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Boehner's big week | Top Dems want White House to call off Part B demo — The next cancer drug shortage | 0fake |
Bigoted Cops Shove Lesbian Out Of Women’s Bathroom Because She Looks Like A Man (VIDEO) | The hopes and dreams of millions of bigots finally came true when three cops on a power trip confronted a lesbian in a public restroom and shoved her outside. Why? Because they thought she was a guy.In a video titled Lesbian harassed and forced to leave a public restroom because the police insist she s a man, three officers, two males and a female, can be seen in a public women s restroom telling a woman referred to her friends as a dyke that she has to leave. This is despite the fact that several of her friends are standing right there telling the cops that she is, in fact, a girl.Now to be fair to the cops, the woman in question didn t have ID and was dressed like a guy because women NEVER do that in America. Completely unheard of. And, even worse, she was fairly flat chested and that s something else that s simply inconceivable. Everyone knows that woman always have curves so you can identify them as chicks. So, clearly, there was absolutely no WAY the cops could know whether or not this was a woman.Other than, you know, the woman and her friends saying that she was. But since when do whiny civilians know better than the police? Frankly, I m surprised they didn t force her to drop her pants to prove it.Here s the disturbing video:This is exactly the kind of prejudice Republicans have been hoping to inspire with their Bathroom Laws. They know that people only need the thinnest of justifications to vent their hate and we see here the result. As far as I m concerned, the cops knew damn well that she wasn t a man or they would have arrested her. That they didn t even threaten it tells me that bullying was the intent and nothing else. Again, exactly what Republicans wanted.The right has lost the culture war against the LGBT community and what we re witnessing now is the last desperate attempts by bigots to turn back the clock to better times. I hope this woman sues the crap out of the police for violating her civil rights and they all lose their jobs. We have enough power tripping assholes on the streets as it is.Featured image via screencap | 1real |
Mississippi Senate OKs Bill Giving Church Members License To Kill Perceived Threats | Mississippi Republicans are taking a shoot first, ask questions later approach to preventing potential church violence with a bill that amounts to legalizing religious security squads tasked with killing perceived threats. This week, the state s Republican-led senate passed the so-called Mississippi Church Protection Act which would militarize the state s churches while also walking back gun regulations and stripping away oversight.The bill would allow churches to create security programs and designate and train members to carry concealed weapons. It would provide criminal and legal protections to those serving as church security.The bill also would allow concealed carry in a holster without a permit in Mississippi, expanding a measure passed last year that allowed concealed carry without a permit in a purse, satchel or briefcase, and another recent law that allows open carry in public.The bill also seeks to prohibit Mississippi officials from enforcing any federal agency regulations or executive orders that would violate the state constitution an attempt to federal gun restrictions not passed by Congress.Mississippi church goers will now get to assign church members as security which can carry concealed weapons without permits and are protected from legal liability if their actions result in death based on a designation of justifiable homicide the same legal standing that we afford police officers on duty.@pourmecoffee It passed pic.twitter.com/H8WvOdHFA4 pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) March 30, 2016What could go wrong?Much of this baffling new legislation is in direct response to NRA lobbying directives to erode existing gun laws in order to create a polite society of heavily-armed citizens. Exploiting tragedy (and ignoring irony) the NRA has used recent mass shootings to push for more guns, not less. The narrative goes that if only churches would have access to firearms, shootings like the one in Charleston, South Carolina, could be prevented.The premise, as tempting as it sounds for would-be vigilantes, has been thoroughly debunked both in theory and in practice. Data suggests that as the number of guns increase, the risk of someone being shot by those guns also increases. Places with a lot of good guys with guns tend to have higher incidences of gun injuries. Go figure. At the same time, anecdotal evidence supports these warnings as well. We ve seen that guns in churches often lead to disastrous accidents, while at the same time not once stopping a mass shooting in a house of worship.With the removal of even permit requirements, Mississippi is planning on handing over the power of life and death to a bunch of untrained, untested amateurs who won t even have the risk of prosecution keeping their index finger off the trigger. A militarized church security unit assigned by the church, trained by the church, and meant to protect the church by any means necessary. If Mississippi legislators can t see the inherent danger in this as the bill heads to the House of Representatives to be finalized, then we are in a lot of trouble.Featured image via George Frey/Getty Images | 1real |
BREAKING: OBAMA JUST RELEASED GITMO Prisoner Who Said He Would “Kill Americans” If He Was Released [VIDEO] | // <![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); // ]]>Gitmo detainee, who said he would kill Americans if he was released, has just been freed Posted by Fox & Friends on Tuesday, 12 January 2016Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) eviscerates Obama and his regime for the release of this terrorist: | 1real |
Insurers use California’s assisted-suicide law to deny treatment for terminal patients | Legal Insurrection – by Leslie Eastman
About one-year ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state’s assisted-suicide bill into law. It fully went into effect this June, with the opening of the first clinic . While there is no data on the number of California assisted-suicides, Oregon recorded over 130 last year as part of their legalized physician-assisted death program.
Now, one young mother says her insurance company denied her coverage for chemotherapy treatment after originally agreeing to provide the fiscal support for it, but indicated it would be willing to pay for assisted suicide instead.
Stephanie Packer, a wife and mother of four who was diagnosed with a terminal form of scleroderma, said her insurance company initially indicated it would pay for her to switch to a different chemotherapy drug at the recommendation of her doctors.
…But shortly after California’s End of Life Option Act, which authorizes physicians to diagnose a life-ending dose of medication to patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live, went into effect, Ms. Packer’s insurance company had a change of heart.
“And when the law was passed, it was a week later I received a letter in the mail saying they were going to deny coverage for the chemotherapy that we were asking for,” Ms. Packer said.
She said she called her insurance company to find out why her coverage had been denied. On the call, she also asked whether suicide pills were covered under her plan.
“And she says, ‘Yes, we do provide that to our patients, and you would only have to pay $1.20 for the medication,’” Ms. Packer said.
Packer attends meetings with others suffering from terminal illnesses. She indicates that the tone of those meetings have changed since the California assisted-suicide law was enacted.
“As soon as this law was passed – and you see it everywhere, when these laws are passed – patients fighting for a longer life end up getting denied treatment, because this will always be the cheapest option.”
Packer attends a support group for terminally ill patients. She said legally sanctioned suicide has changed the tone of the meetings, which used to be “positive and encouraging.” With patients under new societal pressure to kill themselves, she said meetings “became negative, and it started consuming people. And then they said, ‘You know what? I wish I could just end it.’”
Concerned about the enormous potential for abuse, a the national organization, Patients Rights Action Fund, has created a website for patients like Packer. The online resource offers a place for patients, family members, concerned friends to report possible coercion, failure to identify depression or other patient mental health concerns, and complications that arise from the overdose prescription or other aspects of the assisted-suicide process. Were you or someone you know pressured to use assisted suicide, misleadingly known as ‘death with dignity’ or ‘aid in dying’? Did you or a loved one have a chronic, life-threatening illness and personal circumstances where you/they felt like suicide or assisted suicide was your only option? Did a doctor advise you or someone you know of a prognosis of 6 months or less that was wrong by months, years, or even decades? Were you or a loved one denied coverage for a life-sustaining treatment or medication by your HMO or insurance company?
During his Gettysburg Address describing the first 100 days in office if he is elected President, Donald Trump indicated he would work to replace Obamcare with health savings accounts, remove barriers to purchasing health insurance across state lines, allow states to manage Medicaid funds and speed up drug approval inside the Food and Drug Administration.
However, his election would be too late help many terminally-ill Californians who are now experiencing the unintended, but quite predictable, consequence of yet another feel good progressive policy. | 1real |
No hike in Argentine defense spending despite sub tragedy: senator | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Argentina will not increase defense spending, despite the loss of a submarine with 44 crew aboard that has sparked criticism of the state of its armed forces, a close ally of President Mauricio Macri said on Friday. Argentina has given up hope of rescuing the crew of the ARA San Juan, which disappeared over two weeks ago in the South Atlantic. The tragedy underscored what some critics have described as the parlous state of the country s military, which has faced dwindling resources for years. There were no plans to provide extra funding for the armed forces, said Esteban Bullrich, a former education minister under Macri who is now a senator representing Argentina s powerful Buenos Aires province. We have to work within the constraints of our (budget) policy in general, we re not going to go out of our plan because of this incident, Bullrich told Reuters in an interview in New York. There will be no change in Argentina s 2018 budget allocation for defense, he said. Defense spending in the budget is lower than in the previous year in real terms. It is the lowest in the region compared to gross domestic product, and the government has limited room for maneuver. Since Macri took power in 2015, the country has returned to international debt markets but investment has been slower than the government had hoped. Bullrich was in New York to attend a United Nations event and meet with investors, as part of the government s charm offensive to convince them that Argentina is open for business after over a decade of protectionist rule. October s congressional elections - which saw sweeping victories for Macri allies like Bullrich - were a sign to investors that Argentines want change, he said. The vote was widely seen as a referendum on Macri s government. His market-oriented changes have not all been popular. But government supporters say they are starting to benefit Latin America s third largest economy. Although Macri s coalition does not have a congressional majority, Bullrich said he believed that opposition politicians were ready to work with the government. We can pass (reforms) even with a minority, because senators realize this, we had huge support from Argentinians in general, he said. Bullrich expressed confidence that key Macri legislation on pensions, tax, and capital markets - as well as the 2018 budget - could be voted on before the end of 2017. Yes it is (tight). But the thing is a lot of these reforms have been discussed in advance, and we re very open to changes, he said. | 0fake |
Illinois governor orders special session on school funding | CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner on Monday called for a special legislative session starting on Wednesday to secure a school funding system before classes start next month. The Republican governor set a July 31 deadline for enacting a new funding formula without extra money for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teacher pensions that was included in a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature in late May. “We must act now, which is why I’m calling lawmakers back to Springfield for a special session. Our schools must open on time,” Rauner said in a statement. At a news conference earlier on Monday, Rauner accused Democrats who control the legislature of “playing political games” with the state’s approximately 2 million school children by not sending him the education funding bill. Rauner said he supports the bill’s establishment of an evidence-based model that ties public school funding to “best practices” aimed at enhancing student achievement. But the measure also addresses a state funding disparity for CPS pensions, which the governor has labeled a bailout for a badly managed retirement system. The $36 billion fiscal 2018 state budget the legislature enacted earlier this month over Rauner’s veto prohibits the flow of state money to schools in the absence of an evidence-based funding model. That has raised the possibility some school districts largely dependent on state funding may not be able to open in August. Rauner dismissed a request by Democratic Senate President John Cullerton to meet with legislative leaders so the governor can make a “rational decision” on the bill. “I’d like to have a conversation with Governor Rauner in hopes of getting some clarity as to exactly what is going on,” Cullerton said in a statement on Monday. “We slowed down the process in the Senate in order to let everyone blow off some steam, politically speaking.” Rauner, who insisted on getting the bill on his desk before holding any discussions, declined to describe in detail his amendatory veto plans for CPS funding in the bill. Data posted on his website indicated the bill’s $293 million funding boost for CPS for state aid and pensions would be sliced nearly in half, freeing up $145 million for other school districts. Escalating pension payments have led to drained reserves, debt dependency and junk bond ratings for CPS, the nation’s third-largest public school system. The governor called the CPS pension funding “a poison pill” in the legislation, adding that it should be taken up separately. | 0fake |
TEACHER Uses “Shooting at Trump” As An Option On Multiple Choice Quiz For High School Students | A Wyoming high school is under fire after parents exposed an online student quiz that offered shooting at Trump as one of the multiple choice answers.An unidentified English teacher at Jackson Hole High School gave students a multiple choice quiz on Thursday about George Orwell s novel Animal Farm that included a question that many are pointing to as an example of the district s liberal bias, the Jackson Hole News and Guide reports. Napoleon has a gun fired for a new occasion. What is the new occasion? the quiz read.Possible answers included He was shooting at Trump, His birthday, For completion of the windmill, or To scare off the attackers of Animal Farm. Jim McCollum told the news site he did a double-take when his son showed him a screenshot he took of the test. I had to read it two times, McCollum said. I was like, Are you kidding me? McCollum, a Jackson Hole High School graduate and Trump supporter, shared the quiz on Facebook, where it was shared widely and generated a lot of angry comments. It was so inappropriate to show a name of a sitting president in that question, he said. To me, that is so wrong in light of the situation in our country and the divisiveness and all. He told the news site the incident is one of other examples of liberal bias in other classes at the school that make conservative students like son out to be the outcast. He told me, Dad, they crapped on everything I believe in, McCollum said of his son. Rylee is very patriotic, very supportive of our military and of our country and is considering enlisting in the U.S. Marines.School officials eventually issued a statement about the quiz on Monday. (District) administration learned late yesterday that a quiz was administered to a class of high school students that contained an inappropriate answer to a multiple choice question. The administration is investigating this incident and verifying the information we have received, the statement read. (The District) takes seriously threats of any kind, regardless of the intent. We apologize to the students, families and community for this incident and will be addressing the issue with personnel. EAG News | 1real |
Puerto Rico rescue bill advances to full House vote | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday backed a plan to help Puerto Rico escape crippling debt and expand the economy, a move that could put a rescue before the House of Representatives within days. The House Natural Resources Committee endorsed the plan by a 29-10 vote and left intact most provisions endorsed by House Speaker Paul Ryan. The plan would empower a federal oversight board to negotiate with investors and decide what they would recover from the roughly $70 billion they lent the island. Taxpayer money will not be spent in the rescue which would prevent a bailout, Ryan’s office said in a statement on Wednesday. Puerto Rico’s Governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla praised the bill for elements to help address insolvency, protect essential services and grow the economy. However, he reiterated reservations about the broad power of the oversight board. “Puerto Ricans are Americans and our democratic rights need to be protected, just like those of American citizens living on the mainland, and the oversight provisions do not meet that obligation,” he said in a statement, urging Ryan to amend the bill before it goes to the full House for a vote. Under the plan, investors may not sue Puerto Rico while the oversight board does its work, and all the island’s creditors could face a loss despite recent lobbying from Wall Street interest groups. Among Republicans who voted on Wednesday, more than half endorsed the rescue plan but a vocal minority warned that it would hurt investor demand for municipal bonds and force issuers to offer higher yields. “Taxpayers across the country will have to pay ... as markets adjust to this new world,” warned Congressman Tom McClintock of California. The bill, called the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, passed without significant changes. Speaker Ryan and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, in separate statements on Wednesday touted bipartisan support for the bill. If that holds, lawmakers may guide the rescue past the Senate to President Barack Obama before $1.9 billion in Puerto Rico debt is due on July 1. Republicans may demand more concessions while some Democrats find the oversight board too punitive. Democrats also want guarantees that the island’s pension system, which has a shortfall of $40 billion, would be protected first. With the House and Senate set to begin a week-long Memorial Day holiday break at the end of this week, debate of the bill by the full House is not expected until sometime in June. | 0fake |
Bad News, GOP: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Backs Obama In Supreme Court Fight | President Obama just received the highest profile supporter for his quest to fulfill his Constitutional duties by nominating a successor to recently deceased Justice Antonin Scalia s seat on the Supreme Court. Retired Justice Sandra Day O Connor, the first woman to serve in that capacity, told an interviewer that Obama is right America needs a Justice. I don t agree (with Republicans), O Connor said in an interview with Phoenix-based Fox affiliate KSAZ. We need somebody in there to do the job and just get on with it. She noted that it s unusual to for a Supreme Court opening to exist in an election year, saying that the proximity to the presidential race creates too much talk around the thing that isn t necessary. She said Obama should name a replacement for Scalia, an influential conservative member of the nation s high court who was found dead Saturday at age 79.O Connor also told the station that you just have to pick the best person you can under these circumstances, adding, I wish the president well as he makes choices and goes down that line. The retired justice adds to the slowly growing chorus of voices on the right who have begun to peel off of the original assertion that Obama should not be able to appoint Scalia s replacement. Now some Republicans are closer to the Democratic position, arguing that as has been done in the past, a nomination in the president s final year should not be summarily rejected.O Connor was nominated in 1981 by Ronald Reagan, but while appointed by a conservative president over time she came to be seen as a swing justice, never exclusively on one side of an issue.For instance, while she voted in the majority in the Bush v Gore election case in 2000, she also voted with the majority in favor of abortion rights and campaign finance reform.O Connor stepped down from the court in 2005, and was replaced by George W. Bush s nominee, Samuel Alito, a hardcore conservative.Featured image via Twitter | 1real |
Oil mogul Hamm tops Trump list for U.S. energy secretary: sources | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Continental Resources Chief Executive Harold Hamm is at the top of President-elect Donald Trump’s list to serve as energy secretary, according to U.S. Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a Trump energy adviser who confirmed he is also under consideration for the job. “In my view, Harold Hamm has the right of first refusal,” Cramer told Reuters in a telephone interview. “In my view, he’s likely to be asked. And, because he’s a patriot and an American, he’s likely to say yes.” Hamm, 70, became one of America’s wealthiest men during the U.S. oil and gas drilling boom over the past decade, tapping into controversial hydraulic fracturing drilling technology to access vast deposits in North Dakota’s shale fields. Continental spokeswoman Kristin Thomas said, “There has never been a conversation” between Trump and Hamm about the position. She declined to speculate on how Hamm would respond if asked to take the job. People close to Hamm were mixed on the possibility. “I think Harold would be great in the (Energy Secretary) job. If the president calls, I think he would do it,” said Mike Cantrell, a former vice president of government affairs at Continental who remains close to Hamm. Another prominent U.S. oil and gas executive who knows Hamm and asked not to be named, however, said he doubted Hamm would be willing to leave Continental and may be more interested in having a strong say in who gets the job. Aside from Hamm and Cramer, Trump’s short list for energy secretary also includes venture capitalist Robert Grady, who served as associate director for Natural Resources, Energy and Science in President George H. W. Bush’s Office of Management and Budget, according to Cramer and two other sources with knowledge of the situation. Grady did not respond to requests for comment. If Hamm is nominated, the Oklahoman would be the first U.S. energy secretary drawn directly from the industry since the cabinet position was created in 1977, a move that would jolt environmental advocates but bolster Trump’s pro-drilling energy platform. Trump, a Republican who will take office on Jan. 20 and succeed Democratic President Barack Obama, is also working to fill other top administration jobs in the coming weeks. Hamm addressed the Republican convention in July, calling for expanded drilling and saying too much environmental regulation threatened to limit U.S. oil production and increase the country’s dependence on Middle East oil producers. Past heads of the U.S. Department of Energy, which is charged with advancing U.S. energy security and technology, including nuclear weapons production and labs, have typically boasted a political or academic background. Dan Eberhart, a Texas oil investor and Republican party financier who has worked with Hamm and has had conversations with the Trump campaign, said, “I know Hamm is being seriously considered. And I know that he wants it.” A former Capitol Hill staffer who knows both Hamm and Cramer said he thought Trump would be wise to favor the North Dakota congressman, a self-described climate change skeptic who has a history of supporting the oil, gas and coal sectors. “Both Hamm and Cramer would be fantastic choices, but I think Cramer brings more balance and stability,” he said, asking not to be named. This is not the first time Hamm has been in contention for the job. The Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, Mitt Romney, vetted Hamm to be energy secretary but ultimately decided against him because the two men have differing positions on renewable energy sources like wind. Hamm made headlines in 2015 after settling a protracted divorce case and agreeing to pay his ex-wife $975 million - reported to be one of the biggest divorce settlement in history. | 0fake |
Dr. Duke and Dr. MacDonald Call for Prosecution of Hillary for Treasonous Support of ISIS. | Dr. Duke and Dr. MacDonald Call for Prosecution of Hillary for Treasonous Support of ISIS. October 27, 2016 at 10:13 am
Dr. Duke and Dr. MacDonald Call for Prosecution of Hillary for Treasonous Support of ISIS.
