: I really don t know right now. It s part of the ongoing investigation. Everyone involved was lucky this time. Next time, that may not be the case. Who the hell knows what kind of plans that kid had when he chose to carry that pistol into his school? Considering the history of that, this quite disturbing. It seems that Chief Miller and other local authorities need to update their policies. Further, this is just another incident that shows how much we need stricter gun laws.Watch a news report on the incident below:Featured image via Wikipedia | 1real |
WATCH: NAVY VET Declines Award At New Orleans Saints Game Because Of Disrespectful Players Who Continue To Kneel During Anthem | One courageous Navy vet has had enough of the disrespectful NFL players who kneel during the national anthem. Although it would be a great honor for the vet to receive an award, he put standing up for and defending our flag before being recognized for his service. Good for him A disabled Navy veteran said he declined to accept an award at a New Orleans Saints game due to the controversy over players protesting during the national anthem.The Saints organization was going to honor retired Cmdr. John Wells, the executive director of Military Veterans Advocacy, with the Peoples Health Champion award during last week s game in New Orleans, according to The Advocate.On Wednesday he told the organization he was unable to accept the award at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome because of the anthem protests. Saints players have been seen kneeling before the anthem and some continue to do so during the national anthem. Although I am touched and honored to be selected for such an award, the ongoing controversy with NFL players disrespect for the national flag forces me to decline to participate in the presentation, Wells said. I am unable, in good conscience, to enter an NFL stadium while this discourtesy prevails. Since this award is tainted with the dishonorable actions of the NFL and its players, I cannot accept it. Wells served in the Navy from 1972 to 1994 and afterward became an attorney concentrating in military and veterans law, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He was set to receive the award given by Medicare to senior citizens who have made significant accomplishments.The Saints said in a statement Thursday that they were disappointed by Wells decision. FOX News | 1real |
Mattis says U.S. effort on North Korea aims for diplomatic solution | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States hopes to find a diplomatic solution to the situation in North Korea and is addressing it through an international process, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday, hours after President Donald Trump, in a U.N. address, escalated his standoff with Pyongyang. We are dealing with the North Korea situation through the international process and we will continue to do so. Secretary Tillerson is leading the effort and we will hopefully get this resolved through diplomatic means, Mattis said before the start of a meeting with Romania s defense minister. | 0fake |
Fox News Says Non-Whites Should Only Be Depicted On Separate But Equal Novelty Money (VIDEO) | Republicans found their new election year wedge issue. Since they lost on Obamacare, marriage equality, and Benghazi, the new rage source they identified is Harriet Tubman being placed on the $20 bill.This is the new big deal. It s practically an attack on the Constitution itself. Right?It certainly seems to be for Republicans, at least. So many people on the right are exploding over the idea of replacing Jackson on the $20 bill now. However, this isn t new news. This has been planned for a relatively long time. They KNEW this was coming, and there was no outrage right up until someone who was both non-white and non-male was going to do the replacing.Luckily, Fox News Greta Van Susteren came up with the perfect response. Her plan is to leave white people s money as it is and make separate money for non-whites. No, that s not a joke. She literally said we should make a new $25 bill so that Jackson could stay in place.Let s do a bit of critical thinking, based on a bit of history. A Susan B. Anthony dollar coin was released by the government a long time ago. EVERYBODY hated it. Not only did it look like a quarter, and people got confused by that, but it was redundant. We already had a $1 bill that everyone was accustomed to. Not every cash register has room for a new bill slot either. Certain types of automated bill changing machines would have to be retrofit for a $25 bill as well.The point is that a whole new denomination of money would be an annoyance and hassle, and the public would not have any patience for it. To put it into context, America has had a $2 bill with Thomas Jefferson on it for a really long time. Do you know ANYONE who uses them? Do you even remember the last time you saw one outside of some novelty situation for collectors?To sum it up, the Republican party thinks that the only place for a woman or a non-white person when it comes to money, is on something that will be marginalized by society Just like how they ve marginalized women and non-white people for decades! It really makes a lot of sense when you look at it that way. Doesn t it?Watch Greta prove that Fox respects equality by hiring stupid employees of both sexes below: Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
