title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
Blame Government, Not Markets, for Monopoly | Blame Government, Not Markets, for Monopoly Written by Ron Paul Email
When Time-Warner announced it planned to merge with another major communications firm, many feared the new company would exercise near-total monopoly power. These concerns led some to call for government action to block the merger in order to protect both Time-Warner's competitors and consumers.
No, I am not talking about Time-Warner’s recent announced plan to merge with AT&T, but the reaction to Time-Warner’s merger with (then) Internet giant AOL in 2000. Far from creating an untouchable leviathan crushing all competitors, the AOL-Time-Warner merger fell apart in under a decade.
The failure of AOL-Time-Warner demonstrates that even the biggest companies are vulnerable to competition if there is open entry into the marketplace. AOL-Time-Warner failed because consumers left them for competitors offering lower prices and/or better quality.
Corporate mergers and “hostile” takeovers can promote economic efficiency by removing inefficient management and boards of directors. These managers and board members often work together to promote their own interests instead of generating maximum returns for investors by providing consumers with affordable, quality products. Thus, laws making it difficult to launch a "hostile" takeover promote inefficient use of resources and harm investors, workers, and consumers.
Monopolies and cartels are creations of government, not markets. For example, the reason the media is dominated by a few large companies is that no one can operate a television or radio station unless they obtain federal approval and pay federal licensing fees. Similarly, anyone wishing to operate a cable company must not only comply with federal regulations, they must sign a “franchise” agreement with their local government. Fortunately, the Internet has given Americans greater access to news and ideas shut out by the government-licensed lapdogs of the "mainstream" media. This may be why so many politicians are anxious to regulate the web.
Government taxes and regulations are effective means of limiting competition in an industry. Large companies can afford the costs of complying with government regulations, costs which cripple their smaller competitors. Big business can also afford to hire lobbyists to ensure that new laws and regulations favor big business.
Examples of regulations that benefit large corporations include the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulations that raise costs of developing a new drug, as well as limit consumers ability to learn about natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals. Another example is the Dodd-Frank legislation, which has strengthened large financial intuitions while harming their weaker competitors.
Legislation forcing consumers to pay out-of-state sales tax on their online purchases is a classic case of business seeking to use government to harm less politically-powerful competitors. This legislation is being pushed by large brick-and-mortar stores and Internet retailers who are seeking a government-granted advantage over smaller competitors.
Many failed mergers and acquisitions result from the distorted signals sent to business and investors by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary monetary policy. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the AOL-Time-Warner fiasco, which was a direct result of the Fed-created dot.com bubble.
In a free market, mergers between businesses enable consumers to benefit from new products and reduced prices. Any businesses that charge high prices or offer substandard products will soon face competition from businesses offering consumers lower prices and/or higher quality. Monopolies only exist when government tilts the playing field in favor of well-connected crony capitalists. Therefore those concerned about excessive corporate power should join supporters of the free market in repudiating the regulations, taxes, and subsides that benefit politically-powerful businesses. The most important step is to end the boom-bust business cycle by ending the Federal Reserve.
Ron Paul is a former U.S. congressman from Texas. This article originally appeared at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and is reprinted here with permission. | 1real |
FANTASTIC SPEECH LAST NIGHT! TRUMP’S FULL SPEECH After Big Win! [Video] | GREAT SPEECH! Donald Trump spoke last night after winning BIG! His overview of the important things he s campaigning on was fantastic! In case you missed it, it s well worth the listen! | 1real |
Hezbollah says Saudi Arabia forced Lebanon PM to resign | BEIRUT (Reuters) - The leader of Lebanese Shi ite group Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia had forced Lebanon s Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to resign, and called for calm and patience in Lebanon. Hariri, a political ally of Saudi Arabia resigned on Saturday in an unexpected declaration from the kingdom, citing a plot to assassinate him and slamming Hezbollah and its Iranian backers for sowing strife in the Arab world. The resignation of the prime minister, a Sunni Muslim, toppled a coalition government that included Hezbollah. The resignation was a Saudi decision dictated to prime minister Saad al-Hariri and forced on him, Nasrallah said in a televised broadcast, adding that there was no domestic reason for Hariri s decision. Nasrallah urged Lebanese not to hold protests in response to the resignation, saying this will not lead to any result . We urge against political escalation, he said. Nasrallah also said legitimate questions were being raised in Lebanon over whether Hariri was being detained in Saudi Arabia. Hariri allies in Lebanon have denied suggestions that he had been detained. Saudi Arabia s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has tightened his grip on power through an anti-corruption purge by arresting royals, ministers and investors including billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the kingdom s most prominent businessmen. | 0fake |
U.S. spy chief says expects Russia plans to expand presence in Syria base | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Director of National Intelligence said Russia was planning on expanding its presence at its naval base in Tartous, Syria to support its naval operations in the eastern Mediterranean. James Clapper also said he did not expect a “significant change in Russian behavior” when asked about Russia’s hacking activities. | 0fake |
Trump sharpens 'rigged' election allegations disputed by Republican lawyers | GREEN BAY, Wis./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday cited studies he said showed rampant voter fraud, saying the Nov. 8 election was “rigged” against him even as Republican lawyers called his allegations unfounded. Trump, a New York businessman making his first run for public office, has sought to raise fears of a flawed election as he has fallen in opinion polls against Democrat Hillary Clinton. “They even want to try to rig the election at the polling place,” Trump told a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. “So many cities are corrupt and voter fraud is very, very common.” Trump cited Pew Trusts research from 2012 that called for updates to the voter registration system because about 24 million registrations were inaccurate. (bit.ly/1HN4uTF) He also referred to a 2014 article by two political scientists in the Washington Post that said non-citizens who voted could have accounted for Democratic victories in a few close elections in 2008, although the authors acknowledged the sample size of their study was small. (wapo.st/1pX17Bf) Numerous studies have shown that voter fraud in U.S. elections is very rare. Republican campaign lawyer Chris Ashby said Trump’s charges could foment unrest and were “unfounded” and “dangerous.” “When you say an election is rigged, you’re telling voters, your supporters, their votes do not matter,” Ashby said in an interview. “I think some of Donald Trump’s comments could cause unrest at the polls.” Some Republicans have urged Trump to drop the assertions. Early voting and voting by mail have already begun in many states. Mark Braden, partner at Baker and Hostetler and former chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, said that any sort of election rigging at the national level “just is impossible,” citing the various systems in place that would make such an endeavor complicated and unfeasible. “Our system is principally a system based upon each side watching the other side,” Braden said in an interview. “Our system is dependent on local volunteer participation. Our system has worked very well because we have people who get involved in the process and perform these functions.” Trump also pounced on the release on Monday of Federal Bureau of Investigation documents that he alleged showed “felony corruption.” The documents cited an FBI official as saying a senior State Department official sought to pressure the bureau in 2015 to drop its insistence that an email from Clinton’s private server contained classified information.. Clinton’s decision to use a private server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 has drawn criticism that she was careless with national security. “This is worse than Watergate, what’s going on with this,” said Trump. He also proposed a package of ethics reforms, saying that if elected he would ban his administration officials from lobbying government for five years after leaving government. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Trump’s assault on the voting system was an act of desperation. “He knows he’s losing and is trying to blame that on the system. This is what losers do,” Mook told reporters. The RealClearPolitics average of national opinion polls shows Clinton currently leading Trump by 7.1 percentage points, at 46 percent to 38.9 percent. The country’s top elected Republican, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, tried to counter Trump’s message about election fraud. Spokeswoman AshLee Strong said Ryan “is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.” In the traditionally hard-fought state of Ohio, the top elections official, a Republican, said concerns about widespread voter fraud were simply not justified. “I can reassure Donald Trump: I am in charge of elections in Ohio and they’re not going to be rigged, I’ll make sure of that,” Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted told CNN. In a report titled “The Truth About Voter Fraud,” the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law cited voter fraud incident rates between 0.00004 percent and 0.0009 percent. An August study by the Washington Post found 31 credible cases of impersonation fraud out of more than 1 billion votes cast in elections from 2000 to 2014. Arizona State University studies in 2012 and 2016 found similarly low rates. A number of Republican-led states, citing the need to prevent voter fraud, have passed laws with stricter ID requirements. But several have been struck down by courts that ruled they were designed to hinder minority voting. Trump’s campaign has been shaken since the release 10 days ago of a 2005 tape showing him lewdly bragging about kissing and touching women without their permission. A series of women have since come forward with allegations about such behavior on his part, but he has denied those accusations. “They want to put nice sexy headlines up even though nothing happened,” Trump said, blaming the media for trying to “poison the minds of the voters.” On Monday, the allegations were in the headlines again after Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, spoke publicly for the first time about the “Access Hollywood” tape. A former model who has mainly stayed off the campaign trail, Trump told CNN she was surprised by her husband’s language and said she thought he had been “egged on” to “say dirty and bad stuff,” calling it “boy talk.” Melania Trump told CNN that the allegations of unwanted touching from women were “all organized from the opposition” and said media did not “check the background of these women.” In a separate interview with Fox News Channel, she said she had forgiven her husband for the comments in the tape. “Those words, they were offensive to me and they were inappropriate. And he apologized to me,” Melania Trump said in an excerpt released by Fox News Channel. “I accept his apology. And we are moving on,” she said. | 0fake |
U.S. Supreme Court revival on Trump travel ban draws praise, criticism | (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave President Donald Trump a victory by allowing his temporary ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority countries and all refugees to go into effect for people with no strong ties to the United States while agreeing to decide the order’s legality this fall. The case is a major test of presidential powers. The justices granted parts of the Trump administration’s emergency request to put the order into effect immediately while the legal battle continues. The court, which narrowed the scope of lower court rulings that had blocked his March 6 executive order, said it would hear arguments in October on the lawfulness of the ban. THE COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS, A MUSLIM CIVIL RIGHTS AND ADVOCACY ORGANIZATION The council expressed its concerns about the Supreme Court decision in relations to Islam saying it “ignores the Islamophobic origins of the policy and emboldens Islamophobes in the Trump administration.” AHMED AL-NASI, OFFICIAL AT YEMEN MINISTRY OF EXPATRIATE AFFAIRS Al-Nasi, whose country is one of the six falling under the ban, also criticized the Supreme Court decision. “We believe it will not help in confronting terrorism and extremism, but rather will increase the feeling among the nationals of these countries that they are all being targeted,” he said. “Especially given that Yemen is an active partner of the United States in the war on terrorism and that there are joint operations against terrorist elements in Yemen.” Shaheen expressed disappointment in the court’s decision. “Muslim travel ban has no merit & offensive to our nation’s core values,” she said on Twitter. TOM FITTON, PRESIDENT OF JUDICIAL WATCH, A CONSERVATIVE FOUNDATION Fitton praised the Supreme Court’s decision. “This is a major blow to anti-Trump activist judges on the lower courts. And it is a big victory for our nation’s security, President Trump, and the rule of the law.” he said in a statement. DAVID MILIBAND, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE HUMANITARIAN AGENCY AND A FORMER BRITISH FOREIGN MINISTER Miliband said the ruling could hurt refugees who have already been vetted and were slated to come to the United States. “The court’s decision threatens damage to vulnerable people waiting to come to the U.S.: people with urgent medical conditions blocked, innocent people left adrift, all of whom have been extensively vetted,” he said in a statement. “We urge the administration to begin its long-delayed review of the vetting process and restart a program which changes lives for the better.” MICHAEL O’ROURKE, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST AT JONESTRADING IN GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT O’Rourke said it was not clear if the news on the travel ban was having an impact on stocks. “I think it’s having a little impact, but I’m not sure. It just seemed to be the timing of the headlines. “There are a couple of different things floating around. ... I feel there’s a combination of a bunch of little things. “And I have a thematic track basket for immigration, and there are a bunch of tech names in there. Maybe people are reading into the immigration story there. ... But we know what policy the president is going to pursue. It’s not lining up perfectly for me.” ERIC SCHWARTZ, PRESIDENT OF REFUGEES INTERNATIONAL AND FORMER U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POPULATION, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATION Schwartz said he was disappointed by the court’s decision. “The suspension of refugee resettlement will impact the most vulnerable of the world’s populations, including refugee women and girls, survivors of violence and torture, and refugee children, among many other groups at considerable risk.” he said. “The options for organizations like ours are now limited as the Supreme Court reviews this case.” BECCA HELLER, DIRECTOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL REFUGEE ASSISTANCE PROJECT Heller said the parts of the travel ban allowed to go into effect “are actually incredibly narrow.” “Almost anyone coming into the U.S. who has a visa or has been in the refugee program for a while ... has some kind of tie to a U.S. person or a U.S. entity,” she said. “The hope is that this really only impacts a very small number of people.” Trump praised the court’s decision in a statement released by the White House. “Today’s unanimous Supreme Court decision is a clear victory for our national security,” he said. “Today’s ruling allows me to use an important tool for protecting our nation’s homeland.” DEMOCRATIC SENATOR ED MARKEY OF MASSACHUSETTS, MEMBER OF THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE Markey said in an interview with CNN that the top court made it clear the Trump administration had overreached when it came to businesses, family members and students but expressed concern that the court did not issue a more fundamental ruling. “I’m disappointed that the court just didn’t rule that a Muslim ban in and of itself is unconstitutional,” Markey said. OMAR JADWAT, DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION’S IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS PROJECT Jadwat, who argued the appellate case on the executive order, said in a statement: “President Trump’s Muslim ban violates the fundamental constitutional principle that government cannot favor or disfavor any one religion. Courts have repeatedly blocked this indefensible and discriminatory ban. The Supreme Court now has a chance to permanently strike it down.” WILLIAM STOCK, OUTGOING PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAWYERS ASSOCIATION Stock said the “bona fide connections” to the United States cited by the court as a requirement for admission to the country might include those on employer-sponsored visas, family-sponsored green card applications, people who are admitted by schools in the United States as students and those collaborating on research with people in the United States. “The court seems to be saying if a family in Iran had prepaid for Disneyland, they probably have a demonstrable connection to the United States that might allow for issuance of a visitor visa,” Stock said. “If a person says ‘I’ve heard of Disneyland and I’d really like to see it,’ that probably doesn’t get them in.” In a statement, Perez vowed to keep fighting the ban, which he called unconstitutional and an assault on American religious freedom. “As a nation, our diversity is our greatest strength, and we cannot allow such prejudice to shut the doors of progress. Democrats will continue to fight this hatred every step of the way,” Perez said. “Great news for our national security, the rule of law and @POTUS,” Strange said on Twitter, referring to Trump. | 0fake |
Like a “Concentration Camp” Police Mark DAPL Protesters with Numbers and Lock Them in Dog Kennels | By Claire Bernish
On Thursday, police from no less than five states sporting full riot gear and armed with heavy lethal and nonlethal weaponry, pepper spray, mace, a number of ATVs, five tanks, two helicopters, and military-equipped Humvees showed up to tear down an encampment of Standing Rock Sioux water protectors and supporters armed with … nothing.
Under orders from the now-notorious Morton County Sheriff’s Office, this ridiculously heavy-handed standing army came better prepared to do battle than some actual military units fighting overseas.
But the target of their operation — a group of slightly more than 200 Native American water protectors and supporters opposing construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline — never intended to do battle with the armed, taxpayer-funded, corporate-backed, state-sponsored aggressors.
Reports vary, but no less than 141 people were arrested Thursday, and — according to witnesses — police marked numbers on arrestees’ arms and housed them in cement-floored dog kennels , without any padding, before they were transported as far away as Fargo.
“It goes back to concentration camp days,” asserted Oceti-Sakowin coordinator Mekasi Camp-Horinek, who, along with his mother, was marked and detained in a mesh kennel, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Although Thursday’s incident remained relatively peaceful for some time, with only shouts, chants, and occasional attempts by water protectors to convince this standing army to examine its motives and reconsider, clashes nonetheless broke out — solely because of gratuitous police aggression.
After facing off for a couple hours, these militant cops began closing in on the water protectors to shut down the Treaty of 1851 camp — in reference to the Fort Laramie Treaty of that year, which established a large parcel of land designated exclusively Native American territory not to be disturbed by the U.S. government. Prior to his arrest, Camp-Horinek had established the camp, stating, as cited by Indigenous Rising :
Today, the Oceti Sakowin has enacted eminent domain on DAPL lands, claiming 1851 treaty rights. This is unceded land. Highway 1806 as of this point is blockaded. We will be occupying this land and staying here until this pipeline is permanently stopped. We need bodies and we need people who are trained in non-violent direct action. We are still staying non-violent and we are still staying peaceful.
Despite the water protectors’ commitment to nonviolence, the militarized police response went as would be expected — horribly awry.
“A prayer circle of elders, including several women, was interrupted and all were arrested for standing peacefully on the public road,” stated a press release from Indigenous Environment Network . “A tipi was erected in the road and was recklessly dismantled, despite law enforcement statements that they would merely mark the tipi with a yellow ribbon and ask its owners to retrieve it. A group of water protectors was also dragged out of a sweat lodge ceremony erected in the path of the pipeline, thrown to the ground, and arrested.”
Claims to the contrary by Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier aside, Native American and Indigenous water protectors and supporters have refrained from violent acts on the whole, preferring instead peaceful prayer vigils and acts of civil disobedience.
No matter how peacefully the opposition acts, armed defenders of Big Oil interests seem determined to brutalize , disrespect, and generally incite and inflict violence against those who desire unsullied water for generations to come.
In fact, at the beginning of September, a private security firm hired by Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for pipeline construction, indiscriminately unleashed vicious attack dogs on water protectors, press, and supporters — for reasons as yet unknown.
During the savage attack, a pregnant woman, young girl, and many others suffered serious dog bites thanks to the ineptitude of the dogs’ handlers. Afterward, a warrant for inciting a riot was issued Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman — for doing her job, filming events as they happened — though charges were subsequently thrown out.
Although ETP and some law enforcement officers defended the barbarous actions of the private security mercenaries, the Guardian now reports that — because the guards lacked proper licensing — they could now face criminal charges. On Wednesday, the Morton County Sheriff’s Office made the determination that “dog handlers were not properly licensed to do security work in the state of North Dakota.”
Bob Frost, owner of Ohio-based Frost Kennels, told the Guardian , “All the proper protocols … were already done. I pulled my guys out the next day because we weren’t there to go to war with these protesters.”
Frost insisted he had cooperated with authorities investigating the incident — but the sheriff’s department disagrees. Seven handlers and dogs were deployed to the scene in early September, allegedly in response to reports of trespassers; but, according to the Guardian , police have only managed to identify two people.
The sheriff’s department claims Frost has not provided necessary information, and unnamed security officials cited in the report said that “there were no intentions of using the dogs or handlers for security work. However, because of the protest events, the dogs were deployed as a method of trying to keep the protesters under control.”
In a statement cited by the Guardian , Morton County Captain Jay Gruebele said, “Although lists of security employees have been provided, there is no way of confirming whether the list is accurate or if names have been purposely withheld.”
Water protectors, in the meantime, are left to deal with absurdly disproportionate state violence — and the altogether unacceptable, disrespectful, and demeaning insult of being relegated to dog kennels after being arrested for exercising their rights.
As Lakota Country Times editor, Brandon Ecoffey, wrote in an editorial Thursday,
Over the course of the last several months the abuse of detainees by Morton County Law Enforcement has overstepped every boundary guaranteed by the American constitution. Water protectors have been seen being bound and hooded by police. People are being stripped searched and abused within their jail for misdemeanor crimes. And police have employed the use of mass surveillance through drones on the protector camps. This isn’t a war zone this is North Dakota.
Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com , where this article first appeared . Share: | 1real |
Secret Emails From Hillary Clinton Reveal: There Is A Very Powerful Circle Of People Ruling Over Hillary Who Hate Christians And Who Are Now Executing A Plan To Annihilate Christians And Advance Islam - Freedom Outpost | Email
Reading through Hillary and her ‘gang’ leaked emails, gives us a picture as to how America’s foreign policy was run, a policy that nearly wiped out Christians from the Middle East. Looking through Hillary’s email shows a gang bent on destroying the Middle East. It was as if a college Muslim Student Association (which Huma Abedin was member) took over the realm of power, not just any power, but the most powerful nation on earth, where all policy was directed by a handful ring of revolutionary students, who thought that the Middle East needed a facelift, and the only method was to start revolutions. The tragic part is that what you will read here is no fantasy or a simple school project, it is a reality that caused global destruction. It is in fact the prelude to World War III.
Feast your eyes into the secret workings of the Hillary band-of-trouble makers. You will only conclude that Hillary Clinton and her aide, Huma Abedin, should not just be imprisoned, but should face the execution by lethal injection for all the crimes they have committed against humanity.
Reading through the volume of emails makes the operation easy to comprehend. A handful of opportunists with spy-huma continually flatter Hillary. Huma closely watches her confused buffoon boss and they all feed her daily dosages of unreliable information to form her mind by exerting undue influence. At times Huma even tells Hillary what time to “take a nap”. Huma even disclosed to another opportunist staffer that their boss is ‘Often Confused’.
Of course, with a confused boss, Abedin had access to Hillary’s Secretary of State email address that was not even secure using her email server to read everything coming in and everything going out. All this, regardless that she had no clearance to operate under such capacity. How she collected 650,000 emails does not take a rocket scientist to calculate.
Abedin worked for Hillary since 1996. 650,000 emails would average at 90 emails per day. Why would any simple aide want to store 20 years worth of secret emails on another computer besides hers, calls for question that what we are dealing with here is more than just an ‘aide’ but a hijabless spy taking the buffoon on a wild camel ride to create a Muslim Brotherhood revolution. Wrong. This buffoon is not a Hillary’s double and is not ‘photo shopped’
It is clear from the volumes of emails we obtained so far from Wikileaks, Huma then becomes the conduit and filter that ‘provides or denies access’ and dispenses just the right media press needed to form Hillary’s worldview on all things ‘Middle East’. This information concluded the policy which provoked civil unrest throughout the Muslim world. The team’s duty was simply to build walls and fortifications making it hard to reach Clinton while ‘Charlie’s angels’ accomplished what was needed. First, to prove American’s are voting for a buffoon is easy. In one example, Huma with undue influence writes Hillary:
“I understand you are ok making the abu mazen call. Everyone agrees you should make it and they want you to do it today.”
“Everyone” is the gang. They wanted her to speak to the Palestinian Authority leader Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas). Hillary responds: “I don’t know what I’d say“. Huma would write back “these are points from him about what to say. And they asked if you would do today.”
Hillary can’jt seem to survive without Huma, she writes Huma: “let’s go on our trip. I think it’s worth it. And we can always add Israel as we did before!”
Huma: “Ok great! We’ll do ecuador now cause otherwise we lose him. So pinato, mubarak, lobo.”
Hillary: “That’s fine. How are you doing?”
Huma: “Excellent. Yesterday was a madhouse but got a lot accomplished.”
Huma bossing her buffoon boss, can’t seem to have Hillary do a simple task: “can you hang up the fax line, they will call again and try fax Just pick up phone and hang it up. And leave it hung up.”
Obedient Hillary: “I did.”
Huma: “Yes but hang up one more time. So they can reestablish the line.”
Hillary is so stupid “I thought it was supposed to be off hook to work?”
When Huma wants things done (like when she wanted favors for the Saudis) Huma would use key names who said that Hillary “should to do it”. The “aged Saudi ruler” needed to expedite his travel and Huma comes for the rescue. Huma would tell Hillary: “Jeff mentioned we are helping expedite visas for [Saudi] delegation.”
The circle who influenced Hillary most had everything in common regarding political views. Huma, a Muslim, and a couple, of really, the most self-hating Jews money can buy, the Blumenthals, used what Hillary gobbles up most: flattery . Huma even nicknames Hillary “Fabius” a throwback to Quintus Fabius Maximus a Roman politician around 280 BC who was twice appointed Dictator.”Reminder fabius at 3:30 Take a nap” Huma tells Hillary as if she was mother and Hillary is a crib-ridden child.
After every speech or interview, this handful, her gang, would chime in “powerful” “wonderful” as to fatten the bosses’s head. Sidney Blumenthal who had made the greatest impact on Hillary was a senior adviser to Ms. Clinton during her 2008 and then was shut out of the State Department by the White House in 2009 for all his shenanigans. Presidential advisor Sidney Blumenthal, center, departs Capitol Hill after being deposed by House prosecutors Wednesday, Feb. 3, 1999
But now we know one of the reasons why Hillary wanted a private server. Through the Jewish Blumenthal and even his two sons, Hillary was under constant undue-influence and pressure to trust and believe un-vetted opinions titled as “facts” from supposedly “trustworthy” “secret sources” from “sources close to governments”. As it turns out, it was all third-hand rumors guised as ‘reliable’ and ‘confidential’ which formed the judgments of one of U.S. government’s most powerful figures.
So if the issue at hand was the nation of lets say, Kyrgyzstan, Blumenthal would send Hillary some radio jockey’s (Scott Horton) report: “Scott Horton has just returned from a week in Kyrgyzstan, where he held lengthy private conversations with a range of leaders.”
What “range of leaders” was simply bogus. All Blumenthals contacts supposedly had ‘inside intel’, they are supposedly well connected to all the higher-ups. Despite his untrustworthiness and his opportunism, the Blumenthal’s had a lion-share of Hillary leaked emails . They continued their influence over Hillary by even having Max, Sidney’s son, one of America’s most notorious Israel haters, continually corresponding with Hillary influencing her mind. She loved his unsubstantiated articles and responded very favorably to them. With a private server they can now bash anyone who does not agree. Even Shoebat.com was not immune from reaching Hillary who was interested to later spread all sorts of slander on us.
Blumenthal’s writings was the springboard to Max’s anti-Semitic Goliath , comparing Israel to the Nazis, even calling for the expulsion of the Jews from Israel, while comparing the Israel Defense Forces to the SS. Hillary was obliged to respond with favor:
7/6/2010 – “Pls print 5 copies but w/out heading from Sid.” 8/17/2010 – “Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.”
11/18/2010- “A very smart piece as usual.” 4/7/2011 – “Will Max’s piece be published anywhere else? It is powerful and touching.” 12/23/2011 – “Max strikes again!” 1/21/2012 – “Interesting reading.” 9/13/2012 “Your Max is a mitzvah!” 12/7/2012 – “Good stuff. Where is he now?”
Hillary’s favorite reports were Max’s, sent to her via his father Sidney, especially one that raised our eyebrow, on tracking ‘the dangerous Islamophobist Cabal’ revealing Shoebat as one, where Hillary requested the report printed for her read. Reports that attempt to minuscule the whistle blowers as “whacky” is written by Max who signs his name “ Blumenthal, The Great “.
“I’m at the post office but Huma has this printed for you” responds Monica Hanley regarding the report on us and the other dangerous ‘phobes’.
Literally, hundreds of missive emails sent to Hillary completely re-brainwashing an already brainwashed buffoon with all sorts of conspiracy theories and untrustworthy information.
And if Max Blumenthal was ‘like father like son’, Huma was ‘like mother like daughter’ and was not much different from the Blumenthals. The true color of Huma was revealed when one major Hillary Clinton Jewish donor, Haim Saban, in one article complimented Hillary (its how you get in) while stating that there needs to be more scrutiny on Muslim immigrants, Abedin, the filter, was not thoroughly pleased, of course, and had to chime in scolding the Jew who had some anti-Muslim immigration ideas:
“Good interview. Thanks for sharing. But what you are saying about Muslims not consistent with HRC. Are you aware of that?”
In other words, if you want to get through to Hillary, Huma was the gate-keeper and an ‘open sesame’ requires that everyone say the magic words about Islam or say something nasty about Israel.
Including all the anti-Israel reports will take an entire book. Yet when it came to Christians, we find nothing, not even a scant of services. Hillary would not reprimand Philippe Reines on his “mother teresa” comment calling Christians “those crazy right”. In an email by Reines sent to Hillary and copied to Huma regarding a Catholic orphanage, an adoption ministry, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed as “a home she helped open with Mother Teresa” was closed down by red tape, Reines writes Hillary:
Just FYI on the below, from one of those crazy right “magazines” – notes that the home you referenced in your Prayer Breakfast remarks has since closed.
There was no reprimand by Hillary to the type of language her advisor used. When it was a Christian publication, it was always dubbed “crazy right”.
But perhaps satanism amongst the elites (and after reviewing the emails) is no longer conspiracy theory. The leaks from Colin Powel’s phone and Wikileaks match emails from Blumenthal to Hillary:
“I had lunch yesterday with Philip Bobbitt, who told me he had recently been at the Bohemian Grove and had lunch there with Kissinger and Colin Powell.”
Even the reputable National Geographic refers to the Bohemian Grove as having some pagan rituals and included the photos. Perhaps all the Free-Masonry theories about starting revolutions which I doubted as ‘conspiracy theory’ do have merit that what we are dealing with here are satanic elitists who call all truth ‘conspiracy theory’.
There was not one comment revering Christianity or anything Christian. In reality, what difference does it make whether Huma bows to a black stone, like the ancient Jews of the Sinai, who switched from their God Yahweh and bowed to a golden calf, or the elites bowing to Molech or an owl at the Bohemian Grove. It all shows, for one to get ahead, they must first ensure their names are first blotted out from the book of life. Indeed, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is only good or evil.
Vanity of vanities. But here comes the beefy tostada, that every American who votes, need to start paying close attention to. The “best way to help Israel” is to start a war in Syria was Blumenthal’s grand idea. Anyone is welcome to access Wikileaks and see :
“The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.”
Finally, every American now can snoop into the elitist thinking, to see how camel dung is made, processed, and fed to American liberal buffoons who hate America’s Christianity. Today is the day (just days before the election), we can remind you that ‘we told you so’.
In an email sent by Sidney Blumenthal to Hilary Clinton suggesting that Iran would lose “its only ally” in the Middle East if the Syrian regime collapses. Our snooping into Hillary’s emails allows us to look into the Israeli political debate in 2012, where the decisions made caused an outcome making Iran stronger than ever. And despite the disastrous Syrian civil war with hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced, Clinton still clung to the formula like Hitler clung to the trains, opting to transfer Jews to the crematoria than reverse course to save his nation. Likewise, Hillary continues on the destructive path. The email on 11/30/2015 reveals everything we need to know about Hillary and her gang’s mindset.
And when it comes to Syria’s revolution sparked by the Free Syrian Army who were truly nothing more than Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist Jihadi rebels, who wanted to establish a Sharia driven government, Hillary would obtain the analysis from her henchman and aide, Robert Russo, regarding the makeup of the rebels. And just as the typical Muslims on the streets would do, Hillary instead of relying on CIA reports, obtained Al-Jazeera’s false narrative. This even excited Hillary that the FSA “are not fighting for Islam but they are [only] inspired by it”. The subject title for Hillary would read “MUST READ ON COMPOSITION OF SYRIAN FSA”.
The rebels in Syria were painted as ‘partial Islamists’ who do not believe in imposing Sharia law, but only used Jihad as a means of warfare against Bashar’s tyranny.
Many times Hillary would be in hibernation mode as the gang sent her dosages of mind forming articles from Al-Jazeera clips about how the Muslim world do not really hate the U.S. and that the real problem were strictly the Arab regimes that needed uprooting. Hillary would thank them for the info:
“Sorry I’m so far behind in responding–and thanking you–for forwarding this to us. The last month has been a whirlwind which is not likely to calm down …”
The gang would encourage her with more flattery:
“You of all people NEVER need to apologize. Truly can’t wait until you are out and I can work with you again on issues we both think are so important.”
The agents were less than crystal clear about anything, blaming innocent scapegoats and creating phony alibis, while mixing truths with lies. Truths like the Bush ‘no WMD’ in Iraq, which indeed was a faulty conclusion, but that the best way to fight Al-Qaeda is to continue Bush’s scandalous legacy, to destroy Iraq while they also destroy Tunisia, Libya and Egypt too …
So under the guise of ‘aiding Israel’ they called to ‘destroy Syria’.
Reading these emails reveal just how ugly is the reality we live in, that the best way to remove any secular government in the Muslim world was to install an Islamist one. In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Buffoon Hillary, also wrote back in December 31, 2012, that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death. Even the New York Times revealed this and began to pick up on more: Blumenthal’s memos, often appending a note: “Useful insight” or “We should get this around asap.” In an August 2012 memo, Mr. Blumenthal described the new president of Libya, Mohamed Magariaf, as someone who would “seek a discrete relationship with Israel” and had “many common friends and associates with the leaders of Israel.” “If true, this is encouraging,” Mrs. Clinton wrote to Mr. Sullivan. “Should consider passing to Israelis.”
Blumenthal would send emails with outlandish subject titles like “Subject: H[illary]: HIGHLY IMPORTANT! COMPREHENSIVE INTEL REPORT ON LIBYA. AND DRINK 8 GLASSES OF WATER. SID”
Hillary responds with “I’m happy to report that”. The key bait given to Hillary to believe these reports and approve them was this style:
“Speaking on condition of absolute secrecy, a source with access to the Office of the President stated that during late December 2012 Magariaf and Zidan agreed that they must move quickly to deal with these problematic issues before they can address their long term strategy of developing productive diplomatic and business relationships with their neighboring states in North Africa, Western Europe and the United States.”
Blumenthal wanted business opportunities in Libya and Hillary was the key. The terminology to make Hillary believe was the use of jargon used by phony reports “confidential” “absolute secrecy” “sensitive sources” “According to a very sensitive source” and “In the opinion of this sensitive source” “Extremely sensitive sources” to even “Sources with direct access to the governments of Libya and Israel, as well as the highest levels of European governments, and Western Intelligence and security services …”
It was all bogus, the type of charade one find in Nigerian scams or DEBKAFile reports that come from supposedly Israeli intelligence where no serious sources are given.
Buffoon Hillary would get her intel from the conspiracy theorist, Blumenthal, who claimed that Libya’s Magariaf has plans and connections to make peace with Israel. The Buffoon had no clue, Magariaf has no links to Israel whatsoever. It was all a hoax, undue influence on a left-wing loon.
Regarding the Egyptian revolution, the reports were void of the fact that the revolution was in reality a Muslim Brotherhood takeover. In one report Blumenthal even displays a fanciful victory against the Muslim Brotherhood by “nationalist football hooligans known as the Ultras”.
It was as if the football hooligans represented the revolution. The key was to finagle the truth, use sophist and complicated jargon as to sound legit, and keep Hillary believing a fantasy, that Egyptians are tired of the tyranny of both, Hosni Mubarak as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, while explaining that is why they are staging a rebellion in Egypt.
Truth is, the unrest was fomented by Washington and it was clearly a Muslim Brotherhood uprising as we have warned in the initial stages as the outcome was revealed later when it was too late. For example on the faulty labeling of terrorists as ‘moderate’, in one report to Hillary, Blumenthal writes :
I have included below a private report from “Stratfor” that underscores that Syria is attacking the moderate wing of Hamas and the Palestinian accord.
The simplistic labels worked. Hillary never asked is there a ‘ moderate wing of Hamas’ and a ‘ moderate wing of Al-Qaeda’ and a ‘ moderate wing of the Nazi party’? Yet nowhere in Strafor’s report does it even use such oxymoronic terms.
And how Hillary was obtaining her influence on everything Middle East came strictly from this un-penetrable little circle.
“The analysis on events in Egypt ring true to me” Hillary responds to one of her aide henchwomen, Anne-Marie Slaughter. The latter was acting like a college student, all excited about her dissertation as to why Egypt needs a populace control instead of the current structure, objecting why Egyptian heads of state were ‘military’ rulers and not ‘civilians’.
Slaughter according to her bio : “From 2009–2011 she served as director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position”. But when the results were disastrous since the real world at times is not explained by just bookworms, like Hillary’s Benghazi fiasco, it was Mrs. Slaughter who sends Hillary the ointment, more deception that the rebels in Libya really love America:
“To have Libyans carrying placards saying “We are sorry America; this does not represent Islam,” is exactly what we hoped for when we supported the Libyan intervention. Many Libyan bloggers/tweeters have taken the same stance. And to have elected Libyan and Tunisian governments publicly apologizing and denouncing the violence shows a very different face of Islam — the Tunisian government is a Muslim Brotherhood government …”
In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood was tame. To Hillary and her gang, it was no longer that this cobra spawned Al-Qaeda and Hamas and even those had ‘moderates’. It was ‘the Muslim Brotherhood loves America’ and therefore, Hillary ‘loves the Brotherhood’.
Hillary was completely brainwashed to believe Egypt’s Muslim brotherhood will revive as a non-Islamist movement or half-Islamist ‘moderate’ and will all fix itself as it shifts from being uncontrolled by the military. She responds to one release which said:
“The last couple of weeks have seen a shift in Egyptian politics. It appeared that the Egyptian President, Mohammed Morsi, exercised his authority over the military establishment, and dismissed Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi.”