Today Dr. Duke and Professor Kevin MacDonald talked about the tide turning in Donald Trump’s direction. In spite of the efforts by the Zio media to divert voter attention to Donald Trump’s alleged problems with women, Hillary’s treasonous crimes are increasingly difficult to hide.
The fact is that Hillary should be prosecuted, not inaugurated. She has supported ISIS in its war against Syria its terrorism against America. She has sent paid thugs to disrupt Trump’s political events. She has used her government positions to peddal influence. She really should be in prison.
This is an extremely educating and enlightening show. Please share it widely.
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For Many Americans, A Day to Forget | For Many Americans, A Day to Forget November 12, 2016
For many Americans, Nov. 9 was a time of shock at the surprise election of Donald Trump, but the distress was perhaps strongest in New York City which knows Trump best, writes Michael Winship.
By Michael Winship
I would just as soon forget the morning after my father was nearly killed in a car accident and I heard my sister in her bedroom cry out as our mother told her. I would just as soon forget the morning after my father’s store burned to the ground, set ablaze after someone living next door to it fell asleep smoking. Or the morning the pay phone on my college dormitory floor rang and it was my mother telling me my father had died.
I would just as soon forget the morning after Election Day, 1972. I was on the campaign staff of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. I had spent the last couple of weeks in Connecticut. They told us we would lose the state by around 100,000 votes, but we put our shoulders to the wheel and managed to lose it by more than a quarter of a million. Richard Nixon beat us everywhere but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. People knew about Watergate by then but didn’t yet care very much. It was a cold, rainy drive back to Washington.
While I’m at it, I’d like to forget the morning after John Lennon was murdered in December 1980. Another cold, rainy day. All of Manhattan was in shock. I took the subway up to 72nd Street and walked to the Dakota, the apartment building where Lennon lived and died. Fans stood on the sidewalks, soaked, holding radios and tape players, blasting his music, leaving sodden flowers and guttering candles on the doorsteps and windowsills.
And, of course, the morning of 9/11 and the morning after and the morning after that. I live a mile and a half from Ground Zero and saw the towers burn. The day after, we were sealed off from the rest of the city, streets closed to everything but emergency traffic. The smells of burning, of melted metal and other horrors intermittently filled the air, as they would for weeks to come.
Finally, I would just as soon forget Wednesday morning of this very week, Nov. 9. Donald Trump made his victory speech around 3 a.m. A few hours later, as daylight broke, the sky was overcast with a bit of rain and much of New York had fallen into the pained silence of a deep funk. Some compared it to the city’s mood after 9/11 but no, in 2001 there were almost immediate feelings of defiance and resolve mixed with the loss and sadness. Now there was just bewildered numbness, a physical ache.
Rejection in the Big Apple
But a couple of things buoyed me. For one, Donald Trump lost New York City (except for Staten Island) and New York State big time. Here in Manhattan, he received only 10 percent of the vote. Sure, active Democrats outnumber Republicans in the borough by more than 7 to 1 , but from where I sit, 10 percent’s a number for losers. Donald Trump speaking with supporters in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
I know, feeling good about that statistic is a bit of a stretch given the grand scheme of things, but that piddling 10 percent is a reminder that people who live in Manhattan know Donald Trump better than the general population of anywhere else in the country. And we voted no. Loudly.
Maybe we should have been more vocal about this during the election, sent platoons of Manhattanites out into the rest of the country, telling people just what it’s been like to live with this guy for the past four-plus decades: The bragging and lies, the crass excesses and raging misogyny, the bankruptcies, the high-rise real estate developments that have contributed to both our gross income inequality and the staggering property costs that increasingly force everyone but the very wealthiest out of their homes and small businesses.
We could have told them about 1989 and how Trump went after five teenagers of color falsely accused of raping a woman jogger in the city’s Central Park, how he took out full-page newspaper ads calling for a return to the death penalty as punishment, how even after the five were exonerated on the basis of solid DNA evidence and another man’s confession, he refused to apologize and continued to insist on their guilt.
And we could have told them what it’s really like to live on this island of diverse nationalities and ethnicities, of many religions and gender orientations, and the resulting, incredible variety of food, fashion, music and art; how once you’re unavoidably and insistently immersed in our differences, more often than not they’re a cause for celebration and not fear and hate. A lesson yet to be learned by our resident President-elect, who lives in a tower high above such things, but we can hope.
I feel good, too, that by the end of the day on Wednesday, demonstrators had gathered at the Trump International Hotel on Columbus Circle a couple of blocks from our offices, that thousands more gathered in Union Square downtown, and that all of them marched toward Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, carrying placards and shouting in protest. Similar actions took place in cities across the nation and continue as I write.
Condemning those marches and sounding more like the sheriff of Nottingham than his real job, sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, right-wing Trump surrogate David A. Clarke tweeted , “These temper tantrums from these radical anarchists must be quelled. There is no legitimate reason to protest the will of the people.” Sorry, sheriff — dissent is alive and well. Get used to it these next four years.
In my lifetime, we’ve managed to survive Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and two Bushes in the White House. Trump has an excellent chance at being worse than all of them combined. We’ll see. It’s going to be challenging and often frightening.
I fear there will be plenty more terrible mornings ahead. But as Joe Hill said, “Don’t mourn, organize.” And so we shall.
Michael Winship is the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, and a former senior writing fellow at the policy and advocacy group Demos. Follow him on Twitter at @MichaelWinship . [This article originally appeared at http://billmoyers.com/story/adds-november-9th-mornings-id-rather-forget/ ] | 1real |
Obama says transgender rule is important aid to schools: BuzzFeed | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday that his administration’s guidance on transgender issues is needed to help schools grapple with the sensitive topic and ensure that all children are treated fairly. Obama, in an interview with BuzzFeed news website broadcast live on Facebook and YouTube, said schools had been asking the Department of Education how they should handle questions they were facing with transgender youths. “We think it was important for schools who want to go ahead and, in a very practical way, try to deal with the school year - What are they going to be doing next year? How should we approach this? - that we give them our best judgment about how to approach it,” Obama said. 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. The Education and Justice Departments told school districts nationwide that while the guidance carries no legal weight, they must not discriminate against students, including based on their gender identity. Obama, who has two teenaged daughters, elaborated on the decision. “We’re talking about kids. And anybody who’s been in school, been in high school, who’s been a parent, I think, should realize that kids who are sometimes in the minority, kids who have a different sexual orientation or are transgender are subject to a lot of bullying, potentially,” Obama said. “They are vulnerable. And I think that it’s part of our obligation as a society to make sure that everybody is treated fairly and our kids are all loved and that they’re protected and that their dignity is affirmed,” he said. | 0fake |
THE NUMBERS ARE IN: Here’s How The Catholics Voted In This Historic Election | Trump began a more targeted outreach to Catholics after hiring Catholic Steve Bannon of Breitbart.com to be his campaign chairman, releasing a message to Catholics over the weekend promising to fight for Catholics values.In what the Wall Street Journal is calling one of the biggest upsets in U.S. political history, Donald Trump won the presidential election with 290 electoral college votes to Hillary Clinton s 232. Not only did he win the electoral votes by a wide margin, he secured the Catholic vote by margins larger than those enjoyed by any Republican candidate in the last five elections.Leading into Election Day, polls had Trump leading Clinton with Catholics as many as 20 points, with the November 3 IBD/TIPP poll showing 54 percent of Catholics would vote for Trump as opposed to only 34 percent for Clinton. Although that margin began decreasing towards Tuesday, the final results show more Catholics voted for Trump than for his opponent.A Pew Research poll compares the numbers, and shows that Trump won the Catholic vote by a 7-percent margin larger than that enjoyed by George W. Bush in 2004, the last time more Catholics favored the Republican candidate over the Democrat.A CNN national exit poll shows that, of the 23 percent of voters who identified as Catholic in this election, 52 percent voted for Trump, while only 45 percent voted for Clinton.Compare the numbers with the 2012 race between Obama and Mitt Romney, where 25 percent of voters were Catholic and 50 percent of that number voted for Obama as opposed to 48 percent for Romney. The margin was even wider in 2008, where 27 percent of voters were Catholic, with 54 percent of them supporting Obama over only 45 percent for Republican hopeful John McCain.Read more: Church Militant | 1real |
CNN’s Zakaria: ’Obama Could Have Given’ Trump’s Saudi Speech - Breitbart | Monday on CNN’s “Newsroom,” network Sunday morning host Fareed Zakaria said the speech President Donald Trump gave this weekend in Riyadh could have been given by former President Barack Obama. Zakaria said, “It’s going very well in terms of the symbolism and one important respect the substance, which was the speech that President Trump gave in Riyadh on Islam was very carefully done it was nuanced. It was frankly the kind of speech President Obama could have given. He never used the word radical Islamic terrorism, which he kept insisting that Obama use. He tweeted once Obama should resign because he was unwilling to use that phrase. Trump refused to use the phrase as well. He pointed out that 95 percent of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims. It had the kind of nuance and empathy that people look for because ultimately what you’re trying to do is convince these Muslim countries to in some way take on, battle, expel as President Trump said, the scourge of Islamic terrorism. ” ( The Hill) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Obama calls for updates to government IT to protect Americans | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday his budget proposal aims to bolster Americans’ safety with a significant investment in cyber security with an eye toward overhauling how the federal government manages and responds to online threats. Obama, speaking to reporters after meeting with national security advisers, said the United States must increase its spending to upgrade outdated government technology systems that are far behind the private sector. Obama, in his budget released earlier on Tuesday, proposed an increase in U.S. cyber security funding. | 0fake |
Washington Post Deceives Public & Profits From Fake News | 21st Century Wire says The Washington Post has been caught lying and deceiving the public twice in the last few weeks pushing the unfounded mainstream media meme that Russia invaded the U.S. electric grid and another claiming that Russia is behind the explosion of so-called fake news. Considering that the power grid story was proven to be a fake news story that WashPost had to later retract We have to consider the legitimacy of any further claims the outlet has against Russia as particularly dubious.The Intercept has some interesting analysis on how outlets such as WashPost not only deceive the public, push false state sponsored talking points but also how they profit financially from this collusion. Glenn Greenwald The InterceptIn the past six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of fake news, the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom.The second story on the electric grid turned out to be far worse than I realized when I wrote about it on Saturday, when it became clear that there was no penetration of the U.S. electricity grid as the Post had claimed. In addition to the editor s note, the Russia-hacked-our-electric-grid story now has a full-scale retraction in the form of a separate article admitting that the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility and there may not even have been malware at all on this laptop.But while these debacles are embarrassing for the paper, they are also richly rewarding. That s because journalists including those at the Post aggressively hype and promote the original, sensationalistic false stories, ensuring that they go viral, generating massive traffic for the Post (the paper s executive editor, Marty Baron, recently boasted about how profitable the paper has become).After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped on cable news), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the retractions.Baron himself, editorial leader of the Post, is a perfect case study in this irresponsible tactic. It was Baron who went to Twitter on the evening of November 24 to announce the Post s expos of the enormous reach of Russia s fake news operation, based on what he heralded as the findings of independent researchers. Baron s tweet went all over the place; to date, it has been re-tweeted more than 3,000 times, including by many journalists with their own large followings:Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, say independent researchers https://t.co/3ETVXWw16Q Marty Baron (@PostBaron) November 25, 2016But after that story faced a barrage of intense criticism from Adrian Chen in the New Yorker ( propaganda about Russia propaganda ), Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone ( shameful, disgusting ), my own article, and many others including legal threats from the sites smeared as Russian propaganda outlets by the Post s independent researchers the Post finally added its lengthy editor s note distancing itself from the anonymous group that provided the key claims of its story ( The Post does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot s findings and since publication of the Post s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list ).What did Baron tell his followers about this editor s note that gutted the key claims of the story he hyped? Nothing. Not a word. To date, he has been publicly silent about these revisions. Having spread the original claims to tens of thousands of people, if not more, he took no steps to ensure that any of them heard about the major walk back on the article s most significant, inflammatory claims. He did, however, ironically find the time to promote a different Post story about how terrible and damaging Fake News is: Pizzagate shows how fake news hurts real people https://t.co/cOh7RZ4RqK Marty Baron (@PostBaron) November 26, 2016WHETHER THE POST S false stories here can be distinguished from what is commonly called Fake News is, at this point, a semantic dispute, particularly since Fake News has no cogent definition. Defenders of Fake News as a distinct category typically emphasize intent in order to differentiate it from bad journalism. That s really just a way of defining Fake News so as to make it definitionally impossible for mainstream media outlets like the Post ever to be guilty of it (much the way terrorism is defined to ensure that the U.S. government and its allies cannot, by definition, ever commit it).But what was the Post s motive in publishing two false stories about Russia that, very predictably, generated massive attention, traffic, and political impact? Was it ideological and political namely, devotion to the D.C. agenda of elevating Russia into a grave threat to U.S. security? Was it to please its audience knowing that its readers, in the wake of Trump s victory, want to be fed stories about Russian treachery? Was it access and source servitude proving it will serve as a loyal and uncritical repository for any propaganda intelligence officials want disseminated? Was it profit to generate revenue through sensationalistic click-bait headlines with a reckless disregard to whether its stories are true? In an institution as large as the Post, with numerous reporters and editors participating in these stories, it s impossible to identify any one motive as definitive.Whatever the motives, the effects of these false stories are exactly the same as those of whatever one regards as Fake News. The false claims travel all over the internet, deceiving huge numbers into believing them. The propagators of the falsehoods receive ample profit from their false, viral news. And there is no accountability of the kind that would disincentivize a repeat of the behavior. (That the Post ultimately corrects its false story does not distinguish it from classic Fake News sites, which also sometimes do the same.)And while it s true that all media outlets make mistakes, and that even the most careful journalism sometimes errs, those facts do not remotely mitigate the Post s behavior here. In these cases, they did not make good faith mistakes after engaging in careful journalism. With both stories, they were reckless (at best) from the start, and the glaring deficiencies in the reporting were immediately self-evident (which is why both stories were widely attacked upon publication).As this excellent timeline by Kalev Leetaru documents, the Post did not even bother to contact the utility companies in question the most elementary step of journalistic responsibility until after the story was published. Intelligence officials insisting on anonymity so as to ensure no accountability whispered to them that this happened, and despite how significant the consequences would be, they rushed to print it with no verification at all. This is not a case of good journalism producing inaccurate reporting; it is the case of a media outlet publishing a story that it knew would produce massive benefits and consequences without the slightest due diligence or care.THE MOST IRONIC aspect of all this is that it is mainstream journalists the very people who have become obsessed with the crusade against Fake News who play the key role in enabling and fueling this dissemination of false stories. They do so not only by uncritically spreading them, but also by taking little or no steps to notify the public of their falsity.The Post s epic debacle this weekend regarding its electric grid fiction vividly illustrates this dynamic. As I noted on Saturday, many journalists reacted to this story the same way they do every story about Russia: They instantly click and re-tweet and share the story without the slightest critical scrutiny. That these claims are constantly based on the whispers of anonymous officials and accompanied by no evidence whatsoever gives those journalists no pause at all; any official claim that Russia and Putin are behind some global evil is instantly treated as Truth. That s a significant reason papers like the Post are incentivized to recklessly publish stories of this kind. They know they will be praised and rewarded no matter the accuracy or reliability because their Cause the agenda is the right one.On Friday night, immediately after the Post s story was published, one of the most dramatic pronouncements came from the New York Times s editorial writer Brent Staples, who said this:Now that this story has collapsed and been fully retracted, what has Staples done to note that this tweet was false? Just like Baron, absolutely nothing Continue this article at The InterceptREAD MORE RUSSIAN HACK NEWS AT: 21WIRE Russian Hack Files | 1real |
USA Today BREAKS Neutrality, Begs Readers Not To Vote For Trump | In an unusual and shocking move, the editorial board of USA Today did something no one say coming: for the first time in their 34-year history, they broke their rule of neutrality, and blasted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.Never before taking any side let alone taking a position of any sort the board labeled Trump a danger to America, writing that his erratic, ill-equipped personality (as well as his checkered business past) disqualify him from the presidency.Writing not in support of Clinton but rather in sheer resentment of Trump, the board blasted the nominee for his unconventional and downright prejudiced ways:This year, the choice isn t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates Republican nominee Donald Trump is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency He has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.The board called on voters much like Ted Cruz did at the RNC to vote their conscience and follow their convictions, asking them to resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue, and by all means vote, just not for Donald Trump. One of the biggest reasons for the plea of deflection is due in part to Trump s misguided and dangerous view of the world, from his blunders on NATO to his high regard for Vladimir Putin.Trump s foreign policy pronouncements typically range from uninformed to incoherent. It s not just Democrats who say this. Scores of Republican national security leaders have signed an extraordinary open letter calling Trump s foreign policy vision wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle. In a Wall Street Journal column this month, Robert Gates, the highly respected former Defense secretary who served presidents of both parties over a half-century, described Trump as beyond repair. The stinging rebuke comes just days after Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence penned an op-ed in the newspaper outlining why voters should choose Trump and himself.Talk about great timing.USA Today s half endorsement, half non-endorsement follows a slew of newspaper who are famously bucking Donald Trump (and instead endorsing Clinton). USA Today s editorial board expressed deep concerns for Hillary Clinton, citing her emails, her candor, and issues with her entitlement.Nonetheless, the board sent a strong message in an age of neutrality: the stakes could not be higher, and we as a nation cannot take a risk with Donald Trump in the White House.Much like the onslaught received by the Arizona Republic, USA Today is sure to feel the wrath of Trump supporters in the coming days. However, a poll on the paper s website asks readers if they agree with the board s decision or not. Out of almost nine thousand votes (so far), 85 percent agree.That s a good start.Good for the USA Today editorial board they have a backbone, and it s about time those in the media stand up to the racist, fear mongering bully that is Donald J. Trump.Featured image via Joe Readle/Getty Images | 1real |
Undocumented immigrants given roles at Democratic convention | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Democratic Party has selected a handful of undocumented immigrants for official roles at next week’s Democratic National Convention, in a bid to highlight the gaping policy divide on immigration between White House hopeful Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump. Clinton is hoping to drive Latino voters to the polls on Nov. 8 to shore up her chances against Trump, who has campaigned on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration by building a wall along the Mexican border and deporting millions of undocumented foreigners if elected. “Our nation is a nation of immigrants that believes in being inclusive, and that’s exactly what we will continue to work toward,” said Leah Daughtry, the chief executive officer of the committee organizing the July 25-28 convention in Philadelphia. “The voices of our nation’s brave undocumented youth will be heard loud and clear,” Daughtry added. The picks include two members of the convention credentials and platform committees, as well as several speakers. The positions are unpaid, officials said. Trump’s campaign, which has argued that unchecked immigration hurts American workers and undermines national security, criticized the move. “Apparently speaking at Hillary Clinton’s convention is just one more job Hillary Clinton thinks Americans won’t do,” a Trump campaign aide said in an emailed statement. “She should have instead invited unemployed Americans, or victims of crime, or law enforcement.” The selections are legal because of a “deferred action program” adopted by President Barack Obama’s administration, which postpones deportations and provides work authorization for some immigrants brought to the United States as children. The Supreme Court blocked efforts to expand those protections last month. The nominations mark the first time a major U.S. political party’s convention has featured so many undocumented workers among its ranks. While there was an undocumented speaker at the 2012 Democratic convention, the party has not previously tracked the immigration status of its committee members. “It changes the whole conversation when you have someone directly affected at the table,” said Cesar Vargas, a Mexican immigrant chosen for the party’s policy platform committee. Hareth Andrade, 23, an undocumented immigrant from Bolivia who was approved under a deferred action program, was picked for the credentials committee. The convention will also feature at least two undocumented immigrant speakers, Astrid Silva and Francisca Ortiz. Clinton already has overwhelming support from minorities. Some 70 percent back her, compared with 9 percent for Trump, according to recent Reuters/Ipsos polling, suggesting that she could have a strong chance in states like Florida, Nevada and Colorado that swing between voting Democratic and Republican in presidential elections. However, voter turnout among Latinos has traditionally been low, hitting only about 40 percent in 2012, meaning her challenge is to get more of them to cast ballots this year. Luis Fraga, co-director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, said showing a commitment to progressive reform of U.S. immigration policy could help Clinton do that. He called immigration a gateway issue for minority voters that can help engage them. That’s especially so because even Latinos born in the United States are often not far removed from family members who are immigrants themselves. “Although it’s not their individual experience, it is their family’s experience,” Fraga said. | 0fake |
How to Support Standing Rock and Confront What It Means to Live on Stolen Land | Truthout
A month after President Obama told the Army Corps of Engineers to pause construction on the Dakota Access oil pipeline, the Standing Rock Sioux and those supporting them still find themselves in a dire struggle to protect their water and land. With winter approaching, the 300 tribes that are now represented at the Camp of the Sacred Stone in North Dakota are preparing for a lengthy battle.