What Booming Markets Are Telling Us About the Global Economy - The New York Times | The stock market reached yet another new high on Wednesday, the latest development to make a mockery of what savvy economic commentators thought they knew about the world. Consider how things looked one year ago. The world economy seemed hopelessly trapped in a cycle of low growth and inflation. Markets recoiled at the mere possibility that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates. Populist political insurgencies seemed to threaten yet more financial market chaos. Now, interest rates and inflation forecasts have risen substantially from last winter’s lows financial markets are shrugging off — or even rallying at the possibility of — imminent Fed rate increases and it is all taking place during Donald J. Trump’s presidency. An economy that seemed locked in some form of “secular stagnation” or “new normal” is at long last showing some signs of being in something closer to an “old normal. ” The United States manufacturing sector is showing strength, and the broader mix of market and economic data from around the world in the last few months also points to a world where a vicious economic cycle isn’t looking quite as scary and may even be ending. There can be no assurance that this pattern will continue, and there are some things to worry about on the horizon, not least that the Trump administration could follow through on some of its threats to disrupt global trade and diplomatic relations. interest rates remain low by historical standards across most of the world, suggesting that global bond investors aren’t fully buying into a return to stronger, more consistent growth. But the pivot since Election Day is huge. The Standard Poor’s 500 index is up 12 percent since Nov. 8, the London FTSE 100 index reached a new high Wednesday, and other global markets have grown nicely in that span. Treasury bonds now yield 2. 45 percent, up from 1. 85 percent on Election Day, suggesting investors believe higher growth and inflation are more probable than had seemed likely just four months ago. Much of the buoyant optimism on Wall Street is driven by investors’ expectations of corporate tax cuts and deregulation under the Trump administration. But there is also some real improvement in the economic data underneath the shifts, reflecting economic forces that have been underway for years. And this resetting of expectations is evident in market data beyond the always erratic stock market. On Wednesday, that took the form of a new survey of manufacturing supply managers that showed the factory sector is expanding at a breakneck pace. As recently as August, that same index from the Institute for Supply Management was contracting. Those numbers followed positive readings on retail sales, industrial production and the job market. For years, a theory that the major world economies were stuck in a pit of “secular stagnation” had gained hold — the idea that low economic growth, low inflation, low interest rates and weak productivity growth were all reinforcing one another in a vicious cycle. There’s hardly enough evidence to toss that theory aside, but there are many reasons to think things are now looking up. For example, bond market prices now suggest that investors foresee consumer price inflation in the United States at 2. 03 percent a year over the coming decade — consistent with the 2 percent inflation the Fed aims for. It only recently reached that level, however, after being as low as 1. 2 percent in February 2016. And it’s not just the United States. Similar measures of inflation expectations have risen in Germany, Britain and other advanced economies. For a window into the changing of investors, consider some news around the Fed this week. Tuesday afternoon, William C. Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, said in an interview that it would be fair to assume that the central bank would raise interest rates sooner rather than later, given the improving economy. “There’s no question that animal spirits have been unleashed a bit post the election,” Mr. Dudley told CNN. Fed watchers interpreted that to mean that an increase could be on the way in just three months after the last increase in December. Yet that did nothing to slow the 1. 4 percent gain in the Standard Poor’s 500 on Wednesday, and may even have contributed to it, as a sign of the Fed’s confidence in the economy. A year ago, hints that the Fed would move quickly with rates would have sent markets into a tailspin. As 2016 began, Fed leaders were expecting to raise rates four times in that year, plans that helped send the stock market plummeting and measures of economic pessimism soaring. Then they backed off and only raised rates once. Since a stock market rally began on Election Day, there has been plenty of discussion about a Trump effect. And no doubt a big part of the improvement has resulted from expectations that the new president’s policies will help corporate bottom lines (and that some of the risks of his trade agenda won’t materialize). But it’s worth keeping in mind that a Trump bump arrives as the economy is closing in on its full productive capacity. It is getting to the point where a cycle of rising wages and higher inflation necessitates higher interest rates. That, in turn, reflects policies from the Obama administration and the Fed that long predate Mr. Trump’s election. Conventional economic theory predicts that if a government tries to increase deficits at a time of full employment, the results will be some mix of higher inflation and higher interest rates, crowding out investment. So if tax cuts, more military spending and other Trumpian policies add to deficits at a time the economy is already running at full blast, rising prices and rising rates are exactly what we would expect to see. | 0fake |
Hillary Supporter MARK CUBAN Makes Most Ignorant Statement About Trump Since Election When He Claimed Stock Market Would Tank [VIDEO] | TMZ caught up with Mavericks owner and Hillary supporter Mark Cuban yesterday to ask what he thought of President Donald J. Trump. Arizona citizens must be thrilled to hear billionaire Mark Cuban who has personal security surrounding him talk about how ridiculous Trump s efforts to secure our borders and keep our nation safe from foreigners who sneak in with actual refugees with a goal of doing harm to our nation.WATCH CUBAN S SOUR GRAPES INTERVIEW HERE:Well, that s not exactly what happened now is it Cuban?Here s what REALLY happened to the stock market after Trump s election: Market Watch U.S. stocks rallied Wednesday, with the Dow industrials jumping 257 points, led by a surge in financial, health-care and industrial stocks, as investors bet on the infrastructure spending policy promised by President-elect Donald Trump.The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.40% gained as much as 316 points, briefly surpassing the all-time closing high set in August. The index closed 256.95 points, or 1.4%, higher at 18,589.69, its highest level since Aug. 18. Pfizer Inc. PFE, +7.07% and Caterpillar Inc CAT, +7.70% led the gains, rallying more than 7%.Way to go Cuban you just reminded us of how little you know about economics or choosing the right candidate for President Keep up the great work Mark. You re really helping out your brand. | 1real |