They just love this word ‘shift’ as if evil shifts and evolves to the better. The Muslim Brotherhood therefore played an important role in the dream world of Hillary that “military rule” is no more and now its populace rule as planed by the gang.
“The analysis on events in Egypt ring true to me” responds Hillary. After all the intel sent to her said:
“Hosni Mubarak, in this regard, was not a civilian authority: he was a military one, and part of the same structure, which simultaneously occupied the president’s office.”
So when “ousting all dictators” domino effect began sparking in Tunisia, Huma would send Hillary the praise reports that now she is a prophetess:
“It was a fallout she herself [Hillary] had warned of just two weeks earlier. In a dramatic speech in Qatar, Clinton warned Arab leaders their regimes would “sink in the sand” if they did not reform their autocratic governments and create opportunities for their young citizens. Two days after that speech, Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country after he was overthrown amid massive protests. Inspired, Egyptians began similar protests. Now, the U.S. pondered the potential fall of Hosni Mubarak — a critical ally who for 30 years served as a linchpin of security in the Middle East — which would dramatically affect America’s entire policy in the region for years to come. “There were a first few moments of wonderment and then she said, ‘We have to dive in,” recalled Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s counselor and chief of staff. Bad timing for a tough test …”
One would think that such news was a disaster, but the message from Huma was simple, it was plan in progress. In other words, thus said Hillary and the world moved. Hillary thou art Fabius and now she can nap again.
And Muslim Brotherhood ‘populace control’ they got. And what would sound troubling to the normal mind, Huma would send a praise Hillary report . She could not even wait till she signed into Hillary’s server. She writes from state.gov to Hillary, giving her the news of the salvation caused by her messiah; riots sparking the Arab Spring starting in Egypt and spreading to Yemen, Libya, Kuwait, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sudan, India and Iran. To the ‘gang’ it was like watching a fireworks as Huma, the real boss behind the scene gives Hillary full credit:
I’m giving you credit for inspiring the “peaceful” protests.
“Peaceful” in quotes was meant to mean “nothing peaceful”. Captain chaos did the job. Even when Huma reported to Hillary “The Muslim Brotherhood, the big winner in the first election since the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak last February”, this was ‘good news’ and all Hillary did was to respond with some romance :
Have I told you how much I miss you on these trips? Not nearly as much fun [without you].
Hillary wanted Huma by her bedside. Huma, of course, with flattery speaks of their adventures together:
Oh that’s so nice to hear!! Its soo hard to not be there. I miss our many adventures. Jeff feltman is beside himself that you emailed him bday greetings….says you are “incredible“.
From the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to Al-Nahda’s Muslim Brotherhood success in Tunisia , Huma would send the news reports to Hillary as if it was ‘mission accomplished’. One cannot find a single line of any worry or comment resembling ‘we screwed up’. The Hillary gang would even send their boss images on how beautiful Ramadan was from images and photos on Al-Jazeera, the type of which dazzles Hillary’s imaginations. A Palestinian boy in Gaza City plays with fireworks to celebrate the beginning of Ramadan
It was all progress as usual as if chaos was the goal. It is as if Hillary herself was Muslim or that this retard team of women thought they were about to take control of Islam to revolutionize it as Huma says ‘Yay’ when the Saudi Monarch stopped the lashing of a woman for driving.
Evil is always tucked under the good, just as camel-dung is tucked under the non-existing snow of the desert. The outcome was that the Clinton/Obama Administration, this whole time, has been the main sponsor of the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, refugee crisis to destroy Europe, real conspiracies that caused the death of countless Assyrian, Copt, Orthodox and Catholic Christians, and all was done in the name of “protecting Israel”.
Yet we were painted by Clinton’s media henchmen as “the conspiracy theorists”?
US support of Huma’s family’s dream aiding Saudi Arabia, financially and logistically, backed Syrian Islamist rebels which helped lead the creation of ISIS, a policy led to a war that has dragged in Turkey, the Kurds, Russia, Iraq, Iran, our Gulf allies and too many radical terrorist organizations to count, into the apocalypse, the very quagmire we see today which will lead to World War III.
It is perhaps an ideal time to reveal the man whom everyone thought was so conspiratorial that he was viewed as Balaam’s donkey. Yet it was this donkey, Mummer Gaddafi , who prophetically declared to the Arab Summit that after killing Saddam Hussein, he told Bashar al-Assad “you will be next”. Watch Bashar Al-Assad smile as if what this donkey said was madness:
God can speak through a select donkey while the geniuses laughing were the real jack-asses. To Hillary, Huma and the gang, the tribal leaders are ‘out’ and the Islamist universalists are ‘in’.
It took years before Americans woke up to the ugliest of realities, where much repentance is needed, as to what happened to people, be it Muslim or Christian. Over a quarter million butchered. Lord have mercy. Do not exclusively blame the terrorist for the ISIS attacks on U.S soil. We all reap what we sow.
Why Israel and the U.S. want the Arab tribal leaders removed is simple to explain. It was either that the Russian influence is weakened or creating chaotic Islamist regimes will finally unite Russia, Europe and the U.S. to unify against the Islamist savage. But this thinking disregards that creating such a Muslim beast brings utter destruction to the Christians and all secular pro-west Muslims living under the devil’s rule as we see Turkey’s call to be the peace-keepers of Iraq and Syria, in fact, the whole of the Muslim world.
With Hillary, the gang conspired to subvert the power of the office of Secretary of State to violate UN Charter, International Law and U.S. law committing treason and committing war crimes.
And while claiming ‘love for Israel’ or we ‘did this for Israel’ reality was much different. The gang were acting more like a Muslim Student Union at a college campus. They were feeding Hillary all sorts of mad ideas to raise monies for “Palestine” while shaming Israel . Hillary would even respond with: “I am very interested”. Her aide Marie Slaughter dreamt this fanciful idea to have Hillary influence billionaires donate for Palestine:
“This may be a crazy idea, but as far as we can tell we need ideas. Suppose we launched a “Pledge for Palestine” campaign that copies Warren Buffet’s “The Giving Pledge” campaign, described below — he’s trying to get 40 billionaires to give away most of their money. I had asked some S/P folks to think about how we might take that campaign global to help change the attitudes of elites in places like Pakistan and Latin America, but perhaps Warren Buffet could be convinced to lend his name — or perhaps Michael Bloomberg or Danny Abraham (together with a very wealthy Muslim) – to a similar Pledge for Palestine campaign. Such a campaign among billionaires/multi-millionaires around the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in the building of a Palestinian state and could offset the ending of the moratorium for Palestinians (there would also be a certain shaming effect re Israelis, who would be building settlements in the face of a pledge for peace). With even 30 calls to the right people in the Clinton fundraising network it should be possible to generate a substantial enough amount quickly enough to capture the public imagination on the heels of the President’s speech and, critically, to serve as an expression of global solidarity with the Palestinians“
How these women expected 40 billionaires to give up “most of their money” and wealth in a fundraiser for Palestine is the type of dreams one finds in a fantasy book. Did this gang of women think they are in the era of one thousand and one nights copulating with some Caliph to persuade him to pay all of his kingdom?
From Egypt, to the Freedom Flotilla in Gaza, Hillary was interested responding with “please print” “print” print” and “print”.
Print what? How “this [Turkish supported Flotilla to Gaza] is movement that is going to grow and grow and that is going to be impossible to stop”. A revolution into the heart of Israel coming from the sea from all over the Muslim world was the gang’s solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
How is that good for Israel? So in the name of ‘aiding Israel’ they ‘destroyed the Arabs’ and in the name of ‘aiding Israel’ they were ‘destroying Israel’.
And when in 2009, the Muslim Rashad Hussain, was named deputy associate counsel to President Barack Obama, he tried to break protocol writing Huma directly: “Hope you are doing well. I’m looking forward to getting started as soon as possible”. Huma then writes to Cheryl Mill knowing that Cheryl was on vacation to deal with this “I Don’t want to bother you on vacation but see below”. Denis McDonough who was copied answers: “Weird. I will take care of this”.
Rashad Hussein was not careful and stealth enough to enter the inner circle to promote the OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference), which is also Huma’s mother’s aspiration to join forces of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was appointed by the government and made comments to the Musim Student Association in 2004 supporting the convicted terrorist fundraiser Sami al-Arian. A direct contact with Rashad who was toxic could compromise everything.
Yet Hillary still consulted Rashad via Jacob Sullivan. Rashad was not told that it was Hillary who wanted the advise. She had asked “ Does he [Rashad] have any suggestions as to how we handle the Ulema?”
Ulema is Arabic for Muslim scholars . Rashad did not even know the advice went to Hillary who wanted an education on how to handle the Quran when meeting Muslim scholars: Jake- A few points (including some background) to respond to your friend’s question– Muslims believe that the Quran is the direct word of God and the final revelation that was sent to correct human changes that were made to the messages sent to previous prophets (Abraham, Moses, Jesus, etc.). They believe that the message sent to these previous prophets [Judaism, Christianity] was essentially Islam, but was changed [by Jews and Christians] because the texts (Bible, Torah, etc.) were not preserved… certain rules of etiquette have developed for handling the Quran: … one should keep the Quran above the waist when handling it and should keep it only in clean places (definitely never in a bathroom) … many scholars would say that unless non-Muslims are handling it for educational purposes, they should avoid handling it all together. In terms of disposing of old Qurans or other documents with God’s name, your friend is right … Muslims guard vigilantly against the deification of any person, including the Prophet Muhammad, because they fear that people will begin to worship him (as Christians began to worship Jesus … there have been so many recent instances of desecration in the news that people are not as shocked as they used to be to hear these types stories (Terry Jones, Gitmo toilet story, urination on corpses story) … That said, Muslims all over the world are definitely saddened/upset by the news, but for the most part, they understand that the Quran itself teaches that violence is not the answer. Rashad
So Hillary was getting her Islamic education via Rashad Hussain. Hillary knew that claiming the Son of God and that Jesus is God was an insult to Muslims.
Hillary’s chief of staff and counsel Cheryl Mills, during the time Michelle Bachman began to disclose our findings on Huma’s entanglements with Islamists, Abedin and family sent Hillary the media’s praise report of Huma:
“There’s John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Ed Rollins, Republicans who leapt to the defense of Hillary Clinton’s top State Department confidante when Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) suggested that she just might be a traitor. There’s a Facebook group of folks who “stand with Huma.” (PHOTOS: Huma Abedin) And there are countless women and men around the country who thought she handled her husband Anthony Weiner’s Twitter malfunction with all the grace and elegance that he lacked. Abedin’s finding out an enduring truth of Washington politics: Yesterday’s victim is tomorrow’s hero.”
But now things are different. The Muslim Brotherhood spy, Huma Abedin, by withholding evidence during her FBI interview having a home computer, then lying that she did and after showing that there were over 650,000 emails (these are ‘state.gov and HRC emails’) sent to her husband from that computer, Huma Abedin just cancelled her immunity deal. Now after examining some of the other leaked emails, this Muslim Brotherhood snitch, would either have to spill the beans on Hillary or face jail.
For years they said we were ‘mad’ for exposing Huma, but finally the snow melted and this Hijabless camel is revealing all the dung that was hidden beneath the imaginary snow.
O how the tables turn, “tomorrow’s hero” will become Hillary’s scapegoat and tomorrow’s re-discovered Muslim Brotherhood “spy”. To understand all this, read the most extensive research we did on the topic which leaves no question to Huma’s family ties, not just to the Brotherhood, but to the Islamic revolution worldwide:
Nice to have made your acquaintance Jezebel Clinton. Hope you end up in prison with your Muslim aide, PUN intended. Enjoy my report when you get it referring to me as “shock jock” and “right wing nut”.
Article reposted with permission from Shoebat.com Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . | 1real |
Talks on Syria Seek to Extend Fragile Truce to Aleppo - The New York Times | BEIRUT, Lebanon — Negotiations are underway to extend a fragile agreement in Syria to the embattled northern city of Aleppo, which a surge of violence has nearly torn apart in recent weeks, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday. “In the last weeks, the cessation of hostilities has been put to the test, and it has frayed in certain areas, and it has fallen completely in a few areas,” Mr. Kerry said in Geneva after meeting with the United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura. Mr. Kerry said he was particularly disturbed about air raids on a hospital and three health clinics in Aleppo, for which he blamed President Bashar ’s government. “The regime has clearly indicated the willingness, over a period of time now, to attack first responders, to attack health care workers and rescue workers,” Mr. Kerry said. “And the attack on this hospital is unconscionable, under any standard anywhere. It has to stop. ” He added that “both sides — the opposition and the regime — have contributed to this chaos. ” Mr. Kerry said that he planned to talk to his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, on Monday evening, and that Mr. de Mistura would travel to Moscow on Tuesday, all part of an effort to restore a fragile that was brokered in February, with American and Russian support, and is now at risk of collapse. Mr. Kerry urged Russia to pressure Mr. Assad to stop the attacks. “This is the moment to try to make certain that what everybody has signed up to is, in fact, being delivered, being lived up to, without hypocrisy and without variation. ” Mr. Kerry said there could be no “legitimate political talks” until both parties carried out the agreement — a full cessation of hostilities throughout the country and the nationwide delivery of humanitarian aid. “And yet one party is blatantly violating that agreement,” he said, referring to the Syrian government. Speaking at a news conference with Mr. de Mistura, Mr. Kerry said that the deal was fraying in some areas and had collapsed in others and that legitimate talks on a were impossible unless all of the involved parties were committed to it. Mr. Kerry said that Russia and the United States would add personnel in Geneva so that the agreement could be monitored — a declaration that left the unsettling impression that until now, the agreement, promoted as being of ultimate importance, had not been monitored around the clock by its sponsors. Mr. de Mistura added a note of reality, saying he appreciated that while Russia and the United States were developing an improved monitoring system, “we need the political will otherwise we would have only a mechanism. ” “Well said,” Mr. Kerry said. Asked repeatedly whether he trusted the Russian government on the efforts to restore a truce in Aleppo, Mr. Kerry declined to answer. In noting that the partial truce had fallen apart in some parts of Syria, Mr. Kerry acknowledged what has been clear for more than a week on the ground: The relative respite from violence brought by the reduction in hostilities has come to a resounding end in many areas, especially Aleppo, where more than 200 people have died in the past week, most of them civilians. About of those deaths have been on the side of town, which is being pummeled anew by airstrikes and by bombs dropped from helicopters, including on a hospital. But both sides have demonstrated a disregard for civilian life, with rebels firing mortar shells and missiles last week toward most of the neighborhoods in Aleppo, in one of their worst barrages in recent months. Yet as Mr. Kerry carries out shuttle diplomacy to try to revive the partial truce, it has been renewed in several areas, but not in Aleppo, where it is needed most. The Syrian Army said in a statement on Monday that a temporary truce in the suburbs of Damascus and in the coastal province of Latakia would be extended for an additional 48 hours. The Tass news agency in Russia quoted Lt. Gen. Sergei Kurylenko, head of the Russian coordination center in Syria, as saying only that talks about a for Aleppo were continuing. The sticking point is apparently an unwillingness by Russia to tell the Syrian government to stop its aerial bombardments on areas there. Mr. Kerry, as well as residents and opposition figures, say the government’s warplanes, in a campaign aided by Russia, are mainly hitting areas not controlled by the Nusra Front, which has a small presence in Aleppo. Instead, they are believed to be striking areas controlled by other insurgent groups, including some backed by the United States and its allies. The United States is considering whether to draw up a map of safe zones where civilians and members of moderate opposition groups could seek shelter from attacks by Mr. Assad’s military, The Associated Press reported. It was not immediately clear whether Russia would accept such a plan, or could persuade the Assad government to respect the zones. Such an agreement is also unlikely to be helpful if the sides cannot agree on what constitutes the violations the monitors are supposed to be watching for. Even if hard lines were drawn on a map, and civilians and insurgents not affiliated with the Nusra Front were encouraged to go there, the plan would face major practical problems, given the difficulty of moving safely within the city. Rebel groups may not agree to give up areas that Russia believes are held by the Nusra Front, arguing that, in fact, they are held by local opposition fighters and seeing the plan as a ploy to allow the government to take them back. | 0fake |
Clinton Rips Trump For Stuffing His Pockets With Campaign Money (TWEET) | As the Donald Trump campaign shows signs of going broke, it s no surprise as to why: instead of paying staffers, building a political machine and reaching out to voters, Trump is using the measly dollars his campaign collects to pay himself and his businesses. The money has even gone to his personal entities, including his jet plane and his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.In total, Trump has paid himself over $1.4 million.While Trump continues to paint himself as the champion and savior of the middle class, Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, reminds people that Trump is only in this for himself, his image, and his brand nothing else:What is Trump spending his meager campaign resources on? Why, himself, of course. https://t.co/6LsNwf4gTL Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 21, 2016While conservatives and liberals accuse Clinton of being beholden to money, it s good to remember that there s nothing illegal about this. Clinton does it too, and so does every other candidate with any of their own businesses that provide even the smallest service to their campaign, because the law requires them to pay for it, even if the candidate owns 100% of that business. What makes Trump different from Clinton and anyone else doing this is the sheer amount of money he s paid himself and how much he does it. He s not following the law like Clinton, he s bending and manipulating it.As Clinton calls it, Trump s meager campaign resources aren t being used to actually win a presidential election. This is all a charade for the billionaire mogul, who recently went on the record saying he d drop out of the race if someone offered him $5 billion. That s how much the presidency is worth to him. It s a game, and it s all about money.While Clinton gets endorsements from unions that represent millions of blue collar workers, Trump continues to line his pockets with the money of the people he s pretending to care about.Featured image via Angelo Merendino/Getty Images | 1real |
TransCanada gets presidential permit for Keystone XL pipeline | (Reuters) - TransCanada Corp (TRP.TO) said on Friday the U.S. Department of State issued a presidential permit for the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project blocked by former President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump will make an announcement on the pipeline at 10:15 a.m., White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a post on Twitter. Trump signed an executive order to advance the project, which will link Canadian oil sands to U.S. refiners, soon after taking office in January, saying it would create thousands of jobs. Obama had said the pipeline would do nothing to reduce fuel prices for U.S. motorists and would contribute emissions linked to global warming. A senior administration official told Reuters that Trump will make the announcement alongside TransCanada Chief Executive Russell Girling and Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions. “Our Government has always been supportive of the Keystone XL pipeline and we are pleased with the U.S. decision,” a spokesman for Canada’s minister of natural resources said. “The importance of a common, continental energy market cannot be overstated,” he added. The move marks the beginning of lengthy process, which will involve getting approvals from state regulators. The project could also face legal challenges. TransCanada tried for more than five years to build the 1,179-mile (1,897-km) pipeline, until Obama rejected it in 2015. The company resubmitted its application for the project in January, after Trump signed the executive order smoothing its path. Expedited approval of projects is part of Trump’s approach for a 10-year, $1 trillion infrastructure package he promised on the campaign trail. The multibillion-dollar pipeline would bring more than 800,000 barrels per day of heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta into Nebraska, linking to an existing pipeline network feeding U.S. refineries and ports along the Gulf of Mexico. | 0fake |
OBAMA SUPPORTER, Mayor Jim Fouts Allegedly Caught on Tape Trashing Mentally Disabled: They’re “Retards”…”Not Even Human Beings” Should Be “Put In Cages” [AUDIO] | Macomb County, MI Executive Mark Hackel released audio recordings to local Detroit TV stations in which he claims the voice of Warren, MI Mayor Jim Fouts can be heard saying mentally disabled people are retards and not even human beings. Hackel claimed the tapes were given to him by someone who is or was a member of Fouts staff.Channel 4 WDIV-TV reports that reporter Mara McDonald spoke with the person who made the tape, an employee who recorded Fouts in his office. The context was a discussion of Fouts plans to attend an event regarding the Special Olympics, according to the TV station.Lepine said Special Olympics, sports training and competition for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, are a very big deal for the community. In one of the recordings, the man s voice said mean things about the way mentally disabled people use bathrooms. What good are they? They re dysfunctional human beings. They re not even human beings. I don t want any part of this. This is one of the worse things about being mayor. This is the bottom of the barrel. I don t want to be around them, and I wish them well in a cage, the voice said in the recording. Fouts has a controversial history with the Democratic Party. He ran for state representative in the 1970s as a Republican, but in Warren, the city offices are nonpartisan. Fouts, however, has attended many Democratic events over the years, but endorsed U.S. Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, for president in 2008 before switching his allegiance to then-Sen. Barack Obama.In this year s election cycle, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, but later complained about how the party treated him at a Democratic debate in Flint in February and that he didn t get to introduce Clinton when she gave a speech in Warren in August.Bouts, who avoided reporters calls on Friday, in a Thursday night Facebook post denied it was him, and said that Hackel had experts available to electronically engineer it. Detroit FP | 1real |
MARINE VETERAN WILL HOST ANOTHER “Draw Mohammed Contest” In Defense Of Free Speech In America [VIDEO] | This Marine veteran who ran for Constitutional Sheriff in New Hampshire in 2014 is passionate about protecting and defending our nation and our rights. When asked why he s hosting this controversial contest, Jerry Delemus replied: If we back away from our freedom as citizens a little bit at a time, the next thing you know, we don t have any freedoms left. Jerry DeLemus will hold a Draw Mohammad contest in August.Former Marine Jerry Delemus announced plans this week to hold another Draw Mohammad contest in New Hampshire. Delemus says his contest will be held in August.CBS Local reported:A New Hampshire man wants to defy an Islamic prohibition on depicting the prophet Muhammad in pictures and plans to host a Draw Muhammad art contest in August.Jerry Delemus, a 60-year-old former Marine, says the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment trumps any religion s limitations on such expression, If we back away from our freedom as citizens a little bit at a time, the next thing you know, we don t have any freedoms left, DeLemus explained to the CBS affiliate WGME.DeLemus said he hasn t heard from the local Islamic community, but residents in the area aren t sure the event is a good idea. Eric Adema said, I don t understand the point of inciting violence, it s just going to cause more problems. A venue has yet to be determined, but DeLemus says the contest will likely take place in August. He says he recognizes there are risks inherent in hosting such an event, but adds that he plans on having plenty of security on hand.Jerry DeLemus ran for local sheriff in 2014.Via: Gateway Pundit | 1real |
The Dark Agenda Behind Globalism And Open Borders | The Dark Agenda Behind Globalism And Open Borders
by Brandon Smith
When people unfamiliar with the liberty movement stumble onto the undeniable fact of the “conspiracy” of globalism they tend to look for easy answers to understand what it is and why it exists. Most people today have been conditioned to perceive events from a misinterpreted standpoint of “Occam’s Razor” — they wrongly assume that the simplest explanation is probably the right one.
In fact, this is not what Occam’s Razor states. Instead, to summarize, it states that the simplest explanation GIVEN THE EVIDENCE at hand is probably the right explanation.
It has been well known and documented for decades that the push for globalism is a deliberate and focused effort on the part of a select “elite;” international financiers, central bankers, political leaders and the numerous members of exclusive think tanks. They often openly admit their goals for total globalization in their own publications, perhaps believing that the uneducated commoners would never read them anyway. Carroll Quigley, mentor to Bill Clinton and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is often quoted with open admissions to the general scheme:
“The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland; a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank… sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.” – Carroll Quigley, Tragedy And Hope
The people behind the effort to enforce globalism are tied together by a particular ideology, perhaps even a cult-like religion, in which they envision a world order as described in Plato’s Republic. They believe that they are “chosen” either by fate, destiny or genetics to rule as philosopher kings over the rest of us. They believe that they are the wisest and most capable that humanity has to offer, and that through evolutionary means, they can create chaos and order out of thin air and mold society at will.
This mentality is evident in the systems that they build and exploit. For example, central banking in general is nothing more than a mechanism for driving nations into debt, currency devaluation, and ultimately, enslavement through widespread economic extortion. The end game for central banks is, I believe, the triggering of historic financial crisis, which can then be used by the elites as leverage to promote complete global centralization as the only viable solution.
This process of destabilizing economies and societies is not directed by the heads of the various central banks. Instead, it is directed by even more central global institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, as outlined in revealing mainstream articles like Ruling The World Of Money published by Harpers Magazine.
We also find through the words of globalists that the campaign for a “new world order” is not meant to be voluntary.
“… When the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.” – HG Welles, Fabian Socialist and author of The New World Order
“In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than f rom the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.” – Richard Gardner, member of the Trilateral Commission, published in the April, 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs
“The New World Order cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the single most significant component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change its perceptions.” – Henry Kissinger, World Action Council, April 19, 1994
I could quote globalists all day long, but I think you get the general idea. While some people see globalism as a “natural offshoot” of free markets or the inevitable outcome of economic progress, the reality is that the simplest explanation (given the evidence at hand) is that globalism is an outright war waged against the ideal of sovereign peoples and nations. It is a guerrilla war, or fourth generation warfare, waged by a small group of elites against the rest of us.
A significant element of this war concerns the nature of borders. Borders of nations, states and even towns and villages, are not just lines on a map or invisible barriers in the dirt. This is what the elites and the mainstream media would like us to believe. Instead, borders when applied correctly represent principles; or at least, that is supposed to be their function.
Human beings are natural community builders; we are constantly seeking out others of like-mind and like-purpose because we understand subconsciously that groups of individuals working together can (often but not always) accomplish more. That said, human beings also have a natural tendency to value individual freedom and the right to voluntary association. We do not like to be forced to associate with people or groups that do not hold similar values.
Cultures erect borders because, frankly, people have the right to vet those who wish to join and participate in their endeavors. People also have a right to discriminate against anyone who does not share their core values; or, in other words, we have the right to refuse association with other groups and ideologies that are destructive to our own.
Interestingly, globalists and their mouthpieces will argue that by refusing to associate with those who might undermine our values, it is WE who are violating THEIR rights. See how that works?
Globalists exploit the word “isolationism” to shame sovereignty champions in the eyes of the public, but there is no shame in isolation when such principles as freedom of speech and expression or the right to self defense are on the line. There is also nothing wrong with isolating a prosperous economic model from unsuccessful economic models. Forcing a decentralized free market economy to adopt feudal administration through central banking and government will eventually destroy that model. Forcing a free market economy into fiscal interdependencey with socialist economies will also most likely undermine that culture. Just as importing millions of people with differing values to feed on a nation after it has had socialism thrust upon it is a recipe for collapse.
The point is, some values and social structures are mutually exclusive; no matter how hard you try, certain cultures can never be homogenized with other cultures. You can only eliminate one culture to make room for the other in a border-less world. This is what globalists seek to achieve. It is the greater purpose behind open border policies and globalization – to annihilate ideological competition so that humanity thinks it has no other option but the elitist religion. The ultimate end game of globalists is not to control governments (governments are nothing more than a tool). Rather, their end game is to obtain total psychological influence and eventually consent from the masses.
Variety and choice have to be removed from our environment in order for globalism to work, which is a nice way to say that many people will have to die and many principles will have to be erased from the public consciousness. The elites assert that their concept of a single world culture is the pinnacle principle of mankind, and that there is no longer any need for borders because no other principle is superior to theirs. As long as borders as a concept continue to exist there is always the chance of separate and different ideals rising to compete with the globalist philosophy. This is unacceptable to the elites.
This has led not so subtle propaganda meme that cultures that value sovereignty over globalism are somehow seething cauldrons of potential evil. Today, with the rising tide of anti-globalist movements, the argument in the mainstream is that “populists” (conservatives) are of a lower and uneducated class and are a dangerous element set to topple the “peace and prosperity” afforded by globalist hands. In other words, we are treated like children scrawling with our finger paints across a finely crafted Mona Lisa. Once again, Carroll Quigley promotes (or predicts) this propaganda decades in advance when he discusses the need for “working within the system” for change instead of fighting against it:
“For example, I’ve talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are pretty generally in this group.” – Carroll Quigley, from Dissent: Do We Need It?
The problem is that these people refuse to confront the fruits of globalization that can be observed so far. Globalists have had free reign over most of the world’s governments for at least a century, if not longer. As a consequence of their influences, we have had two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Great Recession which is still ongoing, too many regional conflicts and genocides to count and the systematic oppression of free agent entrepreneurs, inventors and ideas to the point that we are now suffering from social and financial stagnation.
The globalists have long been in power, yet, the existence of borders is blamed for the storm of crises we have endured for the past hundred years? Liberty champions are called “deplorable” populists and fascists while globalists dodge blame like slimy slithering eels?
This is the best card the globalists have up their sleeve, and it is the reason why I continue to argue that they plan to allow conservative movements to gain a measure of political power in the next year, only to pull the plug on international fiscal life support and blame us for the resulting tragedy.
There is no modicum of evidence to support the notion that globalization, interdependencey and centralization actually work. One need only examine the economic and immigration nightmare present in the EU to understand this. So, the globalists will now argue that the world is actually not centralized ENOUGH. That’s right; they will claim we need more globalization, not less, to solve the world’s ailments.
In the meantime, principles of sovereignty have to be historically demonized — the concept of separate cultures built on separate beliefs has to be psychologically equated with evil by future generations. Otherwise, the globalists will never be able to successfully establish a global system without borders.
Imagine, for a moment, an era not far away in which the principle of sovereignty is considered so abhorrent, so racist, so violent and poisonous that any individual would be shamed or even punished by the collective for entertaining the notion. Imagine a world in which sovereignty and conservatism are held up to the next generation as the new “original sins;” dangerous ideas that almost brought about the extinction of man.
This mental prison is where globalists want to take us. We can break free, but this would require a complete reversal of the way in which we participate in society. Meaning, we need a rebellion of voluntary associations. A push for decentralization instead of globalization. Thousands upon thousands of voluntary groups focusing on localization, self reliance and true production. We must act to build a system that is based on redundancy instead of fragile interdependencey. We need to go back to an age of many borders, not less borders, until every individual is himself free to participate in whatever social group or endeavor he believes is best for him, as well as free to defend against people that seek to sabotage him; a voluntary tribal society devoid of forced associations.
Of course, this effort would require unimaginable sacrifice and a fight that would probably last a generation. To suggest otherwise would be a lie. I can’t possibly convince anyone that a potential future based on a hypothetical model is worth that sacrifice. I have no idea whether it is or is not. I can only point out that the globalist dominated world we live in today is clearly doomed. We can argue about what comes next after we have removed our heads from the guillotine.
If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here . We greatly appreciate your patronage. | 1real |
BREAKING: GUT WRENCHING…Undercover Video Shows Administrators At Prestigious Colleges Shredding Constitution | The Constitution in everyday life causes people pain Wendy Kozol, Oberlin CollegeAdministrators at Vassar College and Oberlin College agreed to personally shred a pocket Constitution after an undercover reporter posing as a student complained that she felt triggered by its distribution on campus.The video was produced by Project Veritas, a non-profit established by conservative journalist James O Keefe, and employs a similar style to the undercover ACORN videos that first brought him to prominence. Last week something kinda happened on campus that kind of really upset me and I ended up having a panic attack, the reporter tells Vassar College Assistant Director of Equal Opportunity Kelly Grab. It s just I ve been kind of hiding out in my room ever since kind of scared, so, finally somebody told me I should maybe come talk to you about it and see if there s anything that can happen or anything They were handing the Constitution out on campus. Oh, CATO Institute, Grab murmurs while looking the booklet over. They were handing it out and as soon as I saw it you know I started to not be able to breathe, hyperventilating, the reporter elaborated. My vision went blurry and I just kind of just lost control. After establishing that the reaction was triggered merely by the offering of copies of the Constitution and not by anything the group had said, Grab offers her sympathies to the reporter.Via: Campus Reform | 1real |
America is criminalizing Black teachers: Atlanta’s cheating scandal and the racist underbelly of education reform | I am an educator. I am a Black woman who may someday mother a Black child. I have taught other Black mothers’ children. Much of my educational success in elementary school is directly attributable to high performance on standardized tests that caused my white teachers to notice me and intervene on my behalf to get me “tracked” into higher-achieving classrooms. I believe all children deserve access to a good, high-quality, public education.
Therefore, I don’t have to condone cheating in any form (and I don’t) to assert that what has happened in Atlanta to these teachers is a travesty. The pictures that emerged last week of handcuffed Black schoolteachers being led out of Southern courtrooms in one of the country’s largest urban Black school systems were absolutely heartbreaking.
Scapegoating Black teachers for failing in a system that is designed for Black children, in particular, not to succeed is the real corruption here. Since the early 1990s, we have watched the deprofessionalization of teaching, achieved through the proliferation of “teacher fellow” programs and the massive conservative-led effort to defund public education in major urban areas throughout the country. There is no longer a consensus that a good public education — a hallmark of American democracy — should be considered a public good.
Black children have for generations been the primary victims of this continuing social mendacity about the national value of education. More than 51 percent of children who attend public schools live in poverty. In Georgia, the percentage of Black children living in poverty hovers right around 39 percent. For Latino children, the number is consistently over 40 percent. Nationally, the number for Black children is 39 percent, according to most recent data, and 33 percent for Latino youth.
Eighty percent of children in Atlanta Public Schools are Black. Eleven percent are white and 3 percent are Latino. However, only 50 percent of children in Atlanta’s Gifted and Talented programs are Black, whereas 40 percent are white. More disturbingly, 98 percent of all students expelled from Atlanta public schools during the 2009-2010 academic school year were Black.
These numbers taken together paint an abysmal picture of students who are disproportionately poor, over-disciplined, and systematically “tracked” out of high-performing classrooms. And yet we expect teachers to work magic in conditions that are set up for failure.
Lest you think this is merely an Atlanta problem, over at the Crunk Feminist Collective, Susana Morris tells a similar story of attending a predominantly Black high school in Florida with advanced classes that were overwhelmingly white.
Her story mirrors my own. In Louisiana in the 1980s and 1990s, students took two standardized tests. One (the LEAP test) measured basic proficiency and the other (the California Achievement Test) measured more advanced proficiencies. In the third grade, I scored 100 percent on the LEAP test, the only student in my overwhelmingly white class to do so. The teacher Mrs. Callender called me up to the front of the room and bragged about me to all the other students. That same year, on the CAT Test, I scored in the 89 percent percentile.
Meanwhile, I noticed one day during class that several of my white classmates, among them my best friend Amanda, were all mysteriously led out of class and then returned later, with no explanation. When I asked Amanda where she’d been, she said school officials had made her take a test, but she wasn’t clear what for. She never mentioned it again.
The next year, fourth grade, I walked into a classroom and met Beatrice Gaulden, one of only three Black academic teachers I would ever have. With her neon green and yellow Hammer-pants, her penchant for drinking eight tall glasses of water a day, and her strict instructions each morning — we were not to approach her desk, but rather to wait until she moved to a stool in the front of the room for open discussion time — she was a wonder. Mrs. Gaulden is a character in most of my childhood stories of transformation because she was so pivotal to my own sense of self-worth as an outspoken, bossy, loquacious, bespectacled, ponytailed Black girl in a predominantly white classroom.
Because of Mrs. Gaulden’s instruction, my test scores leaped from the 89th percentile to the 99th percentile within one year of instruction. She never taught to the test. She simply taught.
That year, the Louisiana Gifted and Talented Program came calling for me, as they had called for my friends the year before. I took the battery of tests they offered, no doubt because Mrs. Gaulden had asked them to look at my case. They came back to her (she would tell me years later) and told her that I had not passed the tests. She implored them to rescore my assessment. They came back to her and reported an error in their scoring. (As if.) And so I became a “gifted and talented” student, with even smaller classes, more specialized instruction, early opportunities to take the ACT and SAT, and to travel. I soared with the additional resources provided by the G/T program.