In their effort to protect water, life, ancestors and future generations, indigenous peoples are also demanding that corporations, the US government, and settlers respect the treaties and indigenous self-determination. This is widening an existing dialogue and expanding ties of solidarity to include more of us who are of white European descent occupying indigenous land.
As support for those at Standing Rock grows, it is important that allies also confront the fundamental questions of what it means to live on stolen land and how to transform colonial relations in a way that creates a viable and just future for all communities and the planet. After almost a decade of engaging in request-based, volunteer solidarity organizing with indigenous groups fighting relocation in Black Mesa, Arizona due to coal mining , we have learned and honed a list of action steps for non-Native individuals just getting involved, as well as a set of best practices for activists already working on other organizing efforts.
As people of European descent who benefit from both white privilege and settler privilege, we understand that our work and writing is most effective when it is developing and acting upon a mutual stake in decolonization. This means focusing on the responsibilities specific to our position, which is inherently different from that of indigenous and non-Native people of color. Nevertheless, their organizing, along with much activist scholarship — some of which is linked to below — has helped inform this list of action steps and set of best practices.
1. Know whose land you are on. There are plenty of resources out there to help you educate yourself about the land that you, your school or place of worship are occupying and its original inhabitants. Here is one . Find out if the tribes or nations are still in that area. If they are not, find out why. Have they been forcefully relocated or pushed out in another way? Acknowledge that you are on occupied land when you say where you are or where you are from. This is an important way to disrupt the myth of the “disappearing native.”
2. Know your family’s history. How did your family end up in the United States? Was it through a colonial process in another country? If your ancestors are from a colonizing country, what was your family’s connection to land, spiritual traditions, economies, etc., before that country began colonizing other places? Does your family own land in the United States? If so, how did they come to acquire it?
3. Learn together. Encourage learning that is personal, emotional, spiritual, embodied and communal. Host reading groups and discussions that build an understanding of settler colonialism and your community’s relationship to it that is tied to indigenous solidarity. Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” is an enormously helpful place to start, and there are numerous resources, such as the book “Unsettling America,” the website for Black Mesa Indigenous Support, the Colors of Resistance archive , the journal Decolonization , the No One Is Illegal network , queer indigenous studies, critical indigenous studies and more.
4. Ask permission. Asking permission fundamentally shifts the entitlement inherent to the settler experience. Cultural appropriation is an extension of genocide, forced removals, and land theft, as settlers take what does not belong to them as if it is rightfully theirs. This can be countered by asking permission to be on indigenous peoples’ traditional lands. This practice can be extended in a variety of ways and open up new modes of relating and relationships. As one of the first steps of planning, ask permission for any gatherings, marches, etc., from an indigenous representative of the land you are on. Invite them to collaborate in planning around gatherings, conferences, actions, and campaigns for justice work on their traditional homeland. Be open to the work shifting because of such collaboration.
5. Know where your water, heat, electricity and other resources come from. Lands that were relegated to indigenous use under the reservation system often because of their perceived barrenness are now resource colonies for the settler state. Indigenous communities in the United States are among the hardest hit by the negative impacts of climate change because of the extractive projects and processing that take place on their lands. Coal mining and burning, uranium mining and copper mining are just a few of the extractive projects that leave toxic legacies for generations to come. The profit from extraction on Native lands is rarely returned to the community that has paid the cost in destruction of lands and sacred sites, damage to health, and devastation of local economies and lifeways.
6. Take responsibility for Christian privilege/Doctrine of Discovery. If you’ve grown up in Christian culture, you may be unaware of all the ways that Christianity is culturally dominant in the United States. Work with your faith community to raise awareness about the violent legacy of Christian hegemony and move resources to shift power. If you are part of a Christian denomination that has not yet repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery — the theological justification for the theft of indigenous land — start or join a movement to do so. Challenge the notion that the settler church was divinely ordained within your church community. Start conversations about saints or lauded leaders of faith who were directly responsible for conquest. Learn how your church acquired its land and whose land it was originally. Learn the history of your denomination’s relationship to conquest. Consider that within Christian traditions there are built-in practices for atonement and reparations. Get creative with your spiritual community about what atonement and reparations might look like. If it is possible, try and connect with the indigenous tribe or nation in your area to work on this.
The Christian and Catholic Churches are incredibly well resourced not only in cash but also in land. Many, if not all, indigenous-led movements across Turtle Island — the indigenous term for North America — call for return of land to indigenous stewardship. How can the church leverage its many resources in solidarity with indigenous-led efforts for land return? There is a new project in California that is working for the return of urban land to indigenous stewardship. Could your church start a conversation about putting land in trust and working with a local indigenous group to steward it?
7. Engage in local struggles and build relationships. There are ongoing indigenous-led struggles for land and self-determination taking place all over Turtle Island. Not all indigenous spaces and organizations are looking for outside support, but many are. Educate yourself on this history of the area and current struggles. Reach out and take principled and accountable action by centering relationships in your work. The work will often be request-based and/or take on various forms of asking for permission, seeking guidance and input. This is a nuanced dance of taking initiative while ensuring there is guidance and the work upholds, not undermines, community self-determination. Your participation in decision making and giving input should be determined by the indigenous people you work with and will depend on the specific goals. For example, an indigenous community addressing its own tribal government has different objectives and requests from non-Native people than if cross-community power is being built to challenge federal and or state policies, energy policy, corporate power, etc.
8. Work for repatriations of land, upholding treaties, and funding Indigenous-led struggles and efforts for land return. This entails supporting Standing Rock, and other indigenous-led struggles in your region, building power to force the state to respect treaties, and doing creative fundraising campaigns like door knocking for reparations, as members of Resource Generation did in the Bay Area in solidarity with Poor Magazine’s “Stolen Land and Hoarded Resources Tour.” Read more here .
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While these are helpful tips for individuals entering the sphere of solidarity work, there are also things activists already engaged in other organizing efforts can do to amplify indigenous-led struggles or incorporate a decolonial analysis into their work. It begins with incorporating an analysis of settler colonialism into all of your organizing work.
Settler colonialism is the kind of colonial control that exists in “settler states” like the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Israel/Palestine, Canada, Argentina and other countries. It incorporates elements of external colonialism — in which a colonizing power exports indigenous peoples (as slaves or laborers), resources, knowledge, plants, metals, and/or animals to increase the wealth of the colonizer — as well as internal colonialism — which is marked by the violent management of an underclass of people and lands within the “domestic” borders of the imperial nation. So, when Europeans began colonizing what is now known as the United States, settlers came for good — not just to take things and return to an imperial center based in Europe. This is why scholar Patrick Wolfe called settler colonialism a process of “destroying to replace.” It’s our responsibility as settlers to work to dismantle the settler colonial project.
Here are our tips — based on research and experience — for how to do just that, while also continuing your organizing work in other areas.
If your primary area of organizing is around the environment, recognize that indigenous cultures and lifeways are deeply tied to land, and most contemporary indigenous-led struggles center around access to land or land return. If you engage in environmental work: Consider how the environmental framework of land (or wilderness) as separate from people is an inherently colonial mindset that pits environmentalists not only against labor but also indigenous people, whose lifeways are inseparable from land.
If you engage in climate justice work, recognize the ways that indigenous communities have been disproportionately impacted by extreme extraction and climate chaos, as well as how they are resisting. Globally, indigenous communities are living as frontline blockades against extreme extraction.
If you engage in anti-racist work, consider doing the work of understanding settler colonialism as a structure and logic distinct (although interlocking) that is defined in terms of self-determination rather than being solely rights-based. A stance of self-determination signifies that indigenous nations pre-date the existence of the United States and aren’t always looking for recognition from the colonizing force. Rights and “equality” frameworks are most often based on the idea of the individual as the social actor and view equality under the law for all individuals as the end goal. Many indigenous frameworks don’t fully fit this and are centered more on the ideas of the collective (nation, tribe, people), as opposed to the individual. They also prioritize responsibility (to land, and future generations) as opposed to rights.
If you engage in labor justice work, familiarize yourself with the history of exploitation of indigenous labor in this country and consider ways in which your work for just workplaces may invisibilize the original inhabitants of the land your workplace occupies. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States” and Andrés Reséndez’s “The Other Slavery” are good places to start.
If you are involved in queer and trans organizing that isn’t yet connected to two spirit/Native queer and trans perspectives and movements, learn from and build with queer and/or Two Spirit Native organizers, cultural workers and scholars. Learn the history of non-Native (particularly white) LGBTQ appropriation of indigenous alternative sexualities, genders and kinship structures. The article “ Settler Homonationalism ” by Scott Morgensen is a great place to start. Envision and enact queer and trans liberation that is anti/decolonial.
If you engage in food justice, or permaculture, herbalism, building alternative economies, and more broadly alternatives to capitalist institutions and modes of organizing reproduction and social life, familiarize yourself with the existing alternatives indigenous people have maintained through surviving, resisting, adapting and decolonizing. Consider the potential for connecting your work to questions of land and unsettling settler desire. As Scott Morgensen explores in the essay “Unsettling Settler Desire,” the desire to replace Native peoples and inherit their land, lifeways, alternative economies, spiritualities, modes of kinship and sexuality runs deep in settler society and permeates various alternative and radical subcultures. These desires for connection to land and land-based practices are often seen as a much needed antidote to the disconnection inherent in settler society. If, however, these connections and practices aren’t cultivated in relationship to indigenous peoples’ struggles to maintain their connections, responsibilities and traditions, then the forms of connection settlers are fostering can replicate “settler desire” and further entrench colonialism.