SHOCKING ACT OF “TOLERANCE”: TRANSGENDER THUG THREATENS Reporter for disagreeing with him on T.V.: “You cut that out or you’re going to leave here in an ambulance” | Transgender activist and bully, Hanna Zoey Tur threatened conservative reporter Ben Shapiro when he refused to call Bruce Caitlyn Jenner a woman. After Shapiro refused to back down from his statement that Jenner is a man, things became heated with the oh so tolerant Tur:https://youtu.be/pckjiU6iYEU | 1real |
Slaughtered Hindus a testament to brutality of Myanmar's conflict | YE BAW KYA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar authorities displayed on Wednesday the bodies of Hindu villagers they say were killed by Muslim insurgents, victims of a surge of violence in someone else s fight now playing their part in a propaganda war. Authorities found 45 Hindu villagers in mass graves in the north of Rakhine state this week, and the news has dominated Myanmar s media coverage of a new round of violence in old strife between the state s Buddhists and Muslims. The military on Wednesday flew a group of reporters from the city of Yangon to see the bodies laid out on the grass, and to hear from those who found them after information about the massacre filtered back from Hindus who have sought refuge from the violence in Bangladesh. We followed the paths based on the information we got from the other side, police officer Okkar Ko told reporters at the scene. We found where the soil wasn t normal and then when we dug up the ground, the smell came out. The latest violence in Rakhine state erupted on Aug. 25, when Rohingya Muslim insurgents attacked 30 police posts and an army camp, killing about 12 people. Hours later, insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) came to the Hindu village of Ye Baw Kya, gathered up about 100 people, marched them away through their fields and killed them with knives, the government says. The military response to the insurgent attacks has driven 480,000 Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh and drawn U.N. accusations of ethnic cleansing by the army with the help of Buddhist vigilantes. Myanmar denies that, saying its forces are fighting ruthless terrorists. For the government, the proof of the insurgents brutality is plain to see, lying in rows by the mass graves just outside the village of Ye Baw Kya. This is terrorism, Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Win Myat Aye, who visited the site on Tuesday, told Reuters. The ARSA has denied killing the Hindus saying they never kill civilians. Exactly why Myanmar s tiny Hindu minority in Rakhine state got caught up in the bloodshed is not clear, and different people have given different accounts at different times. Some villagers have said the insurgents suspected Hindus of being on the side of the government and acting as government spies. In late August, Reuters reporters in Bangladesh interviewed a group of Hindu women from the village who said their male loved ones were killed by Rakhine Buddhists. However, three of the same women told Reuters this week that Muslims who brought them to Bangladesh had ordered them to say it was Buddhist vigilantes who had done the killing. The three who individually recounted closely matching stories said that on Aug. 25, they and about 100 other Hindus were marched by masked men to the area of the mass graves. They were later able to identify some of the masked men as Rohingya Muslims, although the women said the men spoke several languages they could not identify, besides the dialect spoken by both Muslims and Hindus in the area. We watched as they tied each person, hands behind their back and also legs ... They cut all their throats and pushed them into a hole, said one of the women, Bina Bala, 22, adding that the women were spared after promising to convert to Islam. They said the attackers had objected to official identity cards given to Hindus but not Muslims, saying Hindus should not have them. The victims were blindfolded, with their hands tied and had their throats slit, said Kyaw Maung Maung Thien, hospital superintendent in the Myanmar town of Maungdaw, who examined the bodies. The evidence points to a massacre by the ARSA terrorists, he told the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper. While the accusations fly, the bodies await cremation. Police have been guarding the site of the mass graves, lighting fires at night to keep wild dogs away. | 0fake |
First-Ever Footage of Aging Tar Sands Pipelines Beneath Great Lakes | By Beth Wallace
This past July, National Wildlife Federation (NWF) conducted a diving expedition to obtain footage of aging oil pipelines strung across one of the most sensitive locations in the Great Lakes, and possibly the world: the Straits of Mackinac . Footage of these pipelines has never been released to the public until now.
This NWF map simulates a 3, 6 and 12 hour spill from the tar sands oil pipeline based on Enbridge spill response plans, average current speeds and “worse case” discharge estimates.
The Straits of Mackinac pipelines, owned by Enbridge Energy, are 60-years-old and considered one of the greatest threats to the Great Lakes because of their age, location and the hazardous products they transport—including tar sands derived oil .
For nearly two years, NWF has been pressing pipeline regulators and Enbridge to release information about the integrity of these pipelines, including inspection videos showing how the pipelines cross the Straits of Mackinac. These requests have gone largely unanswered from both Enbridge and the Pipeline Hazards Safety Administration (PHMSA), who regulates pipeline operations. Because Enbridge hastily moved forward with plans to increase pressure on the aging pipelines, and has bypassed critical environmental permitting for changes in operation, NWF decided we needed to obtain our own:
The footage shows pipelines suspended over the lakebed, some original supports broken away—indicating the presence of corrosion—and some sections of the suspended pipelines covered in large piles of unknown debris. This visual is evidence that our decision makers need to step in and demand a release of information from Enbridge and PHMSA.