But my educational access was due to one magical Black teacher who saw a spark in me and nurtured it. Mrs. Gaulden nurtured, taught and challenged all her students regardless of race, but she saw in me a Black girl who needed extra guidance, and a little push, and she willingly gave it. Over the past generation, we have watched the GOP, helped along by an impotent Democratic Party, systematically dismantle funding for public education, underpay teachers, and allow local school systems to institute punitive disciplinary measures that have turned our schools into a prison pipeline. At exactly the same moment, these reformers and their political counterparts George W. Bush (No Child Left Behind) and Barack Obama (Race to the Top) have instituted high-stakes testing, tied to financial incentives for teachers, as the solution to the structural risks overwhelmingly facing children of color. Meanwhile, test-cheating scandals have proliferated in locales across the country. In other urban locales like Baltimore, Houston and Philadelphia principals and teachers were fired and/or stripped of their licenses to teach. This is a punishment that fits the crime. Then there’s Michelle Rhee, the famed former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools who was accused of creating the very same culture of fear about test scores that Superintendent Beverly Hall has been accused of creating in Atlanta. Hall was charged with racketeering. So why was Rhee not subject to prosecution when test-score irregularities emerged in the District? (Bruce Dixon was already asking as much two years ago over at Black Agenda Report.) Not only has Rhee not been prosecuted, but she maintains a fairly high level of bipartisan support from conservatives and political centrists for her views on education reform. Hall’s trial was indefinitely postponed last year due to stage IV breast cancer. She died last month at 68 years old. Locking up Black women under the guise of caring about Black children is an unbelievable move in an educational environment that systematically denies both care and opportunity to Black children. Locking up Black women for racketeering when the system couldn’t be bothered to lock up even one of the bankers who gave disproportionate amounts of terrible home loans to Black women leading to a national economic crash and a disproportionate amount of home foreclosures among Black women in 2008 is patently unjust. Given that public schools are largely funded through property taxes and that Black children are overwhelming reared by Black single mothers, the failure to vigorously prosecute the financial institutions and lenders that gutted Black neighborhoods means that the system co-signed corporate acts of institutional violence against Black mothers and children, and against neighborhood schools in Black communities. But now we are expected to believe that prosecuting these teachers as racketeers is an act of justice. Nothing is just about making Black women sacrificial lambs of an educational system hellbent on throwing Black children away. The images of their handcuffed Black bodies being led in shame from the courtroom gives Black parents angry about the miseducation of their children a convenient target for their angst and outrage over a failing system. Meanwhile, the real racket – privatization and defunding of public schools, diversion of taxpayer resources away from education, and increasing political clout and payouts for school reformers proselytizing the false gospel of high stakes testing – gets obscured. And white children still get educated well, either in private schools or in suburban schools funded through a solid property tax base. Everything I am today, I owe to my mother and to a Black teacher who saw a spark in me and nurtured it. For so many exceptionally achieving Black people, a providential encounter with a Black teacher is the singular thing that made the difference. No other group of people systematically and structurally love and care about Black children more than Black mothers and Black (usually female) teachers. They have been the ones holding aloft the banner emblazoned with the revolutionary idea that Black Lives Matter, before it was ever a slogan upon which to build a movement. An attack on Black teachers is an attack on Black children, Black families, and Black communities. We should stand in solidarity with these teachers and these students and say, “Not on our watch.” | 0fake |
DR GORKA EXPOSES THE COMMIES: One Word Susan Rice Cronies Used Is A Warning To Americans [Video] | The weaponization of the security services is what you expect in a banana republic and a police state or authoritarian state. And let s just look into one more piece of evidence. These individuals are politically appointed. I am politically appointed. I served as a commissioned officer of the president. So did she. We understand that. But you re supposed to be a professional I challenge your viewers right now to go to her twitter feed and read her tweets after January 20th and read her colleagues Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl. You will see who these people really are Just three weeks ago Colin Kahl used the word purge Purging is the kind of word Maoists use. These people have unmasked themselves PURGE Susan Rice and her cronies only want to destroy the Trump administration. Maoists all | 1real |
Kenya election board lawyer: repeat presidential election still on | NAIROBI (Reuters) - A presidential election scheduled for Thursday will take place as the Supreme Court was unable to hear a petition to delay it, said a lawyer for the election commission on Wednesday. It means elections are on tomorrow. There is no order stopping the election, lawyer Paul Muite told Kenyan television station Citizen TV. | 0fake |
RBG BLASTS Republicans For Crippling The Supreme Court | Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is blasting the Republican obstructionism that has crippled the United States Supreme Court. Ginsburg said that having only eight justices sitting on the high court is simply not good enough to deal with the crucial issues at hand.Speaking to New Mexico State Bar Association members who had gathered on Friday, Ginsburg explained that the short-handed court had been faced with important decisions in recent months that were unable to be dealt with properly because the court does not have the intended number of justices.When we are evenly divided, it is equivalent to denying review, Ginsburg said. There were important issues in these four cases that we were unable to decide, and they will come back again and one of them was the president s immigration policy.Ginsburg spoke of several recent cases that had been before the court but had resulted in 4-4 deadlock rather than a final decision, which left the ruling of lower courts in place. The cases she referenced included a key case on immigration, organized labor fees, and the ability of Native American tribal courts to decide controversies involving visitors.The Supreme Court has been operating with only eight justices rather than nine since the unexpected death of Antonin Scalia in February. Before his body had even had a chance to get cold, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that Senate Republicans would refuse to consider any nomination put forth by President Obama. So far, they have held true to their word and have refused to hold a confirmation hearing for Obama s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.Last month, Garland made history and now holds the record for the longest wait for a confirmation hearing of anyone who has ever been nominated to the Supreme Court. There is no justifiable reason that Senate Republicans have refused to give Obama s nominee a straight up or down vote. Meanwhile, the highest court in the land has been crippled by their absurd obstructionism.Featured image via Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images | 1real |
Vice President Biden, Turkey's Erdogan discuss fight against Islamic State | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said Vice President Joe Biden and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed ways to deepen cooperation in the fight against Islamic State in a meeting on Saturday in Istanbul. Biden and Erdogan also talked about the “importance of de-escalating recent tensions between Turkey and Iraq in a manner that respects Iraqi sovereignty,” the White House said in a statement released on Sunday. | 0fake |
Psychiatry Professors Make STUNNING Request To Obama Amid Concerns Over Trump | Three professors of psychiatry have just come forward with a letter directly addressed to President Barack Obama that expresses their concerns that Donald Trump is not mentally healthy enough to be the next President of the United States.The letter was written by Judith Herman, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and two other professors of psychiatry from the University of California, San Francisco. In the letter published by the Huffington Post, the professors stated that they had grave concern about Trump s erratic behavior. They wrote: We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the mental stability of our President-Elect. Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure whom we have not evaluated personally.His widely reported symptoms of mental instability including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office. We strongly recommend that, in preparation for assuming these responsibilities, he receive a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation by an impartial team of investigators. This letter is just a drop in the bucket, as questions about Trump s mental stability and personality have been raised since the beginning of his presidential campaign and are now becoming increasingly common as he continues to break down under the pressure. The mental states of Trump s followers have also been questioned.While the American Psychiatric Association has warned that its members should not try to diagnose Trump with mental illnesses from afar, this letter to Obama is stating a perfectly reasonable concern. Trump has acted out in ways that are unprecedented to any presidential candidate or future President of the United States. There is no question that Trump is unqualified to be President based on his lack of experience alone but further evaluation might prove that it would be unhealthy for him to proceed in leading the country.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
The Myth of the McMahon Line | Recipient Email =>
There’s playing with fire and there’s dousing yourself with gasoline and jumping into a flaming pit. I do the latter in a piece for SCMP’s This Week in Asia magazine, The British Forgery at the Heart of India and China’s Tibetan Border Dispute .
My proposed title, Uncle Sam Plays the Great Game in Arunachal Pradesh, didn’t make the cut.
In my piece I take the visit of the US Ambassador to India, Richard Verma, as an opportunity to unpack the history and significance of the 1914 Simla Convention between Great Britain, Tibet, and China, an imperial episode which also saw the birth of the notorious McMahon Line.
The McMahon Line is notorious since India unilaterally—and with some help from the United States and zero agreement from the PRC—asserts that the McMahon Line is the indisputable boundary between India and the PRC in India’s Northeast.
The McMahon Line is a hot-button issue for Tibetan nationalists as well, since Great Britain negotiated it directly with the government of Tibet, so supporting the McMahon Line delivers the dual benefits of supporting the narrative of the existence of a recognized independent Tibetan government and giving aid and comfort to the Tibetan diaspora’s Indian patron.
The actual situation and significant consequence of the McMahon Line is complicated but, I believe, accessible thanks to some deft historical research by several scholars and despite some litigating by Indian and Tibetan partisans.
Having said that, I welcome correction and instruction, so in this post I’m going to lay out the arguments behind the assertions in my SCMP piece in greater detail. For sourcing, I lean on Neville Maxwell India’s China War (Maxwell was the Times of London ’s India correspondent during the 1962 war and a key figure in revisionist analysis of the roots of the war), and an unpublished dissertation by Dr. Heather Spence, British policy and the ‘development’ of Tibet, 1912-1933, that I found very informative on the diplomatic and geopolitical context of the Great Britain-Tibet relationship pre-and-post-Simla.
The story of the McMahon Line is inseparable from—but not identical with—the story of the Simla Convention negotiations between Great Britain—represented by Henry McMahon–China, and Tibet at the hill town of Simla in India in 1914.
First off, the key and most interesting aspects of the Simla Convention are both the de facto independence of Tibet (which had expelled the Chinese by 1914 and had a government in Lhasa under the Dalai Lama with effective control over much of the area of Tibet)…and Great Britain’s consistent and overriding interest in denying de jure independence for Tibet.
Great Britain was obsessed, perhaps unhealthily so, with playing the “Great Game”: forestalling the southern creep of Russian influence in Asia toward India.
In India’s northeast, this translated into the desire to establish Tibet as a buffer state that was pro-British and secure.
“Pro-British” was not an issue in 1914, since the Dalai Lama at the time was an ardent Anglophile who had spent several years of exile in the sympathetic company of the British administrator Charles Bell.
“Secure” was the problem. The Raj had no interest in rolling the geopolitical dice by endorsing Tibetan independence and with it the possibility that a hostile new regime and adverse set of circumstances might bring the Chinese or Russians into Tibet and up to India’s doorstep; but it also lacked the will or capacity to assert and enforce a unilateral protectorate over Tibet.
It was deemed necessary that, if and when China emerged from the chaos of the 1911 Revolution as a power-projecting state, it would acquiesce to the existence of an autonomous Tibetan government that had a special relationship with Great Britain.
So Henry McMahon summoned Tibetan and Chinese representatives to Simla to order the relations between Tibet and China, and between Tibet and Great Britain. The Tibetans were eager to attend; the Chinese were compelled by McMahon’s threat that he would conclude a bilateral agreement with Tibet if they didn’t show up.
One can speculate—and I will—that the Chinese showed up primarily to stall and throw a spanner in the works. Simla acknowledged China’s role—and also gave China the chance to act as the spoiler, by participating in the negotiations but refusing to endorse the outcome.
The core of the British agenda at Simla was to partition Tibet into “Inner” and “Outer” Tibet as the Russians had just done with “Inner” and “Outer” Mongolia. Inner Tibet, the parts abutting Sichuan in which Chinese control was stronger, would be incorporated into China. Outer Tibet—the big part, the strategic part, the highlands run out of Lhasa by the Dalai Lama—would not become independent: it would be an autonomous government lacking control over its foreign affairs.
Autonomy, but autonomy of a specific type was preferred. McMahon came up with the idea of “suzerainty”.
“Suzerainty” served multiple purposes. By invoking a Chinese aegis, “suzerainty” was a legal fig leaf providing diplomatic cover to Great Britain, which had concluded an agreement with Russia in 1907 that promised neither state would conduct direct negotiations with the Tibetan government. At the same time, “suzerainty” was intended to forestall any claims from Russia and other nations that “Outer Tibet” was part of China and therefore subject to the Open Door policy declaring that the rights and access of one state in China were to be enjoyed by all.
But most importantly, “suzerainty” was used to assert that, by China’s leave, Tibet would be autonomous, but still conduct its foreign affairs independently with respect to only to one, and only one country: Great Britain.
So, in essence, the Simla Convention was designed to secure a special relationship between Great Britain and Tibet with Chinese endorsement to compensate for the fact that Great Britain lacked the resolve to secure Tibet as a formal British protectorate.
The Chinese, however, did not endorse. The Chinese representative initialed the draft agreement, but the Chinese government withheld authorization to sign.
To explain its refusal, the Chinese government placed the onus on the issue of boundary delimitation.
The Chinese foreign affairs office formally notified Great Britain that “This Government has several times stated that it gives its support to the majority of the articles of the Convention. The part which it is unable to agree to is that dealing with the question of boundary. [Spence, pg. 36]
I expect it was McMahon’s fallback plan from the gitgo to try to take in the bilateral what China refused to cede in the trilateral.
McMahon had been instructed by London not to sign bilaterally with just Tibet, but he decided to exceed his instructions, concluding an agreement with Tibet that finessed the Chinese non-participation in the Simla Convention with a declaration that China, by not signing, had simply forfeited the privileges for China negotiated in the Convention.
According to this formula, Great Britain and Tibet would execute the parts of the Convention that pertained to them—mainly diplomatic (Tibet would not enter into agreements with any other foreign power without Britain’s OK) and trade. The agreement waived all tariffs between British India and Tibet, a piece of free-trade maneuvering that advantaged the Raj but caused no small fiscal problems and resentment of the Tibetan government (which had relied on taxing exports of wool to India for a significant part of its revenue) in the 1920s.
At Simla the Chinese representative, Ivan Chen, was excluded from these discussions, unaware of the content of the bilateral undertakings, and invited to go to a separate room while British and Tibetan representatives signed them. Unsurprisingly, he declared the Chinese government would not recognize any agreement concluded bilaterally between Great Britain and Tibet, a declaration that was repeated by the Chinese Minister in London.
No one regarded the gains of the bilateral track as an adequate replacement for a trilateral pact.
It was understood by all concerned—Great Britain, India, Tibet, China, indeed, McMahon himself—Simla was a bust. McMahon reported to London:
It is with great regret that I leave India without having secured the formal adherence of the Chinese Government to a Tripartite Agreement…The fact is that the negotiations at Simla…broke down… [Maxwell, 49]
Mindful that without China’s formal participation the agreement at Simla was in conflict with the 1907 convention with Russia, Great Britain did not publish the Simla Convention. Instead, it belatedly took notice of the negotiations in its official compendium, Aitchison’s Treaties and Sanads 1929 Edition Volume XIV , with the terse remark: “The convention was initialled and sealed on 3 July 1914. As this Convention was not signed and ratified by all three parties, the current Chinese Government does not consider itself bound by the terms of this convention.”
As for the McMahon Line, it was a separate bilateral sideshow to the main issue of trying to demarcate a border between Tibet and China a.k.a. “Inner” and “Outer” Tibet trilaterally at Simla.
Prior to and contemporaneously with the tripartite negotiations on the Simla Convention, the British and Tibetan teams had conducted bilateral discussions in Delhi and Simla as to the position of the boundary between India and Tibet.
Since Great Britain regarded Tibet as de facto autonomous in its dealings with Great Britain (and presumably hopeful the special relationship would be shortly confirmed at Simla as de jure ) , no effort was made during the negotiations to involve China, with rather disastrous implications for the future.
In 1962, India would be facing not the Tibetan government across the McMahon Line but the People’s Republic of China, which with very good reason considered itself in no way bound as a successor to any previous border negotiations.
With equally disastrous consequences for Nehru and India in 1962, McMahon, instead of drawing the boundary in the foothills of the Himalayas, drew it along the crestline, in easy reach of attackers from the north but virtually indefensible from the south.
The key horsetrading occurred in the matter of the “Tawang Tract”. Tawang was an indisputable locus of Tibetan control, with a big monastery dominating a fertile valley at the southern reaches of the Tibetan plateau and also dominating, in a less than admirable way, a local population of ethnic Manpo serfs exploited in the most dire fashion.
By virtue of its riverine topography, Tawang straddled an important trade route between Lhasa and northern India and was therefore seen as a potential military threat/power point that the Raj wished to control.
In the bilateral British-Tibetan boundary discussions, the western terminus of McMahon’s line crept north until it included all of Tawang. The Tibetan delegation was apparently not happy about this state of affairs but accepted it as the price of British support and with the reassurance that they could continue to tax Tawang despite its inclusion into British India. The Indian-Tibetan boundary agreement was enshrined in an 8 mile to the inch map and held in two copies, one by the British and one in Lhasa.
The McMahon Line was introduced into the Simla negotiations through the back door, as it were, by presenting it as a fait accompli on the large-scale map intended for attachment to the Simla Convention as a continuation of the crucial line defining the boundary between Inner and Outer Tibet which had indeed been the subject of genuine tripartite negotiations.
Interestingly, the British and Tibetans also bilaterally extended the boundary to enclose Aksai Chin, a barren waste to the west of Tibet, as Tibetan (not Indian) territory in order to give Tibet the incentive or responsibility to keep the Russians out of that sensitive strategic area.
Ivan Chen initialed the treaty and map—the sole, shaky basis for India’s subsequent insistence that China had accepted the McMahon Line—but was rebuked by Peking for exceeding his instructions and, as noted above, declined to sign the final Convention.
At the time, as recorded in Aitchison, it was universally understood that China had rejected the Simla Convention, and that this was a problem that overshadowed whatever informal gains had accrued to Britain through the bilateral agreements with Tibet. We know this thanks to documents demonstrating that both the Tibetans and Great Britain clung to the Simla “suzerainty” gambit, and that they labored fruitlessly for decades to get China back to the negotiating table to validate the policy.
The key concern was that China, by refusing to sign the tripartite Simla Convention, had refused to countenance the Inner/Outer Tibet arrangement that would have fixed the Sino-Tibetan border, assured the autonomy and security of the government in Lhasa– and justified to Lhasa Great Britain’s extensive, unique, and increasingly onerous diplomatic and trading privileges in “Outer Tibet”.
Immediately subsequent to the Simla negotiations, 1915, internal British correspondence characterized the Simla Convention as “invalid” [Spence, pg. 59] and, in the context of the Great War, without basis as an obligation for arming Lhasa to forestall Chinese mischief. In 1919, the Tibetan chief minister evocatively expressed his concern that Tibet would find itself abandoned “like tiny fledglings on an open plain.” [Spence, pg. 48]
As for China, instead of returning to negotiations and acquiescing to “suzerainity” over a virtually independent Tibet–an arrangement it was perhaps only pretending to countenance before it backed out at Simla, when China was flat on its back and the Raj was at its zenith—it preferred to mass troops on Tibet’s Sichuan frontier and agitate for direct engagement with Lhasa.
It soon became apparent that China was, shall we say, the “rising power” in the Himalayan regions, the British were the “declining power”, and it became a matter of considerable anxiety in Lhasa that China was piling up troops in the eastern marches and the Tibetan government was being forced to confront these forces without any significant military or diplomatic support from Great Britain.
Faced with niggardly and tardy provision of guns and ammunition by Great Britain, Lhasa began playing footsie with Russia and Japan via Mongolia to pursue the supply of arms; amazingly, Great Britain was able to veto these initiatives thanks to the special position in Tibetan security affairs it had negotiated bilaterally at Simla.
The Tibetan government came to understand that the Simla Convention and the idea that Britain had the sincerity and capacity to protect Tibet against China were, at best, on life support.
By 1936, a British political officer reported on the mood in Lhasa as follows:
They regarded the adjustment of the Tibet-Indian boundary as part and parcel of the general adjustment and determination of boundaries contemplated in the 1914 Convention. If they could, with our help, secure a definite Sino-Tibetan boundary they would of course be glad to observe the Indo-Tibetan border as defined in 1914… [Maxwell, 59]
With Simla moribund, the McMahon Line was never demarcated on the ground and as a result it never acquired any customary force as a precedent.
Notably, there were no serious efforts to assert effective British rule in the remote tribal reaches of the McMahon line, or even over Tawang until the 1930s. Then, with the Japanese menace replacing Russia as the focus of the Great Britain’s anxieties concerning northern encroachment, the Raj adopted a policy which might be characterized as “F*ck Tibet”: unilaterally extending British control northwards without reference to the original and unrealized vision of backing Tibet in return for the trade and territorial privileges that Great Britain had negotiated two decades before.
At this point, Olaf Caroe enters the picture. Caroe was a key official in the British Raj and an enthusiastic geopolitical strategist. In 1935, Tibetan authorities in Tawang arrested a British spy/botanist and the government in Lhasa made the decision, unwise in retrospect, to issue a protest to the British authorities and thereby bring Lhasa’s claims to Tawang to Caroe’s attention.
In response, Caroe pulled off a rather notorious subterfuge in order to buttress the British claim to Tawang: he published the Simla Convention for the first time in 1938 with a note misrepresenting that it had included settlement of the border (and alienation of Tawang); and he arranged for the publication of official Survey of India maps that, for the first time, showed the McMahon Line as the official boundary. To advance the narrative, he also corresponded with commercial atlas publishers to put the McMahon Line on their maps as well.
In a telling indication of Caroe’s jiggery-pokery, to avoid the awkward question of why he was first publishing the Simla Convention twenty-four years after the fact in 1938, he instead arranged for the surreptitious printing of a spurious back-dated edition of Aitchison , deleting the original note about the Chinese government’s non-signature, and replacing it with a lengthy note stating, quite falsely, that “The [Simla] Convention included a definition of boundaries…”
Since 1) the McMahon Line had been concluded in secret bilateral negotiations between Tibet and Great Britain outside the Convention and 2) the Chinese had officially refused to recognize any bilateral agreement, boundary or otherwise, between Tibet and Great Britain and 3) had declined to sign the Simla Convention itself and 4) had notified Great Britain in 1914 that the specific sticking point was “the boundaries” this was hoo-hah.
The replacement copy was distributed to various libraries with instructions to withdraw and destroy the original edition.
The subterfuge was only discovered in 1963 when J.A. Addis, a British diplomat, discovered a surviving copy of the original edition at Harvard and compared it to Caroe’s version.
That was too late for Nehru, who apparently sincerely accepted Caroe’s maps as holy writ i.e. the accurate depiction of borders that had been trilaterally negotiated at Simla, published, openly acknowledged, and a moral imperative and worthy object of Indian military defense in 1962.
It was also too late for Harvard’s own John Kenneth Galbraith, who as ambassador to India successfully lobbied President Kennedy to declare the McMahon Line as India’s recognized border, apparently as part of his campaign to support India and elevate the PRC-India conflict beyond the mundane sphere of “clash over disputed border” to “Chicom aggression against India”.
In response to Galbraith’s urgings, President Kennedy overrode the concerns of the State Department and the vociferous objections of Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan (the government of China in 1962 as far as the US was concerned) to give Galbraith the leeway to announce “The McMahon Line is the accepted international border and is sanctioned by modern usage. Accordingly we regard it as the northern border of the [North East Frontier Agency] region.”
Well, “accepted international border sanctioned by modern usage” is something of a stretch. As noted above, not only the Chinese but the Tibetan government of the 1930s, itself to be extinguished by the Chinese in 1959, regarded the McMahon Line as a dead letter.
In discussions with Nehru in the 1950s, Zhou Enlai had made the rather telling statement that “he had never heard of the McMahon Line”. The Chinese government only understood the full extent of the boundary understandings between the Tibetan and British governments in 1914 after the PLA seized documents in the Potala Palace during the 1959 invasion, and Zhou subsequently declared the McMahon Line a piece of imperial fraud. Imperial historians—Addis, Maxwell, and Lamb–had the opportunity to examine British records a few years later, when the fifty-year embargo on government records expired, and agreed with Zhou.
The revelation of these contacts made a good case for de facto Tibetan independence between the two world wars; unfortunately, they also at the same time clearly demonstrated that the Chinese government had never been party to them, or to the McMahon Line.
Much has been made in Indian and Tibetan nationalist circles of Zhou Enlai’s willingness to use the McMahon Line as the basis for a border settlement between India and the PRC. However, this had nothing to do with any acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the line (which, after all, had never been demarcated in the field) and perhaps had something to do with the fact that, as the 1962 war demonstrated, the task of defending the McMahon Line on the edge of the Tibetan plateau is a tremendous strategic burden for India.
The truth about the legal and military aspects of the 1962 Sino-Indian War are, I would venture, still a matter of denial and disinformation, especially in India. The Henderson-Brooks Report, which details the strategic and operational failings of the Indian military establishment in 1962, has never been declassified, despite Prime Minister Modi’s previous promises in that regard; only portions of it are in the public domain thanks to Neville Maxwell, who somehow got his hands on a copy.
Asserting the purported sanctity of the McMahon Line (and Chinese perfidy in refusing to honor it) is a staple of the patriotic narrative.
In its combination of nationalist posturing and pseudo-historical bullsh*t, the Indian position on the McMahon Line bookends the PRC’s claims in the South China Sea in interesting ways.
And, of course, the United States, as part of its pro-India/anti-China tilt is more interested in enabling the myths of the McMahon Line than supporting resolution of the Sino-Indian border dispute through equitable negotiation. (Reprinted from China Matters by permission of author or representative) | 1real |
She Drank a Gallon of Water/Day for a Month and Now She Looks 10 Years Younger | . She Drank a Gallon of Water/Day for a Month and Now She Looks 10 Years Younger Sufficient daily water intake is vital for virtually every function within our bodies yet fewer than... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/she-drank-gallon-of-waterday-for-month.html Sufficient daily water intake is vital for virtually every function within our bodies yet fewer than one in five of us drinks enough. Read on to see the results of this experiment. Sarah Smith is a 42 year old mother of two young kids in the UK. She, like many others, openly admitted to not drinking the recommended 2 to 3 liters of water daily. She suffered from poor and sluggish indigestion and regular headaches. Following consultations with medical professionals for both issues she decided to take heed of the advice given – in both cases she had been told that she needed to up her intake of water . She decided to document and photograph what happened in a self imposed experiment whereby she would drink 3 liters, just over 5 pints, of water per day, every day for an entire month and see if she could feel any benefits.At the outset Sarah took a long hard look at her face noting that: “I am 42, but have to admit I look more like 52 in this picture, which is shocking. There are dark shadows under and around my eyes, which make me look exhausted, a profusion of wrinkles and strange reddish blotches, and my skin lacks any lustre. It looks dead… even my lips look shrivelled.” She spread the water out during the day aiming to drink a big jug of water in the morning, another in the afternoon with a third in the evening.At the end of the FIRST WEEK she had already noticed that her bowel function was improved and her urine was virtually clear as the water was flushing out her previously dehydrated poorly functioning kidneys. She noticed sudden skin breakouts, which were a result of the toxins being eliminated from throughout her body. However, her headaches were already gone and her previous joint stiffness first thing in the morning was vastly improved. Water is vital for lubricating the joints. WEEK TWO saw an improvement in her skin tone and general complexion although she noted that her eyes were still wrinkled but said “they look less crepey and shadowy than before”. She also had a visibly flatter stomach and her smart husband paid her the ultimate compliment by noting that her cellulite had vanished! Significantly she had another week headache free.On to WEEK THREE when Sarah was happy to find that her eye wrinkles and dark circles had all but disappeared and her skin was plumper and healthier looking.She noted that she was actually eating less by this stage as she had fallen into the common trap of reading signals from her stomach as being hunger pangs whereas they were actually thirst pangs. Research has shown that 37 per cent of people actually mistake thirst signals for hunger signals. The plentiful water had now stopped her from continually falling into that unhealthy trap.So what about the end of WEEK FOUR ? Sarah said: “I genuinely can’t believe the difference in my face. I look like a different woman. The dark shadows around my eyes have all but disappeared and the blotches have gone. My skin is almost as dewy as it was when I was a child. The transformation is nothing short of remarkable.” She was leaner, fitter and nobody can deny the astonishing change to her appearance. She changed nothing else in her daily routine apart from the water intake. To those already of you already converted to drinking enough water these results will merely confirm what you already know, but to anyone who is guilty of not doing so, will this persuade you to try this for yourself? Alexander : Since we have addressed the miraculous rejuvenating power of water, here is one more mind-blowing fact. According to Gregg Prescott of In5D.com , he was able to restore his hair's original color after only six months of drinking distilled water . In his own words: "In August of 2010, I was 2 months away from turning 50 and my hair was predominantly gray, with pronounced lines around my eyes. This is when I began to be conscientious about my eating habits and started eating more organic food, although I was still eating processed food as well. I began drinking distilled water in February 2012. By August of 2012, my hair had turned from gray back to its original color and the facial lines were not as pronounced." And the results are fantastic! Here's a before and after comparison: You can buy a good quality water distiller from Amazon for about $200, which is not that much considering the benefits. Source and references: worldtruth.tv ; dailymail.co.uk ; humansarefree.com | 1real |
WHY PICTURE OF CHE-OBAMA Was Much Worse Than Anyone Imagined | Oh the irony, of our Nobel-Peace-Prize-Recipient-In-Chief standing in front of a building representing some of the worst oppression and human rights violations in the world. I don t know, maybe it s just me, but does Obama look like he s imitating a certain someone, that he likely holds up as an icon in that photo? Only 273 days One of the first places I visited on a government-sanctioned educational tour to Cuba several years back was the Plaza de la Revolucion, a hideous expanse of concrete at the center of Havana that makes, say, Tiananmen Square look positively charming. It was there that President Obama was featured in that now-infamous photo in front of a giant mural of Che Guevara.It was unfortunate that the president lent his imprimatur to Guevara, a totalitarian who was responsible for the death of thousands. But, in some ways, the photo-op was even worse than it looked. Because as we learned on our tour, the building that Guevara s face adorns is home to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior.Unlike our own Ministry of the Interior, Cuba s is not charged with innocuous tasks like protecting endangered waterfowl. Rather, it operates the National Revolutionary Police, which, in addition to keeping law and order on the streets, harasses and arrests dissidents, and suppresses counter-revolutionary activities. In other words, it s Cuba s version of the Stasi.President Obama boasted on his trip that he wasn t going to tell Cubans to tear something down, a reference to President Reagan s famous exhortation to tear down the Berlin wall. Of course, there s no wall only ocean separating Cuba from the rest of the world to tear down. But Obama could have at least told Castro to tear down the monument to repression that he was happily photographed in front of.By ETHAN EPSTEIN Weekly Standard | 1real |
Turkish prosecutor seeks 15-year jail sentence for rights activists | ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish prosecutor has called for jail sentences of up to 15 years on terrorism charges for a group of rights activists including the local head of Amnesty International, Amnesty said. The detention in July of the activists, who also include a German and Swedish national, deepened tensions between Ankara and European Union leaders who fear that Turkey is sliding toward greater authoritarianism under President Tayyip Erdogan. They were held after attending a workshop on digital security on an island off Istanbul. Eight of them have been held since then, accused of being members of and aiding an armed terrorist organization . This indictment is little more than a tawdry patchwork of innuendo and untruths and is itself a damning indictment of the flaws in Turkey s justice system, John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International s Europe Director said in a statement. The court must reject it in its entirety and ensure that our friends and colleagues are immediately and unconditionally released. Shortly after they were detained Germany said it was reviewing applications for arms projects from Turkey. A minister in Berlin compared Ankara s behavior over the detention of the activists to the authoritarian former communist East Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel also said last month that Turkey s 12-year journey to join the European Union should be halted. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said he was very worried about the latest development. The demand for up to 15 years in prison is totally incomprehensible to us and not acceptable, Gabriel said in a statement, adding Berlin had got in touch with the Turkish government about the matter. Among those arrested in July are Amnesty International s Turkey director dil Eser, German citizen Peter Frank Steudtner and Swedish citizen Ali Gharavi. They have now been officially charged by an indictment, the first step in court proceedings. We are doing all we can to bring the jailed German citizens, including Peter Steudtner, back to Germany, said Gabriel. Erdogan s government says EU critics of the case, and of the wider crackdown in Turkey following last year s failed military coup in which more than 240 people were killed, do not understand the scale of the security challenges facing Turkey. More than 50,000 people have been detained since the failed coup and 150,000 people, including teachers, academics and lawyers, have been suspended from their jobs. | 0fake |
Turkey's Erdogan, Germany's Steinmeier discuss improving relations: Turkish sources | ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier discussed the need to improve ties between their countries and take mutual steps to that end during a phone call on Wednesday, Turkish presidential sources said. Aside from bilateral relations, the sources said, Erdogan also briefed Steinmeier about a summit on Syria s conflict held by Turkey, Russia and Iran in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Nov. 22. | 0fake |
The White House Just Confessed The REAL Reason For Syria Attack; It Is DISGUSTING (DETAILS) | While many have been baffled and upset by Donald Trump s reckless decision to attack Syria (without Congressional approval), the inner details of what drove Trump to make such a decision are even worse.Senior White House officials have just confessed that this attack against Syria was nothing more than a publicity stunt for Trump, to feed his out of control ego. According to those officials, the poorly planned missile strike (which ultimately failed) isn t even part of a broader strategy or a step in a larger plan to remove Assad. It was absolutely meaningless, and its only purpose was to make Trump seem like a strong leader.CNN s Jim Acosta reported:While it s not surprising that Trump has no strategy for Syria (let s face it, he has zero strategy for anything he does), it s terrifying to actually see it play out before our eyes as an incompetent president puts America in grave danger.Basically, Trump used the U.S. military to make it LOOK like he was taking some sort of action on Syria, when really the exact opposite is true. There is no plan, and there likely will never be one. What Trump put on last night was merely a performance and a damaging one. Already, U.S.-Russia relations have grown more tense as Russia is making moves to punish America for Trump s carelessness.The message Trump is sending to the world is terrifying what we can expect during Trump s presidency is a show; just big empty gestures that won t actually carry any weight. Trump has basically shown Assad that he s not really going to do anything besides send 50 missiles his way. Now Assad and the rest of the world knows our president is all talk and almost no action. The strength and leadership that America once had in the world is disintegrating quickly.Featured image via Pool / Getty Images | 1real |
South Korean Court Begins Hearings on Park Geun-hye’s Impeachment - The New York Times | SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s Constitutional Court, which will decide whether President Park is permanently removed from office, on Thursday ordered Ms. Park to respond to one of the most contentious accusations against her: that she neglected her duties on the day in 2014 when hundreds died in the sinking of a ferry. Ms. Park’s presidential powers have been suspended since Dec. 9, when the National Assembly voted to impeach her. The Constitutional Court has until June to decide whether her impeachment is justified, either reinstating her or formally ending her presidency. Thursday’s hearing, which Ms. Park did not attend, was the start of that process. The legislature accused Ms. Park of a wide range of violations of law and the Constitution, including taking bribes from businesses. But for South Koreans, perhaps the most emotional accusation is that Ms. Park failed to protect citizens’ lives on April 16, 2014, the day the Sewol ferry sank off the country’s southwestern coast. More than 300 people drowned, most of them teenagers on a school trip, and the country was scarred by the catastrophe, perhaps the worst in its peacetime history. Ms. Park has been dogged by questions about what she was doing during the first seven hours of the Sewol disaster. She did not emerge from her official residence during that time, and her office has not explained what she was doing, though it has said she received updates and gave orders. In its impeachment bill, the National Assembly said Ms. Park’s reticence undermined the people’s right to know about the government’s activities. On Thursday, the court appeared to agree. “That was such a day for the country that most people will remember what they were doing that day,” Justice Lee said. “I am sure she has such memories. We ask her to give us a thorough account of where in the Blue House she was in those seven hours, an account of what official and private work she was doing then, and what reports and instructions she received and gave. ” A variety of government failures contributed to the Sewol disaster, and it deepened distrust of Ms. Park’s leadership. Lurid rumors have since spread about what she was doing during those hours one such story says she was having a romantic liaison, another that she was undergoing plastic surgery. No evidence has emerged to support either allegation, both of which her office has denied. Her government has sued and even arrested people who have been accused of spreading such rumors. Though Ms. Park’s office said she was kept up to date about the disaster, her visit to an emergency management center later that day led some to conclude that she was not fully informed. At one point, she asked why it was difficult to find missing passengers when they had life jackets an official had to remind her that the passengers were trapped inside the ship, which had overturned and all but disappeared below the water. The hearing on Thursday was brief and largely procedural, attended by only three of the court’s nine justices, as well as lawyers representing Ms. Park and those appointed by the National Assembly to act as prosecutors. Two lone protesters stood outside the court, one supporting Ms. Park and the other calling for her impeachment, with a sign reading, “The 304 who died in the Sewol ferry are watching you!” The next hearing was set for Tuesday. The move to impeach Ms. Park stemmed originally from allegations that she conspired with a longtime friend and confidante, Choi to force big businesses to donate tens of millions of dollars to two foundations that Ms. Choi controlled. Ms. Park was also accused of letting Ms. Choi interfere with government affairs, despite having no official post. Ms. Park’s approval ratings dropped to record lows in the weeks before her impeachment, and huge crowds filled central Seoul calling on her to resign or be removed from office. Prosecutors have indicted Ms. Choi on extortion and other charges and identified Ms. Park as an accomplice, though as a sitting president she cannot be indicted. The National Assembly is conducting its own investigation of the scandal, as is a special prosecutor. Both Ms. Park and Ms. Choi have denied breaking the law. Prime Minister Hwang is serving as acting president while Ms. Park is suspended. If the court removes her from office, a presidential election would be held 60 days later. On Thursday, the special prosecutor’s office said it was asking the authorities in Germany to detain and extradite Ms. Choi’s daughter, Chung who is believed to be there. The Foreign Ministry said Ms. Chung’s passport would be invalidated if she did not return to South Korea. The special prosecutor is looking into allegations that Ms. Choi used millions of dollars from Samsung, South Korea’s largest conglomerate, to finance her daughter’s equestrian career and a luxurious lifestyle in Germany. A special prosecutor in South Korea has obtained a warrant to detain Ms. Chung for questioning. She is accused of illegally enrolling in Ewha Womans University in Seoul. | 0fake |
This Explains A Lot: Trump Said To Have Fox News-Destroying Dirt, Using It To Keep Network In Line | Why has Fox News been Donald Trump s cheerleader, even while he viciously attacks its employees? The answer may be as simple as blackmail.While much of the Republican establishment has turned on Donald Trump (conservative newspaper National Review published an entire issue bashing Trump, recall), Fox News has been conspicuously on the sidelines. It s certainly not because they want to remain neutral to the political process. This is the network, remember, that has no problem criticizing Obama for, say, eating at a nice restaurant or doing a comedy show. They ve never shied away from wearing their hack-y opinions on their sleeves.But even as Trump goes after one of Fox News biggest stars, Megyn Kelly, with sexist, disgusting digs at her, the network has repeatedly bent over backwards to accommodate the Republican front-runner.An explosive report in New York magazine may reveal a clue as to why:An odd bit of coincidence had given him a card to play against Fox founder Roger Ailes. In 2014, I published a biography of Ailes, which upset the famously paranoid executive. Several months before it landed in stores, Ailes fired his longtime PR adviser Brian Lewis, accusing him of being a source. During Lewis s severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had bombs that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That s when Trump got involved.Trump has often bragged about this encounter, citing it as an example of his superior negotiating skills. But he also got something out of it. When Roger was having problems, he didn t call 97 people, he called me, Trump said. Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the 90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate. Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn t do anything. I solved the problem. Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, I m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike.Information that Fox News head Roger Ailes paid millions to keep quiet is floating around Trump s brain somewhere, just ready to come out of his mouth should the network really provoke him. It s no wonder Ailes has freaked out each time Trump threatened to go nuclear on the network. In a telling moment, when things had come to a head between Fox and Trump, Ailes the man behind the most watched news network in America rolled over and showed his belly. Unconditional surrender. Trump won.Roger Ailes just called. He is a great guy & assures me that Trump will be treated fairly on @FoxNews. His word is always good! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2015In another example, after Trump went after Kelly, the Fox host opened up to Charlie Rose about how bad for the network Trump s animosity would be:Speaking for herself and Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, Kelly told Rose, Neither one of us wanted any sort of a war with Donald Trump. We didn t think that benefited the channel, we didn t think it benefited me, and we don t think it benefited Donald Trump, adding that she believes Trump would agree.Kelly said they just wanted to forge forward and put it behind us and not pour anymore fuel on that fire. The result is some cringeworthy segments that feature Fox pundits twisting themselves into pretzels to defend Trump s nonsense. When Trump recently changed his position on abortion three times in two days, with each new stance more nonsensical than the last, Fox s reliably dim-witted Andrea Tantaros found a way to blame his gaffes on a trap set by Hillary Clinton to make Trump look stupid.For years, Ailes had exploited Trump s star power to take shots at Obama. The billionaire was a regular guest on the network, and Fox no doubt introduce Trump s brand of egocentric conservatism to millions of viewers. When they had a common enemy in Obama, things were fine. Ailes never seemed to anticipate being placed in a position where Trump would use the dirt he had on Ailes against him. Like the GOP more broadly, Fox helped create the Trump Monster and now seem shocked to find that he has wrested control away from them and is on the warpath. It would almost be funny, if it weren t so scary.Featured image via ThinkProgress screenshot | 1real |
Health Ranger to launch revolutionary, certified organic, non-GMO preparedness food line this Thursday | • Slowed healing and recovery time• Increased fatigue and slowed physical recovery• Reduced fertility• Acceleration of Alzheimer's and dementia• Reduced cardiovascular performance• Liver damage• Kidney damageAre these the kind of effects you want to experience when the grid goes down and you're trying to SURVIVE?Don't be stupid. Stop buying toxic ingredients as a form of "survival" food. It's moronic. If you're trying to store some food to keep you ALIVE, don't buy foods laced with chemicals that are designed to KILL (such as pesticides and herbicides). I will be announcing a clean, certified organic, laboratory verified preparedness food line in just two days This project took six months longer than planned, but it's finally ready. In just two days, I'm going to be announcing a certified organic survival / preparedness meal pack that will blow your mind with its cleanliness, nutrition and incredibly great taste. All these organic meal packs and ingredients can be turned into delicious, nutritious, ORGANIC meals by just adding water and heat . (You can cook these on a miniature camp stove, if you want...) All current affiliates for Numanna will be able to carry and sell this new line of Health Ranger approved organic storable food (see below).Here's what's included in the pack (ALL certified organic): Mac 'n Cheese (crazy delicious, the macaroni is made with organic milled flaxseed, delivering a wholesome source of omega-3s, very filling, energy lasts for hours) Classic Chili (amazing chili that's super delicious, even without using any chemical taste enhancers) Pancake Mix (incredibly delicious, made primarily with organic wheat flour, organic milk powder and organic whole powdered eggs) Cheddar Broccoli Soup (tastes gourmet, like you'd get in a fancy restaurant, yet all organic, incredibly satisfying) Brown Sugar Oatmeal (you're going to go ape over this one, with organic oats, organic cane sugar and organic molasses solids, this will blow you away) Organic nonfat dry milk (made from Grade A pasteurized skim milk, just add water to reconstitute) Italian Pasta Marinara (organic wheat flour and organic flaxseed paste, rich tomato taste, super delicious) Pasta Primavera (a thick, creamy organic pasta with organic dehydrated vegetables, incredibly nutritious) Sweet Habanero Chili (sweet and spicy, this mind-blowing recipe is a customer favorite) Organic Black Chia Seeds (high in omega-3s and magnesium, can add to smoothies, soups, breads and more) Organic Quinoa (a complete protein, makes a delicious soup by just adding eggs and onions)All this will be announced in just two days. If you want a heads up, just subscribe to my email newsletter (link below) to be alerted before everyone else. Certified organic ingredients and NO JUNK, no GMOs, no MSG, no hydrolyzed or autolyzed anything! Want to know what's in it? Here's the actual ingredients list for our Italian Pasta Marinara :Organic Pasta (Organic Whole Durum Wheat Flour, Organic Milled Flaxseed), Organic spray dried Tomato, Organic Cornstarch, Organic Dehydrated Vegetables (Onions, Tomatoes, Green Bell Peppers), Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Garlic, Sea Salt, Organic Parsley, Organic Annatto Color, Organic Spices.And our Sweet Habanero Chili ingredients list looks like this:Organic Pre-cooked Pinto, Organic Pre-cooked Black Beans, Organic spray dried Tomato, Organic Cornstarch, Organic Pineapple Dices, Organic Dehydrated Vegetables (Onions, Red & Green Bell Peppers), Organic Chili Powder, Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Spices, Organic Garlic Powder, Sea Salt, Organic Caramel Color, Organic Onion Powder.You're going to be amazed at the incredible taste, nutrition, wholesomeness and cleanliness of this entire line of storable emergency food.Check Natural News this Thursday for details on how to order. We've got thousands in stock and ready to ship , but even then I suspect we're going to run out very quickly. All Numanna affiliates will be able to start selling this breakthrough product in about two weeks This launch is historic for the food preparedness industry. No one has ever created an organic, lab-verified line of delicious emergency foods while avoiding all the toxic ingredients and total crap used by most other companies in the industry (with very few exceptions).Here's even more great news: All distributors and affiliates of Numanna storable foods will be able to start selling this certified organic food line in about two weeks! I'm also available to be interviewed on your podcasts, videos or websites to help explain this product to your viewers. Anyone who wants to start selling this product and earning affiliate fees should contact Numanna .Watch this space for the full announcement in two days... Health Ranger Approved AquaTru Water Filter Back in Stock
I've secured 500 units of the amazing AquaTru at $100 off for Natural News readers (while supplies last).