For non-Native people, walking a path of decolonization is the work of envisioning and enacting reciprocal relationships. Through this we can be humbled. We hold discomfort, knowing it is part of our work and our process of rekindling our dignity and interconnectedness. We can work to stop violence and environmental degradation. We can organize to build our communities’ capacity for self-determination, while struggling alongside indigenous communities as they maintain their responsibility to their homelands and future generations. We can shift entitlement and the normalizing of theft, as well as the narrative of “disappearing Indians”— the dominant colonial story that says indigenous peoples, lands and lifeways are inevitably disappearing as part of the natural passing of time. It is the narrative that relegates all things indigenous to the realm of history. We can move away from Western, colonial modes of existing as we restore traditional economies and modes of relating, community to community and nation to nation. Moving towards decolonization allows us to reckon with the violence of our collective inheritance and commit to healing, restoring and transforming our present, so as to ensure that we have a viable and liberatory future.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source. | 1real |
Trump says he wants to cut Navy submarines' price: Fox News interview | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States needs more submarines but he wants to buy them at a lower cost, resuming his push to get defense contractors to cut the prices they charge the Pentagon. “We’re lacking submarines and we’re going to build new submarines but the price is too high so I’m cutting the prices way down,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News to be broadcast later on Thursday. Two U.S.-based companies, General Dynamics Corp’s Electric Boat division and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding, build the Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines. Neither General Dynamics nor Huntington Ingalls immediately responded to a request for comment. “We are working hard to drive down cost and are seeing the fruits of that labor,” a senior U.S. Navy official said in response to the Trump comments. “We have the most advanced submarines in the world - the more we buy, the more we will bring down the price,” the official said. Trump, who took office on Friday, has vowed to build up the military, which he says has become dangerously depleted. Since winning the November election, he has pressured U.S. defense contractors to reduce the cost of the products they sell to the Pentagon. In December, Trump received a pledge from the chief executive of Lockheed Martin to cut the cost of the F-35 fighter jet after Trump complained in a tweet about the plane’s price tag and said he would ask Boeing to offer a cheaper alternative. | 0fake |
America’s Stepdad Tim Kaine Just Burned Trump HARD On Colbert | Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine spent his Thursday evening with Late Show host Stephen Colbert, and of course eventually the conversation turned to the absolutely destructive force that is the Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump. The first element of Trump s many outrageous statements to be discussed was his absurd description of Trump calling Kaine s running mate Hillary Clinton a bigot. Kaine reminded the audience the difference between the two candidates records regarding America s race troubles: When Hillary Clinton got out of law school, she was working to help advance racial justice in the juvenile justice system in South Carolina and fight school segregation in Alabama, and I about that time got out of law school and was battling housing discrimination in the South and in Virginia. At his early career, Donald Trump was a real estate guy who got sued by the Justice Department for discriminating against people in housing (by) writing the letter C on applications if they were minority, Kaine continued. Hillary Clinton has got a track record all the way back to being a middle schooler in a Methodist youth group of trying to advance priorities for others and Donald Trump s for himself. Kaine is right, of course. The contrast couldn t be more stark, and history speaks for itself. If anyone is the bigot in this scenario, it s Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton.Briefly, Stephen Colbert turned to his and Kaine s shared faith, and asked Kaine to recite a New Testament verse he is fond of. Kaine responded with Philippians 2:3: Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind consider one another as more important than yourself. Colbert then cited his own favorite verse in Latin. A backstage interview yielded more criticism of Trump from Kaine, when he said: This is fundamentally about the nation s promise of equality. If we are supposed to do a U-turn or not, so you got to take that seriously, and I m really glad she just reminded everybody that is what is at stake in November. Kaine says that if he ever gets to confront Trump, he d ask one simple question: How can you say the things you re saying? Kaine then continued his final blistering blow: He is going around saying that the American military is a disaster, ridicules a Gold Star family, makes fun of John McCain because he was a POW that kind of personality shouldn t be within 10 time zones of being commander-in-chief. So right, Senator Kaine, so right. Hopefully, people listen to you.Watch a clip below, via Raw Story:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
KARMA: Race-Obsessed Detroit Free Press Editorial Editor Who Led Effort To Destroy Kid Rock’s Career Is FIRED Over Allegations of Inappropriate Behavior With Female Colleagues | In September 2016, Stephen Henderson, the editorial editor of the Detroit Free Press, used the power of his pen to unjustly attack Kid Rock, after liberals feared Rock might actually be serious about running as a Republican contender against the do-nothing Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow. As a Michigan resident, I can say with a great level of confidence, that besides Mike Illitch, the now deceased owner of the Red Wings and Detroit Tigers, Kid Rock has done more for the city of Detroit and for the black community than almost anyone in this state. When the Illitch s asked Detroit legend and philanthropist, Kid Rock to perform for the opening of their much anticipated Little Caesar s Arena, no one could have dreamed that the Detroit Free Press Stephen Henderson would have used his position to push a lie, that Kid Rock, the single father of a black son, and NAACP award recipient is a racist .Here s what Henderson had to say about Kid Rock, the man who has done so much for the city of Detroit:This is a musician who got rich off crass cultural appropriation of black music, who used to wrap his brand in the Confederate flag a symbol inextricably linked to racism, no matter what its defenders say and who has repeatedly issued profane denouncements of the very idea of African Americans pushing back against American inequality. Just last week, he trashed Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who s jobless right now because he dared challenge the nation s racism with a silent, kneeling protest during the pre-football game singing of the national anthem. Having Kid Rock open this arena is erecting a sturdy middle finger to Detroiters nothing less. And the Ilitches, who ve done so much for this city and also taken so much from it, should be the last to embrace that kind of signaling.Here is how Kid Rock responded on his Facebook page:People! Pay NO attention to the garbage the extreme left is trying to create! (and by the way, fuck the extreme left and the extreme right!)They are trying to use the old confederate flag BS, etc. to stir the pot, when we all know none of this would be going on if I were not thinking of running for office. Pretty funny how scared I have them all and their only agenda is to try and label people / me racist who do not agree or cower to them!! No one had a word to say when we sold out the 6 shows at LCA back in January! My track record in Detroit and Michigan speaks for itself, and I would dare anyone talking trash to put theirs up against mine. I am also a homeowner and taxpayer in the city of Detroit, so suck on that too!I am the bona fide KING OF DETROIT LOVE and it makes me smile down deep that you haters know that! Your jealousy is merely a reflection of disgust for your own failures and lack of positive ideas for our city.I am however very disappointed that none of the people, businesses or charities I have so diligently supported in Detroit have had anything to say about all these unfounded attacks from these handful of jackasses and The Detroit Free Press. So for the unforeseen future I will focus my philanthropy efforts on other organizations besides the ones I have supported in the past. I would however employ that NAN go ahead and make up these losses since they claim to be so good for Detroit and do not want me opening the arena and generating tons of jobs and tax dollars for the city and people I LOVE IDIOTS! .. (Has Al Sharpton even paid his back taxes yet?)Today, the race-obsessed Stephen Henderson, got some very bad news AP The Detroit Free Press fired Stephen Henderson, its managing director of opinion and commentary, after finding what it called credible allegations of inappropriate behavior with female colleagues, the newspaper announced Friday.Free Press Editor and Vice President Peter Bhatia announced Henderson s termination in a story that said the allegations go back several years. Gannett Co. Inc., the newspaper s parent company, says Henderson s behavior has been inconsistent with company values and standards. Henderson said in a statement to The Detroit News and Crain s Detroit Business that he is stunned. I dedicated 18 years to this newspaper over three decades, all of it performing at the highest level, Henderson said. I may have more to say on this later, but for now there is much other work to be done here in the city of Detroit. Stephen is a magnificent journalist and a treasured colleague who has done so much for Detroit, Bhatia said. He added there were no accusations of sexual assault, but said the incidents involving inappropriate behavior and comments directed at Free Press employees ran counter to company policies.Less than 2 months ago, Henderson appeared on Meet The Press and called America a racist nation with a racist history:Rich Lowry of the National Review appeared with Stephen Henderson on Meet The Press to discuss Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who disrespect the flag as a way to support Black Lives Matter. Henderson argued, Some of the words in the national anthem are racist. Henderson argued that it was appropriate to show disrespect for the American flag because he thinks America is a country whose history is racist. Henderson told the panel, I think this is a country whose history is racist, whose history is steeped in white supremacy, and the anthem reflects that in its very words (inaudible) . Lowry responded to Henderson by saying, It s also a nation with very important ideals that have worn down those injustices over time and created a more just society. And people have died under that flag for those ideals. Watch: | 1real |
LEFTIST FREAKS OPENLY CALL For Non-Peaceful Inauguration Actions: “We Are Not In Favor Of A Peaceful Transition Of Power…After The Election, You Saw This Great Spontaneous Upsurge In Spontaneous Anger In The Streets” [VIDEO] | 1real | |
Republicans confident of passing House tax bill: Brady | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Republican leadership is confident it has the votes to pass a tax overhaul bill when it comes to the House floor later this week, the chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means committee, Representative Kevin Brady, said Monday. Debate will begin on Thursday, Brady, a Republican, told reporters in a Capitol hallway. “Leadership believes, is very confident, that ... we do and will have the votes for passage.” Brady said including a repeal of the Obamacare individual healthcare mandate in the tax bill “remains under consideration.” He said he had pledged to House members to keep in the bill a deduction for state and local property taxes, up to $10,000. | 0fake |
FLASHBACK: UNCOVERED VIDEO SHOWS HYPOCRITE HARRY REID TELLING CONGRESS “No Sane Country Would Have Birthright Citizenship” | In 1993 Harry Reid wrote the Immigration Stabilization Act of 1993, a bill that would have denied birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to illegal alien parents. Today the leftist lackey is onboard with the Democrats amnesty for votes plan. The hell with America the Democrats goal is socialism, and the only way to make that happen is to eliminate the voice of any sane member of the GOP who would oppose more government control | 1real |
SINS OF SOCIALISM…Doctors Pumping Air Into Infants Lungs By Hand…No Antibiotics…Children Die In Filthy Venezuelan Hospitals | Only the strongest will survive in the dog-eat-dog world of Socialism. This is the result of a society that believed the government is more capable of running their lives than they are. This is Bernie s world. This is the reality of the utopia Bernie has been promising his supporters. These are the same policies Hillary is promising she ll support if she s able to escape federal prosecution before the election. By morning, three newborns were already dead.The day had begun with the usual hazards: chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions, even food. Then a blackout swept over the city, shutting down the respirators in the maternity ward.Doctors kept ailing infants alive by pumping air into their lungs by hand for hours. By nightfall, four more newborns had died. The death of a baby is our daily bread, said Dr. Osleidy Camejo, a surgeon in the nation s capital, Caracas, referring to the toll from Venezuela s collapsing hospitals.The economic crisis in this country has exploded into a public health emergency, claiming the lives of untold numbers of Venezuelans. It is just part of a larger unraveling here that has become so severe it has prompted President Nicol s Maduro to impose a state of emergency and has raised fears of a government collapse.Hospital wards have become crucibles where the forces tearing Venezuela apart have converged. Gloves and soap have vanished from some hospitals. Often, cancer medicines are found only on the black market. There is so little electricity that the government works only two days a week to save what energy is left.At the University of the Andes Hospital in the mountain city of M rida, there was not enough water to wash blood from the operating table. Doctors preparing for surgery cleaned their hands with bottles of seltzer water. It is like something from the 19th century, said Dr. Christian Pino, a surgeon at the hospital.The figures are devastating. The rate of death among babies under a month old increased more than a hundredfold in public hospitals run by the Health Ministry, to just over 2 percent in 2015 from 0.02 percent in 2012, according to a government report provided by lawmakers.The rate of death among new mothers in those hospitals increased by almost five times in the same period, according to the report.This nation has the largest oil reserves in the world, yet the government saved little money for hard times when oil prices were high. Now that prices have collapsed they are around a third what they were in 2014 the consequences are casting a destructive shadow across the country. Lines for food, long a feature of life in Venezuela, now erupt into looting. The bol var, the country s currency, is nearly worthless.The crisis is aggravated by a political feud between Venezuela s leftists, who control the presidency, and their rivals in congress. The president s opponents declared a humanitarian crisis in January, and this month passed a law that would allow Venezuela to accept international aid to prop up the health care system. This is criminal that we can sit in a country with this much oil, and people are dying for lack of antibiotics, says Oneida Guaipe, a lawmaker and former hospital union leader.But Mr. Maduro, who succeeded Hugo Ch vez, went on television and rejected the effort, describing the move as a bid to undermine him and privatize the hospital system. I doubt that anywhere in the world, except in Cuba, there exists a better health system than this one, Mr. Maduro said.For entire story: NYT sMuch like the drooling college students who are turning out by the tens of thousands to Bernie Sanders rally s in the United States, the citizens of Venezuela elected the controversial Nicolas Maduro as their president, and now they are paying a very heavy price. BBC While he lacks the magnetism followers of Mr Chavez attributed to the late president, he is a commanding figure in Venezuela, and not just because of his stature of (6ft 3in).Derided as a poor copy of his mentor, Mr Maduro has not been ousted by the opposition or by rivals in his own party, as some had predicted when he was elected in April 2013.However, he has failed to win over the opposition after sticking very closely to the fiery rhetoric of Mr Chavez.Tough stance His government s tough approach to mass anti-government protests in the first half of 2014 and the jailing of thousands of demonstrators prompted criticism from human rights groups and sanctions from the United States.His opponents paint him as a ruthless despot who detains his political rivals on overly harsh charges pressed by a judiciary under his party s control, while his followers say he is protecting the country from another coup.But with oil prices plummeting below $50 ( 33) a barrel, Mr Maduro s approval rating has been falling, too.Venezuela s economy is almost entirely reliant on its oil exports and the president is facing a severe economic crisis as well as a hostile opposition.And with financing for the government s generous social programs in jeopardy, some are questioning how committed those who voted for Mr Maduro really are to the socialist cause and their leader. | 1real |
HUFFINGTON POST PUBLISHES, Then DELETES “Trump Is Absolutely Right About Sweden” Article…But OOPS! It Was Archived…And We’re Happy To Share Its BRUTALLY HONEST Content With You! | Yesterday, social media was buzzing after The Huffington Post actually posted a story that not only backed up Trump s assertion about Sweden being a hot mess, but it called out journalists for lying about how the invasion of immigrants are destroying European nations. The title of the article in and of itself, is bad enough: Trump is absolutely right about Sweden but the honesty with which the writer approaches the subject is even more stunning. Not surprisingly, after getting a lot of negative reaction from the left who felt the Huffington Post let them down by actually telling the truth, the Huffington Post deleted the story. Our friend @TEN_GOP was kind enough to archive the story before they deleted it.https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/834822902495145985President Trump tweeted clarification of the comments he made about Sweden that the Huffington Post author Ren Zografos referenced in his article:My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2017After The Huffington Post deleted his article, Ren Zografos came out in defense of his words and of Trump comments about Sweden on Twitter:Trump is absolutely right about Sweden https://t.co/jyFM3bjIE8 Ren Zografos (@zokrates) February 22, 2017Here he Zografos defends his article as nothing but the truth. :Thank you for all supports so far, kind people. The story is nothing but the truth.. #truth #media #Trump Ren Zografos (@zokrates) February 23, 2017Sweden has huge problems because of liberal immigration policy Many journalists around the world are eager to condemn Donald Trump no matter what. When he tweeted about immigration in Sweden few days ago, the social media exploded. Most of the opponent said that Trump has made up the immigration problem Sweden have. They are wrong.Only hours later there was a riot of violence and destructions by immigrants in the capitol of Sweden, Stockholm. The police was forced to shoot with ammunition to put and end to it. In Malm , another city south in Sweden they have struggle with gang violence and lawlessness for years. So when Trump talk about that Sweden have an immigration problem he is actually spot on.It s well known for Scandinavians and other Europeans that liberal immigration comes with drugs, rapes, gang wars, robbery and violence. Additional to that we see the respective nations cultures fading away, for good and for bad.But the immigration problem is not only a Swedish predicament. The truth is, that several European cities have huge immigration problems where even the police force is afraid to interfere in some locations in these cities. UK, France and several other European countries are changing rapidly with extreme quantity of immigration. I m not saying immigration is only bad, but a lot of problems come with poor immigration policy, as consequences we get violence, terror and gangs. The fact is that the press here in Europe hasn t doing their job properly. There is this fear for journalists to not report the basic truth which is that Europe has enormous problems that comes from liberal immigration politics, and as we also now can see in Sweden, but also here in Norway. But it s not political correct for journalists to say or write that immigration in Europe is unsuccessful. When that said, most of the people that come from other countries are behaving flawless and are a gift to our society, but then again to report that everything is all good is simply wrong and these journalists should find another job, because they do not have enough integrity that requires to be decent journalist.Go here to see the actual archived article. | 1real |
Peru opposition leader skeptical president's victory will last | LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski s political troubles will likely continue despite his surprise victory over a bid in Congress to oust him this week, a key opposition leader said on Saturday, citing ongoing graft probes and opposing demands from allies. Jose Chlimper, secretary general of the right-wing Popular Force, said his party could eventually emerge stronger from this week s political crisis, despite failing to garner enough votes in the 130-member Congress to remove Kuczynski from office. For us having 71 lawmakers was an asset but also a liability. Because whatever Congress did was our fault, Chlimper told Reuters in a rare interview. The party, which grew out of the populist movement of imprisoned ex-president Alberto Fujimori, sought to remove Kuczynski from office this week over business links he once denied having to a company at the center of a massive graft scandal. Ten Popular Force lawmakers broke ranks to keep a presidential vacancy motion from succeeding. Chlimper called the defections a painful betrayal but said the rest of Popular Force lawmakers have reaffirmed their commitment to staying in the party and voting as a bloc. Kuczynski, on the other hand, could see the cross-party alliance that defended him this week evaporate going forward, said Chlimper. I don t see how he can come out stronger, he said. Chlimper said Kuczynski lured the rebel Popular Force lawmakers with a promise to free their movement s political leader, Fujimori, from prison - an accusation denied by Kuczynski s government. The dissident faction was led by Fujimori s youngest son, Kenji, who has challenged his sister Keiko s leadership of their father s following and who could receive a boost if the once-popular patriarch is released from prison. Kuczynski would lose the support of Fujimori s left-leaning foes if he makes good on the deal to secure the elder Fujimori s release, said Chlimper. In coming days, the left may have achieved what Fujimori s supporters have been unable to: a pardon for Fujimori, Chlimper said. At the same time, ongoing probes in Congress and in the attorney general s and comptroller s offices threaten to implicate Kuczynski in new allegations of wrongdoing, he added. His allies are going to have to explain themselves for the documents that will keep coming out, said Chlimper. This isn t a picture. It s a video. And we re going to keep seeing the scenery change in coming weeks and months, Chlimper said. | 0fake |
HOW THE CLINTON FOUNDATION RIPPED OFF HAITI…Stunning VIDEO That Exposes America’s Most Selfish Couple | While the media salivates over the illegal release of Trump s tax documents and criticize him for using legal tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes to our corrupt government, they completely ignored the Clinton crime families scheme to steal from the poorest of the poor in Haiti.Here is how the Clinton s used the money that Americans donated to help the devastated residents of Haiti to enrich themselves: | 1real |
BOOM! Indiana YMCA Takes CNN Off TV’s After Members Complain About “Fake News” | The term fake news has become attached to some of America s major news outlets. Now a YMCA in Valparaiso, Ind., has decided to ban CNN from its TVs after customers complained the news network falsifies stories. In order to eliminate perceived political bias associated with national news outlets, the Valparaiso Family YMCA will only be showing local news channels in the future, the Valparaiso YMCA said in a statement.Chicago Tribune reporter/columnist Jerry Davich said he asked Valparaiso YMCA CEO Robert Wanek to elaborate on why the decision was made, and Wanek responded, I cannot pinpoint the change origins, only to add that we get dozens of requests to change channels every day from numerous interest groups. We just want the Y to be a haven for wellness where people come together and have a sense of belonging, gain new relationships and achieve their personal goals, Wanek added. We will display local news moving forward. Davich complained that the Y s decision to remove all national news outlets from its televisions says more about its leaders than its members. You d think this story would be just another example of fake news. Sadly, it s not. He said he wondered if the company was simply exercising its right to appease as many members as possible, or is the new Donald Trump-led America already flexing its muscles? YMCA member Greg Quartucci told CBS Chicago the decision to remove CNN from wellness center TVs was made shortly after Trump confronted CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta, calling his network terrible and fake news. WJ | 1real |