Heightening our concern around this pipeline and the company that owns it: despite having cleared our dive work with the U.S. Coast Guard, several Congressional members and Homeland Security, our staff and the dive crew had uncomfortable interactions with Enbridge representatives. As soon as our team set out on the water, we were quickly accompanied by an Enbridge crew that monitored our every move. This monitoring did not stop at the surface: Enbridge also placed a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) into the water to watch our team.
These actions and our video have raised our level of concern for the general operational behavior of this company and their overall safety culture—including the way they treat the concerned public living near their pipelines . If these aging pipelines rupture, the resulting oil slick would cause irreversible damage to fish and wildlife, drinking water, Lake Michigan beaches, Mackinac Island and our economy.
To make matters worse, the recent shutdown of our federal government has left communities and wildlife with an increased risk of oil spills and failed response because pipeline safety and responding agencies have been scaled back or closed all together. The recent oil spill in North Dakota , of approximately 800,000 gallons, is living proof.
This article was originally published on National Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Promise . | 1real |
40-Year Sentence Handed Down in Kidnapping Case Police Called a ’Hoax’ - Breitbart | On Thursday a kidnapper was sentenced to in prison in a kidnapping case that Vallejo Police Department described as a “hoax. ”[The kidnapper, Matthew Muller, was a Harvard Law School graduate and former Marine. He was found guilty and sentenced over the March 23, 2015, kidnapping of Denise Huskins. According to the Los Angeles Times, Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn were asleep in a home on Mare Island when they awoke to see Muller standing by them. He held them at bay with a water gun — which was painted to look real — then drugged, bound, and blindfolded them. He put Huskins in the trunk of Quinn’s car, then moved her to the trunk of a second vehicle and drove her to his parents’ South Lake Tahoe home. Once there, Huskins said she was “secured on a bed with a zip tie and a bike lock and blindfolded with a pair of swim goggles” and sexually assaulted. On March 25, 2015, Muller drove Huskins to Huntington Beach and released her. Vallejo police were suspicious because Huskins “reappeared carrying an overnight bag and wearing sunglasses. ” Vallejo police Capt. James O’Connell said Huskins “did not act like a kidnapping victim. ” Less the 24 hours after Huskins was released the VPD equated the kidnapping investigation to a “wild goose chase. ” Vallejo Police Lt. Kenny Park said, “Today, there is no evidence to support the claims that this was a stranger abduction or an abduction at all. Given the facts that have been presented thus far, this event appears to be an orchestrated event and not a crime. ” CBS San Francisco reports that the police actually “accused” Huskins and Quinn of “making up the crime. ” The FBI arrested Muller on June 8, 2015, after identifying him from a failed kidnapping attempt that had occurred prior to Huskins’ abduction. The Vallejo PD sent a letter to Huskins and Quinn a month after Muller’s arrest, saying, “It is now clear that there was a kidnapping on March 23, 2015, that it was not a hoax or orchestrated event and that VPD conclusions were incorrect. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
TEACHER Uses “Shooting at Trump” As An Option On Multiple Choice Quiz For High School Students | A Wyoming high school is under fire after parents exposed an online student quiz that offered shooting at Trump as one of the multiple choice answers.An unidentified English teacher at Jackson Hole High School gave students a multiple choice quiz on Thursday about George Orwell s novel Animal Farm that included a question that many are pointing to as an example of the district s liberal bias, the Jackson Hole News and Guide reports. Napoleon has a gun fired for a new occasion. What is the new occasion? the quiz read.Possible answers included He was shooting at Trump, His birthday, For completion of the windmill, or To scare off the attackers of Animal Farm. Jim McCollum told the news site he did a double-take when his son showed him a screenshot he took of the test. I had to read it two times, McCollum said. I was like, Are you kidding me? McCollum, a Jackson Hole High School graduate and Trump supporter, shared the quiz on Facebook, where it was shared widely and generated a lot of angry comments. It was so inappropriate to show a name of a sitting president in that question, he said. To me, that is so wrong in light of the situation in our country and the divisiveness and all. He told the news site the incident is one of other examples of liberal bias in other classes at the school that make conservative students like son out to be the outcast. He told me, Dad, they crapped on everything I believe in, McCollum said of his son. Rylee is very patriotic, very supportive of our military and of our country and is considering enlisting in the U.S. Marines.School officials eventually issued a statement about the quiz on Monday. (District) administration learned late yesterday that a quiz was administered to a class of high school students that contained an inappropriate answer to a multiple choice question. The administration is investigating this incident and verifying the information we have received, the statement read. (The District) takes seriously threats of any kind, regardless of the intent. We apologize to the students, families and community for this incident and will be addressing the issue with personnel. EAG News | 1real |