Breakthrough filter removes nearly 100% of hundreds of contaminants. No plumbing needed. SHIPS TODAY . | 1real |
Sorry Ben Carson Critics: Obama Also Referred to Slaves as Immigrants - Breitbart | Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson was roundly criticized by celebrities like Samuel Jackson after he referred to the slaves from Africa as immigrants with dreams and hopes for their children’s futures. [But President Barack Obama used similar language to include descended from slaves among the immigrants who helped shape America. Here is Obama in 2015: Certainly, it wasn’t easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves. There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more. Here is Carson: That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land. | 0fake |
Bill could make Congress members liable for harassment payouts | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers of both parties are working on legislation that would make members of Congress liable for settlements of sexual harassment claims against them, as new data shows public funds have been used to settle nearly a dozen cases of misconduct over the last decade. From 2008 through 2012, the employment office for Congress paid more than $166,000 in public money to settle eight claims against lawmakers alleging sexual harassment or discrimination, according to data it provided on Tuesday to Representative Gregg Harper, the Republican chairman of the House Administration Committee who is drafting a bill to overhaul how Congress handles sexual harassment. The Office of Compliance previously said it has resolved three other cases since 2013. Provisions in settlement agreements and other legal limits block the office from disclosing details of the payouts it has made on behalf of lawmakers, including identities of those involved, an issue that has come to light as allegations of misconduct swirl around Capitol Hill. A growing wave of women reporting abuse or misconduct has brought down powerful men recently, from movie producer Harvey Weinstein to popular television personality Matt Lauer, as well as one of the longest-serving Democrats in Congress, former Representative John Conyers. Harper said on Tuesday he hopes to file a bipartisan bill by Wednesday evening overhauling how Congress handles sexual harassment that would include making lawmakers personally liable for settlements. “They should have to reimburse” the government for payouts, he told reporters. “There’s no doubt that members have made it clear that taxpayer dollars should not be used for the purposes of settling a sexual harassment claim.” Harper expects swift action, with the House voting on the bill next month. Democratic Representative Jackie Speier, who has proposed similar legislation and has been working with Harper and other Republicans, said she was “thrilled” about the bill. Bipartisan legislation on sexual harassment was introduced in the Senate last week. In a letter to Harper the compliance office’s executive director said it had paid $354,465.85 to settle 16 total claims of employment discrimination, retaliation and harassment from fiscal 2008 through fiscal 2012. According to the letter, eight claims included sexual harassment or discrimination, and often involved other violations such as breaking federal wage rules. Two claims were simply categorized as “retaliation” while the rest were focused on racial, age or disability discrimination. The largest amount paid over those years was $85,000, labeled as “sexual harassment and harassment because of retaliation.” The office does not have investigatory authority and cannot probe allegations, said Executive Director Susan Tsui Grundmann in the letter. Settlements typically have nondisclosure provisions, she said, adding the office has not found an admission of liability in any of the settlement documents. | 0fake |
Romney in mix with others for secretary of state: Trump adviser | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Mitt Romney is a possible choice for the job of secretary of state but President-elect Donald Trump is also looking at other people, Trump’s senior adviser Reince Priebus said on Sunday. Priebus also said on ABC’s “This Week” program that Romney and Trump had a “very substantive” conversation when the two met on Saturday in which they discussed foreign hot spots and other issues. | 0fake |
North Korea Fires Ballistic Missile, Challenging Trump - The New York Times | SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward the sea off its eastern coast on Sunday, in what South Korea called the North’s first attempt to test President Trump’s policy on the isolated country. A projectile believed to be a modified version of the North’s ballistic missile Musudan took off at 7:55 a. m. from Banghyon, a town near North Korea’s northwestern border with China, and flew 310 miles before falling in the sea, the South Korean military said. Earlier, the United States Strategic Command issued a statement identifying the missile as a or system that “did not pose a threat to North America. ” South Korea condemned the missile launching, saying that it violated a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions that bar North Korea from developing or testing ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technologies. It also said the North had launched the missile to raise tensions over its weapons programs and to use it as leverage in dealing with the Trump administration. “We see this as part of an attempt by the North to grab attention by demonstrating its nuclear and missile capabilities and to counter the new United States administration’s strong policy line against North Korea,” the South Korean military said in its statement. The missile launch came as Mr. Trump is hosting Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, on an official visit, but it was unclear if the test was intended as a political message. Mr. Trump and Mr. Abe hastily arranged a joint appearance in response. “North Korea’s most recent missile launch is absolutely intolerable,” Mr. Abe said, calling on the country to comply with all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. Looking grim, Mr. Trump said nothing about the missile launch, but pledged to staunchly back Japan. “I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent,” he said. The two leaders are at Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla. where they are meeting over the weekend. The United States Strategic Command statement identified the missile North Korea launched as “a or ballistic missile. ” “The missile was tracked over North Korea and into the Sea of Japan,” the statement added. “The North American Aerospace Defense Command determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America. ” South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the test, the first by the North this year, demonstrated the “maniacal obsession” of the North Korean leader, Kim with developing a ballistic missile. The test came less than two days after Mr. Trump said on Friday that defending against the nuclear and missile threats from North Korea was a “very, very high priority. ” Mr. Trump made the comment at a news conference with Mr. Abe at the White House. In their joint statement, the two leaders had urged North Korea “to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and not to take any further provocative actions. ” The test of an system would have been especially provocative because it would mean that North Korea was trying to develop the ability to strike the United States. South Korean officials said they believed that the North has been using the Musudan, its missile, to develop and test some intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, technologies. North Korea has deployed and often tested Scud and midrange Rodong ballistic missiles that can reach most of South Korea and Japan, but it has had a spotty record in the Musudan, its only missile with a range long enough to reach American military bases in the Pacific, including those on Guam. North Korea’s last Musudan test ended in failure in October. In a New Year’s Day speech, Mr. Kim said his country had reached a “final stage” in preparing to conduct its first test of an ICBM. That drew a Twitter post the next day from Mr. Trump that said, “It won’t happen!” North Korea has since warned that it could an ICBM “anytime and anywhere,” in its first challenge to the new American president. The American defense secretary, Jim Mattis, visited South Korea on his first official trip abroad and agreed with South Korea to boost the allies’ joint defense abilities against North Korea. The two allies also agreed to push ahead with their plan to deploy an advanced American missile defense system known as Thaad in South Korea by the end of the year, despite a strong protest from China. Although North Korea has vowed to develop the ability to attack the United States with nuclear warheads and has tested missiles that can reach throughout the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity, it has never tested a missile that could fly across the Pacific. It remains unclear how close North Korea has come to building a reliable ICBM, although it has boasted of successfully testing crucial technologies in the past year, such as missile engines and heat shields for an ICBM. | 0fake |
SICK! NY Attorney General With Ties To Hillary Goes After Female 9-11 Survivor For Trying To Change Women’s Minds On Aborting Their Babies | Less than one month before the 2016 presidential election, the New York State s attorney general s office ordered the Trump foundation to cease and desist fundraising activities in the state, and said calls for a similar investigation into the family foundation of Trump s opponent, Hillary Clinton, are without merit.A Trump campaign spokesman accused Schneiderman of being a partisan hack for investigating the Trump foundation, saying it amounted to nothing more than another left-wing hit job. The two have sparred publicly in the past over Schneiderman s investigation of Trump s defunct real estate academy, Trump University.Schneiderman said concerns about the Clinton Foundation s fundraising did not rise to the level of an investigation.He said compliance issues with the Clintons foundation amounted to ministerial, routines stuff such as late filings or missing paperwork, and that the foundation is properly registered and properly filed, unlike Trump s foundation.Critics of the Clinton Foundation have called for an examination of the hundreds of millions of dollars from individuals who met with the then-secretary of state after either donating or promising to donate in the future, which included funding from foreign governments. PoliticoDespite his best efforts, President Trump won the election. Liberal hacktivist NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has now turned his attention on bullying and eliminating the free speech rights of 9/11 survivor and pro-life preacher Angela Braxton.The Thomas More Law Center has announced they will defend Braxton against the pro-life bully and Democrat activist, NY State AG Eric Schneiderman.Ms. Braxton, whose iconic photo as a survivor of the 9/11 World Trade Center Terrorist Attack hangs in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, is one of fourteen pro-life sidewalk counselors sued by the Attorney General who alleges they harassed and intimidated women at the entrance of an abortion facility, Choices Women s Medical Center, in Jamaica, New York.The Attorney General petitioned the Court to create a sixteen-foot buffer zone around the abortion premises and levy fines, attorney fees and compensatory damages against the defendants.Braxton, who did not consider herself very spiritual at the time, had a life-changing experience on 9/11 when the first plane struck while she was on the 80th floor of World Trade Center 1. Looking back on that fateful day, Angela recalls:She did not die. A few years later she fully committed herself to Jesus Christ and the pro-life cause.Jay Combs, the Thomas More Law Center attorney handling the matter, commented:Rather than fulfill his duty as Attorney General to protect the First Amendment rights of Angela Braxton, the Attorney General, in his press conference, lamented what he called a sense of entitlement by protestors to run their mouth. This chilling statement shows that the New York Attorney General is so blinded by his desire to see abortions performed that he has forgotten that the entitlement to speak on behalf of the lives of unborn children is a constitutional right protected by the First Amendment. | 1real |
TRUMP COMES OUT SWINGING: New Ad Features One Of Bill’s Rape Victims…With Surprise Ending [VIDEO] | Bill s gonna wish his corrupt wife never ran for President by the time Trump is finished exposing this family of grifters. This is more than just about Trump winning, it s about Trump doing the job the media should have been doing to expose Hillary Clinton as an accomplice to her perverted husband for decades Fresh from using the R word during a recent sit-down with Sean Hannity, Donald Trump on Monday released on Instagram a new campaign ad against Hillary Clinton featuring the voice of Bill Clinton s rape accuser, Juanita Broaddrick. He starts to bite on my top lip and I try to pull away from him, Broaddrick is heard saying in the brief ad. Bill Clinton can be seen in the background with a cigar in his mouth.Watch here:Is Hillary really protecting women?A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on May 23, 2016 at 8:27am PDTYou gotta love the cackle at the end The Broaddrick audio comes from an emotional interview that she gave to NBC s Dateline in 1999 describing the alleged rape.Broaddrick says Clinton raped her at a hotel when she was a nursing home administrator volunteering for then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton s 1978 gubernatorial bid.She told NBC s Dateline that she resisted when Clinton suddenly kissed her:Then he tries to kiss me again. And the second time he tries to kiss me he starts biting my lip He starts to, um, bite on my top lip and I tried to pull away from him. And then he forces me down on the bed. And I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him No, that I didn t want this to happen but he wouldn t listen to me. It was a real panicky, panicky situation. I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to Please stop. And that s when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip. When everything was over with, he got up and straightened himself, and I was crying at the moment and he walks to the door, and calmly puts on his sunglasses. And before he goes out the door he says You better get some ice on that. And he turned and went out the door. In an interview with this reporter last week, Broaddrick was asked to comment on the statements made by Trump at a campaign stop earlier this month, where the presidential candidate slammed Hillary Clinton as unbelievably nasty, mean enabler who destroyed the lives of her husband s mistresses and alleged victims.Broaddrick replied: I feel like she has been the enabler behind him in allowing him to continue on the same path that he did back in the 70s and 80s and 90s. He has absolutely no morals when it comes to women. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Democrat Takes Trump To The Woodshed In Fiery Speech Defending NFL (VIDEO) | Donald Trump is getting absolutely hammered for his recent attacks on NFL players who refuse to stand during the National Anthem in a stand against social injustice. Trump has tried his hardest to pass off those attacks as a defense of patriotism, but most Americans know that Trump is simply trying to mask what are obviously remarks fueled by his own racism and one Democrat is calling him out for it.Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., blasted Trump on the House floor on Monday and attacked the undeserving POTUS for his pathetic attacks on athletes such as Stephen Curry, Lebron James and the NFL players. In his powerful, fiery speech, Jeffries asked the question that most of us would like to know: How dare Donald lecture us on what s patriotic?! You can watch this epic speech below:Just defended @StephenCurry30 @KingJames @Kaepernick7 on House floor. How dare donald lecture us on what s patriotic?! pic.twitter.com/wfbtDajTLD Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) September 25, 2017And that s not the only time Jeffries has spoken out against Trump about the POTUS recent attacks on athletes. In an interview with CNN, Jeffries called Trump a racial arsonist and stated that Trump was causing controversy just to keep his dwindling conservative fan base happy and engaged. Jeffries said: He uses race to advance his own ends. We couldn t have said it better. It is no coincidence that Trump s fan base are practically just white supremacists who he has repeatedly failed to denounce because he doesn t want to lost the only support he has left. Trump knows that his fans are losing interest and patience after all of his broken campaign promises, so he creates these scandals and spews nonsense to distract everyone and remind his racist fans why they voted for him in the first place. Trump s remarks about the NFL are disgusting and deserve to be condemned again and again.Featured image is a screenshot | 1real |
Will the New Apple iPhone Have a Headphone Jack? Rumormongers Say It Won’t - The New York Times | SAN FRANCISCO — If Apple had its way, this week would play out like Christmas for . First, unbelievable anticipation. Then, great surprise. At the end, immense satisfaction. When the latest iPhone is unveiled here on Wednesday in a auditorium, it probably will instead be more like Christmas for a sneaky who long ago peeked at his present. Thanks. That’s it? Anyone who cares enough about the iPhone to know that a new model is being released this month already knows what it is supposed to be like: a little thinner, a little faster and equipped with superior cameras on the Plus model. By far the most controversial feature, however, is the one that will be missing: a headphone jack. A standard element of technology that can be traced back to 1878 and the invention of the manual telephone exchange, the jack is apparently going the way of the floppy disk and the folding map. The future will be wireless. We know about this potential absence thanks to a global information chain, one that shadows the supply and manufacturing chain that produces Apple’s products. The shadow chain is intended to ferret out Apple rumors: promoting them, discussing them and then discussing them some more, long before they become facts. This rumor mill is both a gift to Apple and a burden, a sign that it has not lost its magic and a warning that everyone is on watch for the moment it does. No other company is tracked quite so relentlessly. Under its Steve Jobs, Apple relished its ability to keep news under wraps and went to great lengths — legally and otherwise — to make sure it remained that way. “There is one more thing, and we’ve managed to keep it secret,” Mr. Jobs exulted in 1999 as he introduced iMacs in colors like blueberry and tangerine. “It’s hard to believe, but we did it. ” It was an ambition that his successor, Timothy D. Cook, underlined at a conference four years ago. “We’re going to double down on secrecy on products,” he said. Things have not quite worked out that way. “When Steve Jobs was around, there was still that hope they could surprise you,” said Gene Munster, an Apple analyst. “Today, that hope is largely gone. ” The long road to unraveling this week’s surprises began last November, less than three months after the iPhone 6s had debuted to gangbuster sales. The Japanese website Mac Otakara, considered a generally reliable source of information that has ties to the factories manufacturing the phone, wrote about Apple removing the jack in the next iPhone under the heading “rumor. ” For anyone not ready to go wireless, the story said, wired earphones would plug into the iPhone via Apple’s Lightning connector, which is typically used for charging power. Traditional headphones would presumably work through a converter. This was big. “Headphones are one of the most basic functions, so this is something that’s going to affect users of all kinds,” said Eric Slivka, editor in chief of MacRumors. com. “I immediately knew it would be an extremely controversial topic all the way until launch. ” A post on the MacRumors site, drawing from the Mac Otakara story, included a cautionary note that began, “Should this rumor prove to be true . .. ” The post received 1, 100 comments from Apple aficionados who had no doubt it was and who, in general, did not like the idea of no jack. Cellphones were once like bricks, but losing the jack so the iPhone could be even thinner was felt by some to be a bad bargain. “Any thinner and I’ll lose it into the continuum forever,” one commenter joked. MacRumors exists for these kinds of moments. So does AppleInsider, Cult of Mac, 9to5Mac and similar sites in various languages, all of which picked up the news and chewed it over. During the next six weeks, helped along by further stories on Chinese blogs, the mainstream media picked it up as well. Newsweek, sounding rather overwrought, asked, “Is Apple Ready to Kill the Beloved Headphone Jack?” A Fast Company article announced that Apple would be dropping the jack — “It’s True,” read the headline — and added that the iPhone would probably support wireless charging and be waterproof. By early January, emotions were at a fever pitch. An online petition from SumofUs. org, which more than 300, 000 people have signed, denounced Apple for creating more electronic waste — presumably, headphones that will no longer work with the iPhone and be thrown out. Some commentators explained that even if people used adapters with their old headphones, they were gaining things, too. Other commentators noted that people complained that Apple never innovated anymore, and yet here it was innovating, and people were complaining anyway. Then came the rumor that the headphone jack was not going away after all. The Chinese website Mydrivers. com published a photo of what it said were the innards of the new iPhone with the jack right there. “Has the rumor mill been lying to us?” wondered Cult of Mac. “Surely not!” Two weeks ago, with the volume of commentary picking up as the big reveal approached, even Apple’s other Steve Wozniak, weighed in. “If it’s missing the 3. earphone jack, that’s going to tick off a lot of people,” he told the Australian Financial Review. But he added a conciliatory note: “We’ll see. Apple is good at moving towards the future, and I like to follow that. ” Perhaps it is better to be forewarned about what the future holds rather than be forced to confront it abruptly. “We soften the blow,” said Neil Hughes, managing editor of AppleInsider. “Can you imagine that if no one saw it coming and Apple just dropped this on Wednesday? People would lose their minds. ” Apple, which declined to comment for this article, most likely has a different view. In late 2004, it went after several websites, including AppleInsider, saying that when they posted details about unreleased products, they were publishing stolen property. At first Apple found success in court but the ruling was sharply reversed on appeal. It was ordered to pay $700, 000 to cover the sites’ legal fees and generally looked like a bully. For several years, Apple sold a in its Cupertino, Calif. campus store that read, “I visited the Apple campus. But that’s all I am allowed to say. ” A recent Apple presentation poked fun at its extensive security measures. But even if the company can now have a laugh or two at its own expense, its philosophy has not changed. “Do you remember when you were a kid, and Christmas Eve, it was so exciting, you weren’t sure what was going to be downstairs?” Mr. Cook said when asked about the rumored Apple car at the annual shareholders’ meeting last February. “Well, it’s going to be Christmas Eve for a while. ” Apple might be the richest company in the world, and quite possibly the coolest, but feel for it for a moment. It has to keep making the iPhone exciting enough so tens of millions of people immediately buy one. Apple depends on this. Never before has a company so large and influential been tethered to one consumer product. And that product, which recently celebrated its sale, may have already hit saturation. Apple sold 40. 4 million iPhones last quarter, a drop from 47. 5 million during the same period in 2015. It was the second straight quarter of declines. “I think we’ve reached peak iPhone,” said Seth Weintraub, of 9to5Mac. But only for the moment. Even as the Apple faithful wait to see all these rumors confirmed, the scuttlebutt and speculation have started about next year’s model. It will be the iPhone’s 10th anniversary, which means the stakes are going up. “Apple is hopefully turning on the development afterburners,” Mr. Weintraub said. “We hear it wants the phone to resemble a sleek glass slab. It’s supposed to be a statement, a really big deal. ” Assuming, of course, the rumors are true. | 0fake |
WHY DID HARRY REID LIE ABOUT THE “ACCIDENT” He Had That Left Him Blind In One Eye? | Dirty Harry must ve jarred something in his head that makes him unaware that he s lying in public. He used to be pretty good at hiding it Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is changing the story about how he sustained those gruesome New Year s Day injuries that have left him blind in one eye.Previously, Reid claimed that an exercise band he was using broke. I was doing exercises that I ve been doing for many years with those large rubber bands and one of them broke and spun me around and I crashed into these cabinets and injured my eye, (emphasis added) Reid said at a press conference on January 22.(You can see the video of that press conference here.)But now, in an interview conducted by Fusion (a joint venture between ABC and Univision), excerpts of which have been released today, Reid tells Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that the exercise band slipped, rather than broke. [T]he [elastic band] strap had no handle on it, slipped, spun me around, uh, about, oh I guess four feet (Reid points with his right hand to the wall of the interview room) and so I smashed my face into a cabinet, Reid tells Ramos.Reid s latest version of the incident, as told to Ramos, differs from previous versions advanced by his team in another very significant way. Sources familiar with the incident said Reid was exercising in his bathroom, with the exercise band attached to the shower door, Politico reported on January 22. (emphasis added)As Breitbart News reported previously, that version of the story, almost certainly told to Politico by Reid s staffers with his approval, is not credible.Now, however, Reid tells Ramos a different story. The exercise band was not attached to the shower door in his bathroom, Reid says, but was instead attached to a big metal hook that came out from the wall in an unspecified room in his new Nevada home.Here s a partial transcript of the excerpt of the interview released by Fusion:Ramos: You said recently that the accident had nothing to do with your decision to retire.However, we are seeing the consequences of what happened.What really happened?Was it really with an elastic band?Reid: Yeah, I had a big, that thick (Reid gestures with his hands), that I had been using for about four years and I was, you know, trying to maintain my, uh, firmness, and, uh, that was my weight training. I was doing that in my new home here in Nevada and a big metal hook that came out from the wall that was hooked there that the strap had no handle on it, slipped, spun me around, uh, about, oh I guess four feet (Reid points with his right hand to the wall of the interview room) and so I smashed my face into a cabinet so hard that uh Ramos: It looked like somebody had hit you.Reid: I am so fortunate that, um, it wasn t over just a fraction of this way and hit me in the temple.Ramos: How s your eye?Reid: I am sightless in my right eye.Watch the full video of the excerpts of the Fusion interview here:Ramos then switched gears and asked Reid about the most difficult moments of [his] 28 years in the Senate. Ramos failed to ask some key follow up questions about Reid s New Year s Day injury incident.For instance, Ramos failed to ask Reid if the accident took place in his bathroom, as Reid s office had previously claimed. According to Reid s latest version of the story, we do not know in which room of his house he now claims he sustained these injuries.Breitbart News has asked Senator Reid s office, which has carefully controlled the release of information about his New Year s Day injuries, to comment on his changed version of the story of his New Year s Day injuries, but has received no reply.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Putin and Macron discuss North Korea's missile launch: Kremlin | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron and discussed North Korea s latest missile launch, the Kremlin said in a statement on Friday. Both leaders condemned Pyongyang s provocative actions, which risk leading to irreversible consequences , the Kremlin said. They agreed on the need for a diplomatic solution, including through resuming direct talks on North Korea, according to the statement. | 0fake |
4 Zika Cases in Florida Were Likely Spread by Local Mosquitoes, C.D.C. Says - The New York Times | Four cases of Zika infection in Florida are very likely to have been caused by mosquitoes there, the State Department of Health said Friday — the first documented instances of local transmission in the continental United States. “Zika is now here,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news briefing. The C. D. C. and Florida officials said that for now, the area of concern is limited to one square mile in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami, a gentrifying area with restaurants and art galleries just north of downtown. Health authorities are not advising people to stay away from the neighborhood, Dr. Frieden said. The four people appear to have been infected in early July since then, mosquito control efforts have been stepped up in the area, and additional cases have not been identified. “We don’t currently see a situation where we would advise people not to travel there or advise pregnant women not to travel there,” Dr. Frieden said. But he said that this advice could change if the number of cases increased substantially. “We would not be surprised if individual additional cases are reported,” he said. And because Zika infection often does not produce any symptoms, “there may be more cases than we know of now. ” The Florida cases signal a new stage in an epidemic that has left a trail of birth defects in Brazil and strained health care resources throughout Latin America. The epidemic is raging in Puerto Rico, C. D. C. officials reported last week: Two percent of blood donors there have been recently infected, and hundreds of pregnant women have tested positive. Researchers had long predicted that the Zika virus would gain a toehold in the continental United States, most likely in Florida and along the Gulf Coast. While the outbreak is not expected to escalate sharply, its course is uncertain. There are now more than 1, 600 confirmed Zika cases in the continental United States. Until the announcement on Friday, all of them had been a result of travel abroad: The virus was contracted either by a mosquito bite elsewhere or by intercourse with someone who had been to a area. None of the four patients in Miami had traveled to areas in Latin America or the Caribbean. After interviewing more than 200 people, Florida health authorities have apparently concluded that none were infected through other means. Dr. Frieden said that the one woman and three men, residents of and Broward Counties, were not related, but that all had been in a section of Wynwood around the time they were infected in early July. At least two were working at different sites in the neighborhood, which had “conditions that can spread Zika,” such as standing water that can attract mosquitoes. Officials declined to say if the infected woman was pregnant. Zika infection is mild for most people, but in a developing fetus, it can cause a condition called microcephaly, characterized by abnormally small heads and brain damage. In rare cases in adults, it can also cause a form of temporary paralysis. Gov. Rick Scott said in a statement that none of the four “exhibited symptoms to be admitted to the hospital. ” No mosquitoes tested in Florida have been found carrying the Zika virus, but Dr. Frieden said that was not surprising. “Confirming transmission is not as easy as confirming infection,” he said. Although the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the Zika virus, cannot travel far — its range is a maximum of 150 meters or a little under 500 feet — finding individual mosquitoes carrying the virus would be a rare stroke of investigative luck, he said. Since the cases were identified, health workers have been going door to door in the neighborhood collecting urine samples for testing of residents. The Food and Drug Administration this week halted blood donations in South Florida until they can be screened for Zika infection. If Florida mosquitoes were infected, health officials said, it is likely to be because they bit someone in Florida who had traveled to Latin America and been infected by a mosquito bite there. Two prominent public health experts had sharply different opinions about the C. D. C’s decision against advising pregnant women to avoid travel to the area. Dr. William Schaffner, head of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University medical school, said the decision was rational. “Two weeks give you a comfort zone,” he said. “If the sense is that the problem has been taken care of and the hazard has been reduced to background level again, then, in the absence of further transmission, I think that’s reasonable. ” But Dr. Peter J. Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said he thought the C. D. C. was wrong to treat a cluster of Zika cases as if it were a cluster of dengue or chikungunya, two related viruses carried by the same breed of mosquito. “This virus doesn’t play by the same rules,” he said. “I think they should tell them: If you’re pregnant or planning to be, don’t travel to the Miami area unless you have to. If you’re in the area, delay getting pregnant during the period when arbovirus transmission peaks, which is the end of July to the beginning of September. And then we’ll see what happens. ” The Wynwood area contains a mix of warehouses, restaurants, bars, galleries, and its housing ranging from apartments to tony . The area has a large population of people from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where Zika cases have been proliferating in recent weeks. The neighborhood that the authorities are focusing on is bound by Northwest Fifth Avenue, U. S. Route 1, 38th Street and 20th Street. At first glance, the bustling crowds in Wynwood betrayed no sense of unease on Friday afternoon. But it was there. “I’m petrified,” said Amber Collins, a newlywed who hopes to become pregnant soon and who had “doused” herself with insect repellent before venturing out to join two friends for a drink at the Wynwood Yard. “I’m deliberately not wearing perfume — I don’t want to attract mosquitoes. ” Ms. Collins, a teacher, said she had taken other precautions, such as wearing jeans, socks and sneakers, instead of the sleeveless romper and sandals she had initially considered, despite the blistering heat. She and a friend who hopes to become pregnant, too, spent part of the morning advising each other via text message about how to stave off the dreaded virus. “I hear mosquitoes go after your feet and ankles,” she said. In a Snapchat posting on Friday, Ms. Collins displayed a photograph of a can of insect repellent: “My new perfume in Miami, now that Zika is officially here. ” Public health officials have been bracing for locally transmitted cases. But the outbreak is likely to be limited, partly because Americans more often live in houses and are less exposed to mosquitoes than those living in some other affected countries. The Aedes aegypti mosquito has a modest range in the United States, rarely appearing farther north than the Deep South, Arizona and California. Still, the revelation of homegrown Zika cases prompted a groundswell of calls on Congress to provide more funding. Congress left for recess this month without authorizing funding to fight Zika. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who voted for the funding request, said in an interview that he was urging Congress to come back to pass the funding bill in August under parliamentary procedures. “I still think there is a significant number of people in Congress who think Zika is not their problem,” Mr. Rubio said, adding, “Perhaps the fact that now it has occurred may change the dynamic a little bit. ” A crucial part of stopping the outbreak is mosquito control, which is spotty at best in the United States, particularly in communities with weak tax bases. C. D. C. officials have begun awarding $60 million to states, cities and territories and have said they will help states hire contractors to conduct control work like spraying. The C. D. C. released a document this year, a blueprint for action when the first cases of locally transmitted Zika occur in the continental United States. The plan says officials should provide “a large margin of safety” by concentrating efforts within a circle around each known infection. One case, with no further transmission, would require a effort, the C. D. C. said. If the infection spreads, the agency will help local officials investigate and warn residents and, if needed, the agency will send in emergency teams. | 0fake |
Moderate Republicans warn of trouble for tax reform | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty moderate Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives warned on Friday that efforts to overhaul the federal tax code could be jeopardized by demands for including major spending cuts in a fiscal 2018 budget resolution. In a June 30 letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, lawmakers from the moderate Tuesday Group said that including hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to mandatory programs could be “extremely problematic” for tax reform and asked for a budget delay until Senate Republicans finish their debate on healthcare legislation. “We fear that if the House persists on pursuing this course, it could imperil tax reform,” wrote the lawmakers, who were led by Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. Republicans must pass a 2018 budget resolution to unlock a key legislative tool known as reconciliation, which the party needs to move a tax bill forward without support from Democrats. But members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus say they will back a spending plan only if it cuts mandatory programs including Medicaid and food stamps, reductions that moderates oppose. “House Republicans have made significant progress on budget decisions and these family discussions will continue amongst the conference,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in a statement. The Freedom Caucus and Tuesday Group each represents enough House Republicans to stymie legislation on its own. Outside organizations including powerful business lobby groups are increasingly worried that the disagreement could lead to a political stand-off that prevents tax reform from occurring. “No other reforms under consideration rise to the importance of pro-growth, comprehensive tax reform,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business said in a joint letter to Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday. Republican moderates also worry that adding mandatory cuts to a reconciliation bill would create unpalatable legislation that reduces benefits for the poor while granting tax cuts to corporations and wealthy individuals, according to aides. The House Budget Committee canceled plans to send a resolution for fiscal 2018 to the floor this week, after the chairmen of several other committees rejected efforts to wring $250 billion in mandatory spending from spending. Freedom Caucus members want much larger cuts. | 0fake |
88-Yr Old DEMOCRAT Congressman and Accused SEXUAL PREDATOR Reluctantly Steps Down From House Judiciary Committee…REFUSES To Resign | John Conyers, the 88-year old Democrat Congressman and Black Caucus member who used taxpayer dollars from one of the most impoverished districts in Michigan, to pay off accusers of sexual assault, is refusing to give up the power he s become accustomed to, as the longest sitting House member in America s history. The corrupt Congressman has, however, agreed to step down from his role on the House Judiciary Committee, pending an investigation into the multiple allegations of sexual harassment that have been levied against him.In a statement released through Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi s office on Sunday, Conyers said he would like to keep his leadership position but realized that he may undermine the committee s work if he stays at the helm. I have come to believe that my presence as Ranking Member on the Committee would not serve these efforts while the Ethics Committee investigation is pending, Conyers (D-Detroit) said in the statement. I cannot in good conscience allow these charges to undermine my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus, and my friends on both sides of the aisle in the Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives. Conyers, 88, is the longest-serving House member. BuzzFeed reported last week the contents of the secret $27,000 settlement Conyers paid with taxpayer funds to a former staffer who said she was fired for rejecting Conyers sexual advances.Conyers has admitted to the payment but denied any wrongdoing. I deny these allegations, many of which were raised by documents reportedly paid for by a partisan alt-right blogger, Conyers said, referring to the settlement papers obtained by Mike Cernovich and passed along to the news site. I very much look forward to vindicating myself and my family before the House Committee on Ethics. With Conyers stepping aside, the next most senior Democrat New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler will become acting Ranking Member of the powerful committee. Even under these unfortunate circumstances, the important work of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee must move forward, Nadler said in a Sunday statement. I will do everything in my power to continue to press on the important issues facing our committee, including criminal justice reform, workplace equality, and holding the Trump Administration accountable. Nadler added: Ranking Member Conyers has a 50 year legacy of advancing the cause of justice, and my job moving forward is to continue that critical work. New York Rep. Kathleen Rice was the first House Democrat last week to call for Conyers resignation from Congress, and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) said Conyers should at least give up his perch as the House Judiciary Committee s ranking member, pending the outcome of the ethics probe.Earlier Sunday, Pelosi defended Conyers on NBC s Meet the Press by not calling for his resignation and insisting the icon deserves due process. NYP | 1real |
Hollywood Holiday Habits: Big Games, Small Gifts and Other Joys - The New York Times | We asked stars and filmmakers about their holiday traditions. Here are edited excerpts from their answers: My husband [Dwyane Wade of the Chicago Bulls] has been playing on Christmas Day for as long as we’ve been together. So I watch my husband play basketball. And how Christmas goes really depends on how the game goes. There was the infamous “Kobe shot” that ruined Christmas. And then there was the big Heat win over the Cavs, so we had a good Christmas. Before I started seeing Dwyane, [my family] would listen to the Broadway cast album of “Dreamgirls” and choose different parts. Some years, I got to be James Early, and some years Deena — but those were the rare years. Our favorite thing in our family wasn’t really the presents under the tree. We loved the stockings, especially my mom’s. She loved to open things, [and] we’d wrap, like, six beautiful boxes, so she’d think she was going to get down to a necklace or something. After about 10 minutes of opening all these packages and getting down to a Tiffany box, it would be a cotton ball. We still do that. [My son] Levi wrapped a in five boxes. And [my wife] Camila really thought she was going to get this awesome thing we found in our travels. You’ve got to have a sense of humor to live in this family. I think one of the greatest Christmas movies of all times is “It’s a Wonderful Life. ” As clichéd as it sounds, it says a lot about the idea that we don’t know the profound effect we have on one another’s lives. I’m also a huge fan of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas. ” My kids are 24 and 27, and we always used to make a family tradition of watching it. I love that the Grinch is such a miserable soul. We can all relate to that sometimes. We’re actually going to Cuba this year, and I’ve got “The Grinch” on a DVD. When I was younger, “Home Alone” was one of my favorite movies to watch around the holidays. Something about being around family and watching a family movie like that just got me in the spirit. You watched so much that you knew it like the back of your hand. Christmas in my family is when everybody is dropping everything to come together. I live in Atlanta, but I always go back to home to Milwaukee, where I’m from, because a holiday without snow or cold weather is weird. My favorite Christmas movie is always “It’s a Wonderful Life. ” But I like to listen to music more than anything else: the Phil Spector Christmas album [“A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector”] some Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, maybe make myself feel smarter with some Bach. In New Orleans, where I live, they have a tradition on Christmas Eve called the Réveillon, where they start eating about midnight, gumbo and all sorts of foods. I’m going to miss it this year. I’ll be in New York [performing in “The Front Page” on Broadway] which is always a treat. As a fortunate member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that is the time of year that we try to catch up on all of the different films that we hear good things about. My family is grown up now, so they’re in different cities, but we try to spend Christmas together. We have a screening room, and we light a fire and have dinner and watch a movie every night. Bring your pajamas. My sister and I come home [to Canada] and regress into narcissists and make everybody watch home movies of us and applaud how cute we are. My mom tries to class it up with “Miracle on 34th Street,” but we’re not drawn to that as much as our recorded lives. I just got a house in Los Angeles, and now there’s a whole new world of people to invite over and be like, “Bet you guys haven’t seen this. ” I celebrate Christmas in Spain, where my family lives, and we sit down to dinner with 20 [to] 30 people. [We also] go to the movies. We normally choose a movie everyone can watch, and it’s always a big argument, trying to get 10 or more people to agree. I remember when I was a kid, the first movie I saw was “Superman,” and my parents took me during Christmas. This year, I think for sure we want to see the “Star Wars” movie. This year we’re going to go see my mom in Oklahoma City. She’s 95 and confined to a bed in her own home with care, thanks to “Will Grace,” so we’re going to arrange for her to get to a theater to see [“Why Him? ”]. She wants to see it. It [will] be a bit of a production. She can’t sit up for extended periods of time, so [she’s] going in her reclining wheelchair, and we’re taking at least two of her beautiful caregivers with us. The movie is really dirty, but she liked a good dirty joke back in the day. My boyfriend [the writer and director Sebastian Gutierrez] is from South America, and so Christmas Eve is our big celebration. While cooking and [drinking] wine and opening presents each hour, we watch “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — just because it’s one of the best movies ever made. I love Karen Allen’s performance so much. You’re on fire with your cooking when that movie is playing. And in the ultimate Christmas spirit, “Raiders” is about Jewish artifacts that are going to defeat evil. So it’s appropriate to the day. | 0fake |
AHA! FOX HEAD HONCHO RUPERT MURDOCH Ordered FOX Execs To TAKE DOWN TRUMP Last August | If the hierarchy within the Republican Party loses an election to Democrats it s only a lost election; they are still there, and still comfortable even in the minority. However, if the hierarchy within the Republican Party loses an election to Conservatives, they are out of a job Mark LevinMurdoch was not a fan of Trump s and especially did not like his stance on immigration. (The antipathy was mutual: Murdoch s been very bad to me, Trump told me in March.)A few days before the first GOP debate on Fox in August 2015, Murdoch called Ailes at home. This has gone on long enough, Murdoch said, according to a person briefed on the conversation.Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox s debate moderators Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace to hammer Trump on a variety of issues. Ailes, understanding the GOP electorate better than most at that point, likely thought it was a bad idea. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee, Ailes told a colleague around this time. But he didn t fight Murdoch on the debate directive.On the night of August 6, in front of 24 million people, the Fox moderators peppered Trump with harder-hitting questions. But it was Kelly s question regarding Trump s history of crude comments about women that created a media sensation. He seemed personally wounded by her suggestion that this spoke to a temperament that might not be suited for the presidency. I ve been very nice to you, though I could probably maybe not be based on the way you have treated me, he said pointedly.Read more: Conservative Treehouse | 1real |
Anti-Trump PAC files complaint against FBI for interfering with election | Print
The Democratic Coalition Against Trump filed a complaint Friday against FBI Director James Comey with the Department of Justice, alleging interference with the 2016 presidential election.