Tips for Your Post-Holiday Clutter Purge - The New York Times | With the year winding down and New Year’s resolutions just around the corner, it’s time to gear up for that clutter purge. But the thought of tackling the kitchen junk drawer — or even taking down the decorations — can be overwhelming. So to help motivate you, several organizing professionals offered tips on how to streamline your closets, beat back the toys taking over the living room and, yes, finally deal with that junk drawer. START WITH THE HOLIDAY TRAPPINGS To keep plastic ornaments and Hanukkah candles organized, use small containers you already have on hand, like popcorn and cookie tins or empty shoeboxes and egg cartons. Wrap fragile ornaments in leftover tissue paper or newspaper, or invest in storage containers like archival ornament boxes from the Container Store. For strings of lights and garlands, use zip ties to avoid tangles and put them in plastic bags labeled according to use (tree lights, porch lights, balcony, bushes, etc. ). Zip ties can also be used on wreaths, so that they can be hung on coat hangers and covered with plastic garment bags from the dry cleaner. To avoid a stockpile of holiday cards, “save only those that are meaningful and special,” Tova Weinstock, a professional organizer in Brooklyn, said. “For the others, appreciate them as you receive them and then kindly send them to the trash. ” EDIT YOUR CLOSET Eliminating clothes you never wear is easier said than done. “I don’t believe in ‘If you haven’t used or worn something in a year, get rid of it,’” said Laura Cattano, another organizer in Brooklyn. “How you want to live moving forward is a much better guide for editing than whether or not you actually have used something in the past. ” Focus on the image you would like to project, she said, then start at one end of the closet and review each piece, pulling out those you know you can toss, donate or sell. Try on anything you haven’t worn in a while and consider how it makes you feel or if it could be styled differently. Clothes you have forgotten about could be “your new favorite thing,” she said, while there may be some pieces you wear all the time that should be retired. (If you subscribe to the Marie Kondo method of decluttering, ask yourself, “Does it ‘spark joy? ’”) Sort clothes by type, grouping pants together, then shirts or blouses, jackets or dresses. “If you can’t see it, you won’t wear it,” said Sharon Lowenheim, an organizer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the founder of the Organizing Goddess. “So remove dry cleaning bags and hang only one item per hanger. ” Arranging shirts by sleeve length, with the shortest at the front, makes them easier to find, said Ms. Lowenheim, who also subscribes to a rotation method: selecting garments to wear from the front of each section, then hanging them up toward the back after they are cleaned. “If you find yourself continually bypassing an item at the front, that is a signal to you that you just don’t like that item,” she said. “Get rid of it. ” Another way to keep your closet streamlined is to store clothes out of sight, said Faith Roberson, an organizer in Manhattan and the founder of Organize With Faith. When clothes have been put away for half the year and you’ve done fine without them, “it changes your perspective,” she said. “You can honestly ask yourself, ‘Do I actually love this piece? And if I don’t, why am I holding onto it? ’” TACKLE THE TOYS Organizing pros agree that the best way to keep toys from taking over is to get children involved in selecting some to donate. “Finding a charity that provides toys to less fortunate children is very motivating for a child,” said Ms. Lowenheim, whose daughter purged her playthings in this manner before each birthday and holiday, starting when she was a toddler. Before that, Ms. Lowenheim said, she would sneak into her daughter’s room while she was sleeping to gather up the games and stuffed animals she was no longer playing with. “When she was around 3, she started noticing if something was missing and would ask me about it,” Ms. Lowenheim said. “At that point, I realized that I had to involve her in the process. ” If they cooperate, be sure to respect their decision, Ms. Roberson said, even if they choose something you wouldn’t have. “Parents think about the money they’ve spent,” she said, or the sentimental value, which can make them reluctant to let go of that American Girl doll or the train set from Aunt Joan. Another strategy is to encourage them to sell the toys they no longer play with, either online or at a garage sale, and keep the proceeds for themselves. Once the toys have been pared down, Ms. Roberson swears by clear shoe or sweater drawers for storage. “They are stackable, they have dividers, are easy to clean, easy to label, and they come in four different sizes,” she said. To help maintain order, “label where each toy goes,” said Ms. Lowenheim, who recommends installing a tall bookcase and putting paints, jigsaw puzzles and other games that tend to leave a mess on the highest shelf. If your child is too young to read, label the containers with stickers or pictures. If everything has “a home” to return to at the end of the day, she said, cleanup will be easier. AND THAT JUNK DRAWER . .. “Don’t waste your time standing over the drawer sifting through it piece by piece,” Ms. Roberson said. Dump everything onto the floor or countertop, divide it into piles and then ask yourself: Do I want it? Does it work? Does it need to be in the junk drawer? If not, where else could it go? “Take it easy, and go pile by pile,” she said. Put things where they belong (like that miniature tube of toothpaste you got from the dentist that should go in your toiletries bag) and discard things you don’t need, like old keys and expired batteries and coupons. To ward off atrophy, buy a drawer organizer, suggested Ms. Lowenheim, who uses expandable drawer organizers from Staples in her own home. “The key thing is to measure the drawer, then find the organizer that best fits the space,” she said. “If it’s too small, it won’t help. ” The reward? “Keeping everything sorted by type,” she said, “will make it easier for you to find something when you need it. ” | 0fake |
UNREAL! RAW VIDEO: Looting During Milwaukee Riot Captures Thugs Destroying Store [Video] | The Milwaukee riots provided an opportunity for thugs to ransack and destroy small businesses in their own community Unreal! A longer version of the looting: | 1real |
Czech ruling party says wage growth must be priority for next government | PRAGUE (Reuters) - The next Czech government should spread the benefits of strong growth with workers and shift to a higher wage economy, Lubomir Zaoralek, who will lead the ruling Social Democrats into next month s election, said on Wednesday. (For graphic, click tmsnrt.rs/2xRMCax) The center left party trails its coalition partner, the ANO movement, by double digits ahead of the Oct. 20-21 vote but Foreign Minister Zaoralek says it can attract voters concerned with economic fairness. The Czech Republic is heavily industrialized and has a large auto sector. Strong growth, which stood at 4.7 percent in the second quarter, has led to labor shortages and increased wage demands. Private sector wage growth has led public sector workers to demand higher pay and the government has increased salaries for health and education workers who have long lagged behind. If the society is to remain united ... when there is prosperity, then that has to be for all, Zaoralek, 61, said in an interview. He said his priorities were wage growth, education and lifting living standards to those of western Europe. The outgoing government has raised the minimum wage each year. The latest rise set wages at 12,200 crowns ($561.23) per month and takes effect next year. It also agreed to increase teacher salaries. Teachers are the worst paid as compared to other skilled professions in OECD countries. Zaoralek said the country needed a new economic model that could produce higher margin goods even it meant some companies dependent on cheap labor shut. Such a shift would echo developments in export industries where wage growth has forced companies to innovate to maintain margins. Czech workers make about a third of their German counterparts. To catch up with western neighbors the country needs to keep in step with EU partners as the bloc debates its post-Brexit future, he said, adding that the country is interested in getting observer status in the euro zone. But it should not push to join the euro zone quickly, he said. Such a push could encounter opposition from potential coalition partners. Zaoralek s stance differs from that of outgoing Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka who says the next government should set a date for joining. Most Czechs do not want the country to join the currency bloc. Zaoralek said elections are often decided in the final days of campaigning so the Social Democrats could still form the next government. No party is expected to win an absolute majority and opinion polls have proved inaccurate in previous elections. One headache for both ANO and potential coalition partners is that parliament voted this month to allow police to charge ANO founder and chairman, billionaire Andrej Babis, with fraud in drawing EU subsidies. He denies wrongdoing. Zaoralek said he could not see Babis in the next cabinet if he were charged. He did not rule out a coalition with the ANO movement if Babis is not prime minister. It is tough to build a coalition with someone who is being prosecuted .... That is unimaginable, he said. | 0fake |
Supreme Court Just Delivered HUGE Win For Same-Sex Adoption (VIDEO) | In big news coming out of the Supreme Court, it was the opinion of the Court that a decision made by an Alabama court refusing to recognize a same-sex adoption will be overturned.When one half of an Alabama couple sought to have the adoption of her children be recognized in her state of Alabama, she was denied, even though the couple together had previously been granted approval by the state of Georgia. The couple has since split up, but both individuals are still parents to their children, as it would be with any heterosexual couple. However, the entire thing does start to get very confusing.Here s the run down via NPR: The two women in the case were together for 16 years, and they had three children conceived by assisted reproductive technology an older daughter, now 13, and boy and girl twins, now 11. The actual names of the parents have not been revealed. They are identified in court documents by the initials V.L. and E.L.E.L. was the biological mother and V.L. subsequently adopted the children with her partner s explicit consent. The adoption was in Georgia, where both women appeared at a court hearing, and the final adoption decree recognized both as the children s legal parents.When the parents, now living in Alabama, split five years ago, however, the biological mother denied her former partner access to the children. The Alabama courts initially ordered a decree of shared custody, based on the Georgia adoption, but the Alabama Supreme Court overturned the lower court orders. The state Supreme Court said the Georgia courts had wrongly agreed to the adoption.The adoptive mother appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on Monday the justices unanimously overruled the Alabama Supreme Court in a short, unsigned opinion. Now, all of that aside, let s just get it out there that this was a frickin terrible thing to do, and as a lesbian myself, to see a woman use anti-gay laws against her former partner as a means to try to keep her away from her own children is pretty much the lowest of the low. But I digress Thankfully, the Court sided with the mother who had adoptive rights in Georgia with the argument was brought up where according to the Constitution in Article IV, Section 1, where the Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. Basically, what s good for the goose, better damn well be good for the gander, and all states need to respect legal acts and proceedings from other states. According to Cathy Sakimura of the National Center for Lesbian Rights: The Supreme Court s reversal of Alabama s unprecedented decision to void an adoption from another state is a victory not only for our client but for thousands of adopted families. No adoptive parent or child should have to face the uncertainty and loss of being separated years after their adoption just because another state s court disagrees with the law that was applied in their adoption. This decision could affect up to 30 different states, according to a brief that was submitted by adoption and child welfare agencies. If we re going to have marriage equality, then that equality needs to reach across all levels of the law. This should include, but not be limited to, adoption, and worker s rights as well. No one should be fired for being gay, which currently is still allowed in 28 states. It s 2016, people, gay rights are human rights. There should be no difference whatsoever.Featured image via Wikimedia Commons | 1real |
Bidders Cast Doubt on Seriousness of Mexican Border Wall Projects | Companies have expressed numerous concerns over the proposed border walls. With the lack of funding in the 2017 budget, those concerns are growing. [Construction of President Trump’s proposed border wall along the U. S. Border is slated to kick off in June when 20 selected bidders will be asked to build prototypes based on the proposals they submitted, Breitbart Texas previously reported. However, The Arizona Republic reports that some bidders are starting to have serious doubts with some already giving up on the project due to how poorly the government is managing details. Michael Hari, the founder of Crisis Resolution Security Services in Illinois, submitted a proposal but is now one of its skeptics. “From the beginning it’s not a serious process, it’s not going to get the wall built,” Hari said. “Right from the there were conflicts, there was not enough time given to it, to develop a reasonable process that would result in a wall getting built. ” Hari, a former sheriff’s deputy, described to the Chicago Tribune in April his vision and reasons for wanting to work on the border wall, which is about more than money. “We would look at the wall as not just a physical barrier to immigration but also as a symbol of the American determination to defend our culture, our language, our heritage, from any outsiders,” Hari said. M3 Federal, a consulting firm for contractors that has over 40 years of experience working on government contracts, warned that Washington not have a specific concept in mind for what exactly they seeking, as evidenced by multiple changes made to the requests for proposals. “The fact that things are being delayed and the fact that there are seven amendments out there just verifies the fact that the government does not have a confirmed concept about what they want to put in place,” said Patrick Malyszek, owner of M3 Federal. “The way the government is handling this is actually going to create a very high risk in terms of the overall project. ” Among those bidders who have already given up on the border wall project is Christopher Dillon, owner of a construction management company based in Alaska. “From the outset of the project, I have been tracking it and it’s a political stunt,” Dillon said. “It’s burning a lot of money. It’s really jerking the contracting community around. ” Building a wall on the U. S. Border was a hallmark for Donald Trump’s campaign. During the campaign launch at Trump Tower, he said, “I would build a great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words. ” Despite this promise, President Trump said that he was “very happy” with the $1. 2 trillion spending bill that he signed on May 5 which included $0 for a border wall. President Trump has reassured supporters that the wall is going to get built despite the setbacks in the 2017 budget in which he blamed Democrats for being “obstructionists. ” “Look, the Democrats are obstructionists that’s all they can do is obstruct. They have no leadership. And we have to agree, and I think both — both sides agree, we have to keep government going, we don’t want to shut government,” he said. Ryan Saavedra is a contributor for Breitbart Texas and can be found on Twitter at @RealSaavedra. | 0fake |
Uzbek leader says he will curb power of state security service | TASHKENT (Reuters) - Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev said on Friday he would reform the Central Asian nation s state security service, adding that its power had become excessive under his predecessor Islam Karimov. The National Security Service (NSS), the local successor to the Soviet KGB, wielded sweeping powers under Karimov who died in September 2016 after a quarter century-long rule criticized for systematic abuses of human rights. Rustam Inoyatov, NSS chairman since 1995, is the only Karimov-era senior security official still in his post, one year into Mirziyoyev s presidency. Speaking to parliament on Friday, Mirziyoyev accused security bodies of rights abuses and called for deep reforms. To strengthen national statehood, sovereignty, peace and stability of the people ... it is time to reform the work of the National Security Service, he said, asking MPs to draft new legislation on law enforcement agencies. At the moment, the National Security Service bases its work on a statute passed by the government 26 years ago. The fact that this statute has remained untouched for a quarter of a century and that every problem was regarded as a threat to national security has led to a groundless expansion of this agency s powers. | 0fake |
STEVE BANNON JUST MADE A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT About What He’ll Be Doing After Leaving The White House…And It’s Very Bad News For The Left | Former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon left the White House today and has already returned as Executive Chairman of Breitbart News, where he will continue to go to war for President Trump.Unfortunately for the Left, Steve Bannon will continue to go to war for Trump against his opponents, he just won t be conducting the war from the White House anymore. There are very few conservatives in America who really know how to beat the left at their own game. Conservatives need someone like Steve Bannon more than ever right now. Fortunately for us, he doesn t plan to walk away from the fight. Josh Caplan reports that Bannon will continue his fight for Trump from the outside after his exit from the White House today.FULL STATEMENT: Bannon says he s going to war for Trump after White House exit pic.twitter.com/e61m6bb74O Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) August 18, 2017 If there s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America, Bannon told Bloomberg News Friday in his first public comments after his departure was announced.Bannon led the evening editorial meeting at Breitbart, where he resumed his role as executive chairman, the website said in a statement. A person who was on the call said Bannon called on the group to hunker down and work like never before to advance conservative causes. Bloomberg The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today, said Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow. Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda. Breitbart News CEO and President Larry Solov agreed. Breitbart s pace of global expansion will only accelerate with Steve back, said Solov. The sky s the limit. Bannon joined the Trump campaign on August 17, 2016 nearly one year ago to the day of his return to Breitbart. He submitted his intention to leave the White House on August 7 of this year. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve s last day, said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders Friday afternoon. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best. Breitbart | 1real |
Exclusive: South Sudan's government using food as weapon of war - U.N. report | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - South Sudan President Salva Kiir s government is using food as a weapon of war to target civilians by blocking life-saving aid in some areas, United Nations sanctions monitors told the Security Council in a confidential report seen by Reuters on Friday. During 2016 and 2017, the U.N. monitors said a military campaign by government troops in the northwestern town of Wau and surrounding areas in Western Bahr el-Ghazal targeted civilians on ethnic grounds and displaced more than 100,000. The government has during much of 2017 deliberately prevented life-saving food assistance from reaching some citizens, the monitors wrote. These actions amount to using food as a weapon of war with the intent to inflict suffering on civilians the government views as opponents to its agenda. The denial of aid had caused extreme food insecurity among large sections of the population, with malnutrition and death by starvation the documented outcome, in particular in the Greater Baggari area in Wau County, they said in the report submitted to the U.N. Security Council s South Sudan sanctions committee. South Sudan s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the U.N. report. South Sudan spiraled into civil war in late 2013, two years after gaining independence from Sudan, and a third of the 12 million population has fled their homes. The conflict was sparked by a feud between Kiir, a Dinka, and his former deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, who is being held in South Africa. The United Nations has warned that the violence in South Sudan was providing fertile ground for a genocide. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley visited the Juba late last month, where she told Kiir that the United States had lost trust in his government and risked losing Washington s support if he did not pursue peace. The U.N. monitors reported that the government had regularly denied humanitarian aid access to certain parts of the population, in particular areas outside the town of Wau, which was visited by U.N. Security Council ambassadors in September last year. One of those areas, Greater Baggari, is noteworthy for the persistent and systematic nature of the government s access denials, and the catastrophic humanitarian conditions that have resulted, the independent U.N. monitors said. In August, the government eased restrictions, allowing aid groups to distribute food and lifesaving assistance to more than 12,000 people in Greater Baggari. Villages had been looted and burned and crops destroyed, the U.N. monitors wrote. One humanitarian assessment mission told the U.N. monitors that 164 young children and elderly had died from hunger and disease between January and September 2017. The report by the U.N. monitors found that despite the catastrophic conditions across South Sudan, armed forces, groups and militias - particularly those affiliated with Kiir and Vice President Taban Deng Gai - continued to actively impede both humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed in South Sudan since 2011. An East African bloc, IGAD, led two rounds of peace talks over two years, culminating in a brief power-sharing agreement signed by Kiir and Machar in 2015. But even as IGAD urges a new ceasefire, the warring parties are preparing for more fighting. The coming dry season in South Sudan will, absent a change in the current conflict dynamics, see further fighting and civilian suffering as the government continues to pursue military victory over political compromise, the U.N. monitors wrote. | 0fake |
Trump says would meet North Korean leader under right circumstances: Bloomberg | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he was open to meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong un “under the right circumstances,” according to Bloomberg News. “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Trump told Bloomberg in an interview, adding, “under the right circumstances I would meet with him.” | 0fake |
HOW A SINGLE FEDERAL BUREAUCRAT OPENED THE DOOR TO LET FOREIGNERS VOTE | Meet Alice Miller who single-handedly scr*wed the legal voters of America by letting non-citizens vote. I guess voter integrity only applies to some .The Supreme Court has been asked to allow Kansas and Arizona to verify that only United States citizens are registering to vote in those states. Unfortunately, a single federal bureaucrat refused to allow the two states to weed out non-citizens trying to register to vote.Meet Alice Miller, the acting executive director of the Election Assistance Commission. Miller alone, from her inside-the-Beltway office, refused to amend the Kansas and Arizona version of a federal voter registration form to include state laws requiring proof of citizenship. Backed by a swarm of left-wing groups, Miller, by herself, made it easier for foreigners to vote in Kansas and Arizona.You might wonder how a single federal bureaucrat could have so much power over how elections are run in Kansas and Arizona. Federal law, commonly known as Motor Voter, requires states to accept a form drawn up by the Election Assistance Commission to register voters in their state. But states can ask the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to revise the version for their state to include state qualification laws. In Kansas and Arizona, registrants must establish that they are citizens to be qualified to register. When Kansas and Arizona asked the EAC to print new forms with those state law requirements, Miller refused.Kansas and Arizona sued, and a federal court ordered the EAC to reprint the forms. However, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and held that Miller had the power to deny Kansas and Arizona new forms.The Supreme Court has been asked to take the case, a case which implicates both the integrity of American elections as well as the reach of federal bureaucrats.Normally, the commissioners at the EAC decide what versions of a form the states can use, but the EAC lacked a quorum. Into this vacuum swept Miller.The Public Interest Legal Foundation has filed an amicus brief for the American Civil Rights Union with the Supreme Court. The brief asks the Court to take the case and to restore the constitutional balance which Miller has disrupted.Read more: pj media | 1real |
Republican Senator Lee says he will vote for tax bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah said on Monday that he will support legislation to overhaul the U.S. tax system, leaving only two Republicans undecided as the bill approaches a final Senate vote this week. “Just finished reading the final Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It will cut taxes for working Utah families. I will proudly vote for it,” Lee said in a message released on Twitter. Republicans, who control the 100-seat Senate by only a 52-48 margin, can lose support from no more than two party lawmakers if the bill is to pass. Republican Senators Susan Collins and Jeff Flake have yet not said whether they will support the legislation. Senator John McCain, who has brain cancer, will not be present for the vote. | 0fake |