This Deranged Michigan Congressman Thinks Disaster Relief For Flint Is Unconstitutional: Here’s Why | Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich.) thinks that providing disaster relief to the people of Flint, Michigan is unconstitutional (Full Disclosure: Amash is my current representative). Amash is a libertarian, and a Constitutional Originalist. That means that he takes the extreme view that the Constitution should be interpreted as the original framers would have. He s besties with Rand Paul, and a darling of the Tea Party. I have been to many of his speaking events. No matter what the topic is, his supporters mostly only want to know the latest news on Benghazi.Amash s extremist view, that is shared with the likes of Justice Scalia, has led him to be very vocal in his opposition to giving federal assistance to the people of Flint. Here is Amash s reasoning for his opposition: While the U.S. Constitution does not authorize the federal government to intervene in an intrastate matter like this one, the State of Michigan should provide comprehensive assistance to the people of Flint. The residents who were harmed deserve an independent, nonpartisan investigation, and the persons responsible for this crisis must be held accountable. Michigan needs federal assistance. That s the bottom line. It is estimated that it will cost $1.5 billion dollars to fix Flint s water system. It is tragic that Republicans can rail against the government, working to dismantle the effectiveness of its apparatus on every level, only to have their failed schemes be bailed out by the government. However, we are the United States. We come together in times of crisis. Man-made, or otherwise. 10 people have already died from legionaries disease, people need help now.There is absolutely no Constitutional argument against providing disaster relief to the people of Flint, outside of the mad imaginings of what these loons think the Constitution is. Fortunately, Amash and similarly minded people in Congress don t have the collective political power to actually prevent disaster relief funds to places that need them.That s why the Hurricane Sandy spending package of $9.7 billion dollars was approved of, despite Amash s and other Republicans votes against the package, in 2013. Yeah, he voted against disaster relief for those hurt by Hurricane Sandy too. At least Amash is consistent in his world view, even if that world view is a complete departure from reality.By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Justin AmashUploaded by AlbertHerring) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons | 1real |
CNN’s Don Lemon: There Is ’an Effort to Tar and Feather’ Susan Rice - Breitbart | Tuesday night on CNN, host Don Lemon said there was an “effort to tar and feather” President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice over reports she unmasked members of Donald Trump’s transition team. Lemon said, “So far, we’ve seen no evidence that she’s done anything improper and it seems like an effort to tar and feather her to try to make a lie the truth, the original tweet by the president. ” Former Obama administration green jobs czar Van Jones agreed that Susan Rice was “being tarred, feathered, and burned alive for doing her job in a good way. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Silent Coup in the USA? Former Diplomat Explains How Soft Regime Change Works | Waking Times
“How could one person like myself be able to do what we in the business call regime change?” ~Steve Pieczenik
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Steve Pieczenik has a long history as an expert in psychological warfare and was a diplomat to Soviet Russia helping to instigate the collapse of the megalithic communist state in 1991. In a recently released video he speaks on the role the American government played in manipulating Soviet culture and leadership to bring about a silent coup, or bloodless regime change, offering insight that is especially relevant in the present context of U.S. politics.
Pieczenik explains the effectiveness of soft strategies as tools for destabilizing the U.S.S.R., noting firstly how religion was used externally to bring about an internal rise in the Russian Orthodox religion to undermine the atheist regime in the Kremlin.
A second soft tactic by the U.S. was to demonstrate for top Soviet military leaders the effectiveness of modern U.S. weaponry against Soviet tanks and other weapons systems. This allowed Soviet leaders to grasp the dominance of power already in play, effectively neutralizing the Soviet military without having to actually engage in warfare.
“A third element was creating economic hardship for the Soviet Union which they really could not comprehend,” says Pieczenik, who explains how Reagan’s funding of the Strategic Defense Initiative , or SDI, was largely a tactic of smoke and mirrors to force the Soviets to respond by over-spending on obsolete defense programs. It was a bluffed cold war arms race, aimed at destabilizing the financial systems of the Soviet Union.
The fourth component of regime change, of which Pieczenik was greatly concerned, was cultural, involving the creation of a fissure between the younger and older generations in Soviet Russia, achieved primarily by exposing Russians to American rock and roll music, which was, at the time, highly revolutionary for the Soviet culture.
The fifth element was the process of negotiations that took place between the Soviet politburo and American intelligence agencies for the deconstruction of the communist elements of the Soviet state, initiating the sequence of events that became known as perestroika . This was systemic and psychological warfare and negotiation with members of the government and Soviet elite, which neutralized the Soviet Union allowing for a collapse of the communist component. A regime change. Silent Coup in America Today?
We see hints of many of these same elements at play in American politics today.
Recent revelations made public by Wikileaks impacted the result of the 2016 election. The timing of the releases and the overtly partisan nature of their contents, targeting only the Democrat campaign, revealed a clear bias, opening the door to speculation of a connection between Julian Assange and deeper state actors in both the Russian and the American intelligence communities.
The primary defensive play of the Democrats was to blame Russia without ever providing specific evidence of Russia’s involvement in the leaks, yet some analysts indicated that the NSA was the source of the leaks , and that a silent coup had been initiated by the U.S. intelligence community covertly working to prevent a Clinton win.