The coalition, an arm of the Keep America Great PAC, filed the complaint with the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, after Comey announced to Congress that because of new emails discovered on Huma Abedin’s electronic devices relevant to the Hillary Clinton email investigation, the agency would review those emails and assess their relevancy to the investigation .
For Scott Dworkin, senior advisor to the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, the announcement is evidence that Comey, a registered Republican, is attempting to undermine Clinton’s chances of taking the White House.
In a statement, Dworkin submitted:
It is absolutely absurd that FBI Director Comey would support Donald Trump like this with only 11 days to go before the election. It is an obvious attack from a lifelong Republican who used to serve in the Bush White House, just to undermine her campaign. Comey needs to focus on stopping terrorists and protecting America, not investigating our soon to be President-Elect Hillary Clinton.
The Democratic Coalition Against Trump has filed numerous complaints with federal agencies about figures connected to the 2016 election.
On Monday, the group filed a complaint with the FBI against Donald Trump himself for allegedly violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In other words, the group thinks Trump has called for voter intimidation and suppression on a national level.
Earlier in October, the group also filed a complaint against the Trump campaign and political strategist Roger Stone, saying both were involved with WikiLeaks and also a “foreign government” behind the hacks that lead to the release of emails from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair.
Podesta referred to the FBI’s Friday announcement as “extraordinary.”
“It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election,” Podesta said . “The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining.”
In July, after the FBI came to a conclusion on Clinton’s private email server and said that no reasonable prosecutor would move forward with criminal charges, the Clinton campaign praised Comey as a “well-respected Republican who served as George W. Bush’s Deputy Attorney General.”
Brian Fallon, press secretary for the Clinton campaign, shamed Republicans in September , particularly GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley , for “trying to bully the FBI into serving partisan interests.”
This report, by Jonah Bennett, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation. | 1real |
Trump Snubs World Leaders On Climate, Pulls Out Of Paris Accord | Donald Trump seems determined to make sure that the United States of America is never seen as the leader of the free world again. As his disastrous treatment of the leaders of allied nations at the NATO and G7 summits and his continued attacks on democratic values and his buffoonish behavior on Twitter isn t enough, it is now being reported that Trump plans to continue to put his dangerous and ridiculous notion that climate change is some kind of Chinese hoax into policy. He has taken his worst step yet in that direction, and now plans to pull out of the Paris Accord on Climate Change.Around 200 countries including all of the world s developed nations are a part of the deal, of which the United States was instrumental in sealing. Now, we will be on par with third world countries on this issue because one of our political parties seems to think that science isn t real. The decision comes after Senate Republicans wrote Trump a letter urging him to pull out of the deal, citing regulations that would cost American jobs. Then again, we know that the GOP isn t that bright on this issue and many others.This move comes on the heels of the Trump Administration rolling back most of the climate regulations that the Obama Administration had put in place to help save the environment. The Paris Accord would have the United States commit to reducing carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent.Beyond the disastrous effects on the environment, this is just devastating to America s standing in the world. It shows everyone that we are no longer ready to lead, that we are taking an isolationist approach when it comes to important issues on the world stage, and that we are led by incompetent, science-denying fools who only care about their own craven quest for power.Say goodbye to your standing in the world, fellow Americans. It was nice while it lasted.Here s video coverage from our partners at Content News: Featured image via Sean Gallup/Getty Images | 1real |
How to Build a Prepper’s Medical Emergency Kit on a Budget | When disaster strikes, you want to know that you have done what you can to prepare for the worst. If an event such as a hurricane or nuclear disaster forces you and your family to leave your home without warning, you could easily find yourself in a serious situation where you will need first-aid medical attention. However, during natural or unnatural disasters, emergency medical attention might not be able to come to your location, so having the resources and knowledge to help yourself and your family members at a time like this can be the difference between life and death.
In the midst of a catastrophe, having a functional medical emergency kit is essential for survival, and sometimes you have to plan for it on a limited budget. In this case, the best approach is to build your own, while utilizing only the most critical items you need for your survival.
Prepare for any disaster step-by-step
Build Your Own: Four Essential Medical Categories to Concentrate On The four general categories you will want to take into consideration for your medical kit preparations are: ointment, bandages, tools and medicine. Knowing the necessary components for each category will help you to form the most cost-effective kit.
Ointment The first and most important in this category is antiseptic wipes, like iodine wipes or alcohol-based wipes. In addition to wipes, you may also want to include an antibacterial ointment, like bacitracin. These are other ointments you may also find valuable:
Hand-sanitizing gel Insect repellent Insect sting relief treatment Iodine liquid Sunscreen Lip balm Biodegradable soap Collapsible water sink or basin Water-treatment chemicals Bandages You want to have bandages that can address any possible injury that may arise. Keep in mind that a person can die after just 10-15 minutes if they are bleeding from a major artery; you will want to have sufficient bandages to stop blood flow and close the wound. Remember, the best thing you can do for an actively bleeding wound is to apply pressure until you are able to apply ointment or bandages. The Israeli Battle Bandage is a first-aid device commonly used for major wounds, and it’s only $9. You will also want to include the following bandages in your medical kit:
Blood-stopping (hemostatic) gauze Triangular cravat bandages SAM splint and finger splint Stretch-to-form bandages Liquid bandages Medical adhesive tape Band-aids (various sizes) Tools You are definitely going to want a suture kit as well as scissors and fine-point forceps to deal with critical injuries. You may want to consider buying paramedic shears in order to cut through clothing for injuries that require fast response time. Cotton-tipped swabs will be helpful for applying iodine liquid to wounds. In addition to these items, here are a few other tools that will likely be useful:
Multi-tool (or pocket knife) CPR mask Emergency heat-reflecting blanket Headlamp (or flashlight) with extra batteries Safety pins Industrial gloves (preferably non-latex) Needle-nose pliers Medicine There are a number of medications and treatments that you will want to consider packing in your medical emergency kit. Aloe Vera can be helpful as both as sun screen and a treatment for sunburns. You may also want injectable epinephrine, commonly known as an “ Epipen ” (only $7), to treat allergic reactions. Here are a number of other medications or treatments that one may require:
Antihistamines for allergic reactions Prescription medications Glucose to treat hypoglycemia Eye drops Aspirin Iodine tablets for water purification Multivitamins Take into account the above mentioned items and each of the general categories as you compare prices on medical emergency kits that are prepackaged versus individual items. Many of the prepackaged kits have a great variation of items, but they may be lacking on some of the critical components previously mentioned, and this is why it often the most cost-effective strategy to build your own.
This information has been made available by Ready Nutrition
Originally published November 3rd, 2016 Make Your Own Natural QuikClot A Prepper’s Story: Life Threatening Emergencies Happen At… 10 Household Items That Have First Aid Uses Basic Emergency Trauma Supply Considerations From a Green… Building Your SHTF Gunshot Survival Kit | 1real |
9 FACTS ABOUT SLAVERY Democrats Don’t Want You To Know | SPREAD this EVERYWHERE! | 1real |
Stephen Colbert’s Send Off For Antonin Scalia Is Refreshingly Touching (VIDEO) | Stephen Colbert left his Comedy Central character behind to replace David Letterman on The Late Show, and he has been absolutely phenomenal at it. Therefore, it was inevitable, and only fitting, that he gave an amazing tribute to recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.However, unlike what would have likely been expected, Colbert did not mock Scalia. The man was universally despised by many decent human beings due his outrageous homophobia, misogyny, and other various bigotries, but, apparently, there was a good side to him that most of us never got to see. Colbert, instead of using Scalia s death as a point of comedy with which to insult his memory, chose to humanize the man most of us are glad to see go from both the Supreme Court and the planet.Colbert recalled his one meeting with Scalia at a White House Correspondents Dinner, in which Scalia revealed that he had a dazzling sense of humor. The Late Show host also pointed out that Scalia had an amazing friendship with his fellow, and notoriously liberal, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.I ll never give Scalia or any other awful right-winger a pass on bigoted behavior. However, amidst all of the hatred we are rightfully slinging Scalia s way, and at the glee we feel now that he can no longer sully the Supreme Court with his disgusting ideas, Colbert s tribute was refreshingly touching.Watch the video below:Featured image from YouTube screen capture | 1real |
Mexico's Meade to seek nomination of ruling PRI party | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s outgoing finance minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Monday he will seek the presidential nomination of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in next year s election. | 0fake |
Editorial: Presidential stakes are high for nuclear arsenal - The Boston Globe | When President Truman approved the use of the world’s first atomic bomb, the weapon first had to be transported to the island of Tinian. Stowed in the hold of the USS Indianapolis in July 1945, the journey from San Francisco took 10 days. Flying time from the airfield to the city of Hiroshima clocked in at about six hours, and the bomb itself fell for 43 seconds before exploding.
These hours, minutes, and seconds of history will be front and center this Friday, when Barack Obama becomes the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima. Yet aside from anniversaries, Americans don’t think much about nuclear weapons today. Perhaps it is the cultural hangover from the Cold War, which often seemed to test the limits of how much fear societies could endure. Perhaps with the bombing of Hiroshima passing from living memory, we’ve simply lost the vocabulary for talking about the mechanics of midnight, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists famously christened the end of the world.
Instead, what is left is the absurdist shorthand: “the finger on the button.” What that cliched phrase means today is this: The US president could order a nuclear strike on, say Moscow, and the 12 million inhabitants there would be incinerated about 15 minutes later.
The apparatus of calamity constructed over the past seven decades is more lethal now than it was in the summer of 1945, and it is far easier to use. Its future is worth considering, especially by those seeking the White House. Today, the United States has more than 7,000 nuclear weapons. Of those, 2,000 are deployed, which means they can be launched on a 15-minute alert on the authority of one human being.
Nine months after Obama’s finger was first placed on the button, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for his stated goals of nuclear nonproliferation. The administration’s deal with Iran and its efforts to get more than a dozen nations to surrender bomb-grade material are important steps toward checking the spread of cataclysmic weapons.
At the same time, however, the Obama administration oversaw the development of the B61 model 12, a new nuclear weapon that is small, accurate, and adaptable. In truth, this is what might be called a contradiction bomb: It is the most expensive nuclear weapon project in history, yet it is intentionally designed to get the least bang for the buck. It is a nuclear weapon that looks and feels and can be used like a conventional smart bomb. This ease — even plausibility — of use is what makes this weapon so dangerous.
The Pentagon is also in the process of taking advantage of the already extreme accuracy of missile warheads by changing their fusing mechanisms so as to increase their ability to successfully destroy the hardest targets by a factor of three. This program will vastly increase the killing power of the entire missile arsenal and, in so doing, create the appearance that the United States is preparing to fight and win a nuclear war against Russia.
Americans today have lots of pressing concerns — paying their bills, paying their debts, deciding whom to vote for. The Atomic Scientists even changed their clock in 2007 to reflect the threat posed by climate change rather than just nuclear annihilation.
The country meanwhile spent its Cold War peace dividend on decades of forgetting the stakes, on trivializing the power of the presidency. After all, what really is an affair with an intern, a torture program, a terrorist attack on a remote embassy, when there’s an immediate and existential threat one push away?
Which brings us to Peak Triviality — Donald Trump’s pursuit of the White House.
Not only did Trump not know the basics of the US nuclear triad (the Pentagon’s land, sea, and air contingent of nuclear forces), he also rejects nonproliferation, a strategy fundamental to Western military thinking since Hiroshima. Conservative military thinker Max Boot calls Trump the country’s top national security threat, though surprisingly few Republicans publicly share that view.
Lest drawing attention to this topic be perceived as fear-mongering, consider this interview Trump sat for in March with Chris Matthews:
TRUMP: Look, nuclear should be off the table. But would there be a time when it could be used, possibly, possibly?
MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in ’45, heard it. They’re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.
TRUMP: Then why are we making them [nuclear weapons]? Why do we make them?
Just because one political party feels that Trump is the most suitable soul to command the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenal doesn’t mean the wider electorate should lose sight of the stakes.
President Richard Nixon was famous for his “madman” theory of foreign policy, whereby his administration tried to convince leaders of enemy nations that he was mentally unstable and thus not to be antagonized. Should he win in November, Trump will have to go to extraordinary lengths to persuade friend and foe alike that he is both predictable and worthy of trust. The fate of nations may depend on it. | 0fake |
U.S. guidance on school restroom choice opposed by some states | (Reuters) - Transgender students cheered the Obama administration’s directive on Friday requiring U.S. public schools to allow them to use toilets and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity while some school districts said they would not comply. “This is the strongest guidance to date from the federal government to schools instructing them on how they must treat transgender students fairly and without discrimination,” said Ilona Turner, legal director at the Transgender Law Center in California. “This will be something that courts will have to give great weight to.” The letter, signed by officials from the U.S. Education and Justice Departments, intensified the debate over balancing equal rights with privacy concerns. The Obama administration told U.S. public schools on Friday that transgender students must be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice, upsetting Republicans and raising the likelihood of fights over federal funding and legal authority. Transgender student Gavin Grimm, who won a U.S. appeals court ruling in April in his fight over bathroom access at his Virginia high school, said he was happy with the support from the Obama administration. “This guidance would have made a big difference in my life,” he wrote on Twitter. Educators are facing scrutiny and legal action over access to toilets and locker rooms based on gender identity versus a student’s sex at birth. The federal government’s position is that U.S. laws against sex discrimination in educational programs include gender identity. Friday’s directive was the broadest attempt to enforce that stance on a national basis. But North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest said in a statement that the state would “not stand by and let our locker rooms and high school showers be used for social experimentation at the expense of the privacy and protection of our young boys and girls.” Forest advised schools to reject the policy and said a state law enacted in March restricting bathroom choice for transgender people trumped the administration’s “non-binding directive.” North Carolina is locked in a high-profile legal battle with the federal government over its “bathroom bill.” On Monday, Republican leaders of the state’s legislature said they had sued the U.S. Justice Department over the state’s law restricting public bathroom access for transgender people. That lawsuit came hours after North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory sued the Justice Department, accusing it of overreaching after federal lawyers said the state’s law requiring public bathroom use based on birth gender was a civil rights violation. In Florida, Marion County Public Schools showed no sign of backing down from a resolution passed in April requiring students to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate. “I don’t believe our board will reverse the decision unless it is instructed by the courts,” the school system’s spokesman Kevin Christian said in a telephone interview. Mississippi’s Department of Education said it would comply with the federal guidance. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order in March allowing a person of any gender to choose whether to use a men’s or women’s toilet or locker room in all municipal properties including public parks, pools, and playgrounds. The order requires city agencies to post the policy in conspicuous locations within three months and to train all employees within two years. New York City’s action came a week after South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed a bill that would have made the state the first to limit transgender students to bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their birth gender. In November, Houston voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure known as the “bathroom ordinance” that would have established non-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people. Nationwide, 22 percent of transgender and gender non-conforming people report being denied access to appropriate bathrooms at work, and 26 percent report being denied access to bathrooms in an educational setting, according to a survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. | 0fake |
‘Schlonged!’ NYT: FBI reopened Hillary probe thanks to … ANTHONY WEINER? | — Brad Thor (@BradThor) October 28, 2016 Men ruin everything with their dicks https://t.co/vFLzBWDEpO
This FBI-investigation-into-Hillary-plot just got a whole lot thicker, so to speak: NYT alert: new emails were discovered while investigating into ANTHONY WEINER SEXTING SCANDAL.
— Andrew Clark 🎃 (@AndrewHClark) October 28, 2016
Wait, what? New emails tied to the FBI's Clinton inquiry were discovered during the investigation into Anthony Weiner's sexting https://t.co/FMHEkn03B0
Dude: Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton ’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, an aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony Weiner. … In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant. Clinton picks up @nytimes
— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) October 28, 2016
What more can you say about this?
— Kemberlee Kaye (@KemberleeKaye) October 28, 2016 Oh my god https://t.co/Qa8JRQuO8f | 1real |
WATCH: Hilariously Stupid Trump Fans Fooled By Hitler Quotes Disguised As Trump’s (VIDEO) | It s no secret that Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler are very similar. Like Hitler, Trump wants to keep the Untermensch in this case Muslims, Hispanics, and other brown people out of his country. Both men chose to run for office on a Christian platform while failing to act anything remotely similar to Jesus. Like Hitler, Trump has decided that an entire segment of the population Muslims should be forced to register in a national database and to wear special little badges. And, like Hitler, The Donald wants to throw a certain segment of the population in concentration camps. Dissenters especially minorities are brutally beaten at his rallies, something Trump adamantly supports.With all the similarities between the two fascists, YouTube prankster channel SloFlo decided to conduct a little social experiment: They quoted Adolf Hitler to Trump supporters, but told them the words were Trump s. The prankster made up a fake Trump pamphlet, but he replaced all the quotes with Hitler quotes. Well, there s a lot of people that should be sterilized according to Donald Trump, said a man wearing a Trump tie. So, sure. You look at the Democratic Party and they prove that, one supporter said. That s why I m voting for Trump. He s a smart man, he s got the world by the balls right now, a young woman replied. He s got a lot of money, and he s very influential because of his money, and what he s done with, like, his empire. As soon as our economic system starts improving, we don t have to worry about the immigrants anymore, an enthusiastic man Trumpsplained. They ll go away. Well, man is the cruelest animal, said Tie Guy.After the Trump supporters said they agree with the quotes in the pamphlet, they were in for a surprise when it was revealed that the quotes actually came from none other than Adolf Hitler a man whose speeches Trump has been known to keep by his bedside. I m definitely not down with racism, said the young woman after learning she had just endorsed Hitler s words. I d say you re lying to me, another Trump supporter said with a blank stare on his face. Asked if he still supports Trump, he replied: Well, yeah, But I don t support Hitler. Pressed on whether he supports the quotes, he explained that If Donald Trump said them, I support em! Watch this hilarious prank below:Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
AL Cop Goes Ballistic On Fellow Officer Over Records Dispute (VIDEO) | A Birmingham, Alabama police officer was arrested this week, after he allegedly pepper sprayed a fellow officer and threatened to put him in a body bag.According to WTVM, officer Shaun Deane became enraged last July, after an officer in another precinct had trouble locating records that he wanted to pick up.During an interview with WBRC, the unidentified victim described what happened next: This officer opens up his cannister, his holster for mace and pulls his mace out and puts it in my face. I look at him and I made a statement to him. Told him he s not gonna do anything and before I could even get my statement out he had already applied the spray to my face. The officer who was pepper sprayed by Deane went on to say that he was blown away by what happened. I couldn t even wrap my mind around what was really happening, he said. I could possibly be able to process the situation if it would have been a citizen, but this was a fellow officer. It took me to a place in my mind that I couldn t even process at that time. The incident has been the subject of an internal police investigation for the past year.On July 15, WBRC reported that Deane was arrested and charged with use of a noxious substance.According to Sgt. Bryan Shelton, Deane has been taken out of service while the case makes its way through the courts.Shelton didn t comment on whether Deane will be allowed to remain on the police force once the court proceedings are over.Deane has been on the police force for the past eight years. While there s no information at this time regarding past excessive force complaints, it s a good bet that any officer who pepper sprays another cop in the face should not be sent out on the streets with a badge and a gun.Here s more on this story from WTVM.WTVM.com-Columbus, GA News Weather & Sports Featured image via video screen capture via WTVM | 1real |
GERMANY: Parents outraged after German primary school ‘forces’ children to chant “Allahu Akbar” and “there is no God but Allah” in Muslim prayer | BNI Store Oct 27 2016 GERMANY: Parents outraged after German primary school ‘forces’ children to chant “Allahu Akbar” and “there is no God but Allah” in Muslim prayer 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 memorize the Islamic chants and forwarded the handout to Austrian news service unsertirol24. UK Express (h/t Terry D) 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. Headteacher Gisela Herl did not confirm the incident when questioned, but said the school would issue a written statement detailing its position in the coming week. The incident comes just weeks after parents complained to German newspaper Hessian Niedersächsische Allgemeine (HNA) that their children’s nursery was refusing to acknowledge “Christmas rituals” to accommodate the “diverse cultures” of other pupils. The Sara Nussbaum House daycare centre in Kassel refused to put up a Christmas tree, tell Christmas stories or celebrate Christmas in general because it said only a minority of pupils. A spokesman for Kassel explained: “There will be no Christmas celebrations, in the strictest sense. Because the majority of children at this kindergarten are not Christian the festival will not be celebrated in the way that it is at other schools.” Migrants now outnumber native children at many schools in Germany as the country has been inundated with Muslim migrants in recent years. More than one million migrants are estimated to have arrived in Germany during the last year alone. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees estimates that another 200,000 Muslims will apply for asylum in 2017. | 1real |
Thomas Frank Explores Whether Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party Will Address Inequality | 1real | |
BREAKING: Obama Alongside Canada Just Made HUGE Move To Protect Earth From Trump | In a move that is seemingly being done as a preemptive strike against Donald Trump s administration and his clear love for the oil industry, President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have just put in place actions to prevent drilling in regions of both the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.The statement from the White House also states that we need to be moving away from fossil fuel. Donald Trump and his nomination of Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil for Secretary of State seems to be an effort to double down on oil production. However, fossil fuels are not infinite and we must move away from oil to a cleaner more sustainable future.The statement reads: Today, in partnership with our neighbors and allies in Canada, the United States is taking historic steps to build a strong Arctic economy, preserve a healthy Arctic ecosystem and protect our fragile Arctic waters, including designating the bulk of our Arctic water and certain areas in the Atlantic Ocean as indefinitely off limits to future oil and gas leasing.These actions, and Canada s parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth. They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region s harsh conditions is limited. By contrast, it would take decades to fully develop the production infrastructure necessary for any large-scale oil and gas leasing production in the region at a time when we need to continue to move decisively away from fossil fuels. JUST IN: Obama and Trudeau move to protect Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from risks of Trump, Tillerson, Pruitt, etc. pic.twitter.com/iITA06szoM The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) December 20, 2016 You can find the full statement from the White House stating the actions being taken by each nation HERE.These actions will undoubtedly send Trump and his cronies into a hissy fit because they are seemingly desperate to pillage the earth further for profit with no thought into how it will affect generations to come if a spill were to occur.Good on Obama and Trudeau for taking action where action needs to be taken.Featured Photo by Andrew Renneisen, Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
WATCH: CNN Panelist HUMILIATES ‘Snowflake’ Trump For Cowardly Backing Out Of Correspondent’s Dinner | Donald Trump is so thin-skinned that he would rather sit in the White House and pout instead of attending the White House Correspondent s Dinner.It is a tradition for the president to attend the annual White House Correspondent s Dinner. It s a chance to spend time with reporters and journalists and enjoy the entertainment of a comedian. Stephen Colbert, Craig Ferguson, Jon Stewart, and Jay Leno are just a few of the big-name comedians who have headlined the event. And presidents get the opportunity to let off some steam by delivering jokes. President Obama was particularly skilled at self-deprecating humor while also making jokes about his critics.For example, President Obama once seriously burned Donald Trump with a joke in 2011 in reference to Trump s birtherism. Now, I know that he s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald, Obama said. And that s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac? President Obama then joked about Trump s leadership on Celebrity Apprentice for firing Gary Busey after a cooking contest. These are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled, Obama said. Meanwhile, Obama had just ordered the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, which makes his appearance at the Dinner even more impressive.But Trump has decided to be a big baby and is now the first president to ever skip the event. Ronald Reagan did not attend in 1981, but he had a good excuse since he had just been shot. But he still managed to deliver some remarks via phone.I will not be attending the White House Correspondents Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017During a discussion on CNN on Saturday, New York Times TV critic Bill Carter took Trump to the woodshed for cowardly refusing to attend. Republicans always criticize the media, Carter said. This has reached a point where it s over the top, actually. Any story that s critical of him now becomes fake. Indeed, Trump has declared war on the media because they refuse to be his cheerleading squad. And I think the fact that he s bowing out of this dinner, it has a little bit of the quality of You can t fire me, I quit. because a lot of people are dropping out of this dinner, Carter continued.And it s true. Trump s attacks on the media have caused many news outlets to cancel parties and refuse to go to the dinner. Now that Trump isn t going, perhaps these outlets will now reverse their decision.But Carter wasn t done yet. Carter said that Trump knows he isn t going to get a good reception from the crowd at this event, particularly in light of his claim that the media is the enemy of the American people. In other words, Trump is literally running away because he doesn t want to be criticized. He likes to have paid applauders, he quipped. The whole thing would have been fraught for him. And I know there s been a lot of criticism of Democrats for being snowflakes, but it s sort of snowflake-y to me, to back out of this. Here s the video via YouTube.Donald Trump knows that he won t be a very welcome guest at the dinner event, but that doesn t mean he should tuck his tail between his legs and run away. If ever there was a chance for a mea culpa with the media, this is it. Trump could apologize to the media for his unfair and un-American attacks on them and try to build a better relationship with them. But he won t because he is a petulant child who would rather throw a temper tantrum instead of doing something that makes him look like a grown-up.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 1real |
The Lives They Loved: Submit Your Memories - The New York Times | As part of the magazine’s annual The Lives They Lived issue, we invite readers to contribute a photograph and a story of someone close to them who died this year. A number of submissions will be chosen to be published on The New York Times website. All entries must be submitted by Dec. 31, 2016, to be eligible for consideration. | 0fake |
Hallowe'en - The Day of the Aos Si | Hallowe'en - The Day of the Aos Si 31.10.2016 And so the agricultural year dies, the underworld and our world reach the same level and there begins the time of the crossing of spirits from below to above, walking among us through the darkness of Winter. Hence the need to light fires and celebrate with festivals of light, hence the children dressed up as demons and ghouls. Humankind 2016, repeating prehistoric rites. Hallowe'en, the Day of the Witches, All Hallows' Evening, Samhain. Day of the Dead. Pumpkins, chestnuts, new wine, mulled wine. A bonfire, to keep away the evil spirits, the Aos Sí and to bring the community together, the first festival of light in the dark winter with little or no agricultural produce. What is the meaning of all these symbols? The end, or death, of the agricultural year in Europe happens around this time and as the centuries wore on, the Celtic peoples (and probably others) stipulated that at sunset on October 31 begins Samhain (pronounced So'win). This was a "boundary time" when the Aos Sí (bad spirits) could move easily from the underworld into our world and so bonfires were lit to cleanse the Earth from evil and to protect communities against it. Print version Font Size From the earliest times, children would go "mumming" or "guising", wearing disguises as monsters, witches or bad spirits, going from door to door asking for offerings of food and drink - or else people placed these outside their homes for the Aos Sí to take and be appeased. A time of darkness and uncertainty It was a time of darkness and uncertainty, a time when survival depended on how much food had been stored from the harvest and in what conditions it was in, a time when the wine or beer barrel was opened and which hopefully would last until Spring. It was a time when the fattened pig would be slaughtered and salted, when sausages would be made, hams smoked. It was a time before the potato, which was brought to Europe from the region of the Andes in the sixteenth century. What substituted the potato at the time was the chestnut, especially in Southern Europe, where a chestnut festivity took place at the beginning of November around a Magnus Ustus, a Great Bonfire. As with Samhain , the date became institutionalized and was fixed on November 11, the Day of Saint Martin. Medieval festivals carried across the waters In Medieval times, these festivities were still very popular in Europe and were carried over to the Americas by the Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (rest of Latin America), French and British (North America), where they continued, while they became less popular in Europe and were celebrated locally by communities. In some cases, they took on a different meaning, as was the case with Guy Fawkes' Night, or Bonfire Night, in the United Kingdom. Guy Fawkes, an English Catholic, was part of a plot to blow up barrels of gunpowder under the House of Parliament when it was to be opened by King James VI of Scotland, James I of England (who became King of both countries upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603), on November 5, 1605. The plot was discovered, Guy Fawkes committed suicide just before he was hanged (he jumped from the gallows and broke his neck) and since then the day has been remembered throughout the UK with fireworks, bonfires, chestnuts and a stuffed doll representing the "Guy", children wheeling the doll around the villages asking for "A penny for the Guy". But this does not begin in 1605 - as we see, the symbology is the same as that coming from ancient times and the burning of the guy resembles the burning of the scarecrow in Iberian communities around this time. Humankind 2016, repeating age-old rites just because it is what you do at this time of year. You dress up, you light a fire, you dance, you celebrate, you go singing round people's homes. But you also come together and the community regulates itself during the darkest and most dangerous months of the year. A good example, togetherness. It is a pity that with all the resources at our disposal, we cannot perpetuate such moments throughout the year. Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey | 1real |