Theresa May, New British Prime Minister, Gives Boris Johnson a Key Post - The New York Times | LONDON — After a startlingly swift transfer of power that made her Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May took charge of a new government on Wednesday, vowing to honor the referendum to leave the European Union and naming Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who had been widely considered politically dead, as foreign minister. Mr. Johnson had been at the forefront of the Leave campaign, but after its triumph abruptly pulled out of the contest to succeed Prime Minister David Cameron, who left office earlier Wednesday. Speaking as she arrived at the prime minister’s office at 10 Downing Street, Ms. May, 59, who had served for six years as home secretary, sought to position herself firmly in the tradition of “one nation” Conservatism, stressing her commitment to helping the underprivileged and pledging to fight “burning injustice. ” She also promised to preside over an economy that benefits everyone. “As we leave the European Union we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world, and we will make Britain a country that works not just for a privileged few but for every one of us,” Ms. May said, as her husband, Philip, stood nearby. Another notable appointment was that of David Davis, a former minister for Europe and a longstanding Euroskeptic, to lead a new department responsible for exiting the European Union. Liam Fox, a former defense secretary, will take charge of international trade. Ms. May has effectively handed Mr. Johnson, Mr. Davis and Mr. Fox the responsibility for successfully carrying out the withdrawal — known as Brexit — which they repeatedly promised would yield new opportunities. Putting crucial international portfolios firmly in the hands of Brexit supporters was perhaps an astute move for Ms. May, who had argued, tepidly, for Britain to remain in the European Union. Not only do the appointments appear to reflect a desire to unite her party around the outcome of the June 23 vote, they may also be calculated to head off any suggestion from that she might not follow the will of the voters. Even so, Mr. Johnson’s elevation to such a prestigious post represents a remarkable change of fortunes in a career that has had its share of them. He played a key role in the extraordinary national dramas of the last few months, abandoning Mr. Cameron, who desperately tried to keep Britain in the European Union, and cheerfully becoming the public face of the Brexit campaign. Yet when Mr. Cameron announced his resignation after the referendum, Mr. Johnson’s hopes of succeeding him as Conservative Party leader were undermined by another Brexit supporter, Justice Secretary Michael Gove, who threw aside his support for Mr. Johnson and announced his own candidacy. Mr. Gove argued that Mr. Johnson was not up to the job. Ms. May herself recently mocked Mr. Johnson’s negotiating skills over London’s purchase of used German water cannons when he was mayor. She blocked the use of the cannons, citing fears that they could cause serious injuries. Among other appointments, Ms. May promoted Amber Rudd, former energy secretary, to home secretary. That ensures that one of the biggest political offices — and Ms. May’s old job — remains in the hands of a woman. The new prime minister chose Philip Hammond, who had been foreign secretary, as chancellor of the Exchequer, replacing George Osborne, a close Cameron ally. Ms. May moved into 10 Downing Street after a day of political ritual that saw Mr. Cameron address lawmakers for the last time as prime minister, before tendering his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II. Only on Monday did Ms. May learn that she would become prime minister, when the last remaining contender to lead the governing Conservative Party, Andrea Leadsom, quit the race. Ms. May takes over at a time of acute political turmoil and economic uncertainty and is the 13th prime minister to serve this queen — the first was Winston Churchill. Ms. May’s task is more formidable than that of most of her predecessors. She must chart a course that unites her Conservative Party and takes Britain out of the European Union, while limiting the effect of withdrawal on an economy already heading for a downturn and bruised by a slump in the value of its currency. The Brexit referendum divided the nation, with the majority of voters in a number of less affluent areas opting to quit the bloc, while most of those in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland took the opposite view. On Monday, Ms. May outlined some of the economic changes she hopes to make, speaking about taming excessive executive pay, and arguing that big multinational companies must pay their fair share in taxes. Just an hour or so before Ms. May spoke outside 10 Downing Street on Wednesday, Mr. Cameron stood in the same spot, flanked by his wife, Samantha, and their three children, paying tribute to his family and his key staff members who had supported him. “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve our country as prime minister over these last six years, and to serve as the leader of my party for almost 11 years,” Mr. Cameron said. “My only wish is continued success for this great country that I love so very much. ” Mr. Cameron cited the nation’s economic recovery as his top legacy. “With the deficit cut by two and a half million more people in work and one million more businesses, there can be no doubt that our economy is immeasurably stronger,” he said. He also cited among his accomplishments the legalization of marriage, in 2013 changes to the education system and reduced wait times for operations in Britain’s National Health Service. “I’m delighted that for the second time in British history, the new prime minister will be a woman, and once again a Conservative,” Mr. Cameron said. “I believe Theresa will provide strong and stable leadership in fulfilling the Conservative manifesto on which we were elected, and I wish her well in negotiating the best possible terms for Britain’s exit from the European Union. ” Hours earlier, in his final parliamentary duty, Mr. Cameron took part for the last time in prime minister’s questions, the weekly ritual in which lawmakers interrogate the leader in often combative exchanges. On Wednesday, the discussion was more respectful — and lighthearted — than usual, as Mr. Cameron’s political adversaries and allies paid tribute to him. “I’m told that there are lots of leadership roles out there at the moment: there’s the England football team, there’s ‘Top Gear,’ there’s even across the big pond the role that needs filling,” Danny Kinahan, a lawmaker from Northern Ireland, told Mr. Cameron jokingly, referring to England’s soccer team, a wildly popular BBC television show — and the United States presidential election. | 0fake |
Largest Gun Control Study In History Completed–The NRA Is Gonna Be P*ssed | While Republicans and their NRA puppet masters refuse to acknowledge it, we have a gun violence problem in America today. Almost like clockwork, anytime there is a shooting the right twists themselves into pretzels to blame anything but the easy availability of guns to, shall we say, crazy people.Each time, for instance, a pro-gun Republican shoots up a building, conservatives will fallaciously claim that he was a Black Lives Matter protester, or ignore their raving-mad right-wing rants and love of weapons, or claim the shooter was a Progressive because he was formerly employed by an insurance company by that name, or even say that a man who shot up a Planned Parenthood in an effort to stop abortion was a transgendered leftist activist who was trying to rob a bank. They spend so much time focusing on inventing stories that they completely miss the one trait all of these attacks share: the weapon used was a gun.While they ignore the issues, the right bellows that the solution is more guns, not fewer. But a recent study the largest of its kind to date puts that assertion largely to rest. A research team reviewed 130 high-quality studies conducted in ten countries over six decades and found that the tyrannical attempts by those of us on the left who want to restrict crazy people s access to guns because we are sick of seeing dead children on a daily basis, aren t at all misguided, as conservatives often claim.While researchers stopped short of saying they have proved conclusively that firearm restrictions reduce deaths, the study provides plenty of evidence to suggest this is the case. Across countries, instead of seeing an increase in the homicide rate, we saw a reduction, lead researcher Julian Santaella-Tenorio from Columbia University told Vox. The study analyzed law changes in the United States, Australia, Austria, Brazil, South Africa, and other countries. No new data was collected. Instead, the researchers observed the big picture by taking a look at what the data says when all the studies are examined together. Santaella-Teonorio explained: The simultaneous implementation of laws targeting multiple firearms restrictions is associated with reductions in firearm deaths. The findings do not note one specific law that has caused gun violence to decrease like an assault weapon ban, or a ban on high-capacity magazines, because the diversity among countries makes this difficult. However, in countries that overhauled their firearm regulations broadly, the changes shared similar characteristics, according to the researcher:South Africa s Firearm Control Act of 2000, for example, contained all three of these measures, and a study of five South African cities found a 13.6 percent reduction in firearm homicides each year for the next five years. Reductions in nonfirearm homicides were also observed, the researchers say, although not as pronounced as the ones observed for firearm homicides. To combat mass shootings, Australia passed similar legislation in 1996. Thanks to the new laws, firearm homicide rates decreased by 4.8 percent, and suicides by 9.9 percent. There have only been two mass shootings in the country in the two decades since.But even the smallest changes, such as background check requirements and storage regulations, can have a huge impact. Laws restricting the purchase of (e.g. background checks) and access to (e.g. safer storage) firearms are also associated with lower rates of intimate partner homicides and firearm unintentional deaths in children, respectively, the researchers write.Of course, the weakening of firearm laws can have an impact as well. Following Missouri s decision to eliminate common-sense laws requiring people to have a permit to purchase a firearm, the state saw a homicide rate increase of 25 percent. No other changes in the law explain this increase. Stand Your Ground laws do nothing to reduce gun violence, but instead increase it (especially among white men): Stand your ground laws were associated with a 6.8% increase in homicide rates, mainly driven by increments (14.7%) in homicide rates among white males. While this can t be considered conclusive evidence that gun control helps limit fatalities, the study certainly provides enough evidence to give any Republican who can manage to operate a toaster without an adult supervising the operation pause to consider that maybe, just maybe, laws limiting firearms to people who aren t criminals, who aren t insane, and who aren t going to misuse them or act irresponsibly are in everyone s best interest even the most staunch Second Amendment supporter.Featured image via QuickMeme | 1real |
Green groups criticize Trump pick for White House environmental policy post | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Green groups on Friday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump for choosing a nominee for White House environmental panel who wrote in an opinion article last year that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. The White House said on Thursday that Trump had nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, who served as Texas’s top environmental regulator under the state’s former governor, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The council sets the administration’s environmental policy goals. White, now a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Institute, has questioned the notion that burning fossil fuels is causing harmful increases in global temperatures. In an opinion article in the Austin American-Statesman newspaper on June 20, 2016, she said natural gas had been “falsely maligned” and should be known as the “gas of life.” Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said on Friday that assertion indicated that White would facilitate “the rampant looting of environmental and public health protection policies,” according to a news release. The Environmental Working Group describes itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting human health and the environment.” The Sierra Club environmental group called White “a fossil fuel industry apologist” in a news release on Friday. White did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Kathleen Hartnett White is eminently qualified having served as an environmental regulator and on numerous environmental boards and commissions,” a White House spokeswoman said. “Her nomination was cleared by the Office of Government Ethics. We look forward to Mrs. White being confirmed.” An overwhelming majority of scientists think that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels is a major contributor to global climate change, triggering sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms. White is not the first person Trump has picked to join his administration who rejects that scientific consensus. In March, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said he did not believe carbon dioxide was a major contributor to global warming. | 0fake |
OUTRAGE AND DESPERATION: VIDEO Captures American Company Telling 1,400 Workers Their Jobs Are Going To Mexico | Our next President is going to have to work with Congress to undo all of the excessive tax burdens, government regulations and restrictions, that have been forcing American businesses to go overseas in order to make a profit and compete Is Donald Trump that President? Video footage has emerged documenting the outrage and desperation of 1,400 American workers as they are informed that their company will be sending their jobs to Mexico.As Mediaite reports: A cell phone video taken at Carrier Air Conditioner in Indianapolis shows the exact moment that the plant and union workers were told that the company had decided to shift production south of the border. The best way to stay competitive and protect the business for longterm is to move production from our facility in Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico, says the company representative at the microphone. Let s quiet down, the company representative says as the American workers of different races and ethnicities begin to shout out after being told that they will soon be out of a job.Although the establishment media seems loath to report it, globalist trade deals and the off-shoring of American jobs have become a central focus of the 2016 race as earlier this month President Obama s signed what could arguably be one of the impactful trade agreements in modern history, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.The Economic Policy Institute has documented that Between 1993 (before NAFTA took effect) and 2013, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada increased from $17.0 billion to $177.2 billion, displacing more than 850,000 U.S. jobs. More than 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost between 1997 and 2014, and most of those job losses were due to growing trade deficits with countries that have negotiated trade and investment deals with the United States, the report states.Mexico is a member country of the TPP. The Economic Policy Institute notes, the United States already has a large and growing trade deficit with the 11 other countries in the proposed TPP, which reached $265.1 billion in 2014. In contrast, the United States had a small trade surplus with Mexico in 1993, before NAFTA took effect. In other words, outsourcing to the TPP countries is a potentially much greater threat than it was under NAFTA with Mexico. Donald Trump has made his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership a focal point of his campaign.Trump said that if he were President,I would call up the head of Ford I would say, Congratulations. That s the good news. Let me give you the bad news. Every car and every truck and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we re going to charge you a 35-percent tax, and that tax is going to be paid simultaneously with the transaction, and that s it If it s not me in the position, it s one of these politicians that we re running against [then] here s what s going to happen. They re not so stupid. They know it s not a good thing, and they may even be upset by it. But then they re going to get a call from the donors or probably from the lobbyist for Ford and say, You can t do that to Ford, because Ford takes care of me and I take care of you, and you can t do that to Ford. And guess what? No problem. They re going to build in Mexico. They re going to take away thousands of jobs. It s very bad for us. So under President Trump, here s what would happen: the head of Ford will call me back, I would say within an hour after I told them the bad news And he ll say, Please, please, please. He ll beg for a little while, and I ll say, No interest. Then he ll call all sorts of political people, and I ll say, Sorry, fellas. No interest, because I don t need anybody s money I don t need anybody s money.I m using my own money. I m not using the lobbyists. I m not using donors. I don t care. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
THE END OF CROOKED HILLARY’S POLITICAL CAREER: “Hello Darkness My Old Friend” [VIDEO] | A true story of how Americans rejected socialism, cronyism and corruption at the polls on November 8th. And how Crooked Hillary s supporters reacted to her excruciating loss:HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND. #NotMyPresident pic.twitter.com/WuXXhJGYZO Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 9, 2016 | 1real |
Fox Rejects Super Bowl Ad From 84 Lumber, Which Depicts Border Wall - Breitbart | If you believe those who spin the mill of rumors, Fox has undertaken a massive effort this year to make Super Bowl LI apolitical. [For example, Entertainment Tonight had a report, which was vehemently denied by the NFL, that the league told halftime performer Lady Gaga not to mention Trump during her show. Now, Fox has 86’d a Super Bowl ad from 84 Lumber, which includes the depiction of a border wall. According to The New York Post, “The spot, from 84 Lumber, a first time Super Bowl advertiser, was deemed by Fox to be too controversial, a spokesman for ad agency Brunner told The Post. Fox declined to comment. The two sides are said to be working on a compromise. ” Campaign’s Kathryn Luttner provides some description of the ad. Luttner writes, “The script has been rejected by the network for being “too political,” according to sources close to the project. The spot from agency Brunner focuses on recruitment and includes images of immigrants unable to cross the border due to “the wall,” a flashpoint of debate during the 2016 presidential election. ” 84 Lumber’s owner and president Maggie Hardy Magerko said in a statement, “Our industry is going through a period of extreme disruption. And I’ve always preferred to be the one doing the disrupting, rather than the one being disrupted. But to do that, we need to hire and train people differently. We need to cast a wider net, and to let the world know that 84 Lumber is a place for people who don’t always fit nicely into a box. We want people interested in creating their own path … for themselves and for 84 Lumber. ” If getting “outside the box” was the goal of this ad, 84 Lumber definitely achieved that. Still, it’s interesting that the NFL is so tightly policing this particular Super Bowl. They did not exercise such oversight last year when Beyoncé performed her extremely song “Formation,” during the halftime show. Of course, that event occurred during a and halftime show and not in a commercial ad, such as what’s happening here with 84 Lumber. Certainly, 84 Lumber should not be allowed to construct a giant replica border wall during the halftime show, even though that might be the greatest thing ever. But, if a performance that denigrates and endangers police officers can get an entire halftime show, a border wall commercial can get some love, right? Probably not. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 0fake |
WHY MOM EMPLOYED BY DISNEY Is Calling Them “Bullies”…Voting For Trump To Stand Up To Them | We can t say for sure, but we re guessing the truth about the happiest place on earth is about to be exposed by the Donald I m doing this because I don t like bullies, Dena Moore says, explaining why she as one of the American Disney workers who was laid off and forced to train her low-wage H-1B foreign replacement is now launching a discrimination lawsuit against the corporation. You can t let a bully continue to be the bully. Someone had to say: Slavery isn t right, I think I ll stand up against it. Someone had to say: We shouldn t [mistreat] our women. I think I ll stand up. Someone had to stand up. That s what I m hoping that my work is doing. There s a lot of people who are just afraid, Moore tells Breitbart in an exclusive telephone interview.Yet this sentiment also explains why Moore, a constituent of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) now says she s casting her ballot for GOP frontrunner Donald Trump: Trump is standing up to the bullies. The American people are now the weak ones being bullied, Moore explains. The everyday working person needs a champion and you d never think to say that. Who would ever think a day would come when we would have to say that? But the middle class needs a champion we need a union that will protect us and Donald Trump is that champion. He is champion who stands up to the bullies to protect the weak, he stands up for us he stands up. When you stand up to the bullies you have to stay strong, Moore explained. You re not always going to be well-liked, and it takes you a little while to be heard. Maybe you ll make mistakes, but you have to get past the media s let me pick you apart stage and recognize that this person is standing up to the bullies. I will be voting for Trump, Moore said emphatically. If we don t want to become the next third world country to me we need somebody whose a business man to run the country. I never realized the laws behind it, Moore says of the nation s rampant visa policies that allowed her and her colleagues to be replaced by foreign workers. I didn t know what I didn t know. And Trump has brought this to the forefront. This is probably happening in more than 50 percent of workplaces. As Americans, we re becoming the minority, we re becoming the underpaid workers, who have to now go find a different position. Moore, at 53 is a mother of four and grandmother of 13. She had been working for Disney just shy of ten years, when out of the blue she was called into a meeting and informed that she along with hundreds of her American colleagues were being let go and would be replaced with foreign workers, whom they would have to train. These foreign workers had been brought into the country on the controversial wage-depressing H-1B visa.In the course of the interview, Moore discussed the toll this news took on her extended family her colleagues at Disney who could not recover from the stress of the blow. People often tell me, You don t seem devastated enough. I am, but I don t live my life that way, Moore says. I am Miss Sunshine. I m the energetic positive force. Being devastated, Moore explains, is just not in my nature. I bounce. But a lot of other people have not, she says trailing off. Most people were devastated because they had worked at Disney for 30, 40 years. I fared better because I ve been a contractor my whole life. Disney was my first real job as an employee. But I had a friend who passed away after the situation. And I had another friend who was hospitalized with a heart condition. I truly believe it was from the stressful situation that we were all in. It was a family the people I worked with it was an extended family. And it got torn part. And not only for the people who left. People were devastated you took a well-running machine and you just busted it up. We were afraid to come forward we didn t want them to hoard anything against us, Moore said of why so many of ex-Disney employees remained silent.Moore s Senator, Marco Rubio, has pushed to expand H-1B visas despite the fact that scores of his own constituents had just been displaced by the program.In 2015 Rubio introduced a bill to triple the number of H-1B visas. This bill known as the I-Squared bill was endorsed by Disney CEO Bob Iger via his immigration lobbying firm. Disney is also one of Sen. Rubio s biggest financial boosters having donated more than $2 million according to Open Secrets.While Rubio has pushed legislation that would help companies like Disney to bring in more even more H-1B foreign replacement, Trump has called on Disney to hire back all of its American employees. In October, Trump declared, I am calling TODAY on Disney to hire back every one of the workers they replaced, and I am calling on Rubio to immediately rescind his sponsorship of the I-Squared bill and apologize to every Floridian for endorsing it. I am further calling on Rubio to return the money he has received from Silicon Valley CEOs and to donate the money to a charity helping unemployed Americans whose jobs Rubio has helped to destroy. While Trump has made clear that he will champion the interests of American workers, Marco Rubio has never reached out to us, Moore explained. I do believe that politicians will always side with who pays them directly or indirectly, Moore said of Rubio s financial ties to Disney. I also believe they will say and do whatever it takes because they re not being held accountable. There s always an out for them because that is what the American people have said politicians can do. During the exclusive interview, Moore recalled the events that led her to eventually call Sara Blackwell and begin her involvement in the lawsuit.Moore said that when Disney originally gathered the American employees together: We thought we were having a party. We did fantastic work. We were excited. We thought it was going to be a party, but then when we went down the hallways. We realized it wasn t a party but a meeting, suddenly we all knew that something good was not about to happen. It was that quick suddenly there was an ominous atmosphere Nobody they brought in was better than anybody they let go. Every one they brought in were as we would describe completely green, they were like interns, fresh out of nowhere [When they originally let me go], I was offered a position it was a contract position for six months I had a start date, I was entered in to the HR system, etc. but two days before I was supposed to come in to start, HR called and said, You can t come in because executives are reviewing your position. Four weeks later after not hearing from them I called Sara [Blackwell, the attorney for American workers in the lawsuit against Disney]. Moore said that she is grateful for Trump s firm position on immigration: I m not prejudiced. I have lots of diversity in my friend group, but I don t think you can come into my country, take my resources and not only be granted to stay here but tohave the red carpet rolled out for you by my politicians What s bad is that because we have become this politically correct nation, if you say anything you sound like you re prejudiced. To me, Trump has done a really good job because it is so very easy to pull that you re prejudiced card, and that is not what this is about. It has to do with our economic resources and whether Americans get to benefit from them. I usually just vote Republican because I m a Republican, Moore said. I don t usually pay attention to politicians because they say whatever they need to say. I usually don t hold many politicians to what they say because they just say what people want to hear, but with a business person they don t play that political game. It makes you listen. They re used to being held accountable they re used to having to prove themselves and perform. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Turkish Military Deploy Tanks And Equipment To Iraqi Border | Posted on November 1, 2016 by Edmondo Burr in Middle East , News // 0 Comments The Turkish military have begun deploying tanks and military hardware to towns in the Sirnak province bordering Iraq, according to military sources on Tuesday.