Now, after the election, the manipulation of the body politic continues as protests organized by political front groups funded by the likes of billionaire social engineer George Soros continue, and resistance to a Trump presidency picks up steam.
The nation is clearly being manipulated by off-screen actors on both sides of the stage. Is there an attempted silent coup happening right before our eyes in the United States?
Many of the elements of regime change noted by Pieczenik are visibly in play in America today. Religion is weaponized as Islam is being used by globalists as an invincible enemy. There are signs of a new arms race as both Russia and China demonstrate new military capabilities and global assertiveness. Economic warfare is in play as the banking and financial crisis created by central banks continues to destabilize the financial system. There are elements of a cultural war in the U.S. as millennials and so-called social justice warriors are attempting to disrupt civil discourse, essentially advocating for the end of free speech . And as we see in recent election events, there is some type of negotiation taking place behind the scenes in American politics between several factions.
In the end, the American people may very well be at the mercy of those who are maneuvering to drastically alter the social, cultural and political environment in the U.S. Unfortunately these maneuvers would only lead to greater system of control and authoritarianism than we already have, unless the body politic wakes up refuses to allow themselves to be weaponized and used as pawns by the oligarchy . Read more articles by Dylan Charles . About the Author
Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com , the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com , a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. He may be contacted at . This article ( Silent Coup in the USA? Former Diplomat Explains How Soft Regime Change Works ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dylan Charles and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.
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Chicago to sue Trump administration over sanctuary city funding threat | CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chicago will sue the Trump administration on Monday over threats to withhold public safety grant money from so-called sanctuary cities, escalating a pushback against a federal immigration crackdown, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced on Sunday. The federal lawsuit comes less than two weeks after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the U.S. Justice Department would bar cities from a certain grant program unless they allow immigration authorities unlimited access to local jails and provide 48 hours’ notice before releasing anyone wanted for immigration violations. “Chicago will not let our police officers become political pawns in a debate,” Emanuel, a Democrat, said at a news conference. “Chicago will not let our residents have their fundamental rights isolated and violated. And Chicago will never relinquish our status as a welcoming city.” Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants provide money to hundreds of cities, and the Trump administration has requested $380 million in funding next year. Chicago, a regular target of Republican President Donald Trump because of its murder rate, expected to receive $3.2 million this year for purchasing equipment. Emanuel said the lawsuit would prevent the Trump administration from setting a precedent that could be used to target other funding. Under Trump and Sessions, the federal government has sought to crack down on sanctuary cities, which generally offer illegal immigrants safe harbor by declining to use municipal resources to enforce federal immigration laws. Dozens of local governments and cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have joined the growing sanctuary movement. The Justice Department said more Chicagoans were murdered last year than residents of Los Angeles and New York combined, and cited comments by Sessions last week saying sanctuary cities “make all of us less safe.” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a Sunday statement: “It’s especially tragic that the mayor is less concerned with that staggering figure than he is spending time and taxpayer money protecting criminal aliens and putting Chicago’s law enforcement at greater risk.” Police and city officials in sanctuary cities have said deporting illegal immigrants who are not accused of serious crimes harms public safety by discouraging immigrants from coming forward to report crimes. Chicago’s lawsuit is the first to challenge the department over the Byrne program, though city officials said they are in contact with other cities. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is also considering a similar lawsuit, the Sacramento Bee has reported. The Trump administration has already faced legal battles over its sanctuary city policies. Last month, a U.S. judge refused to revisit a court order that blocked Trump’s January executive order denying broader federal funds to such jurisdictions, in a case filed by San Francisco and the California county of Santa Clara. | 0fake |
“MODERATE” MUSLIM SILENCE? Neighbors: “They Kept To Themselves…They Did Not Wear Religious Garb”…PEOPLE WHO KNEW HIM: “He Expressed Support For Terror Groups” | If the Muslim terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded several others in a gay nightclub in Orlando had been scouting out Disneyworld and other possible soft targets in the Orlando area, why is this the first time we are hearing about it? Did his Muslim wife have her mouth taped shut? If friends are now coming forward to tell authorities that the Ft. Pierce terrorist had expressed support for terror groups, why didn t they contact the FBI before he committed a horrific act of terror in America? And finally, if the Ft. Pierce terrorist, who was clearly making incendiary statements, was visiting nations who fund the campaigns of United States Presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton, and have a history of supporting terror groups, should the FBI be held accountable, or should every US citizen demand the people who knew he posed a danger, but kept silent be held accountable? Meanwhile, Barack Hussein Obama blames America and uses this horrific tragedy to trash Donald Trump and to promote his final, (and maybe most important) action that would prove his disdain for America and our Constitution