Championing Optimism, Obama Hails Clinton as His Political Heir - The New York Times | PHILADELPHIA — President Obama delivered a stirring valedictory address at the Democratic convention Wednesday night, hailing Hillary Clinton as his rightful political heir and the party’s best hope to protect democracy from “homegrown demagogues” like the Republican Donald J. Trump. Taking the stage to rapturous roars of “We love you” and “Yes we can,” Mr. Obama acknowledged that Democrats were still divided after a bruising nomination fight and that Mrs. Clinton had made “mistakes. ” But he vouched passionately for Mrs. Clinton as a trusted and reliable ally not just for him but for all Americans who need a fighter to improve their lives and keep them safe. “She’s been there for us — even if we haven’t always noticed — and if you’re serious about our democracy, you can’t afford to stay home just because she might not align with you on every issue,” Mr. Obama said, an explicit appeal to supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders who continue to resist Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Obama offered an optimistic portrait of America and a strong defense of his policies, but also unleashed by far his most ferocious attack yet on Mr. Trump, even portraying the Republican nominee as a threat to the country. “That’s why anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end,” he said. In the most unmistakable declaration yet by Mrs. Clinton that she is effectively seeking Mr. Obama’s third term, she strolled on stage after his speech and embraced the president as the delegates roared. It was a tableau of continuity and a vivid illustration of how dependent the two former rivals are on each other now. Mr. Obama also used his own remarks to try to drive a wedge between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Republican voters. “It wasn’t particularly Republican and it sure wasn’t conservative,” he said of last week’s Republican convention. “There were no serious solutions to pressing problems. Just the fanning of resentments and blame and hate and anger. ” The president’s contempt for Mr. Trump took on a personal dimension as well when he recalled his grandparents from Kansas and said, “I don’t know if they had their birth certificates” — a reference to Mr. Trump’s leadership of the birther movement that raised questions about Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Wednesday signaled a transition for the party. Emotion suffused the convention hall: Some delegates, in tears, were not ready to say goodbye to Mr. Obama yet, and others — particularly some liberals and young Democrats — were not ready to accept Mrs. Clinton as their new leader. As she prepares to give her nomination acceptance speech on Thursday night, the left wing of the party still remains divided, while many Republicans appear ready to fall in line behind Mr. Trump. Mr. Obama’s speech, a passionate defense of Mrs. Clinton’s vision and character, did not itself herald the start of new political era. Mrs. Clinton has wrapped herself in the cloth of the Obama presidency rather than break with him and offer a new path, like Vice President George Bush’s promise of “a kinder, gentler nation” in 1988 after the Reagan years. Instead, the lineup on Wednesday reflected a party attempting to rally its own partisans and attract Republicans with blunt warnings that, whatever they may think about the new Democratic they must all do their duty to thwart Mr. Trump. And the convention speeches were full of appeals, as Senator Tim Kaine, the Democratic nominee, offered Republicans “a home” if they felt Mr. Trump did not represent “the party of Lincoln,” and former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York urged independents to vote for “a sane, competent person” — Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Kaine, a senator and a former governor of Virginia, introduced himself to his largest television audience yet as a product of a Jesuit high school who embraced its motto — “Men for others” — who held close to his faith while trying to help Americans as a civil rights lawyer and then as a political leader whose most searing experience was the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007. He occasionally shifted to Spanish, which he speaks fluently, and led the audience in a chant of an Obama political slogan, “Sí se puede” (“Yes you can”). Mr. Kaine paid brief tribute to Republicans and also hailed Senator Bernie Sanders, whom Mrs. Clinton defeated for the nomination, at several points. Yet some Sanders supporters were not willing to fall behind the new nominee. As Mr. Kaine spoke, jeers broke out from the Utah delegation attacking the Partnership trade deal that the senator has supported and Mr. Sanders is against — and Mrs. Clinton has shifted to oppose. Placards denouncing the trade deal quickly spread through the hall, including a couple of dozen in the California delegation. Leon E. Panetta, the former defense secretary and C. I. A. chief, spoke early in the evening and was repeatedly interrupted with shouts of “No more war!” from several state delegations that favored the candidacy of Mr. Sanders during the presidential race. As the heckling persisted, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters took up a heard more often at the Republican convention to drown out the jeers: “U. S. A. U. S. A. !” Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. also turned to images and language more commonly used by the right to depict Mr. Trump as denigrating American greatness, invoking patriotism and saluting military service. Before Mr. Obama even entered the convention hall here, the audience was clearly as devoted to him as they were excited for Mrs. Clinton. The first lady, Michelle Obama, was received with adoration and her speech on Monday was the most moment of the first days of the convention. And even a quick flash of Mr. Obama’s face, amid a procession of past presidents on the convention screen Tuesday, brought a burst of applause. The president is also the strongest adhesive holding Democrats together after five months of bitterly fought primary and caucus contests between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders of Vermont. According to a New York poll earlier this month, 82 percent of Sanders supporters approved of Mr. Obama’s job performance. After two nights of convention speeches focused on Mrs. Clinton’s virtues and attempts to make peace with Sanders supporters, Clinton campaign officials sought to address the threat of radical Islamists — an omission early on that Republicans had criticized. And in a shift from only about a decade ago when they largely avoided the issue, Democrats used much of Wednesday to advocate gun control, sending relatives of those murdered in Newtown, Conn. and Charleston, S. C. as well as a former congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, to recount their stories. But virtually all of the anticipation on Wednesday surrounded Mr. Obama and the symbolic passing of the torch to Mrs. Clinton after she became the party’s nominee on Tuesday night. Mr. Obama’s resounding endorsement of his rival was the final consummation of a political alliance over a decade in the making, since Mrs. Clinton flew to Chicago in 2004 to raise money for a state senator and discovered a phenom. Back then he was the one who benefited from the imprimatur of a political star, and her support continued to prove critical over the years. After he won the presidential nomination that she expected to be hers in 2008, Mrs. Clinton put aside her resentment and helped him unify a divided Democratic Party. And later that year, she again came to his aid by agreeing to become his first secretary of state. Mr. Obama is the one riding high now, his approval rating over 50 percent. And his image is only enhanced as voters view him, in his final months as president, through the prism of a race to replace him that features two deeply unpopular candidates. While acknowledging that Mrs. Clinton has “her share of critics’’ on the right and the left, the president sought to transfer his prestige and political appeal to his long ago rival. “Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me,” he said. “I ask you to carry her the same way you carried me. ” “And if you’re serious about our democracy, you can’t afford to stay home just because she might not align with you on every issue. You’ve got to get in the arena with her, because democracy isn’t a spectator sport. America isn’t about ‘Yes he will.’ It’s about ‘Yes we can. ’” | 0fake |
Bountiful Afghan Opium Harvest Yields Profits for the Taliban - The New York Times | KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It is spring that determines how a year turns out, according to an Afghan proverb. And if the Helmand poppy fields this spring are any indication, the Taliban will have a very good year. As the opium harvest winds down across Helmand Province, Afghanistan’s largest in territory and poppy cultivation, farmers and officials are reporting high yields. The skies were generous with heavy rainfall, and the Afghan government with its cancellation of annual eradication campaigns. It had lost much of the territory in Helmand to the Taliban anyway. So it was with peace of mind that farmers, and thousands of seasonal laborers who had traveled to Helmand, scraped the gum from the opium bulbs. Taliban fighters were just around the corner to lend a hand — and to receive their share of wages and taxes, in cash or kind. The crowded fields amounted to an insurgent recruiter’s dream. “We are happy that we had a good harvest this year compared with previous years,” said Abdul Rahim Mutmain, a farmer in Musa Qala district. Mr. Mutmain said his modest plot saw a increase in yield compared with 2015, which was plagued by crop failures and concerted government eradication. “There is no security concern for a single laborer being checked or robbed by the police,” Mr. Mutmain said. “The entire district is under Taliban control and the bulk of the harvesters are Taliban. ” He added, “Actually, this is the Taliban regime — you can take your narcotics anywhere or anytime you want to sell them. ” The United Nations, which has described the Taliban behavior “more like ‘godfathers’ than a ‘government in waiting,’ ” says the insurgency extracts a large share of its expenses from the narcotics trade, which the agency put at roughly $3 billion a year within Afghanistan. The story of just how deeply the Taliban are intertwined in the business even at the farm level can be told by the fluctuations in violence since last year’s poppy harvest. For much of the winter, the insurgents had the Afghan forces on the back foot in Helmand, inflicting heavy casualties, overrunning outposts and even entire districts. The fighting reached the gates of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, drawing American and British special operations forces into the combat. Then, just as harvesting began in late March and early April, officials reported a sudden dip in fighting. Despite the Taliban’s official launch of their annual offensive on April 12, with violence intensifying across other parts of the country, Helmand is still experiencing a relative lull as the last bulbs of poppy are scraped. The period of calm has allowed the Afghan Army in Helmand a rare breather to train and rebuild a force that took a bad beating last year. With men dying at alarming rates and outposts overrun easily, the 215th Afghan Army Corps was forced to abandon certain districts, bringing what remained of the troops to the headquarters for collective retraining. The NATO mission in Afghanistan, which has officially shifted to a limited role of training and assisting the Afghan forces, has said that overall training lagged behind because of the relentless tempo of fighting last year. The army was forced to turn out raw recruits simply to fill the gap caused by casualties and desertion. Now, Afghan military officials and NATO advisers say they are trying to refocus on quality, better logistics and cooperation at the level. During the monthlong harvest season in Helmand, the Taliban have better things to do than fight: They profit in multiple ways from the lush opium fields. Their fighters often lay down their weapons to work as day laborers, farmers say. They also collect the opium tax they impose on the local level, as well as stick around for the additional 10 percent Islamic tax on farm produce, called ushr. Those proceeds are supposed to go to the needy, but often end up going to the Taliban. Above all, the harvest season becomes a Taliban recruitment drive, with thousands of men coming in from all over the country who are already frustrated with their lack of job opportunities. “The poppy harvest is a good time for the Taliban to interact with new faces — best time for new recruitment,” said Bashir Ahmad Shakir, the head of security committee at the Helmand provincial council. Abdul Jabar Qahraman, the Afghan government’s representative in charge of the fighting in Helmand, said the Taliban were campaigning “ ” to recruit from the pool of 15, 000 laborers, mostly jobless young people, who arrived in Helmand for the harvest season. He said the government arrested some 700 of the laborers to disrupt the harvesting, but the men were released a few days later except for a small number suspected of being Taliban members. “The war in Afghanistan is not a war of ideology, it is a war of financial benefits,” Mr. Qahraman said. “The poppies support the Taliban financially,” he added. “The commanders of the Taliban stuff their pockets with cash. Once they receive the cash that makes their stomachs oily, they prepare themselves for fighting. ” But Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said opium cultivation was a regional and “traditional” issue that brings people the income they need for the rest of the year. “Poppy farming has nothing to do with us, and in such in an environment of conflict we cannot prevent it either,” Mr. Mujahid said. “It’s natural that in some areas the Taliban are residents of that area and have family needs, maybe for meeting those needs they may have participated in the harvesting. But it is not some formal work from our side. ” Consider Mr. Mutmain’s roughly four acres in Musa Qala district. This year, he said he collected about 88 pounds of raw opium, compared with about 30 pounds from six acres last year. Among the 25 laborers he hired for the 15 days of gum collection, Mr. Mutmain said 10 were active Taliban members who took a break to work the harvest. The rest were young men from other provinces, mostly neighboring areas. “You know, they become good friends with each other — they spend at least 12 or 15 days, which is enough time to build trust,” Mr. Mutmain said. The Taliban fighters recount “stories of bravery, how they manage to blow up armored vehicles” and overrun checkpoints. “Those kinds of tales really impress the newcomers, and some go to the battlefields with them and join,” Mr. Mutmain said. Since he lives quite a distance from his fields, Mr. Mutmain built makeshift huts for the workers to rest in during the afternoon and sleep in at night. He also hired a cook who served beans, chickpeas and the traditional southern yogurt drink, shrumbai. Soon after the harvesting was over, a Taliban tax collector arrived with a notepad and a witness, Mr. Mutmain said. Sometimes, the farmers need to line up the plastic bags of opium they have collected, each weighing about 10 pounds, for inspection. But most of the time, the Taliban take their word for it. “You either pay them in the current price, or in narcotics,” Mr. Mutmain said about the tax. He paid cash, the equivalent of $400. Mahatabuddin Khan, another farmer in Khanshin district, said he paid his taxes in kind. He had hired 15 people, five of them Taliban and the rest young men from northern districts of Helmand, to work on his two acres, which ultimately yielded about 35 pounds of opium. The tax collector arrived before the harvesting was even over. He estimated how much the plot in front of him would yield, and Mr. Khan paid just under two pounds in raw opium. “He had a notepad to write my name and the amount of narcotic collected from me,” Mr. Khan said of the collector. Many across Helmand fear a difficult year of fighting ahead, now that the insurgent machine is fueled with new cash and fresh fighters. “The Afghan military forces in Helmand are preparing to face the toughest summer season of fighting,” said Mr. Shakir, the provincial council member. | 0fake |
BREAKING: TRUMP ANNOUNCES Nominee For Secretary Of State…Liberal Heads Explode! | Leading Republicans have already expressed anxieties about Tillerson, as they contend with intelligence assessments saying that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election to help turn the tables Trump s way. FOX NewsThe RINOs will certainly join in with their concerns just like Marco Rubio did in a tweet: Being a friend of Vladimir is not an attribute I am hoping for from a #SecretaryOfState. Sen. Marco RubioPresident-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he intends to nominate ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.Tillerson impressed Trump during the two meetings he had with him. Trump had high praise for the energy titan, calling him a world class player . He s in charge of an oil company that s pretty much double the size of his next nearest competitor, Trump told host Chris Wallace. It s been a company that s been unbelievably managed, and to me a great advantage is he knows many of the players and he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia, he does massive deals for the company. Not for himself, for the company. Trump pointed to Tillerson s relations with Moscow and other political hot spots as a selling point. As ExxonMobil s chief, he maintained close ties with Russia and was awarded by Russian President Vladimir Putin with the Order of Friendship in 2013, a high honor for a foreign citizen.Read more: FOX | 1real |
Demoralized and divided: inside Catalonia's police force | BARCELONA (Reuters) - With the Spanish government ready to take over the running of Catalonia on Friday, the loyalty of the local police to Madrid or to the Catalan cause will be tested if they are ordered to drag their former political masters from office. Spanish police provoked international outcry by using batons and rubber bullets when they stepped in to try to stop an illegal independence referendum on Oct. 1 after the local Catalan force refused to prevent voting in what has become the worst constitutional crisis in modern Spanish history. Catalonia s secessionist government is intent on resisting Spain s plan to remove it from power, and there are doubts over how a divided and demoralized Mossos d Esquadra, as the Catalan police are called, would respond if ordered to evict President Carles Puigdemont and his autonomous government by force. National police could once again be on the front line. The local police force is riven by distrust between those for and against Catalan independence and is estranged from Spain s national police forces, according to interviews with Mossos officers and national police. The Civil Guard gave evidence against the Mossos chief in a sedition inquiry after his force stood back and allowed voting to take place, court documents show. Five Mossos officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the 17,000-strong force was split among those who wanted independence and those who opposed it, with three of those saying they would not use force to remove ministers and lawmakers from power. I m not going to use force and beat people with my baton if they are passive, said a 15-year Mossos veteran and secessionist, who declined to be named. He said many others felt the same, but added: I would have to obey it. My family has to eat. A Mossos spokeswoman said the force was neutral and not subject to any political or ideological criteria . Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is intent on thwarting the latest bid for independence by Catalonia, which has 16 percent of the Spanish population but generates 19 percent of the country s economic output, to avoid what he believes will bring economic and social turmoil to the heart of the eurozone. Officers told Reuters there was also an anti-independence faction in the Mossos d Esquadra, Lads Squad in Catalan, which uses an encrypted chat app to share views on independence versus allegiance to Madrid. In a bid to impose its authority the Madrid government will replace the Mossos senior leadership, but the question is whether this will be enough to ensure the force s loyalty. The Mossos stance will have a powerful influence on the 7.5 million Catalans as the force has deep roots in Catalan society, having emerged from citizen militias in the 18th century. The Mossos s reputation was enhanced by its handling of an August van attack in Barcelona which killed 14 people. Rajoy will seek Senate approval on Friday to take the unprecedented step of assuming central control of Catalonia, including its government and the running of Mossos. The strategy will replace the Mossos leadership, including its two senior officers and 23 commissioners, and route the chain of command to a national police commander, yet to be appointed, who will report to the interior ministry, officials in Madrid and a Catalan police union said. Spain s foreign minister, Alfonso Dastis, said at the weekend, before calls for civil disobedience by the Catalan government, that we are not going to arrest anyone . But a senior government source said force may be necessary depending on the reaction in Catalonia. If the parliament has to be emptied out and closed, if the councillors offices have to be cleared out - if they obey there s no problem, but if they don t obey it will have to be enforced, the source said. The months-long standoff between Madrid and pro-independence leaders progressively damaged morale inside Mossos, with hundreds of officers opposed to independence looking to quit the force, officers and union officials say. Some complain they are sidelined by their pro-independence colleagues. Luis Miguel Lorente, head of the national ARP police union, said about 200 Mossos officers had contacted his union for information on how to join national police forces. Spain has sent about 4,000 police reinforcements to Catalonia, where protests on both sides of the independence debate have drawn hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets. Extra police have been billeted in two cruise ships in Barcelona harbor. One of the ships is painted with cartoon characters of Tweety Pie and Sylvester the Cat, leading to Tweety Pie being adopted as the mascot of the independence movement by some campaigners. Participants in the referendum opted overwhelmingly for independence, but turnout was only about 43 percent as Catalans who favor remaining part of Spain mainly boycotted the ballot. Secessionists said the result gave them a mandate for statehood. Spain was only restored to democracy following the death in 1975 of dictator Francisco Franco, under whom the Catalan language and traditions were suppressed. Protests have been peaceful, but the referendum showed how tensions can swiftly escalate when Madrid uses national police, despised by many secessionists, to enforce anti-independence measures. If Mossos stands back again, the senior government source said, national police would step in once more. A defiant Catalan government, which remains in power until the Senate approves Rajoy s plan, said this week its civil servants, including the Mossos, would continue to obey its instructions and those of its legislature. That raises fears that Puigdemont and regional lawmakers, will refuse to leave their offices, or that their supporters may try to help by occupying the offices. As well as replacing Mossos leaders, Madrid may also redeploy Mossos officers away from key government buildings and use national police instead, an interior ministry official said. Relations between the regional and the national forces are at rock bottom and no new joint investigations are being launched, say officers from each force. | 0fake |
FAKE NEWS: CNN Ties MILO to White Nationalists Despite Explicit Rejection of Racism - Breitbart | CNN published an article and video about Breitbart Senior editor MILO Thursday which associated MILO with the and “white nationalist” and “ ” activists despite his explicit rejection of them. [In a video piece accompanying an article headlined, “Milo Yiannopoulos is trying to convince colleges that hate speech is cool,” CNN states that MILO is on a mission to “take on the liberal college establishment, and he’s not the only one” before cutting to an interview with white nationalist Nathan Damigo. The video then shows clips from white nationalist Richard Spencer’s rallies and claims that Spencer’s planned college tour is inspired directly by MILO. “Why are you seeking to associate me with these people?” MILO asked the CNN interviewer, who replied, “They associate themselves with you. ” “What you are seeking to do, by associating me with people who have odious and disgusting opinions, is suggest that I somehow in some way tacitly enable these people,” MILO replied. “I don’t. I don’t have unsavory opinions about skin color. F*ck you. ” CNN asked some of the students that invited MILO to UC Berkeley about their opinion on what MILO is doing in trying to “take down the ivory tower” of college campuses, “they’re finally learning from the Democrats. ” One student added, “it’s been years and years that they’ve controlled the university. ” Unlike the protesters at UC Berkeley, MILO has stated multiple times that skin colour and race do not matter, ideas and values do. Last week while speaking at UC Colorado Springs, MILO explicitly denounced racism: “White pride, white nationalism, white supremacy isn’t the way to go,” he continued. “The way to go is reminding them and yourselves that you should be aspiring to values and to ideas. ” “You should be focusing on what unites people and not what drives them apart,” MILO concluded. “You shouldn’t give a shit about skin color, a shit about sexuality … You shouldn’t give a shit about gender, and you should be deeply suspicious of the people who do. ” CNN did not include those statements in their story, but they were sure to include this analysis from the League’s Oren Segal: “Whether Milo considers himself actually or not, clearly those who represent the see what he’s doing as an opportunity for them as well. ” | 0fake |
Lindsey Graham: We Have No Other Choice But to Go Nuclear With Gorsuch - Breitbart | Monday on MSNBC while discussing Senate Democrats opposition to President Donald Trump Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch, Sen. Lindsey Graham ( ) said Republicans have “no other choice” than the nuclear option of lowering the filibuster threshold for a Supreme Court nominee to a simple majority. Partial transcript as follows: REPORTER: Mitch McConnell, the leader is prepared to go nuclear here? GRAHAM: Yeah. We have no other choice. We’re not going to have a tradition of the senate where they get their judges and President Trump can’t get his. REPORTER: When do you see potentially a floor vote? GRAHAM: At the end of the week. It’s sad but we are where we are. Follow Pam Key On Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
U.S. Senate votes to overturn Obama broadband privacy rules | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted narrowly to repeal regulations requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers’ privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) or Facebook Inc (FB.O). The vote was along party lines, with 50 Republicans approving the measure and 48 Democrats rejecting it. The two remaining Republicans in the Senate were absent and did not cast a vote. According to the rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission in October under then-President Barack Obama, internet providers would need to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children’s information and web browsing history for advertising and internal marketing. The vote was a victory for internet providers such as AT&T Inc (T.N), Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), which had strongly opposed the rules. The bill next goes to the U.S. House of Representatives, but it was not clear when they would take up the measure. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate was overturning a regulation that “makes the internet an uneven playing field, increases complexity, discourages competition, innovation, and infrastructure investment.” But Democratic Senator Ed Markey said, “Republicans have just made it easier for American’s sensitive information about their health, finances and families to be used, shared, and sold to the highest bidder without their permission.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said consumers would have privacy protections even without the Obama administration internet provider rules. In a joint statement, Democratic members of the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission said the Senate vote “creates a massive gap in consumer protection law as broadband and cable companies now have no discernible privacy requirements.” Republican commissioners, including Pai, said in October that the rules would unfairly give websites like Facebook, Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) or Google the ability to harvest more data than internet service providers and thus dominate digital advertising. The FCC earlier this month delayed the data rules from taking effect. The Internet and Television Association, a trade group, in a statement praised the vote as a “critical step towards re-establishing a balanced framework that is grounded in the long-standing and successful FTC privacy framework that applies equally to all parties operating online.” Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel for advocacy group Consumers Union, said the vote “is a huge step in the wrong direction, and it completely ignores the needs and concerns of consumers.” | 0fake |
Proposed Budget Deal Is MUCH WORSE On U.S. Border Security Than We Originally Thought | Only a few days after his inauguration, President Donald Trump moved aggressively to tighten the nation s immigration policies Wednesday, signing executive actions to jumpstart construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall and block federal grants from immigrant-protecting sanctuary cities. Beginning today the United States of America gets back control of its borders, Trump declared during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security. We are going to save lives on both sides of the border. Trump cast his actions as fulfillment of a campaign pledge to enact hard-line immigration measures, including construction of a wall paid for by Mexico. With the families of Americans killed by people living in the U.S. illegally sitting in the audience, Trump said, When it comes to public safety, there is no place for politics. Trump cast his actions as fulfillment of a campaign pledge to enact hard-line immigration measures, including construction of a wall paid for by Mexico. With the families of Americans killed by people living in the U.S. illegally sitting in the audience, Trump said, When it comes to public safety, there is no place for politics. PBSAlthough the source of funding for a border wall was never really clear, most Americans believed with a Republican majority in both the House and Senate, funding for a secure border wall, as part of our national security was a no-brainer. Conservative Review The proposed budget deal before the House of Representatives is playing out like a bad replay of the latter Obama era: A Republican-controlled Congress given the power of the purse by the American people giving away the farm to Democrat demands.But the capitulation is far worse than one may realize. It s not just the lack of new funding for a southern border wall; this omnibus, which funds countless liberal priorities, prohibits existing funds from being used on any sort of border wall as well.According to a Congressional Research Service report from January, the Department of Homeland Security could have taken non-obligated funds and used them to put structures along areas of the border already spelled out in the Secure Fence Act of 2006 mandating a double-layered fence. Indeed, nothing in current law would appear to bar DHS from installing hundreds of miles of additional physical barriers, it contends, at least so long as this action was determined appropriate to deter illegal crossings in areas of high illegal entry or was deemed warranted to achieve operational control of the southern border. It s important to remember that the requirement to construct no less than 700 miles of border fencing (originally 850 miles) has been the law on the books for over a decade. Obama used waiver authority and very loose discretion (thanks to the weakening of the law in 2008) to skirt the requirement.Now that Trump wants to fulfill the existing mandate, Congress really has a moral obligation to honor the existing statutory authorization with sufficient appropriations. This is not some Trump boondoggle; this is a law passed with major bipartisan support in 2006.What the current proposal does is not only not fund a border wall, but it s so specifically worded as to prohibit any of the currently allocated funds from going to construction on the project. The bill actually rescinds $21 million in unobligated funds for border fencing.This means that even previous resources cannot be used on new construction as well, thereby tying the administration s hands and essentially weakening current law. Without this language, Trump could theoretically begin entering into contracts so that by the time the September funding bill is signed, he can hit the ground running with new funding (not that he will fight then, either). So, rather than take what money exists and use that to start negotiating contracts, run studies, and do whatever else is conceivable on physical border security between now and when Congress revisits this never-ending budget circus in September, nothing except for maintenance on the current, insufficient structure will be permitted.Meanwhile, the current budget retains provisions either providing funds specifically for, or predicating them upon, border security in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, Ethiopia, and other countries affected by extremism. That is not to say that the security of these borders against the likes of jihadists aren t our concern, or that these provisions ought not to exist. Assisting in physically stopping the flow of terrorist arms and personnel across borders is but one basic tool to be employed in the global fight against Sharia supremacism. But the juxtaposition of these is telling.A Republican Congress is willing to pass a bill that realizes border security is necessary for countries across the ocean, but will sacrifice not only a symbol of our own sovereignty, but a physical means of protecting it (the only effective way of tackling the policy and political problems with open borders). | 1real |
Burkina Faso recalls ambassador to Libya over 'slave markets' report | OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - Burkina Faso s foreign minister said on Monday it had recalled its ambassador to Libya over a report that black African migrants were being auctioned as slaves there. The decision by the West African nation followed the broadcast by CNN of footage of what it said was an auction of men offered to Libyan buyers as farmhands and sold for $400, a chilling echo of the trans-Saharan slave trade of centuries past. Libya s ambassador to Burkina Faso said his country was being unfairly blamed for a global problem that all nations affected must come together to solve. Foreign Minister Alpha Barry announced the decision by President Roch Marc Kabore in a news conference. The president of Burkina Faso has decided to recall the ambassador to Tripoli, General Abraham Traore, for a consultation, Barry said. He had also summoned the Libyan charge d affairs in (Burkina Faso s capital) Ouagadougou to express our indignation at these images that belong to other centuries, images of the slave trade . In a news conference on Wednesday, Libya s ambassador to Burkina Faso, Abdul Rahman Khameda, appealed for help from both the European Union and African Union to help Libya reach a lasting resolution of the migrant crisis. Libya alone can not solve this problem, he said. We call on the international community to intensify efforts to help Libya cope with this danger (illicit migration), which is tearing at its social fabric. African and European leaders are due to meet next week in Ivory Coast s main city, Abidjan, where migration and Europe s efforts to tackle it by co-opting Libya will be high on the agenda. Adopting an effective solution will prevent certain parties from exploiting such unfortunate events to tarnish Libya s name, Khameda said. An agreement between Europe and Africa to stem the flow of migrants coming through Libya to Europe had failed to tackle the severe abuses they face, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein wrote in an article published in September. | 0fake |
Manchin: I Plan to Skip Obama’s Capitol Hill Meeting Defending Obamacare | Sen. Joe Manchin ( ) announced he would skip President Obama’s Capitol Hill meeting with Democrats on defending Obamacare. [“In good conscience, I can’t do it,” Manchin said Wednesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, according to the Hill. He added: If anyone listened and paid attention to what the American people said when they voted, they want this place to work. Can you imagine in here … we have the outgoing president coming up here today to talk to only Democrats. We have the incoming vice president coming up to talk only to Republicans. Manchin then stated that this is not what “makes this place work. ” Obama met congressional Democrats on Capitol Hill to discuss how to prevent Republicans from repealing Obamacare. Vice Mike Pence also addressed Obamacare in a meeting on Capitol Hill with Republicans Wednesday, the Washington Times reported. Manchin said that 172, 000 West Virginians gained health care under Obamacare for the first time, but he also said that Obamacare could use a lot of “repairing. ” “I’m willing to look at replacing, repairing, doing anything that we can to make it better. But put something on the table,” he said. “I just can’t believe the Republicans would go down this path and just throw it out and say, ‘Trust us, in two or three years, we’ll fix it. ’” | 0fake |
Old Man On Vacation Angrily Live-Tweets Show He ‘Never Watches’ | Back in February to honor Black History Month, Trump attacked the media because of course he did. Among other things, Trump said, I don t watch CNN but that s just not true. In mid-July, Trump said, I have very little time for watching TV and that, too, is not true. In April, Trump told the Associated Press, The one thing I ve learned to do that I never thought I had the ability to do. I don t watch CNN anymore. Trump kicked off his 200th day in office (seriously, it seems like 10 years) from his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club by unleashing a series of mean-girl tweets. Trump claimed on Twitter that he s working hard, then minutes later Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) was interviewed on CNN s New Day . Blumenthal defended special counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into the Trump-Russia scandal.Watch:.@SenBlumenthal reacts to crackdown on leaks: "I'm very concerned that [DOJ] is weaponizing laws" https://t.co/sOHDh0IcW9 New Day (@NewDay) August 7, 2017 There is no minimizing or underestimating that attack by the Russians, Blumenthal said. It was purposeful and relentless, and it involved propaganda and hacking into our voting machines or at least an attempt to do it and potential collusion by the Trump campaign and then obstruction of justice. That investigation must be pursued. Just after totally not watching CNN, Trump tweeted, Interesting to watch Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut talking about hoax Russian collusion when he was a phony Vietnam con artist! The former reality show star didn t stop there. Never in U.S. history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like Senator Richard Blumenthal, he tweeted. He told stories about his Vietnam battles and .conquests, how brave he was, and it was all a lie. He cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child. Now he judges collusion? When Blumenthal was a candidate in 2010, he was forced to admit that he exaggerated his Vietnam military record so that s what President Bone Spurs was referring to. Trump received 5 deferments to avoid serving in the military, one of them because his feet hurt. There s something to be said about glass houses here.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. | 1real |
Republicans Sabotage Obamacare So They Can Claim It Doesn’t Work | Did your Obamacare premiums go up this year? Blame Republicans.In their effort to destroy President Obama s signature legislative achievement, Republicans voted to repeal the law a bazillion times since taking over the House. They ve also filed lawsuit after lawsuit hoping that a federal court will see things their way and strike it down.However, both efforts have failed miserably as the Supreme Court has ruled against Republicans in two major cases. Plus President Obama would simply veto any repeal bill should it reach his desk.Republicans desperately want to use Obamacare as a campaign talking point this year. The only problem is that Obamacare is turning out to be a successful healthcare program that is becoming as ingrained in our society as Medicare and Medicaid as more and more Americans sign up and get health insurance.According to the Washington Post, more than 11.3 million Americans have signed up for Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act.Furthermore, CNBC reports that fewer than 1 in 10 Americans lacked health insurance in 2015, the first time ever in the nation s history that the uninsured rate has fallen so low, and a clear sign of Obamacare s impact. It s a stunning victory for a program that has only been in full effect since 2014. Much of that success is due to the Medicaid expansion part of the law, which means even less people would be uninsured if Republican-controlled states had not refused to expand Medicaid for their own citizens.Obamacare has also created jobs despite Republican doomsday predictions.All of these successes not only makes Obamacare more popular, they make it harder for Republicans to repeal it without suffering major consequences on Election Day.That s why Republicans have devised an underhanded new strategy in their continuing obsession to kill Obamacare.Talking Points Memo reports:In late 2014, Republicans inserted a provision in budget omnibus legislation that tinkered with what s known as the risk corridors program, which buoys insurers who spend more money than they planned for on covering populations that are sicker than anticipated.The provision resurfaced in the political discourse last fall when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) took it on a victory tour during his presidential campaign, bragging that he stopped a health insurance bailout. The legislation did not so much end the program as screw up the mechanism by which money can be carved out to fund it. The risk corridors can now only be funded by transferring profits from insurers whose populations cost them less than expected, and the government can no longer pull from savings elsewhere in the law to make up the difference.Washington and Lee University School of Law health law expert Timothy Jost explained to TPM that while the tweak isn t near enough to destroy the law, it has caused significant problems, and is a major factor contributing to premium increases this year. Basically, Republicans are deliberately making minor tweaks to Obamacare mechanisms so that certain parts of the program become weaker than they were originally. New reports then come out showing that premiums went up. Then Republicans use those new reports to brag about how Obamacare is broken even though they were the ones who broke it in the first place.So if you discover that your healthcare premiums have risen this year, you can blame Republicans for that and you can make sure they never screw with your healthcare again by punishing them at the voting booth this November.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
Turkeys face deep divisions over Thanksgiving vote | November 2, 2016
A group of about 200,000 White Holland turkeys in a gigantic shed at a farm in Ohio is now debating whether or not to vote in favour of Thanksgiving. The vote to be made next week by pecking once at a pile of grain for ‘Thanksgiving’ or twice for ‘Something Else’ comes after bitter arguments in which claims and counter-claims were made about the availability of dust for bathing in over the turkeys’ long-term (i.e. three-week) future.
Many turkeys have deplored the resulting divisions, which have seen elevated levels of pecking in the once harmonious community five miles from Wapakoneta. ‘I’ve lived here all my life, y’all,’ said turkey hen Wanda-Mae Cabrera. ‘What was it we were deciding on again? Me an’ my folks before me, we all lived here, yes we did.’
Voting for Thanksgiving means that the turkeys will be able to build a wall from their own faeces to deter any incoming poultry from Kentucky from trying to get into the shed, once they have mastered the intricacies of building a wall from their own faeces. Many also believe that this will make the shed great again, as it hasn’t been great for a long time but definitely used to be. They also said they liked the sound of a new farmer called Donald, who recently grabbed a pussy-cat that raided the shed before it could do any damage.
Some turkeys prefer to carry on not celebrating Thanksgiving because the past 244 generations had not and had all gone away to live happily on a farm somewhere else, apparently. ‘One labourer said we will get a right stuffing either way,’ said anti-Thanksgiving turkey DeMarius Jackson, aged 28 weeks. ‘Well, that’s democracy. I imagine.’