Reuters reports:
The sources did not give a reason for the deployment, but President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Turkey was aiming to reinforce its troops there, saying Ankara would have a “different response” for Shi’ite militia groups if they “cause terror” in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. RELATED CONTENT India Deploys 100 Tanks In Remote Border Region With China
Photos from the military sources showed a long column of vehicles, including tanks, tank rescue vehicles and construction vehicles in single file on a dual carriageway.
The deployment coincides with an Iraqi operation to drive Islamic State from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and after Iraqi Shi’ite militias launched a related offensive to push the jihadists out of the town of Tal Afar further west.
Ankara has warned against such a move toward Tal Afar, which is some 170 km (106 miles) from Silopi and home to a sizeable ethnic Turkmen population with historic and cultural ties to Turkey.
Sirnak province, where Silopi is located, is also one of the main areas of conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, who have bases in northern Iraq. | 1real |
‘We Still Have a Lot of People Dying’ - The New York Times | BALTIMORE — I first met Brandon Scott the day after Freddie Gray died. It was April 20, 2015. Mr. Scott, a member of the Baltimore City Council, was quietly observing a news conference where Baltimore police officials announced the suspension of six officers involved in the arrest of Mr. Gray, a black man who sustained a fatal spinal cord injury in a police transport van. In the blighted West Baltimore neighborhood where Mr. Gray grew up, protests were growing. Mr. Gray’s death was wrenching for Baltimore a lot has transpired here since then. On the day Mr. Gray was buried, riots broke out, prompting Maryland’s governor to call in the National Guard. The fiery state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, promptly indicted the six officers on charges including murder. The city paid $6. 4 million to the Gray family. With the murder rate soaring, the mayor fired the police chief — and decided not to run for office again, as the city struggled to heal. Then came the officers’ trials, which ended this week without a single conviction. Throughout, I have repeatedly interviewed Mr. Scott. He is 32, and the vice chairman of the Council committee that oversees the Baltimore police. Before being elected in 2011, he worked in city government and the 300 Men March, an group here. On Thursday, we spoke again, about the latest developments and what has changed. Below is an edited and condensed excerpt from that conversation. Ms. Mosby’s team has just accused the Police Department of undermining the prosecution. Does that concern you? My concerns are first and foremost that moving forward, we are doing what we need to do to repair our city — to improve relations. I have spent a good deal of time over the last year working on body cameras, working on trainings with young people. The most important thing — what gets lost in all of this, is that we are talking about the loss of a life. But I will be following up with the police commissioner, even though this happened before the current commissioner, to provide a response to those claims. You mentioned body cameras. Are the Baltimore police using them? They will, just like in New York or any other major city, they’re going to be rolled out. We already have body cameras out there at this point, we are close to 200 officers. Body cameras were in the works before Freddie Gray, but most definitely it ratcheted up the pace. What else has changed? The department decided to improve the vans, so that’s a change. And I’m partnering with an organization called Community Mediation, fostering dialogue between youth and the police. Community Mediation is now mediating some internal affairs complaints. A lot of things have changed, things that people don’t see because they’re behind the scenes. I’ve talked to a lot of people who feel as though in the end, justice was not served — either for Freddie Gray or for the police. What do you say to that? I think what people must know about American justice is that the way the system is set up, you have to have a certain burden of proof and if it’s not met, then it’s not met. You can be as angry as you want to be, but you have to understand the system and respect it. What about you? Do you personally think justice was served? I can’t personalize it. Like myself, what I would do in a situation like that is talk to the family and see how they feel. If Mr. Gray’s family feels like everything, from the charges, from the state’s attorney proceeding with the trials, everything that has come out of it equals justice to them, then it’s justice. That’s a careful answer. You’ve always been so measured in answering my questions. I’m the grandson of poor farmers in rural North Carolina. I truly understand what it means for me being a young black man in this country. But I try not to be divisive, I try not to be polarizing, because that’s the last thing we need right now. We have enough of that going on. We’ve talked about changes in the city. Have you changed? Of course I have changed. I have shifted my work I’ve tried to do things a little differently. You have to be uncomfortable. If you’re not uncomfortable, if you haven’t changed the way you operate from April 2015 to now, then you’re saying the way our city was, was O. K. — and it wasn’t. So what are you doing differently? For example today, I’m on the labor committee in the City Council and we voted to send a bill to the full council raising the city’s minimum wage to $15 by 2022. I don’t think that would have happened before last April. Is Baltimore perhaps a better place now, as a result of Freddie Gray’s death? I can say that there have been changes in Baltimore for the better. But I can’t say that Baltimore is a complete better place, because we still have a lot of people dying. So Ms. Mosby never got any convictions. What, if anything, did she achieve? Many folks feel that her charging the officers would not have happened under the previous state’s attorney. That alone is a big deal for thousands of people in the city. But I would also remember — I talked to you and every other media outlet last year, I said, everyone should stay middle ground, because it’s just the beginning of the process. Are you surprised at how it turned out? I thought that at least there would be one charge that would stick with at least one officer, but I can’t say I’m surprised that it turned out the way that it did. | 0fake |
NEWT GINGRICH Gives Best Ever Solution to Stop WH Leaks! [Video] | Newt Gingrich: You start putting a few people in jail, you ll see the leaks dry up dramatically. Gingrich is saying what so many Americans are thinking! President Trump needs to bring down the hammer on these leakers!.@newtgingrich: You start putting a few people in jail, you ll see the leaks dry up dramatically. pic.twitter.com/hIouoVMTgm Fox News (@FoxNews) May 28, 2017JUDGE JEANINE RECENTLY SAID THAT THE ONE BIG PROBLEM THAT TRUMP NEEDS TO FIX IS THE LEAKERS:Pirro called on Trump to make every effort to find the leaker in the White House:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53eulMbi9x8A RECENT REPORT FROM BREITBART NEWS: LEAKERS FOUND AND WILL BE DEALT WITH BY THE PRESIDENT:The latest report on the White House leakers raises many questions. The main question to ask is why there are ANY Obama holdovers left working at the White House. Trump should fire them all because it s turning out that they just want to sabotage his presidency!BREITBART NEWS IS REPORTING that at least two separate news organizations have credible information that three distinct leakers have been identified at the White House and that President Donald Trump is expected to fire them when he returns from his first overseas trip. CBS News has confirmed from two sources that three leakers of classified information at the White House have been identified and are expected to be fired, CBS News reported this week, adding, Officials within the Trump White House believe leaks of Mr. Trump s conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are a deliberate attempt by officials who are holdovers from President Obama s administration and are trying to damage the Trump presidency. In addition, this week, chief One America News Network (OANN) White House correspondent Trey Yingst also reported that three White House leakers have been identified and referred to the proper authorities.Yingst wrote on Twitter that the three leakers have been carelessly leaking classified information to hurt President Trump politically and that Trump is expected to fire multiple people connected with the network of leakers upon his return to the White House. | 1real |
INVASION OF AMERICA: POSSIBILITY OF A TRUMP WALL Has Illegals Racing To Across The Border In Record Numbers | A report just came out about the crazy huge numbers of illegals crossing our OPEN BORDER. Yes, Obama has basically opened our borders to pretty much anyone who can walk or crawl across. That means people from all over the globe including terrorists!The prospect of Donald Trump s border wall becoming a reality has illegal immigrants racing for the U.S.An investigative report by Reuters quantitatively and qualitatively shows the Republican front-runner s vow to secure the border has struck fear into the hearts of would-be illegal aliens. The news service interviewed migrants and smugglers for Tuesday s report, in addition to pouring over Customs and Border Patrol data: If Trump wins, we re all screwed and all Latinos are screwed, Isaias Franco, a 46-year-old from El Salvador who was deported from the United States late last year and is now trying to get back, said at a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data shows 150,304 migrants were detained trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border between October and February, up 24 percent from the same period last year.Similar data for unaccompanied child migrants those traveling without a guardian is not yet available, but between October and January, 20,455 kids were apprehended on the southwest border, up over 100 percent from a year ago. They think they need to take advantage while they can, said Blanca Rivera, who manages a Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, migrant shelter.She said coyotes in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa who charge about $7,000 per person have been telling people now is the time to leave.CBP data revealed 150,304 people were apprehended trying to illegal enter the U.S. through its southern border between October and February 2015 a 24 percent jump over the previous year. Unaccompanied minors detained illegally entering the U.S. from October to January 20,455 skyrocketed 100 percent compared to the previous year.Isaias Franco, a 46-year-old from El Salvador who was deported from the U.S. last year, told Reuters from Ciudad Juarez that he was determined to return. If Trump wins, we re all screwed and all Latinos are screwed, Franco said. You watch the news There s a lot of fear among Latinos. Read more: WNDMEXICO REJECTS THE POSSIBILITY OF A WALLMEXICO CITY (Reuters) There is no way Mexico would fund Donald Trump s terrible plan to build a wall along its border with the United States if the Republican front-runner wins the U.S. presidential election, the Mexican finance minister said.Trump, the New York billionaire developer and former reality television star, sparked outrage in Mexico when he vowed to force Latin America s second largest economy to pay for a wall along the southern U.S. border to stem the flow of illegal immigration and drugs.In a televised interview late on Wednesday, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray categorically rejected the proposal. Under no circumstance will Mexico pay for the wall that Mr. Trump is proposing, he said. Building a wall between Mexico and the United States is a terrible idea. It is an idea based on ignorance and has no foundation in the reality of North American integration. Trump has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the U.S. border and has vowed to increase fees on some Mexican visas and all border crossing cards as part of a broader plan to force Mexico to pay for the wall. Read more: Yahoo | 1real |
Iceland’s Pirate Party Makes Strong Showing in New Election | Iceland’s Pirate Party Makes Strong Showing in New Election Posted on Oct 30, 2016
By Common Dreams staff PiratesforIceland.party
Iceland’s Pirate Party has tripled its seats in the 63-seat parliament, Saturday night’s election results show.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, the leader of the Pirate Party, said she was satisfied with the result. “Whatever happens, we have created a wave of change in the Icelandic society,” she told a cheering crowd early Sunday morning.
The Pirates won 10 seats, more than tripling its three seats in the last election. The Left-Green Party also won 10 seats Saturday.
The left-leaning parties — the Left-Greens, the Pirates and two allies — won a total of 27 seats, just short of the 32 required to command a majority in Iceland’s Parliament, the world’s oldest.
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The governing center-right Progressive party lost more than half of its seats in the election which was triggered by Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson ‘s resignation in April in the wake of the leaked Panama Papers which revealed the offshore assets of high-profile figures.
Current Prime Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson said he would resign on Sunday.
The anti-establishment Pirate Party, which was founded in 2012, had said it could be looking to form a coalition with three left-wing and centrist parties.
The Pirates’ core issues are: direct democracy, freedom of expression, civil rights, net neutrality, and transparency, all set out in a popular, crowdsourced draft of a new national Constitution that the current government has failed to act on. They also seek to re-nationalize the country’s natural resource industries, create new rules for civic governance, and issue a passport to Edward Snowden. After election press conference of @PiratePartyIS . @birgittaj : "We don't step back from anything that we said before the election." pic.twitter.com/hnf8i3cR6J — Fabio Reinhardt (@Enigma424) October 30, 2016
Pirate Party founder and MP Birgitta Jonsdottir said she was “very satisfied” with the result.
“Our internal predictions showed 10 to 15%, so this is at the top of the range. We knew that we would never get 30%,” Ms Jonsdottir told Reuters. “We want to see trickle-down ethics rather than make-believe trickle-down economics,” Ms. Jonsdottir, 49, who is also a former WikiLeaks activist, said
“We are a platform for young people, for progressive people who shape and reshape our society,” Ms. Jonsdottir told Agence France-Presse. “Like Robin Hood, because Robin Hood was a pirate, we want to take the power from the powerful to give it to the people.” Turnout in Iceland was 79.2%! If the US got anywhere near that, this would be a dramatically more progressive country. pic.twitter.com/9uCBBewNz2 — John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) October 30, 2016 TAGS: | 1real |
Defense Secretary: US Talking to Turkey About Future Role in Raqqa | Insists ISIS Capital Will Be Attacked With 'Forces Available' by Jason Ditz, November 02, 2016 Share This
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter today confirmed that negotiations with Turkey are ongoing related to the upcoming invasion of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital city of ISIS. Carter suggested Turkey’s involvement would only happen “ further down the road .”
The US announced that it intends to launch an invasion of Raqqa very soon, will conduct the operation concurrent with the ongoing invasion of Mosul in Iraq, and that Kurdish YPG forces will be providing the vast majority of the forces for this offensive.
That’s irked Turkey, particularly the last part, as Turkish officials repeatedly warned the US against allowing Kurds anywhere near Raqqa and have suggested their own involvement was contingent on there being no Kurds involved.