GUN CONTROL.Orlando gunman Omar Mateen s two trips to Saudi Arabia, one of which was a pricey package that included four-star accommodations and fancy meals, were highly unusual and may have been cover for terror training, according to experts.The FBI is piecing together Mateen s radical Islam roots, and the trips to Saudi Arabia could be a sign of his growing religious devotion. His stated reason for both the 2011 and 2012 trips was umrah, a Muslim pilgrimage to the Kingdom that is not as significant as the hajj, a trip all Muslims must make to Mecca at least once in their lives. Either or both of the trips could also have included a side trip. It s very possible for someone to take a trip to a country like Saudi Arabia and declare it as their destination when it is in actuality just a pit stop to a different country like Yemen, said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for Clarion Project, a New York-based research institute that tracks global terrorism. Based on his blatant extremism and ties to a convicted Orlando imam known for facilitating international jihadists traveling, the strong likelihood is that these trips were not benign. Mateen, 29, killed 49 people and wounded 53 inside the gay nightclub Pulse early Sunday, holding dozens hostage for hours before a SWAT team stormed the building and killed him in a gun battle. While holding captives, Mateen made multiple calls to 911, professing his allegiance to ISIS and support for the Muslim brothers who bombed the 2013 Boston Marathon, police said.When Mateen aligned himself with terrorists is not yet clear, but his trips to Saudi Arabia would have put him within a day s drive of Yemen, where Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula has long had a large presence, and where ISIS also has gained a foothold in recent years. Several radicalized Americans have traveled to Yemen to train in terror camps.Mateen s first trip to Saudi Arabia was for 10 days, and the jaunt a year later was for eight. The 2011 trip was arranged by U.S.-based Islamic travel agency Dar El Salam and was a package the company calls the Sacred Caravan Umrah. The package costs up to $4,000 and is generally comprised of four nights at four-star accommodations in Mecca and six nights in Medina, complete with buffet meals, sightseeing and religious studies and lectures.The travel agency did not respond to a request for comment.The second trip included a stop in the United Arab Emirates, but the exact itinerary of either trip is not known. The FBI, which searched Mateen s condominium in Fort Pierce, Fla., overnight Sunday and into Monday morning, taking a computer and several other items, declined to comment on what investigators may have learned about Mateen s travels.Muslim leaders said it was unusual for Mateen to have made two visits to Saudi Arabia in consecutive years the first when he was just 24.Okay so why didn t anyone report his trips to the FBI??? It s not cheap to do so and people that young usually don t go twice, said Adnan Khan, former leader of the Council of Pakistan-American Affairs. And especially considering he appeared not to have come from a staunchly religious background. Okay so why didn t anyone report his trips to the FBI??? A single trip to Saudi Arabia could be attributed to the mandatory hajj or umrah, but the second trip and the visit to the UAE suggest that his stated reason for traveling was a cover, he said. Even if the trip included legitimate religious travel, it does not mean the activity was limited to that. One umrah is usually enough for a Muslim, said Timothy Furnish, an expert in Islamic history and consultant to the Pentagon, The fact that Mateen made two of those would suggest that he felt he had many sins needing rectifying and/or he was not engaged solely in religious activity but meeting with someone in Saudi Arabia, Furnish said.Mateen was born in New York to Afghan immigrants. People that knew him have said he was not overtly religious, but often expressed anger and a deep hatred of minorities. He had once aspired to be a police officer, was trained with weapons and worked for an international security firm after being fired from a job as a prison guard.The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Those Saudi s are quick to react when it comes to writing a check to the Clinton Crime Syndicate/Hillary for President fund though!Neighbors in the quiet condominium complex where Mateen lived with his 3-year-old son and wife, Noor Zahi Salman, said the couple kept to themselves and did not wear religious garb. We were all shocked when we found out, one neighbor told FoxNews.com. The most activity I ever saw from the apartment was his girlfriend or wife walking to the mailbox and back with their child. However, sources say Mateen had a large collection of Islamic literature in his home, and people who knew him said he had expressed support for various terrorist groups.- FOX NewsWouldn t any sane person knew someone who expressed support for terrorist groups report them to the proper authorities? | 1real |
‘Maury’ Show Official Facebook Posts F*CKED UP Caption On Guest That Looks Like Ted Cruz (IMAGE) | Maury is perhaps one of the trashiest shows on television today. It s right in line with the likes of the gutter trash that is Jerry Springer, and the fact that those shows are still on the air with the shit they air really is a sad testament to what Americans find to be entertaining. However, Maury really crossed the line with a Facebook post regarding one of their guest s appearance with a vile, disgusting caption on Tuesday evening.There was a young woman on there doing one of their episodes regarding the paternity of her child. However, on the page, the show posted an image of the woman, who happens to bear a striking resemblance to Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz. The caption from the Maury Show page read: The Lie Detector Test determined .that was a LIE! Ted Cruz is just NOT that SEXY! As if that weren t horrible enough, the caption underneath the Imgur upload reads, Ted Cruz in drag on Maury. Here is an image from the official Maury Facebook page:Here is the embed of the post itself:This is beyond despicable. It s bad enough that this show preys on desperate people to keep their trashy show going and their audience of bottom-feeders entertained, but now they publicly mock them as well? This young woman cannot help how she looks or who she resembles. That is not her fault. Shaming someone s looks on social media is something we d expect from the morons who watch this crap on a daily basis, but it is NOT something the official show page should be doing. Then again, what can you expect from a show that rolls in the mud for a living and continues to show the world that there is now low they will not stoop to? This was more than a step too far, though.Maury, you owe this young woman a public apology. A VERY public apology. There s just no excuse for this, no matter the demographics of your audience or what you do on that disgusting show of yours. I suppose it will be too much to ask that you lose viewers over this, because the people who watch your trashy ass show likely aren t educated enough to understand why this is so wrong in the first place. I don t watch, so I can t deprive you of my viewership, but I CAN call you out.Shame on you, Maury Show and everyone associated with this despicable Facebook post. You really showed your true colors here today.Featured image via Facebook | 1real |