‘I ain’t having no goddam American Bronzes sharing my shed, no sirree,’ raged White Holland cock Burl Griffin CCXXVI. ‘Before you know it, they’ll be gobblin’ around your hens, stealin’ your water and sayin’ you can’t worship the Great Spotlight in the Roof no more. I ain’t breedist but have you seen the size of their wattles? I like my shed the way I like it, so I’m for Thanksgiving, sure thing. What is Thanksgiving, anyway?’ Share this story...
Posted: Nov 2nd, 2016 by Oxbridge Click for more article by Oxbridge .. More Stories about: World News 0 | 1real |
AT&T Buying Time Warner: If Approved, Assures Greater Scoundrel Media Consolidation Than Already | in: Corporate Takeover , Economy & Business , Science & Technology , Sleuth Journal , Special Interests Six corporate giants control most media and related content Americans consume. Comcast, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, CBS and Time Warner dominate US broadcast and cable television news, entertainment and sports, movie and TV production, theme parks, record labels, publishing, and for-profit online operations. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported telecommunications giant AT&T and Time Warner agreeing to merge. Approval, if granted, would likely assure greater consolidation in both industries – benefitting corporate predators at the expense of the vast majority of consumers, giving them less choice than already, ensuring higher prices for poorer service. Hillary is a Wall Street, war profiteers, corporate predators tool, virtually certain to support this outrageous deal – likely to get FCC and Justice Department approval on her watch. Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Trump called the proposed deal another example of too few sources disseminating information to Americans, warning of “too much concentration of power,” manipulating people, telling them how to think. As president, if elected, he vowed to oppose it. He’s against jobs-killing TPP, NAFTA and similar deals. “Our jobs are fleeing the country,” he said. “They’re going to Mexico. They’re going to many other countries.” Hillary calls TPP the “gold standard in trade agreements,” sure to approve what Trump opposes. He calls friendly relations with Russia a good thing, praising Putin as “a leader…far more than our president has been,” saying “(i)f we have a (normal) relationship with Russia, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could work together on it and knock the hell out of ISIS.” Hillary’s rage for endless wars to eliminate all sovereign independent governments risks nuclear confrontation with Russia, China and Iran on her watch. Trump is no peacenik, no paragon of virtue, yet he’s on the right side of vital issues discussed above. Hillary should terrify everyone – on the wrong side of virtually everything mattering most, the most ruthlessly dangerous choice for president in US history. Submit your review | 1real |
EMBARRASSING: Obama Spends Final Hours With Troops Defending His Failure As Commander In Chief…Bashing Trump [VIDEO] | President Barack Obama claimed the United States is breaking the back of ISIS in his final national security speech before leaving office and told armed service members the country is depending on them to carry forward what is best in us. Obama directed the bulk of his counter-terror speech to criticisms of his policies leveled by President-elect Donald Trump during his successful campaign but did not mention his successor by name. We are a nation that our best has been defined by hope and not fear, Obama told them in his Tuesday address.The nation s commander in chief recounted the United States defining moments in the Civil War, WWII, when American soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy and climbed the hills of Iwo Jima, and the civil rights era. That s who we are. That is what makes us stronger than any act of terror, he told troops stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. Remember that history. Remember what that flag stands for. DMFunny, Barack Obama couldn t find it in his heart to speak out against those who openly disrespect our flag like Black Lives Matter acitivists or 49er s Quarterback Colin Kaepernick, or others who disrespect or burn our flag in the name of oppression and hate. | 1real |
CNN LEAKS – VP Griffiths: Journalists Should ’Aid the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable’ - Breitbart | In audio recordings released by Project Veritas, CNN Vice President and Senior Editorial Director Richard Griffiths was caught claiming that the role of the journalist is to “aid the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. ”[“If we are journalists, what is our role as a journalist? What is the fundamental role as a journalist, for us to do?” remarked Griffiths in one of the recordings. “Tell a story. Tell what’s going on. There’s a secondary corollary to that, right? Aid the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To a degree, right?” “Is that not part of the traditional role of a journalist? It’s actually one of the things I can be most proud of as a journalist,” he continued. “You know we try to show the ugly side of humanity so we can do something about it. It’s hard, very hard. ” The released tapes also reveal CNN’s “misrepresentation of polling data” and the news outlet’s disdain for conservative media. 119 hours of audio data have so far been released with over 100 more hours reportedly to come. Recorded in 2009 at CNN’s Atlanta HQ, the audio clips feature numerous employees including Joe Sterling, Arthur Brice, and Nicky Robertson. Project Veritas made a call for leaked information, offering $10, 000 to anyone else “that exposes media malfeasance. ” “Project Veritas is determined to expose malfeasance, corruption and wrongdoing,” declared Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe. “We want to become a destination where citizen journalists can come forward, work with us and make a real impact. That’s why today, we’re announcing a $10, 000 award for anyone that comes forward with legally obtained materials exposing media malfeasance. If you have hidden audio recordings, video tapes or documents inside of a news room or media institution — and the material is good enough — I will pay you $10, 000. ” In a comment to Breitbart Tech, O’Keefe spoke of his concern at the growing leftist bias of social media companies and warned that Project Veritas would investigate them too. “Yes we know about it, we’re concerned about it, we’re fighting it,” said O’Keefe. “[CNN Leaks] is the first in a long effort to target and expose abuse within the media, and that includes social media … Who knows? Maybe we have someone inside with a camera right now, recording everything. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0fake |
Aboard rickety boats or swimming, over 750 Rohingya reach Bangladesh | COX S BAZAR/YANGON (Reuters) - They came in boats, others on flimsy rafts, some even swam. Around 750 Rohingya Muslims made their escape from Myanmar on Friday to reach Bangladesh, where the greatest danger is malnutrition and disease in teeming refugee camps. Over 613,000 Rohingya have already taken refuge in the camps since a Myanmar military clearance operation forced them to abandon their villages in northern Rakhine State. Rohingya who have reached Bangladesh have recounted horror stories of rape and murder. A top U.N. official described the military s actions as ethnic cleansing , though Myanmar denied that, saying its operation was needed for national security after Rohingya militants attacked 30 security posts on Aug. 25. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar s less than two-year-old administration, was in Vietnam on Friday, attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. She was expected to hold talks with several leaders on the sidelines of the gathering, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Having won the Nobel Peace Prize for defying the generals who ruled predominantly Buddhist Myanmar with an iron fist for nearly half a century, Suu Kyi s reputation as a stateswoman has suffered due to her failure to speak out more strongly over the Rohingya crisis. Under a constitution written before the junta gave way, the civilian administration still has to share power with the generals, and has little say over defense and security issues. Still, leaders at APEC, and two other regional summits to be hosted by the Philippines in the coming days, are expected to exert pressure on Suu Kyi to do more to stem the crisis. And on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet with Suu Kyi in Naypyitaw, the Myanmar capital, with senators back in Washington pressing to impose sanctions targeting the military. International Rescue Committee, the leading aid agency headquartered in New York and led by former British foreign minister David Miliband, reckoned that up to two-thirds of the 300,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar will join the exodus to Bangladesh in the coming months. The IRC in a statement highlighted the extremely dangerous health conditions for Rohingya living in camps in the port city of Cox s Bazar. A nutrition survey led by its partner Action Contre la Faim had found 40,000 Rohingya children faced malnutrition and required life-saving assistance. It said 95 percent of the population was drinking contaminated water - and agencies had reported that two-thirds of Cox s Bazar s water was contaminated with faeces. The conditions we are seeing in Cox s Bazaar create a perfect storm for a public health crisis on an unimaginable scale, said Cat Mahony, the IRC s emergency response director in Cox s Bazar. The situation will only deteriorate with more arrivals and a greater strain on already overstretched resources. Trail of destruction: tmsnrt.rs/2y8FgQ8 Still, Rohingya too scared to stay in Myanmar were ready to risk their lives crossing the waters around the mouth of the Naf river to reach Bangladesh. They were helped on Friday by another day of calm seas, though more than 200 have drowned attempting the crossing during the past two months. Bangladesh officials said significant numbers were arriving on rafts they had built from bamboo, lashing plastic jerrycans to the poles for extra buoyancy. They said more Rohingya had swum across on Thursday. A Reuters photographer saw up to ten rafts landing on the beaches of Teknaf, at the southern tip of Cox s Bazar, on Friday. People reaching the shore have told Reuters that there are thousands living in desperate conditions on the strand of beach by the river s mouth at Pa Nyaung Pin Gyi, as they waited for a chance to cross over. Dil Muhammad, 30, from Buthidaung, one of the Rakhine regions that bore the brunt of the military operation, finally made it across with his wife and three children after weeks of living on the sand because he could not afford to pay a boatman. I stayed in Pa Nyaung Pin Gyi for two months because I didn t have money to come, he told Reuters. Dil Mohammed said his 18 month old daughter was suffering from diarrhea and a fever. I couldn t get to a doctor as we were stuck in that place. And Sakhina Khatun, a woman of 35, said that three men who had been with her on the other side had been attacked by Buddhists when they went to search for bamboo to make a raft. Border Guard Bangladesh officials counted 444 refugees coming ashore at Sabrang, near Teknaf, and 150 more arriving further along the coast. Afruzul Haque Tutul, additional superintendent of police in Cox s Bazar said his officers had rescued 125 Rohingya from a wooden fishing boat stranded off Inani beach and bussed them to the camps. Mass exodus: tmsnrt.rs/2xTId74 A desperate escape: tmsnrt.rs/2xIvxQF | 0fake |
Factbox: After U.S. House Speaker Ryan, Trump to meet ex-rivals Fiorina, Santorum | (Reuters) - Donald Trump was scheduled to hold additional meetings on Friday and Monday as he forms his administration before taking over from Democratic President Barack Obama on Jan. 20. The Republican president-elect has held more than 90 meetings so far, according to his transition team. Trump was to see the following people in coming days, according to his team: * U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican * Former Trump rival for the 2016 presidential nomination * Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co * U.S. senator from West Virginia, a Democrat * Meeting originally scheduled for Dec. 9 * U.S. Representative from Idaho, a Republican * Serves on House Judiciary and Natural Resources committees * Was scheduled to meet with Trump on Dec. 8 * Former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, a Republican * Former Trump rival for the 2016 presidential nomination Technology industry leaders invited for a meeting with Trump, according to media reports citing transition officials. | 0fake |
Hillary: “We Did Not Lose A Single Important Person In Libya” | Email
Hillary Clinton declared during NBC News’s Commander-in-Chief forum that no lives were lost in Libya when she made the move to take out dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Even so, the former secretary of state did not mention the fact that 11 months later four Americans – including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens – were killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi that arose from the instability that the overthrow created.
“That was one of the few situations in American foreign policy decision making processes where everybody came together to make sure we don’t make the wrong move, and the operation was a success, even Donald Trump supported it,” Clinton argued. “As with any operation of such magnitude, we had a few hiccups, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. As I’ve said, the operation was a success.”
She continued, “So much so, in fact, that I’m proud to say that no important people were lost through it all, and when I say that, I say it with the utmost respect for all those who had to give their lives on both sides so that Libyans could be freed from the iron fist of Gaddafi. It would have been unrealistic to expect 0 casualties; however, the overall toll did not exceed expectations, with the greater amount of damage being on the side of the enemy.”
“Politics can be a cruel line of work. That being said, I stand before you here, today, and I am proud to say that giving democracy to a people that have not had any contact with it for generations is a wonderful thing that makes all of the sacrifices worth it. And while we’re on the subject of sacrifices, thank God they did not include anyone important from the American delegation, including yours truly,” she said jokingly, causing the auditorium to laugh.
She said, “But all jokes aside, I have to pay homage to the CIA, who has once again performed outstandingly and saved the day. Its agents’ work in the field is an immeasurable contribution and an asset that we would be wise to treasure for generations to come. If it hadn’t been for them, we would not have been able to perform the operation so cleanly and with such little impact to the surrounding nations. I am proud that the United States of America has an intelligence agency such as the CIA.”
“I’m sure many here among you disagree with my position that one embassy is a small price to pay, a bargain, if you will, when it comes to ridding the world of another dictator and a terrorist. I would also like to remind everyone here that that price would have gone up immeasurably if we had sat idly by and allowed Gaddafi to rage on and cause death and destruction throughout the region. For better of worse, we acted and I am convinced no other dictator will ever again think about cheating the CIA out of a deal. Because, in the words of a personal friend of mine, who is a former CIA spook – shutting down arms dealers is easy; finding trustworthy partners among nation heads is the hard part,” she concluded. | 1real |
Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of Literature - The New York Times | Half a century ago, Bob Dylan shocked the music world by plugging in an electric guitar and alienating folk purists. For decades he continued to confound expectations, selling millions of records with dense, enigmatic songwriting. Now, Mr. Dylan, the poet laureate of the rock era, has been rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature, an honor that elevates him into the company of T. S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison and Samuel Beckett. Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels. [ Our pop critic on Bob Dylan, the musician | Our book critic on Dylan, the writer ] Some prominent writers celebrated Mr. Dylan’s literary achievements, including Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, who called Mr. Dylan “the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition,” adding, “Great choice. ” But others called the academy’s decision misguided and questioned whether songwriting, however brilliant, rises to the level of literature. “Bob Dylan winning a Nobel in Literature is like Mrs Fields being awarded 3 Michelin stars,” the novelist Rabih Alameddine wrote on Twitter. “This is almost as silly as Winston Churchill. ” Jodi Picoult, a novelist, snarkily asked, “I’m happy for Bob Dylan, #ButDoesThisMeanICanWinAGrammy?” Many musicians praised the choice with a kind of awe. On Twitter, Rosanne Cash, the songwriter and daughter of Johnny Cash, wrote simply: “Holy mother of god. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize. ” But some commentators bristled. Two websites, Pitchfork and Vice, both ran columns questioning whether Mr. Dylan was an appropriate choice for the Nobel. As the writer of classic folk and protest songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are ’,” as well as Top 10 hits including “Like a Rolling Stone,” Mr. Dylan is an unusual Nobel winner. The first American to win the prize since Ms. Morrison in 1993, he is studied by Oxford dons and beloved by presidents. Yet instead of appearing at the standard staid news conference arranged by a publisher, Mr. Dylan was in Las Vegas on Thursday for a performance at a theater there. By late afternoon, Mr. Dylan had not commented on the honor. Mr. Dylan has often sprinkled literary allusions into his music and cited the influence of poetry on his lyrics, and has referenced Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Ezra Pound. He has also published poetry and prose, including his 1971 collection, “Tarantula,” and “Chronicles: Volume One,” a memoir published in 2004. His collected lyrics from are due out on Nov. 1 from Simon Schuster. Literary scholars have long debated whether Mr. Dylan’s lyrics can stand on their own as poetry, and an astonishing volume of academic work has been devoted to parsing his music. The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation Row,” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released “The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan” in 2009, further cementing his reputation as a brilliant literary stylist. Billy Collins, the former United States poet laureate, argued that Mr. Dylan deserved to be recognized not merely as a songwriter, but as a poet. “Most song lyrics don’t really hold up without the music, and they aren’t supposed to,” Mr. Collins said in an interview. “Bob Dylan is in the 2 percent club of songwriters whose lyrics are interesting on the page even without the harmonica and the guitar and his very distinctive voice. I think he does qualify as poetry. ” In giving the literature prize to Mr. Dylan, the academy may also be recognizing that the gap has closed between high art and more commercial creative forms. “It’s literature, but it’s music, it’s performance, it’s art, it’s also highly commercial,” said David Hajdu, a music critic for The Nation who has written extensively about Mr. Dylan and his contemporaries. “The old categories of high and low art, they’ve been collapsing for a long time, but this is it being made official. ” In previous years, writers and publishers have grumbled that the prize often goes to obscure writers with clear political messages over more popular figures. But in choosing someone so well known, and so far outside of established literary traditions, the academy seems to have swung far into the other direction, bestowing prestige on a popular artist who already had plenty of it. It’s not the first time it has stretched the definition of literature. In 1953, Winston Churchill received the prize, in part as recognition of the literary qualities of his soaring political speeches and “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values,” according to the academy. And many were surprised last year, when the prize went to the Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, whose deeply reported narratives draw on oral history. In its citation, the Swedish Academy credited Mr. Dylan with “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. ” Sara Danius, a literary scholar and the permanent secretary of the academy, which called Mr. Dylan “a great poet in the tradition” and compared him to Homer and Sappho, whose work was delivered orally. Asked if the decision to award the prize to a musician signaled a broadening in the definition of literature, Ms. Danius responded, “The times they are perhaps. ” Mr. Dylan, whose original name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn. He emerged on the New York music scene in 1961 as an artist in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, singing protest songs and strumming an acoustic guitar in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. But from the start, Mr. Dylan stood out for dazzling lyrics and an oblique songwriting style that made him a source of fascination for artists and critics. In 1963, the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart with a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” whose ambiguous refrains evoked Ecclesiastes. Within a few years, Mr. Dylan was confounding the very notion of folk music, with ever more complex songs and moves toward a more rock ’n’ roll sound. In 1965, he played with an electric rock band at the Newport Folk Festival, provoking a backlash from fans who accused him of selling out. After reports of a motorcycle accident in 1966 near his home in Woodstock, N. Y. Mr. Dylan withdrew further from public life but remained intensely fertile as a songwriter. His voluminous archives, showing his working process through thousands of pages of songwriting drafts, were acquired this year by institutions in Tulsa, Okla. His 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” was interpreted as a supremely powerful account of the breakdown of a relationship, but just four years later the Christian themes of “Slow Train Coming” divided critics. His most recent two albums were chestnuts of traditional pop that had been associated with Frank Sinatra. Since 1988, Mr. Dylan has toured almost constantly, inspiring an unofficial name for his itinerary, the Never Ending Tour. Last weekend, he played the first of two performances at Desert Trip, a festival in Indio, Calif. that also featured the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and other stars of the 1960s. He is scheduled to return on Friday for the festival’s second weekend. “As the ’60s wore on,” Giles Harvey wrote in The New York Review of Books in 2010, “Dylan grew increasingly frustrated with what he came to regard as the pious sloganeering and doctrinaire leftist politics of the folk milieu. ” He “began writing a kind of visionary nonsense verse, in which the rough, ribald, lawless America of the country’s traditional folk music collided with a surreal ensemble of characters from history, literature, legend, the Bible, and many other places besides. ” Mr. Dylan’s many albums, which the Swedish Academy described as having “a tremendous impact on popular music,” include “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited” (1965) “Blonde on Blonde” (1966) “Blood on the Tracks” (1975) “Oh Mercy” (1989) “Time Out Of Mind” (1997) “‘Love and Theft’” (2001) and “Modern Times” (2006). His 38 studio albums have sold 125 million copies around the world. The academy added: “Dylan has the status of an icon. His influence on contemporary music is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of secondary literature. ” Mr. Dylan’s many honors include Grammy, Academy and Golden Globe awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, won a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. The Nobel comes with a prize of 8 million Swedish kronor, or just over $900, 000. The literature prize is given for a lifetime of writing rather than for a single work. “Today, everybody from Bruce Springsteen to U2 owes Bob a debt of gratitude,” President Obama said at the medal ceremony. “There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music. All these years later, he’s still chasing that sound, still searching for a little bit of truth. And I have to say that I am a really big fan. ” ■ Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct. 3 for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy, a Greek term for “ . ” ■ David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz shared the Nobel Prize in Physics on Oct. 4 for their research into the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states. ■ Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Oct. 5 for development of molecular machines, the world’s smallest mechanical devices. ■ President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pursuing a deal to end 52 years of conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the war in the Americas. ■ Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for their work on improving the design of contracts, the deals that bind together employers and their workers, or companies and their customers. | 0fake |
Does Trump Have a Fighting Chance Against the Establishment | New Eastern Outlook | Region: USA in the World When countries are in trouble they always react the same way. If they have economic troubles their governments take ever greater control of the public finances, whether through austerity or centrally-dictated spending programmes. When there is civil strife the government calls out the army and restricts liberties to regain control of the situation. When wars are taking place elections are cancelled so the government of the day remains in power to deal with the conflict. These measures have the effect of entrenching the “Establishment”, whoever that may be at a given time, and excluding others. People can only play a part in addressing the problems of the country at the whim of the Establishment, with appointments replacing elections in many such scenarios. Only when the Establishment is secure does it allow greater freedom of debate, action and participation, which are regarded as the hallmarks of stable countries . Now Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States on an avowedly anti-Establishment platform. He tapped into those disaffected by the political system and found the issues on which he could make the most noise. That in itself was a virtue with the constituency he was trying to attract. Too many people have become disaffected with politics everywhere because someone has decreed certain views to be unacceptable, without giving a reason why, and Trump was only too happy to give voice to those who have been told that their views don’t entitle them to one. But is Trump’s election the democratic revolution he claims? Does it actually give a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless? In order to exercise any power President Trump will have to do all the things he accuses his opponents in the Establishment of, but worse. For a while he might get away with it, but he will never have the resources to win in the longer term. All we will have is the methods, with no returns: Establishment oppression on a scale beyond the worst nightmares of the enforced nobodies who now think they are somebody, but are in fact Donald Trump. Who do you think you are? As it turned out, Hillary Clinton failed to get past a problem she would not have had as a Republican. If you are on the conservative end of the political spectrum you are expected to act like you belong in power when you have it. People in more progressive parties claim to represent the interests of the broad mass of people who will never be rich and powerful. If they stay in power for too long, they create a distance between themselves and that mass which erodes their natural support. Hillary Clinton has been a national figure in the US for a generation. Her accession to the Democratic nomination was seen as almost dynastic, a factor which harmed Senator Edward Kennedy when he ran for the Democratic nomination against Jimmy Carter in 1980. She was referred to as the “Establishment candidate” throughout the campaign, particularly by members of her own party who preferred socialist Bernie Sanders, who complained throughout the primary process that the voting was being rigged and that the media were falsely reporting that she had won the nomination before it was mathematically certain . For a Republican, all this would play well, except in extreme circumstances such as Watergate. For a Democrat it was bound to depress enthusiasm in the party’s voter base, and either drive it to another candidate or persuade it to stay at home, particularly when enough scandal attaches to Clinton as it is due to her business and government dealings. Clinton was about her nice office in Washington, not the problems of real Democrats. Keeping her there would have solved nothing. This was seen most clearly in Wisconsin, a traditional Democratic mainstay which voted for Trump despite the fact exit pollsters were showing that a large numbers of voters greatly disliked both he and Clinton . Many of those who disliked Trump still voted for him because they felt disliked themselves by politicians such as Clinton, who had let them down more than a newcomer had been able to do. He was “the-none-of-the-above” candidate from early on in the primary election period. Poacher turns gamekeeper Whether Trump would have got anywhere near the Republican nomination had there been a Republican president for the last eight years is unlikely. Only as an outsider could he gain any traction within a party which thinks of itself as the natural party of government, and would pick an insider every time to maintain its hold on power. The Republican Party will remain largely embarrassed by Trump, despite his victory. He may be the voters’ idea of a president, but he isn’t what Republican politicians see as a Republican president. As the Huffington Post published underneath every article about Trump from January until election day, “Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar , rampant xenophobe , racist , misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims – 1.6 billion members of an entire religion – from entering the US.” Ask most Republican Congressmen, who control both houses, whether this describes a Republican President and you know what the answer will be, though Trump himself revels in such depictions. Well before the end of his term Trump will have become the Establishment himself. So to achieve anything in the checks and balances system the US has he will either have to carry the party and the military-industrial establishment with him, and become more embedded than Clinton is to do it, or try and purge the very many who will oppose him. Throughout his “business career”, if repeated bankruptcy, con, robbing of contractors and tax avoidance can be dignified with such a term, Trump has relied on bluster and a stubborn refusal to face reality to prosper. Whether he can get away with that with the military and intelligence staff who have ruined America’s global reputation with impunity is another matter. Presidents who spent lifetimes working the system have not been able to control the CIA or the industrial and media barons. If Trump tries, he will have to exert extreme control to do it, and become more exclusive than the Establishment itself. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 as an antidote to a corrupt political establishment. Despite his long years of public service, he was discarded four years later for being exactly what he was elected to be – a good man out of his depth in murky Washington. Trump has never held any elected office. Is he going to take on those same forces and turn them into public servants? More than he can chew out
One of Trump’s selling points with poorer Americans is that he pledged to stop US involvement in costly foreign wars. In particular, he said he could work with Russia and saw no need for the continual war rhetoric coming out of every Western government. Obviously this plays well with those who can’t afford to feed their families. The money will be spent on them, not bombs. But is it even possible to reduce the US military commitment, with so many bases, so many troops employed, so many weapons which will be manufactured and sold regardless? Trump may well find that the best way to stop foreign wars is to buy up all the weapons so that potential enemies don’t get them. The War on Terror would greatly diminish if the US didn’t supply arms to its favourite terrorists whilst pretending to fight them. But there is a vast industry devoted to maintaining armament and troop levels, which can only be justified by fighting wars against enemies real or imagined . So how would Trump go about achieving such a goal? Trump and his supporters are sons and daughters of the Bolsheviks. Convinced they are right, they think they can say what they like, do what they like and everyone else just has to put up with it because any opponent is part of the corrupt Establishment. It is no coincidence that Nigel Farage, former leader of UKIP and the main proponent of the UK leaving the European Union, has described Trump’s victory as a “ Supersized Brexit . Farage’s supporters behave the same way: everyone they don’t like hasn’t got the right to an opinion anymore, because they lost, and were inherently bad to begin with. Based on all we have seen so far, if someone stands in the way of Trump’s ambitions as president they will be told that they are holdovers from a corrupt system, serving masters who are now enemies of the people, and must therefore be removed. In order to get rid of them he would have to use extralegal measures in many cases, and deny them an opinion or another job. The “people” Trump would be referring to are the dispossessed whose votes he courted, who by definition don’t have levers of power of their own. It hardly gives those people more power to demonise certain individuals on presidential say-so, but that is all Trump has offered so far, or may ever be capable of offering. Trump has enjoyed spreading hatred of various minority groups. As many commentators have pointed out, he has broken all the usual rules of presidential candidate conduct and got away with it. But this simply makes anyone a potential victim, and encourages such behaviour to go on unchecked. A system which was there long before a here-today-gone-tomorrow politician has all the levers his supporters don’t to maintain itself. But if attacked, it will have no alternative but to fight fire with fire. A battle for control fought behind the scenes would empower Trump’s supporters even less, whilst not addressing the specific problems which made them see Trump as the solution. Not beating them, only joining them This presidential election campaign was the ugliest within living memory. This played into Trump’s hands: it brought those who were told they couldn’t behave like that into the mainstream, and Trump as the outsider reaped the benefit. But it also created the expectation that this will be followed through: if you start such a process, you are expected to finish it. A poll taken just before Election Day showed that if Bernie Sanders had been running against Clinton and Trump he would have won by a landslide . Sanders supporters remain angry that he was denied the nomination by what they thought was an establishment fraud. Now Clinton has lost, they will make further efforts to ensure that anyone with Clinton credentials is neutralised so that they can present a more credible candidate in 2020, and will have much moral weight and grassroots sympathy behind this effort. As Clinton supporters will fight back in the same terms, the Democratic Party is likely to spend the next four years fighting itself rather than Trump, trying to exclude its own members in the same way Trump supporters want to get rid of everyone they don’t like. The Republicans have the same problem. Trump was as offensive to his intra-party opponents as he was to Clinton. Those who think themselves “real” Republicans will be emboldened by the pro-Sanders Democrats to seek to reclaim the party and its voters from the Trump constituency in the same way. This will generate more exclusion and counter-exclusion, even through Republican Congress versus Republican President battles, with each trying to show themselves to the public as More Republican Than Thou. Both Trump and Sanders supporters will now feel that they are the new “Establishment” because they have been backed by their respective publics to overthrow the old one. Though both Trump and Sanders were the none-of-the-above candidates, they will be the above from now on. To justify their initial behaviour, and satisfy their support, they will have to be even worse Establishments than the ones they have removed, more intolerant, more exclusive …more arbitrary. If the old guard is going to come back, they will have no choice but to adopt the same tactics. The choice at the next election will be between groups of battle-hardened intolerants who are more interested in serving their friends and stuffing their enemies than in the disaffected people in their midst. Trump has not overthrown the failed political Establishment and methods which created the disaffection he has exploited, he has confirmed their validity. Trump may change the personnel, but the Establishment will be the same animal, all the more dangerous for its delusions to the contrary. Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook ”. Popular Articles | 1real |
TOP 10 TWEETS From Democrat Debate | Here s the fake black guy, Shaun King weighing in on how awesome it is that Bernie Sanders can now come out of the socialist closet. Because America is soooo ready (or so Shaun thinks anyhow) to embrace a socialist. Here is his tweet:#1.https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/654100720929632256Here is a great question from the Janie Johnson:#2.The bottom 49% of earners pay zero taxes how much more fair do you want the tax system? #DemDebate Janie Johnson (@jjauthor) October 14, 2015Truth!#3.https://twitter.com/weknowwhatsbest/status/654128633385107456And this tweet is priceless:#4.https://twitter.com/weknowwhatsbest/status/654128132295802880Some race baiters were not satisfied that enough divisive questions were posed to the candidates. How much time exactly should we giving to the issue of race during our presidential debates? Would 50% of the debate time be acceptable to the #BlackLivesMatter terrorists?The first is from #BLM activist and George Soros favorite, Deray McKesson:#5..@AndersonCooper, you were strong tonight, though I hope there are more questions about race at the next debate. #DemDebate deray mckesson (@deray) October 14, 2015Next is from the fake black guy, Shaun King who bemoans the lack of diversity on the debate stage:#6 and #7https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/654095075069296640https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/654113225005510656And then we have the self proclaimed Trump girls, Diamond and Silk weighing in on the debate hilarious!#8.We out. This is not a debate. This is a disgrace. Hope .@realDonaldTrump come to save the day. #stump4trumpbaby pic.twitter.com/I1CcLL31lX Diamond and Silk (@DiamondandSilk) October 14, 2015Best tweet of the night goes to the Donald:#9"@releafpen: Dem debate message summary = More free handouts. They will be voting in droves. We need to get out and vote Trump BIG TIME!" Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2015And the runners-up are Two from conservative actor James Woods:#10.Thank God money grows on trees. This bunch has no allergy to spending it. Free college not only for Americans, but anybody from anywhere James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) October 14, 2015We actually fibbed, there are 12 favorite tweets. We save 2 of our favorites from @iowahawk for last:I got 10 bucks that more people are following the debate on Trump's Twitter feed than on CNN David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 14, 2015How to make college affordable: don't go David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 14, 2015 | 1real |
What Kids Wish Their Teachers Knew - The New York Times | When Kyle Schwartz started teaching third grade at Doull Elementary School in Denver, she wanted to get to know her students better. She asked them to finish the sentence “I wish my teacher knew. ” The responses were for Ms. Schwartz. Some children were struggling with poverty (“I wish my teacher knew I don’t have pencils at home to do my homework”) an absent parent (“I wish my teacher knew that sometimes my reading log is not signed because my mom isn’t around a lot”) and a parent taken away (“I wish my teacher knew how much I miss my dad because he got deported to Mexico when I was 3 years old and I haven’t seen him in six years”). The lesson spurred Ms. Schwartz, now entering her fifth teaching year, to really understand what her students were facing outside the classroom to help them succeed at school. When she shared the lesson last year with others, it became a sensation, with the Twitter hashtag “#iwishmyteacherknew” going viral. Other teachers tried the exercise and had similar insights. Many sent her their students’ responses. In her recently published book, “I Wish My Teacher Knew: How One Question Can Change Everything For Our Kids,” Ms. Schwartz details how essential it is for teachers and families to be partners. “I really want families to know how intentional teachers are about creating a sense of community and creating relationships with kids,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Kids don’t learn when they don’t feel safe or valued. ” Melody Molinoff of Washington, D. C. who has two sons, ages 9 and 11, in the public school system, agreed. “Parents see the teacher as their partner in bringing up their child, and that’s a huge responsibility that we are putting on our teachers and our schools,” Ms. Molinoff said. “I always want my sons’ teachers to know what their challenges are, what they like, just more about them. ” Mary Clayman, a teacher in the Washington public schools, said she has noticed the same thing from the other side of the desk. “I’ve taught over 500 kids so far in my career and parents in every grade want to know how their child is doing socially and emotionally, often times more so than whether they can multiply or divide quite yet,” Mrs. Clayman said. In her book, Ms. Schwartz writes about mistakes that might have been prevented if she had known her students better. She had a student named Chris who was obsessed with science. Ms. Schwartz thought she had done Chris a huge favor by securing a spot for him in a summer camp. But she was unaware of the family’s financial struggles and it turned out that his parents could not afford to take time off from work to get Chris to camp. Ms. Schwartz said classrooms can become a supportive environment for students coping with grief. She suggests that schools have “grief and loss” inventories for students who have gone through a crisis, with input from families so that the child’s future teachers know what that student is dealing with. “As teachers, we know parents are the first and best teachers for their children and we want them to work with us,” she said. | 0fake |
WOW! FBI ASST DIRECTOR: They used to kill people like Hillary by firing squad for “careless leaks” [Video] | Lou Dobbs: So you would agree with those who say it would take something substantial for Comey to have gone this far. He s not sitting here looking at a pig in a poke.Former FBI Asst. Director James Kallstrom: No I don t think so but I don t really think he knows how big the pig is or how big the poke is. And when you look at it this way could there be anything more important than the stuff they didn t look at the first time. You know, top secret, SAP, Special Access Program. We shot people at firing squad for disclosing this information in World War II. | 1real |
DISTURBING VIDEO Shows HILLARY’S Campaign Likely FAKED Her Audience At NC Rally | On September 15, Hillary apparently held a rally in the Old Student Recreational Center at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, NC. This was her first public appearance since she convulsed and had to be lifted into her van following the 9-11 memorial in NYC. Hillary s campaign was quick to blame the heat until they discovered conservative websites were able to quickly access the weather and determine that it was a balmy 74 degrees in NYC! Hillary was quickly whisked away to her daughter Chelsea s apartment following her incident, passing more than one hospital on the way to recuperate. Did Hillary recover from her incident or was this rally faked to make it look like she did?Here is the first video of Hillary s Greensboro, NC rally that was causing viewers to ask what the heck are those cameras in Hillary s audience pointing at? If you look closely, it sure isn t Hillary!Watch this video first, and then the video below to get a closer analysis of what appears to be a phony rally for Hillary at https://twitter.com/WDFx2EU5/status/777263623915745280This stunning video takes the viewer through and shows step-by-step where the audience is faked:Here is the actual video from C-Span to prove nothing was doctored in the videos above. Holy moly! | 1real |
Kushner Omitted Meeting With Russians on Security Clearance Forms - The New York Times | When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s and senior adviser, sought the security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest. The omissions, which Mr. Kushner’s lawyer called an error, are particularly sensitive given the congressional and F. B. I. investigations into contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. The Senate Intelligence Committee informed the White House weeks ago that, as part of its inquiry, it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings he arranged with Mr. Kislyak, including the one with Sergey N. Gorkov, a graduate of Russia’s spy school who now heads Vnesheconombank. Mr. Kushner’s omissions were described by people with direct knowledge of them who asked for anonymity because the questionnaire is not a public document. While officials can lose access to intelligence, or worse, for failing to disclose foreign contacts, the forms are often amended to address lapses. Jamie Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, said that the questionnaire was submitted prematurely on Jan. 18, and that the next day, Mr. Kushner’s office told the F. B. I. that he would provide supplemental information. Mr. Kushner’s aides said he was compiling that material and would share it when the F. B. I. interviewed him. For now, they said, he has an interim security clearance. In a statement, Ms. Gorelick said that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the F. B. I.: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a for foreign officials trying to reach the . I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts. ” No names were disclosed in that correspondence. Applicants for major national security positions must submit a lengthy F. B. I. questionnaire as part of a background check. They are asked to list the dates and details of all contacts with representatives of foreign governments. This is not just bureaucratic paperwork. The form warns that “withholding, misrepresenting, or falsifying information” could result in loss of access to classified information, denial of eligibility for a sensitive job and even prosecution knowingly falsifying or concealing material facts is a federal felony that may result in fines or up to five years imprisonment. Clearance holders are often allowed to amend disclosure forms and avoid punishment if omissions are deemed oversights rather than deliberate falsifications, and prosecutions are rare. Mr. Kushner is the second top White House official to have problems concerning his dealings with foreign officials. Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, had his security clearance suspended and was fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the content of phone calls with the Russian ambassador during the transition. Last month, the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, confirmed to Congress that his agency was investigating Russia’s interference in the election and the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Vnesheconombank is a target of American sanctions imposed in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. It is controlled by members of President Vladimir V. Putin’s government, including Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, and has been used to bail out oligarchs favored by Mr. Putin and to fund pet projects like the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Mr. Kushner has said he did not discuss sanctions with Mr. Gorkov, the Russian banker. Mr. Gorkov declined to comment on the subject of whether sanctions were discussed. | 0fake |
Second phase of Brexit talks will be harder than first: EU's Juncker | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The second phase Brexit negotiations will be significantly harder than an already difficult first phase of talks, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Friday. The leaders of the 27 countries remaining in the European Union will give the go-ahead on Friday for the EU s chief negotiator Michel Barnier to begin talks with London on a transition period and future trade ties with Britain. I have extraordinary faith in the British Prime Minister. She has agreed with me and Mr Barnier that the withdrawal agreement will first be formalized and will be voted on and then we will see. The second phase will be significantly harder than the first and the first was very difficult, Juncker told reporters on arriving for the second day of the EU summit. | 0fake |
Tom Cotton Accepted $1 Million From Israel To Sabotage Iran Nuclear Deal | How much money does it take for a foreign nation to buy a United States Senator? Just ask Republican Tom Cotton.For a lousy $1 million paycheck, Israel hired Cotton to lead an effort to sabotage the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama Administration toiled for months to achieve.Bill Kristol s Emergency Committee for Israel donated to Cotton s senatorial campaign and not long after taking office, Cotton penned a letter signed by 47 of his colleagues to Iranian leaders in an attempt to get them to abandon the negotiations by warning that a Republican president will not honor any deal struck.His effort to sabotage important diplomatic negotiations even drew criticism from a former Army General who expressed disappointment because as a former veteran himself, Cotton should know better than to undermine the Commander-in-Chief.In July, Cotton continued his effort by comparing Secretary of State John Kerry and the Iran Deal to Pontius Pilate and the crucifixion of Jesus.Then Cotton openly made an oath to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip to Israel in which he pledged his allegiance to Israel and vowed to sabotage the Iran deal. Today s meeting only reaffirms my opposition to this deal, Cotton announced. I will stand with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel and work with my colleagues in Congress to stop this deal and to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself against Iran and its terrorist surrogates. And this perfectly illustrates how Israel got Republicans to turn against their own country, and is fitting since a recent NSA leak has revealed that Israel did, indeed, bribe GOP members of Congress to rail against the Iran deal.As Addicting Info reported last week,A U.S. intelligence official who was involved in managing the NSA intercepts said Israel s communications with Republicans included such questions as: How can we get your vote? What s it going to take? What further denial of treason can be made by either Republicans or Israel at this point?Clearly, Israel successfully bought their new puppets considering Republicans crusaded against the deal for months. And the fact that America s broken campaign finance laws gave Israel the secret opportunity to donate to campaigns like Cotton s only makes Republican and Israeli treachery all the more credible.Cotton got a million dollars for his campaign from an Israel Super PAC and then went to work for his Israeli overlords to sabotage American foreign policy.Sometimes, it really is that simple.Featured Image: Gage Skidmore (flickr) | 1real |
Romania senate backs bill seen in West as threat to judiciary | BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania s senate approved on Wednesday part of a judicial overhaul criticized by the European Commission, the United States and the country s own president as a threat to judicial independence. The bill passed by the assembly is one of three that have triggered street protests across the country, a European Union state ranked as one of the bloc s most corrupt, and drawn opposition from thousands of magistrates. The three bills jointly limit magistrates independence and set up a special unit to probe crimes committed by magistrates. This makes magistrates the only professional category with a prosecuting unit dedicated to investigating them. The proposed changes mean the country is joining its eastern European peers Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders are also trying to control the judiciary, in defying EU concerns over the rule of law. Lawmakers approved another bill on Tuesday, amending the definition of prosecutor s activity to exclude the word independent . A third bill is widely expected to be approved on Thursday. The Commission launched an unprecedented action on Poland on Wednesday, calling on other member states to prepare to sanction Warsaw if it fails to reverse judicial reforms it says pose a threat to democracy. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said there were obvious risks that the Commission could do the same in Romania s case if the legal changes take hold. If someone imagines there will not be consequences, then they are from the moon, Iohannis told reporters. There will be consequences, the magnitude depends on the laws final form. It could be months before the bills are enforced. Opposition parties plan to challenge them in the Constitutional Court. The president could do the same, as well as send them back to parliament for re-examination, something he can do only once. He could also trigger a country-wide referendum on continuing the fight against corruption. Romania s ruling Social Democrats, which command an overwhelming majority in parliament together with their junior coalition partner, ALDE, have so far ignored the warnings. They are also working on changes to the criminal code that critics say will derail law and order. The country s prosecutor general, chief anti-corruption prosecutor and the head of the anti-organized crime unit have all criticized the proposed changes which they said will not only end the anti-graft fight but endanger general safety. Hundreds of magistrates protested in silence this week, lining the steps of courthouses across the country. Romania s anti-corruption prosecution unit has sent 72 members of parliament to trial since 2006. The speakers of parliament s lower house and senate are both currently on trial in separate cases. | 0fake |
Millennials Just Aren't That Into Hillary Clinton, and it Could Cost Her the Election | A number of new polls show Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson doing very well with millennials and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton underperforming with the same demographic that helped President Obama build winning coalitions in 2008 and 2012.
A New York Times/CBS poll shows 26 percent of voters under the age of 29 supporting Johnson and a further 10 percent supporting Green presidential nominee Jill Stein. Similarly, a Quinnipiac poll shows Johnson at 29 percent of young voters, and Stein at 15. In that poll, Clinton barely edges out Johnson among young voters, getting 31 percent. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is at 26 percent among that demographic in the poll. Further, a Global Strategy Group poll of millennials in 11 battleground states found 73 percent of millennials saying that Trump was a racist, and just 38 percent supporting Clinton in a 4-way matchup.
The results have yielded unsurprising hand-wringing from older liberals who feel the vote of millennials belongs to them. Clara Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, tweeted that she has "never hated millennials more" in response to the NYT/CBS poll, which earned refreshing responses from millennials. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, meanwhile, quips that it looked "like 'liberaltarianism' is a real thing" and that Donald Trump was "very glad" of it.
While Republicans have a few politicians who could be called 'liberaltarian' (two former Republican governors who might be called that are on the Libertarian Party ticket, after all), Trump is not. In a tight race, those votes could be crucial, and Trump has nothing to offer them. Not something to be glad about. The same goes for Democrats, whose nominee has nothing to offer a demographic that has increasingly become more libertarian-friendly.
A Reason-Rupe poll of millennials in 2014 found 66 percent of them believing government was wasteful and inefficient even as many said they planned to vote Democrat in that year and in 2016. The drop off in support for Democrats is unsurprising, given that the rhetoric about government that Democrats deploy does not match the reality on the ground. That reality was bound to catch up with millennials who, even when they are fans of government, give authority the side eye. Many of the responses to Jeffrey's tweets encouraged her sarcastically to keep alienating millennials if she wanted Clinton to win.
The narrative of the older generation of liberals is that Donald Trump is so bad, voters have to hold their nose and vote for Clinton. The option alone of a third party vote is skewered online, mostly by establishment liberals who have increasingly come to represent the poor policy making that has led to a mammoth-sized debt and veritable police state in the U.S. and U.S. warfare state abroad. Donald Trump does not "scare" millennials as much as the mess older voters have made of the country. Clinton's courting of neo-conservatives and figures like Henry Kissinger only serves to alienate millennials more. Johnson's refusal to play political games, like powering through a question about Aleppo without knowing what it's in reference to, while it makes him an easy target for the media establishment to mock, likely ingratiates him to millennials who see both Trump and Clinton as products of a corrupt political system their parents' generation has glorified.
Clinton and President Obama's decision to call Trump a break from Republican tradition instead of the inevitable evolution of it, as more dishonest partisans might frame it, has also placed Johnson and the Libertarian Party in a better position. Millennials are used to start-ups. They are early adopters whose behaviors and decisions are helping drive old giants of industry out of business, from Blockbuster to taxicabs. The latest polls suggest they have the potential to disrupt the political industry in this country in the same way they've disrupted so many others. All the fearmongering over Trump, the cries of false equivalency, and the attempts by millennial "influencers" like Vox.com to frame the Clinton campaign as something transformative millennials ought to get behind, won't bring millennials to heel in the way major parties were able to in days gone by. Neither will false alarms about "spoilers" (spoiler: third parties aren't spoilers, shitty candidates are).
The persistence of never Trump Republicans (even if they don't go for Johnson), combined with Obama and Clinton's refusal (as of yet) to smear the principles of limited government, freedom, and Constitutionalism with Trumpism because of Republicans' history of running on those principles while never acting on them, and the Libertarian party's decision to nominate socially tolerant and fiscally responsible candidates (as many millennials describe themselves) means millennials have the chance to catapult the Libertarian party into major party status, if not through this election cycle alone, almost certainly in cycles to come. Both millennials and Libertarians should expect the smears and attacks to become more vociferous and detached from reality as the old establishment partisan order slowly but surely comes to an end. | 0fake |
Moment in Convention Glare Shakes Up Khans’ American Life - The New York Times | Six minutes and one second. That was all it took for the 66 years of Khizr Khan’s life to become an American moment. It was not something that he could have anticipated. For years, he and his wife, Ghazala, had lived a rather quiet existence of common obscurity in Charlottesville, Va. He was known in circles that dealt with electronic discovery in legal proceedings. Another overlapping sphere was the rotating cast of cadets that passed through the Army R. O. T. C. program at the University of Virginia. His wife was a welcoming face to the customers of a local fabric store. And the last dozen years for the Khans were darkened by their heartbreak over the death of a military son, Humayun, whose body lies in Arlington National Cemetery, his tombstone adorned with an Islamic crescent. Their grief brought them closer to a university and to a young woman in Germany whom their son loved. It also gave them a conviction and expanded the borders of their lives. Some of their neighbors knew Mr. Khan liked to carry a $1 pocket Constitution around with him. In the Khan home, a stack of them always lay at the ready. Guests showed up and they were handed one, in the way other hosts might distribute a party favor. Mr. Khan wanted it to stimulate a conversation about liberty, a cherished topic of his. He liked to point out that he lives nearly in the shadow of Monticello, home of one of his heroes, Thomas Jefferson. Mrs. Khan liked to say, “We need Thomas Jefferson. ” And then the Khans stepped into a sports arena in Philadelphia and left as household names. In a passionate speech at the Democratic National Convention, the bespectacled Mr. Khan stingingly criticized Donald J. Trump and his stance on Muslim immigration, scolding him, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one. ” Quickly enough, both Khans felt the verbal lashings of Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. And just like that, they found themselves a pivot point in the twisting drama that is American politics. This is another moment in the lives of Khizr and Ghazala Khan. In 1972, he was studying law at the University of the Punjab in Lahore, the largest public university in his native Pakistan. He was intrigued by Persian literature. Learning of a Persian book reading, he went. Ghazala was the host. He was raised in Gujranwala in Punjab Province, the oldest of 10 children. His parents had a poultry farm. “My life was very ordinary,” he said in an interview this week. “There was nothing special. I grew up as every other Pakistani. No extra events took place during my lifetime, and we were modest people. ” But, he said, he had the ambition “to keep moving forward. ” The university reading was one thing, but what enchanted him was the host. She was from Faisalabad and was studying the Persian language. He engaged in some decorous maneuvering and decided that she was the woman he wanted to marry. He enlisted the help of his parents, who reached out to her parents. Then the real courtship began. In 1973, he graduated from law school and he was licensed with the Punjab bar in 1974. Already, his goal was to move to the United States. “Everybody’s dreams come true if you are able to study and complete higher education abroad,” he said. “That’s the plan we grew up with: that it makes your future better if you have a postgraduate degree from overseas, England or United States. ” But he did not have enough money. And so after the Khans were married, they moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. For three years, Mr. Khan worked for an American oil field company as the lawyer who handled the affairs of the expatriate workers. Their first two sons were born, Shaharyar and Humayun. In 1980, the Khans came to the United States. First, they went to Houston to save up more money. The four of them squeezed into a $ apartment. Once he had the savings, he enrolled at Harvard Law School. He graduated in 1986 with a master of laws degree and became a citizen, as did his wife. They moved to Silver Spring, Md. and he found work reviewing mortgage documents. It was not his dream job, but a third son, Omer, had been born. Mouths had to be fed. In time, he moved on to several large law firms, where he specialized in the emerging area of electronic discovery. It involved finding information that was stored electronically to answer discovery requests from opposing sides in lawsuits. Robert Eisenberg, a consultant who is a pioneer of the field, came to know Mr. Khan well and found him highly proficient at his work and immensely likable. “There is an gentility about him,” he said. “He has this veneer of formality. But under it is kindness. ” And so the Khans settled in, and they became an American life. There are different vantages from which to understand the Khans’ middle son, Humayun, and one of them is through Amir Ali Guerami. He was born in Iran and he happened to come to the Maryland middle school that Humayun attended. There were few Muslims, and that made Mr. Guerami different. And he was very overweight. He was taunted and beaten up. His middle name was Patrick. As he walked down the school hallways, bullies would bellow, “Fat Rick. ” And Humayun would hear this and step in. He would walk alongside him, a sentry staring the bullies down, deflecting them. And he intervened when Mr. Guerami was being roughed up outside the library. When he was punched in the throat in gym class and could not breathe. This cemented a friendship that continued throughout high school. Humayun was Mr. Guerami’s defender and his motivator. He urged him to exercise and to diet. And after his sophomore year, Mr. Guerami was 60 pounds lighter. As a high school student, Humayun swam and played basketball, and he taught swimming to children with disabilities. In his middle son, Mr. Khan saw the traits of his mother — farsighted and “much more balanced in her thinking and gestures. ” “I’m a little more emotional and shortsighted,” Mr. Khan said. Mr. Guerami saw this, too. “You always knew he had a plan,” Mr. Guerami said. “He wasn’t just stumbling through life like the rest of us. He was planning college from Day 1. ” They lost contact after high school. Mr. Guerami now lives in California and owns a mortgage company. He was watching the Democratic convention when the video came on about Captain Khan. And that was when Mr. Guerami learned that he had been an R. O. T. C. cadet at the University of Virginia and had joined the Army and had gone to Iraq and become a hero. That his life was frozen at age 27. The memories returned. “He had an impact on my life,” he said. “You read about kids being bullied in school and then their hurting themselves. He owed me nothing, a complete stranger. Yet he stood up for me. He was a savior. ” A German woman named Irene Auer sat down in a cafe in the Bavarian town of Amberg, and a man approached her. This was another moment in the life of Humayun Khan. He was stationed in the barracks at nearby Vilseck. This was 2002. She liked his manner, and she especially liked his English. ”There were many who spoke English very badly, or with a lot of slang, but not him,” she said. “He spoke beautiful English and had a very beautiful voice. ” They started dating. In time, she began studying international management but stayed with him in his apartment off base on weekends. His mother went to Germany in 2003, and the two became acquainted. In September 2003, Ms. Auer flew with Captain Khan to the United States to meet his father. This was serious stuff. Captain Khan loved to have a good debate with Ms. Auer, her family and her friends. One of his favorite topics was the meaning of life. As it happens, she opposed the war in Iraq. But he accepted his duty and was proud to be a soldier. “Once he even said to me, ‘You know that I am married,’ ” she said. “I asked him, ‘What do you mean you’re married?’ and he told me, ‘Yes, I am married to the U. S. Army.’ ” On Feb. 9, 2004, he left for Iraq. They planned to get married the following year and eventually settle in the United States. His intention was to go to law school. In one of the last emails she received from him, he told her to go pick out an engagement ring. It was his day off but he was not much for days off. He was the commander of the Force Protection Team of the 201st Forward Support Battalion, First Infantry Division, at Camp Warhorse in Diyala Province, Iraq. Sgt. Crystal Selby, one of the team’s drivers, went to pick him up that morning. June 8, 2004. He said he wanted to check the compound’s gate. On a day off? She told him to stay in his room. He was her boss. She could not order him to, and he got in. It was funny how she had known Captain Khan only a couple of months and yet it seemed like she had known him so much longer. It was the way he treated her and all of the soldiers. “He didn’t talk to you like he was in charge of you, but like a friend,” she said. “He taught you how to be better. Not better tanker or better fueler. Better human being. ” He made sandwiches for his soldiers when there was no time to get to lunch. He had such an easy sense of humor. “I read where someone called him a soldier’s officer,” she said. “To me, he was a human’s human. ” The drive took three or four minutes. She dropped him off outside the gate and headed to the office. An taxi carrying two suicide bombers was creeping toward the gate. Captain Khan shouted for his men to hit the dirt. That may well have saved their lives. He moved toward the taxi, trying to halt it. Sergeant Selby was still in the truck, not even to the office, when she heard the explosion. When she arrived, the news of his death was already on the radio. The Army R. O. T. C. center at the University of Virginia is on the first floor of the Astronomy Building. The program is not large — a typical Army cadet class commissions 10 to 20 people. When you walk into the offices, it is the first room on the left. The Khan Room. There are several pictures of Captain Khan. Clippings about him. One of his uniforms. A letter of condolence from the Seven Society, one of the university’s secret societies. Memorial plaques. The piece he wrote for his commissioning. It is where who he was endures. It is a functional space, serving as a conference room, a place where prospective cadets might get interviewed or meetings held. When it is empty, cadets use it to study for exams. A few months after their son’s death, the Khans moved to Charlottesville, where their other two sons were living, so they could try to recover as a family. Shaharyar, their oldest son, a biotech firm that Omer, their youngest son, works at. The Army R. O. T. C. program became a part of their restoration. Tim Leroux, who was the commander from 2009 to 2012 and retired a lieutenant colonel, saw them as the “mom and pop of the department. ” It became one of their rocks. They attended all its formal events. At the annual commissioning ceremony, Mr. Khan always spoke. When the cadets took the oath, he told them, they needed to think hard about their pledge to defend the Constitution, to reflect on what they were pledging to defend, because his son died for that document. And he would give each graduate one of his pocket Constitutions. Then there would be an award presented, the Khan award, that went to that year’s outstanding . “For years, I’ve been telling people he’s the most patriotic person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met quite a few,” Mr. Leroux said of Mr. Khan. “There are people who will put on cutoffs of the American flag and say they’re patriotic. Or they’ll put on bumper stickers — America, Love It or Leave It — and say they’re patriotic. He has a much more profound idea of being patriotic. It’s a complete understanding of what liberty and democracy mean. ” Mrs. Khan came to these commissioning ceremonies, too. They were hard for her. Her grief over her son’s death reached deep. One day not long after moving to Charlottesville, she stopped at a local fabric store, Les Fabriques. She makes her own clothing and needed fabric. Carla Quenneville, the store’s owner, waited on her. Mrs. Khan told her the story of her son’s death. “She said she came in because she was so depressed and she said, ‘I have to get off my couch and stop crying,’ ” Ms. Quenneville said. “She had cried for a solid year. And we cried together that day. ” Ms. Quenneville wanted to bring sun back into her life. She told her, if she wished, she could spend time in the store, help out if she wanted. And so she did. Pretty much every Monday, she began showing up and assisting customers, giving them tips on the sewing machines that the store sold. Since she prayed five times a day, she sometimes used a back room to pray. The fabric store helped her mend her own life. The sorrow, though, persists. “A new staff person comes on, she tells the story of her son,” Ms. Quenneville said. “And she cries. She can’t get through this. ” There was other healing to be done in the circle of their son’s life. When Ms. Auer, the woman Captain Khan planned to marry, came to his funeral, Mrs. Khan presented her with his favorite quilt. She asked her to return it when she got married, so they would know she was happy again. Two years later, Ms. Auer was still adrift. The Khans invited her to stay with them, and she did, from May until August 2006. “They said to me, come, we need you here by us,” she said. After returning to Germany, she met a man who became her husband. They have two daughters. She realizes she should return that quilt. It was important to the Khans to know the R. O. T. C. cadets, really know them, and so they began the ritual of the dinners at their house. There would be one dinner each year for the freshmen cadets and one for the seniors. A front room was filled with mementos and objects no parent ever wants — the letter of condolence from President George W. Bush, the American flag that had covered the coffin. Often, the Khans would show the cadets the room for them to understand the magnitude of the step they were taking. “The Khans didn’t become bitter when they lost their son or become angry with the military,” said Joe Riley, a cadet who graduated in 2013. “The exact opposite. They showed tremendous pride in us. ” He remembered how Mr. Khan pulled him aside and told him how he felt blessed to be in this country and how much he admired the American military. The focus at these dinners would swivel to the cadets — who they were, why they wanted to join the Army, what future they envisioned. As they shared, Mrs. Khan, always the R. O. T. C. mom, would remind them to eat their vegetables. At one dinner, he told of how he had pictures of himself as a boy wearing an Army uniform and digging tiny foxholes on the farm he lived on in Tennessee. As he got older, he just felt it was the correct thing to do, the only thing to do. He said he felt that if you live in your country and enjoy its wonders, you should give back. For him, the Army was the way to fulfill that obligation. His parents had a different view. When they learned of his plans, they did not speak to him for eight weeks. And, oh, how the Khans loved hearing this conviction in a young man, this resolute belief in guarding American democracy. In 2011, Joe Riley won the Khan Award. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar and is now stationed in Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash. an Army lieutenant. Everything had happened in the space of a week, and it was so much. The Khans were on “Meet the Press” and “State of the Union” and “PBS NewsHour,” some dozen news shows in all, fresh arrivals in the political process. All from the dominoes of chance. Months ago, Mr. Khan was quoted in an article in Vocativ, an online publication, criticizing Mr. Trump’s position on Muslims. When asked about Muslim extremism in the United States, he recounted a conversation with his older son about the need to root out “traitors” among them. Seeing the article, campaign officials for Hillary Clinton wanted to put his son in a video to be shown at the convention, and then asked the Khans if they wished to say a few words. And now all this. Mr. Khan was on “Anderson Cooper 360” this week, and he seemed spent. He said they would not become silent but they were withdrawing. “I will continue to remind you what your behavior for the whole year had been,” he said addressing Mr. Trump. “I am not going to continue to appear on television. It is really disturbing because it is emotionally disturbing. It is disturbing. ” He told The Times this week that he was exhausted from talking to reporters and that it was harming his health. In recent years, he had gone out on his own as a legal consultant. A few days ago, he took down the website promoting his law work. He said that he was getting hateful messages and that he was worried about it being hacked. Insinuations were being made, that he was involved in shady immigration cases. He said he has had no clients come to him for that sort of work. He said he did commercial law, especially electronic discovery work. The Khans had been one sort of family and now they are another. In the way that it can happen in modern society, they have become public figures. They were put up in Washington hotels for their TV appearances. People floated up to them on the street. Took selfies with them. They wanted to be themselves again, mingle with cadets and talk about sewing at the fabric store. A few days ago, done with a round of interviews in Washington, they stopped at Arlington National Cemetery to visit the grave of their son. Then they went home. | 0fake |
Truck Terror Attack in Jerusalem Follows Mounting International Pressure on Israel | TEL AVIV — The timing of today’s deadly terrorist attack in Jerusalem may be instructive. [The attack, carried out in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv, also known as Eastern Talpiot, comes less than three weeks after the United Nations Security Council declared eastern Jerusalem to be “occupied Palestinian territory. ” It follows Secretary of State John Kerry’s Mideast policy speech in which he largely blamed Israel for the absence of negotiations (while the Palestinians have refused multiple statehood offers as well as attempts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to jumpstart talks) and he repeatedly slammed Israeli settlement construction, including in eastern Jerusalem. Notably, the State Department’s condemnation of today’s attack referred to the location of the terrorist onslaught as “Jerusalem” instead of “East Jerusalem. ” Today’s eastern Jerusalem truck terror comes one week before the Palestinians are scheduled to attend a farcical Paris “peace” conference at which the international community, minus Israel, is slated to get together to set the future parameters of a Palestinian state. Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely was right to link today’s carnage to the Paris summit. “The world has received a clear answer from the Palestinians to the peace conference coming up in Paris: More terror,” Hotovely said. “I again call on the international community to demand an end to terror and the industry of education toward it. ” The Palestinians have a long and sordid history of responding to peace talks or international pressure on Israel with a terror campaign targeting Israelis. Arch Terrorist Yasser Arafat personified that tactic when he responded to generous Israeli statehood offers in September 2000 by launching the deadly Second Intifada instead of accepting a Palestinian state or even making a counter offer. Within less than hours of last month’s UN resolution, I noticed an immediate uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks targeting Jews in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, the very areas where Israeli construction was singled out in the UN document. I wrote at the time it was too early to tell whether the violence represented a spike in Palestinian terrorism following the UN vote or whether the incidents were part of the trend known as the Palestinian wave of terror that seems to escalate and then slow down. With today’s truck terror, we may be more clearly seeing the Palestinian response to the mounting international pressure on Israel. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. | 0fake |
Ted Cruz Has ‘Religious Liberty’ Exactly Wrong, His Response To Georgia Veto Is Cringeworthy | There are a lot of people in the United States who simply do not understand the meaning of religious liberty. Having religious freedom is not the freedom to be discriminatory against others based upon your faith, it is the freedom to worship how you like on your own time. The First Amendment was very clear in its intent of separation church and state with the Establishment Clause. There is no national religion, there is no religious test, and having a faith is not required.However, there are those who still like to skew not only the Constitution to their liking, but also the Bible to their favor. Folks like Senator Ted Cruz who will pick and choose which laws suit their fancy and which Bible verses they want to hold near and dear to their hearts to throw in people s faces when they want to be bigoted jerks.When it comes to religious liberty in the state of Georgia, the state s legislature passed a bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse to serve or hire base upon sexual orientation. However, noticing that such a law is not only bigoted, but would also be harmful to the state economy as many businesses were threatening to leave, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal made the smart choice to veto the bill.Governor Deal had it exactly right when he said: I do not think that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia. But Senator Ted Cruz used his skewed and biased point of view based upon his own understanding of things, and had this to say regarding the veto: I thought that was very disappointing to see Governor Deal in Georgia side with leftist activists and side against religious liberty. It wasn t too long ago that religious liberty enjoyed bipartisan support. The modern Democratic party has determined religious faith is inconsistent with its political objectives. I think that s shameful. The only people using their supposed faith and point of views for political objectives are people like Ted Cruz. Legalized discrimination doesn t become less discriminatory when you call it religious liberty. It s still unconstitutional and it s still wildly un-American.If Cruz wants to call those who follow the Constitution and abide by the 1st and 14th Amendment leftist activists, well, then so be it. I guess the framers of the Constitution were also leftist activists then.Ted Cruz is angry that Georgia's governor vetoed an anti-gay bill https://t.co/jbD6C0pcMv NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 28, 2016Featured Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images | 1real |
BREAKING: Muslim Shot Dead In Paris After Rushing Police HQ With Knife, Was Living In German Refugee Shelter | But of course Oh the humanity The attacker was wearing a fake explosives vest and shouted Allah Akbar God is Great during the terrifying incident before he was shot dead.German police revealed they had raided an apartment at an asylum centre in the western city of Recklinghausen claiming it had been occupied by the attacker.Officers said they were acting on concrete evidence obtained from French security authorities.They said the results of the search are still being evaluated with their French counterparts and there is no evidence of further possible attacks being planned.Police said they would not release any further information at the moment to avoid jeopardising the ongoing investigation.French investigators are still trying to determine the true identity of the man originally identified as Sallah Ali who was carrying a butcher knife as he tried to storm the station last Thursday.Paris prosecutor Francois Molins confirmed the attacker was carrying a piece of paper that pledged allegiance to the leader of evil ISIS also known as Daesh and said his act is linked to the deaths in Syria He also had a phone with a German SIM card, the prosecutor said.He said: A mobile phone and a piece of paper, on which appear the Daesh flag and a clear written claim in Arabic, were found on the individual. Alexis Mukenge, who saw the shooting from inside another building, told the network iTele that police told the man, Stop. Move back. Mukenge said officers fired twice and the man immediately dropped to the ground.A police official said Ali shouted Allahu Akbar and had wires protruding from his clothes. That s why the police officer opened fire. The chilling attack occurred on the one-year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre where 12 people were killed at the satirical newspaper s office by jihadi gunmen. Via: Express UK | 1real |
U.N. team to collect evidence of Islamic State crimes in Iraq | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council on Thursday approved the creation of a U.N. investigative team to collect, preserve and store evidence in Iraq of acts by Islamic State that may be war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. The 15-member council unanimously adopted a British-drafted resolution, after a year of negotiations with Iraq, that asks Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to establish a team to support domestic efforts to hold the militants accountable. British Minister of State for the Middle East Alistair Burt said Britain would provide some $1.3 million to help establish the team. There can never be adequate recompense for those who were forced to endure the wanton brutality of (Islamic State) and the dead will not be brought back, but this resolution means that the international community is united in our belief that there should, at least, be accountability, Burt told the council. Use of the evidence collected by the team in other venues, such as international courts, would be determined in agreement with the Government of Iraq on a case-by-case basis. Evidence is for primary use by Iraqi authorities, followed by competent national-level courts, according to the resolution. Thousands of foreigners have fought with Islamic State and some are already being prosecuted when they return home. U.N. experts said in June last year that Islamic State was committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the minority religious community through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes. International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Nadia Murad, a young Yazidi woman who was enslaved and raped by Islamic State fighters in Mosul, have long pushed Iraq to allow U.N. investigators to help. Clooney and Murad, who were both in the Security Council for Thursday s vote, described the resolution as a milestone in the fight for justice. Nadia and I exchanged a warm smile when we saw the 15 hands go up in the chamber, Clooney told Reuters. It s been a long time coming; in the meantime, evidence has been lost and we ve lost some opportunities along the way, but the fact that we have this resolution now means that justice is finally possible, she said. Murad said she was very happy the council had acted. The Security Council met during the annual gathering of world leaders for the U.N. General Assembly. We look ahead to the next steps and it s really the next steps that will define whether this piece of paper we acquired today will become real justice on the ground for Yazidis and other victims of ISIS, Clooney said. Iraq s foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari officially requested international help in a letter to the Security Council last month. The council could have established an inquiry without Iraq s consent, but Britain wanted Iraq s approval. Islamic State s self-proclaimed caliphate effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces completed the recapture of Mosul, the militants capital in northern Iraq, after a nine-month campaign. | 0fake |
Eyes on Odinga as Kenya election board CEO takes leave before vote | NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya s opposition leader Raila Odinga, who says he will boycott a presidential election re-run due next week, said on Friday he would announce a way forward the day before the scheduled poll, raising the possibility he might participate after all. At a memorial in western Kenya for opposition supporters killed in protests against the vote set for Oct. 26, Odinga told his supporters not to attack innocent people including people who support his rival President Uhuru Kenyatta. He did not comment on an announcement by the electoral board chief executive Ezra Chiloba earlier on Friday that he would take three weeks leave. Kenya is holding the re-run after the Supreme Court threw out the result of an Aug. 8 election won by the incumbent Kenyatta but disputed by the challenger Odinga. The opposition leader has refused to participate in the re-run, arguing that reforms were needed first to prevent fraud. The opposition has demanded Chiloba resign, and the announcement that he will not participate in running the vote suggests progress in behind-the-scenes negotiations involving Western diplomats and religious and civil society leaders. Uncertainty over whether Odinga will participate in the election and concerns that it may not proceed peacefully have left Kenya, a traditionally stable Western ally in an often chaotic region, mired in political crisis. The volatile build-up to the Oct. 26 vote has revived memories for Kenyans of ethnically charged violence that killed around 1,200 people after a disputed election in 2007, when Odinga also lost and disputed the result. Chiloba told Reuters that, in light of the opposition s demands, he was going on leave, and that all arrangements for next week s vote were in place. At least 45 people died nationwide in a police crackdown on opposition supporters after the August vote, including a six-month old baby struck on the head by a police baton. With Odinga yet to respond to Chiloba s decision to go on leave, diplomats said they were unsure what would happen next. The crystal ball is very cloudy at the moment, a senior western diplomat in Nairobi told Reuters. The situation is changing by the hour. The electoral board has said next week s election will go ahead. Odinga met its chairman Wafula Chebukati on Thursday and later told reporters that if there were serious consultations and serious reforms, the opposition could review its boycott. Chebukati had said a day earlier that he could not guarantee the election would be free and fair, citing interference from politicians and threats of violence against colleagues. A fellow board member resigned this week after fleeing to the United States, saying she feared for her life. The opposition has held near-daily protests demanding electoral reforms and the sacking of board officials. Police said on Friday four people were killed as a result of their interventions to stop demonstrations. Kenyatta has meanwhile urged Kenyans to come out in large numbers to vote, insisting the ballot be held. On Thursday, he snubbed an invitation to meet Chebukati, saying he would instead spend the time campaigning. In a speech in Nairobi on Friday, Kenyatta said the election must not divide the nation or push it to the brink. Disruptions of the vote by those who thrive in chaos and relish anarchy would not be tolerated, and security forces have been enhanced and appropriately deployed to maintain law and order , he said. | 0fake |
U.S. and Britain begin dialogue on post-Brexit farm deal | LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue met with British politicians on Thursday as the two countries eye the potential for increased farm trade once Britain leaves the European Union. Perdue talked to members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee (EFRA) in the House of Commons and is due to meet his British counterpart Michael Gove on Friday. Britain is still part of the EU and we have to be respectful of that relationship but that doesn t preclude the fact we can begin the conversations on what would be in our best interests as two sovereign nations to pursue going forward, Perdue told reporters after the meeting. There have been concerns in Britain about differing food safety standards with historic practices in the United States such as washing chicken carcasses in chlorine banned in the EU. I think that is one of the things I m here to dispel. We don t process chicken with chlorine any longer, he said, adding he wanted British consumers to be able to make decisions based on sound science and facts, not perception or myth. Committee members raised the importance of maintaining food standards in any trade deal. We must ensure that a trade deal protects UK consumers and maintains a level playing field for our own producers. Food safety and animal welfare standards must upheld in any future Free Trade Agreement, EFRA chair Neil Parish said. Perdue said would be premature to go into too much detail on future trade potential but added there might be scope for increased UK exports of lamb. We think probably the UK is ahead of us in lamb and sheep production. There is big demand to have access to the U.S. market in those products, he said. Parish said the domestic U.S. market presented significant opportunities for the UK food and farming industry and following Brexit the government should focus on securing a great bilateral trade deal with our U.S. partners. | 0fake |
George Soros-Financed Groups Scheme to Stop Trump’s Temporary Refugee Halt Order - Breitbart | TEL AVIV — Immigration lawyers from groups financed by billionaire George Soros, a champion of open border policies, were signatories to a lawsuit filed Saturday to block President Donald Trump’s executive order halting visas for 90 days for “immigrants and ” from Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Iran, and Iraq. [The executive order further suspended the entry of all refugees for 120 days, indefinitely blocks Syrian refugees from entering and lowers the ceiling to 50, 000 for refugees allowed to enter the U. S. during Fiscal Year 2017 . The New York Times first reported on the lawsuit: At least one case quickly prompted a legal challenge as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy International Airport in New York filed a motion early Saturday seeking to have their clients released. They also filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and other immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry. The suit was filed by lawyers from the International Refugee Assistance Project, the National Immigration Law Center, the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (formerly Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project) at the Urban Justice Center. The ACLU is massively funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundations, including with a $50 million grant in 2014. The National Immigration Law Center has received numerous Open Society grants earmarked for general support. The Urban Justice Center is also the recipient of an Open Society grant. Taryn Higashi, executive director of the Center’s International Refugee Assistance Project, which is listed on the Trump lawsuit, currently serves on the Advisory Board of the International Migration Initiative of Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Over the last decade, Soros has reportedly provided some $76 million for immigrant issues. In 2014, the New York Times credited “immigrant rights groups” financed by Soros and a handful of other donors for influencing President Obama’s immigration policy. The newspaper reported: When President Obama announces major changes to the nation’s immigration enforcement system as early as next week, his decision will partly be a result of a yearslong campaign of pressure by immigrant rights groups, which have grown from a cluster of lobbying organizations into a national force. A vital part of that expansion has involved money: major donations from some of the nation’s wealthiest liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Open Society Foundations of the financier George Soros, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. Over the past decade those donors have invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally. In August, Breitbart Jerusalem first reported hacked documents from Soros’s Open Society Institute boasted that the billionaire and his foundation helped to successfully press the Obama administration into increasing to 100, 000 the total number of refugees taken in by the U. S. annually. The documents revealed that the billionaire personally sent President Obama a letter on the issue of accepting refugees. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With research by Brenda J. Elliott. | 0fake |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.