EPIC: Brave German woman beats the absolute hell out of a Muslim ‘refugee’ with her purse | jewsnews © 2015 | JEWSNEWS | It's not news...unless it's JEWS NEWS !!! Proudly powered by WordPress — Theme: JustWrite by Acosmin Join the over 1.4 million fans of Jews News on FB…It’s NOT news unless it’s Jews News! | 1real |
Germany withdraws diplomat from North Korea | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Germany is withdrawing a third diplomat from its embassy in North Korea over increasing concerns about Pyongyang s missile program, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday, a day after Pyongyang test fired a new missile. North Korea said on Wednesday it had successfully tested a powerful new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that put the entire U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. Berlin strongly condemned the test as a violation of international law. Speaking in Washington after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Gabriel said he had offered support for taking a tough line towards Pyongyang. He wants our support for their efforts to pursue a hardline position vis a vis North Korea, and he has it. But it s our job to decide what we will do in diplomatic channels. Two diplomats had already been withdrawn from the German embassy in Pyongyang, and a third was being pulled out now, Gabriel said. Germany was also demanding North Korea reduce its diplomatic presence in Germany. Gabriel said Washington had not demanded that Germany, one of seven European countries with embassies in North Korea, shut its mission or withdraw its ambassador. It was not Germany s desire to shut down its embassy, he said, but added: that doesn t mean we are ruling it out. Gabriel said Germany would discuss North Korea options with fellow European countries to determine whether it s necessary to further increase the diplomatic pressure. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States had called on countries to scale back or cut ties with North Korea as part of an effort to pressure Pyongyang to give up its weapons programs. If they would be willing to close their missions in North Korea altogether, that is also something we would be supportive of, she said, while adding that Tillerson had not specifically asked in his meeting with Gabriel for Germany to recall its ambassador. Gabriel also told reporters that he had no information about reports that the White House planned to replace Tillerson, noting that he had already scheduled another meeting with Tillerson for next week. U.S. officials said on Thursday the White House had developed a plan for CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson within weeks. | 0fake |
“DONALD TRUMP DIET”…LIFELONG LIBERAL Tells How His Leftist Friends Caused Him To Lose 7 Pounds After He Defended Donald Trump [VIDEO] | Every single day, liberals provide more and more evidence that Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing. After the treatment liberal Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz received from his leftist friends for defending the law, and in the process defending President Trump, will he ever be able to embrace the people he used to believe were tolerant and open-minded ? WFB Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Friday that he has lost seven pounds because his liberal friends have stopped inviting him to dinner parties for defending President Donald Trump against Democrats calling for him to be charged with obstruction of justice. Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Dershowitz, a lifelong liberal who has donated thousands of dollars to Democrats, about liberals shunning him, noting that he usually agrees with liberals when he appears on the show. Well, I call it the Donald Trump diet, Dershowitz said with a smile. I ve lost seven pounds because my liberal friends have stopped inviting me to dinner parties. After four years, I ll be back to my high school weight. He added that many liberals do not want to understand his view and immediately accuse him of being on Trump s side.WATCH: I m on nobody s side. I m on the side of the rule of law, the Constitution, and the Constitution is clear [that if] a president exercises his constitutional authority by firing somebody or by pardoning somebody, that cannot be the basis for obstruction of justice, Dershowitz said. If he goes further and lies or tells his people to destroy evidence, of course, that s different. That s how [Richard] Nixon and [Bill] Clinton got in trouble, but President [Trump] cannot be charged with obstruction for simply exercising his Article 2 power under the Constitution. And that s the point of view you expressed on this program a couple of days ago, co-host Steve Doocy added. And then the president of the United States retweeted, Hey you should watch Alan Dershowitz on Fox and Friends make that case, but then your liberal friends, their heads started exploding, and I understand somebody even suggested that you re being paid off by the Trump people. Dershowitz mocked the idea that he is being paid off or that he wants to become a Supreme Court justice at the age of 79. He then mentioned that he also is being attacked for his article supporting Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. I m being criticized for that by people because that s what Trump said, and if Trump said it, that means Dershowitz can t say it because that means Dershowitz is on Trump s side, Dershowitz said. I m on the side of justice and fairness. | 1real |
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