Carter’s comments suggest the US plan to invade without Turkey is unchanged, and that they intend to try to placate Turkey about the involvement of the YPG by giving them some involvement in the post-ISIS situation in Raqqa. Turkey is particularly keen to ensure that their own allies end up in control of Raqqa, and that’s likely the main incentive of this deal. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1real |
White Racists Are FURIOUS With Netflix; The Poor Little Snowflakes Are Even Boycotting | If it weren t for the whiney phrase, political correctness, which is really just another phrase for being polite, Donald Trump would likely have never invaded the White House. It seems that over the last 50 or so years, black people have gotten much too uppity, so when Netflix announced the release of a series called Dear White People, which isn t supposed to be exactly flattering to white people and especially racist white people, they threw a fit and are canceling their Netflix memberships.Because they can be as cruel as they want toward People of Color, but if the People of Color call them on it, well, that s out of bounds. So, White Supremacists, taking a cue from their Supreme Orange Leader, came up with a protest Twitter hashtag, #NoNetflix.Netflix announced a new anti-white show (Dear White People) that promotes white genocide.I cancelled my account, do the same. #NoNetflix pic.twitter.com/2HIGqviLHj Shia LeBaked (@bakedalaska) February 8, 2017This is the type of anti-white bigotry that gets incited by @Netflix sponsored shows. #NoNetflix pic.twitter.com/gaozYZ6kyO Shia LeBaked (@bakedalaska) February 10, 2017Netflix is working with Code Red Production, peddling their anti-White garbage. #NoNetflix #BoycottNetflix pic.twitter.com/ZutCzDus0L Boatsinker (@Clausfarre143) February 11, 2017To be fair, this is one of the show s writers, but after reading these tweets, I too hate white people and like Moore, I m one of them.Why I canceled my membership @netflix #NoNetflix pic.twitter.com/vQspcNM5Mi trevr (@trevrc) February 9, 2017If you can stomach it, read this trash:retweet and like if you think this guy summed it up beautifully. #netflix #NoNetflix pic.twitter.com/Xf8OVC24Uk Dwight Mann (@geno_philia) February 9, 2017Netflix. More like Nettrix, am I right? #NoNetflix #BoycottNetflix pic.twitter.com/EqDWW4vt5o Boatsinker (@Clausfarre143) February 9, 2017So, what is this that got the Dear White People riled up? This trailer that talks about people dressing up in black face, which I thought we agreed a long time ago was beyond offensive.Take a stroll through those comments and you ll be hating white people too.The series is based on a movie of the same name and if white people watched it with open minds, they would know that no one came across as anything more than flawed human, although deservedly, white people were portrayed as much less aware.Featured image via John Moore/Getty Images | 1real |
When They Switch the Chip On You Won’t Know Who You Are Anymore | Home | Sci/Tech | When They Switch the Chip On You Won’t Know Who You Are Anymore When They Switch the Chip On You Won’t Know Who You Are Anymore By Dr. Kane Targonen 15/11/2016 18:20:20
LOS ALAMOS – USA – The immersive qualities of Virtual Reality are only just being rolled out right now, but in a few years every household will have multiple head sets, eventually progressing to mind chips.
People who have these VR sets are already completely addicted to the sensation of total immersion within another world, and this is the clincher, soon they will not be able to live without their VR headsets.
The natural progression from an external device, like a pair of goggles is to have a chip implanted into the brain directly which will link up with the synapses and billions of dendrites. These chips are already in use for the severely disabled, however their development is accelerating daily.
Mapping out every channel and synapse in the human brain is a feat in itself, and they have already mapped out the brains of rodents and smaller creatures.
“We can upload any scenario directly into your brain, you will feel as if you are there, you will see, smell, and feel every nuance the programmers introduce into the world, you will taste food, you will feel the wind on your cheek, every sensation you feel in the real world can be replicated in the brain directly through the zones activated by the neural implants.
“This technology will be sold through the premise of perfect memory and data recall. Imagine going to a dinner party and knowing who the head honchos are to schmooze with immediate data downloaded into your brain, imagine being able to speak in any language at the drop of a hat, or recall any text ever written by man at the blink of an eye,” a scientist on the project revealed.
The next step will no doubt be a jump from the intrusive machinery strapped on to our bodies to the discreet internal implants, and of course with every leap forwards there is always a leap backwards in freedom. You will essentially allow an external force into your own mind.
Behaviour modification
“We have apps now for everything, and in the future, you want to fly that Huey, just download the app in thirty seconds and you will be an expert pilot. Yes, it sounds very Matrix, but consider the fact that every six months, the power of computers doubles. We are getting very close now to a point of no return, and the processing power in chips is getting more powerful, yet shrinking in size. We will be able to alter every facet of someone’s behaviour. After the chipping process, you will not be recognisable.
“This is not one way traffic, and advertisers will be able to beam adverts directly into your brain. If you do not comply with whichever regime or government is in charge, they can not only shut you down, but implant nightmares into your own brain to torture you for your crimes. We can see prisoners in jail, who will be put into states of mind torture lasting thousands of years , this is accomplished by speeding their mind clock to the desired level. Prisoners could therefore spend thousands of years breaking rocks with no end in sight, all in their own minds,” the scientist added.
Once they’re in your head, that’s it.
The future will certainly be an interesting place but with the introduction of artificial intelligent systems, sentient machinery and brainchipping, there may be no place for humans to go other than the augmented fashion. Employers will require their staff to be chipped, and all transactions will require biometric approval. Therefore, if you wish to be employed, and eat, you need the chip. Share on : | 1real |
Breitbart News Daily: Trump in Saudi Arabia - Breitbart | On the Monday edition of Breitbart News Daily, broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 6AM to 9AM Eastern, Breitbart Alex Marlow will continue our discussion of President Trump’s first foreign trip. [Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Trump and author of the bestselling book Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, will discuss Trump’s speech in Riyadh on the issue of Islamic terror. We’ll also hear from Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and author of The Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Live from London, Rome, and Jerusalem, Breitbart correspondents will provide updates on the latest international news. Breitbart News Daily is the first live, conservative radio enterprise to air seven days a week. SiriusXM Vice President for news and talk Dave Gorab called the show “the conservative news show of record. ” Follow Breitbart News on Twitter for live updates during the show. Listeners may call into the show at: . | 0fake |
OBAMA’S RACISM CZAR, “REVEREND” AL SHARPTON CALLS FOR FEDERAL POLICE FORCE | Yeah putting the federal government in charge of our entire police force, sounds like a great idea Al. We re waiting for Al to call for an all black police force next you know, in the name of fairness. Rev. Al Sharpton called for national policing legislation akin to the Civil Rights Act this morning at the kickoff his National Action Network s annual convention, just after the arrest of a white South Carolina police officer for murder in the shooting of an unarmed black man. There must be national policy and national law on policing, Mr. Sharpton said. We can t go from state to state, we ve got to have national law to protect people against these continued questions. Mr. Sharpton s comments, coming on the heels of multiple instances of police killings of unarmed men of color around the country, were met with applause from the crowd and from the dais, which was packed with elected officials including Mayor Bill de Blasio, Congressman Charles Rangel, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, city Comptroller Scott Stringer and state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoliThe convention kickoff, which featured a ribbon cutting with the lawmakers, came just hours after it was announced last night that North Charleston, S.C., police officer Michael T. Slager would be charged with murder in the death of Walter Scott who can be seen in a widely publicized video running away from Mr. Slager, while the officer shoots into the man s back repeatedly. The video offers a markedly different story than the one Mr. Slager first offered up: that Scott had stolen his taser and left him in fear for his life.Mr. Sharpton praised the city s mayor and police chief for bringing the charges, but said the nation couldn t rely on the judgement of local officials. We commend them, but we cannot have a justice system that hopes we have a mayor in the right city or a police chief, he said. We have to have one policy that is national. Mr. Sharpton later noted that the comparatively small town s officials had been braver than police leaders in bigger cities. He has been vocal about his belief that New York City police Daniel Pantaleo should have been charged with a crime in the death of an unarmed black Staten Island man, Eric Garner. A grand jury declined to indict Mr. Pantaleo, spurring protests throughout the city.That death, too, was captured in a widely published video. And though the footage did not lead to any charges, Mr. Sharpton said today the national legislation should focus on cameras as well as accountability. He compared the fight for police reform to the civil rights struggle, noting that activists did not try to fix discrimination in individual states or cities. They fought for a national Civil Rights Act, a national Voting Rights Act. It s time for this country to have national policing, Mr. Sharpton said.After the ribbon cutting, Mr. de Blasio whose first year in office was dominated by an effort to reform police-community relations after Garner s death and a subsequent City Hall feud with police union leadership said he agreed some kind of national standard should be set. It s a broad point he s making, and I think he way he made the analogy to the Voting Rights Act is the right one. We ve got to figure out how to create the right relationship between police and community, Mr. de Blasio told reporters. The vast majority of police do their job well and want to work more closely with the community. Obviously community residents want to work more closely with the police. But we have to create more of a national standard that says we all have to be on the same page. The relationship between Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Sharpton was fodder for his woes with police unions last year: they took umbrage when Mr. Sharpton was seated next to the mayor and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton at a City Hall round table, and dismissed Mr. Sharpton as divisive. A poll later showed voters didn t like the approaches of either Mr. Sharpton or the union leaders and rank-and-file officers who later turned their backs on Mr. de Blasio at the funeral for two slain officers.Today, Mr. Sharpton offered a full-throated defense his relationship with the mayor, saying it was based not on political power but on a long history of working together, citing Mr. de Blasio s support on issues like wage increases and the silent march against stop, question and frisk before his election. He marched with us when other candidates wouldn t. So don t begrudge us for knowing somebody that we always knew, and that was there in the trenches with us, Mr. Sharpton said, saying he had never asked for favors or back room deals only access and policy changes. There s nothing in the back room we want. We want everything out front. Via: The Observer | 1real |
As Peat Bogs Burn, a Climate Threat Rises - The New York Times | RED EARTH CREEK, Alberta — Kristyn Housman grabbed the end of a sampling auger, a steel tube that two colleagues had just drilled into a hummock in a peat bog, and poked through a damp, fibrous plug of partly decomposed peat. Peat has been building up for centuries in this bog, where the spongy moss is interspersed with black spruces and, on a late spring morning, the air is teeming with mosquitoes. The sample, taken from three feet down, is at least several hundred years old, said Ms. Housman, a graduate researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “There’s literally tons of carbon here,” she said, looking around the bog, which covers several acres off a muddy road amid the vast flatness of northern Alberta. In discussions of how nature regulates carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, forests receive most of the attention for their ability to absorb and store carbon. But peatlands play an important role, too. There are an estimated 1. 6 million square miles of peatlands, or about 3 percent of the earth’s land surface, mostly in northern latitudes in Canada, Alaska, Europe and Russia. Peat is made up of sphagnum and other mosses, which hold a large amount of water and contain compounds that inhibit decomposition. The peat slowly builds up over centuries because the annual growth exceeds the decay. A relatively small amount of peat is mined to burn as fuel, to improve backyard gardens or to add smokiness to Scotch. But most of it stays where it is, and because it accumulates carbon over such a long time, it contains more carbon than is in all the world’s trees and plants, and nearly as much as the atmosphere does. Like forests, peatlands are threatened by climate change. Warming temperatures can dry out bogs, making them more susceptible to fires, and to deeper, more intense burning. A peat fire, which can smolder like a cigarette for months, can release a lot of carbon. “It’s carbon that has accumulated over several thousands of years,” said Mike Waddington, a McMaster professor who has been researching peat in Alberta and elsewhere for more than two decades. “If it were to be released, the global CO2 concentration would be much higher. ” The world has already had vast releases of carbon from peat, in Indonesia. Last year, bogs that had been drained for agriculture, and were drier because of El warmth, burned for months, creating a haze visible from space and causing widespread health problems. At their peak in September and October, the fires released more carbon per day than was emitted by the European Union. While few people foresee that level of disaster in northern peatlands, concern about fires is growing. A major worry is that as climate change and other disturbances affect peatlands, the intensity of fires will increase, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere. “They take thousands of years to develop,” said Merritt Turetsky, a peat researcher at the University of Guelph in Ontario. “And in five minutes, a wildfire can blow through that area and release five to six hundred years of peat accumulation and change it forever. ” The enormous spring wildfire that destroyed much of Fort McMurray, a city of 90, 000 people 150 miles east of here, burned bogs as well as trees. In June, the trees were no longer on fire outside the town, but crews were overturning peat with backhoes in an effort to extinguish smoldering hot spots. In a large wildfire in May 2011 that burned in and around the town of Slave Lake, about 80 miles south of here, some peat continued to burn through the winter, until spring rains and melting snow finally extinguished it. Peat is generally resistant to burning, because sphagnum moss, which is dominant in a healthy bog, holds a lot of water. “If you have a large amount of this moss in a peatland, you aren’t going to get a very severe fire,” Dr. Waddington said. Typically only the top few inches of the peat will burn. Warming, however, alters the system. Drier peat allows more oxygen to get to the roots of trees and other vegetation. This causes them to grow bigger, which means they use more water, further drying the peat. As trees grow, they also provide more shade, which favors the growth of other mosses that, because they hold less moisture than sphagnum, are less fire resistant. When the bog does catch fire, it may be more severe, with the combustion spreading deeper into the peat. Other disturbances, like draining bogs to grow trees or to produce oil and gas, can also make a fire more severe. Dr. Waddington and others are doing research on how to restore bogs that have been drained, to reduce the risk of carbon loss through fires. Normally a bog recovers slowly after a wildfire, with certain mosses and other vegetation taking over in stages until sphagnum mosses dominate. At the bog where Ms. Housman and her colleagues took samples, a section was deliberately burned last year. It is showing signs of recovery, with clumps of singed sphagnum moss already producing small shoots of regrowth. But an intense fire, or a combination of other factors, can delay or even halt recovery. That is the case at a small bog south of Red Earth Creek that researchers have nicknamed “Scorcho” because it was severely burned in the 2011 Slave Lake fire. As much as four feet of peat was consumed in some parts of the bog. “All that peat, combusted and gone,” said Sophie Wilkinson, a McMaster doctoral student. Five years later, the bog is showing few signs of returning to its old self. “It is definitely on the brink,” Ms. Wilkinson said. “There’s little to no sphagnum recovery, which is very worrying, because if it’s going to return to a system, which is what you would hope, really, it needs to get that sphagnum back. ” Scorcho may ultimately turn into something other than a bog — drier land with leafy trees like birches and aspens replacing the black spruces, with little to no moss and, as a result, less carbon storage. The bog is laced with instruments to measure the water table, the evaporation of water from vegetation and other characteristics, but researchers are still uncertain why it is not recovering. What is clear is that recovery from a fire is a delicate process, one that global warming will complicate. “Climate change will determine the severity and frequency of burns the bog has to be resilient to,” Ms. Housman said. Referring to Scorcho, Ms. Wilkinson said: “Like, if this was to burn again? Who knows, really, what’s going to happen. ” | 0fake |
Seaworthy and Ready for an Early Unveiling - The New York Times | ABOARD WAVERTREE IN KILL VAN KULL — In the 131 years since the cargo ship Wavertree was built, it has been tossed and tattered — its main mast ripped away in a hurricane, and its role demoted to sand barge. So when the vessel sailed from the South Street Seaport to Staten Island last year for a restoration, the crew feared that the extensive damage would draw out repairs and delay the ship’s return to its Manhattan berth. They should have known better. Wavertree, which has endured no shortage of natural and economic calamity, turned out to be more resilient than anyone anticipated. In September, after more than a year away, it is set to return to the South Street Seaport Museum, mended, gleaming and ready to remind visitors of the ships that define New York City’s history. The $13 million undertaking has progressed ahead of schedule, hastening the goal of once again sailing Wavertree through New York Harbor. “We were pleasantly surprised,” Jonathan Boulware, the executive director of the seaport museum, said. “It’s a real testament to the era’s wrought iron. ” When it was commissioned in Southampton, England, by R. W. Leyland Company of Liverpool, Wavertree was among the last sailing ships fashioned from wrought iron and it remains the largest afloat, according to the museum. Last May, workers brought it by tugboat to the Caddell Dry Dock and Repair Company in the Richmond Terrace section of Staten Island and expected to replace 10 large metal plates on the hull. Instead, the 4 slabs of iron, which sit below the water line, needed only minor repairs. Wavertree has nonetheless required an ambitious overhaul, carried out by a crew of up to three dozen. The ship spent five months in dry dock, where workers scrubbed away barnacles, seaweed and other gunk before adding layers of protective paint to its underside. The team has also been replacing three decks. The wood that once covered the main deck has been exchanged for steel to keep out water. The poop deck is being repaired traditionally, using wooden planks caulked with cotton and oakum then sealed with pitch. And Wavertree once again has its ’tween deck, a modest level between the main deck and the cargo hold that had been absent for decades. The most daunting task, workers said, has been the renovation of the ship’s three masts and their rigging. For that, Caddell built a pair of sheds outfitted with both and highly modern tools. Inside one, the crew is building 16 spars from laminated timber. The other has held more than three miles of wire, which was stripped of its old protective coating and wrapped in a new layer of pine and leather. Though the crew did not expect to fully rig the ship by September, time and money saved on the hull plates accelerated the schedule. “I marvel at how effectively and efficiently we’ve been able to conduct the restoration,” Mr. Boulware said. Although its immense iron frame and masts give Wavertree a distinguished profile today, it was a relatively common model when it was built by Oswald Mordaunt Company in 1885. A plaque identifies the Wavertree as the company’s hull No. 231. Mr. Boulware noted that stringers, which fortify the hull, on the ship’s port side dip below those on its starboard — one of several imperfections in the construction. The cramped quarters once held bunk beds stacked tightly to accommodate a crew of 35 men in the ship’s heyday. Over the years, Wavertree circumnavigated the globe nearly 30 times, ferrying sundry cargo — coal, kerosene, jute, cotton, tea, coffee, molasses, timber. On Jan. 14, 1895, it called on the Port of New York, bearing a load of nitrate from Chile. In 1910, a violent storm off Cape Horn splintered Wavertree’s masts, ending its days. Its owners sold the ship to Chilean businessmen, who used it as a warehouse for 30 years. It transferred hands again in 1947, beginning a career as a sand barge in Buenos Aires. Wavertree was acquired by the museum in 1968. The ship’s homecoming was made possible in part by the impending departure of Peking, another sailing ship, which has graced the seaport since 1974. Peking, too, has been battered — by war, by waves and by weather. It suffered through plummeting tourism in Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Faced with mounting financial difficulties, the museum considered dispensing with the barque, which was built in Hamburg, Germany, in 1911. However, salvation came from the German government, which is spending 30 million euros (about $33 million) to bring Peking home, carried across the Atlantic Ocean on the back of a ship. “I’ll be sad to see her go, but it’s what’s best for everyone,” Mr. Boulware, said. “It’s about resource allocation. ” Funding for Wavertree’s restoration has come from the City Council, the office of the Manhattan borough president and the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. “Wavertree is an incredible object with a direct connection to the site that really gives the area an authentic sense of its past,” Tom Finkelpearl, the department’s commissioner, said. The Wavertree project was also helped by a $4. 8 million grant given to the museum in March by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The money will go toward improving safety and accessibility at the museum, and adding an education center, Mr. Boulware said. “The port is what built the city and what continues to build it today,” Mr. Boulware said, showing off the museum’s first new exhibition since 2012, “Street of Ships: The Port and Its People. ” It plumbed the museum’s collections to tell the history of the Port of New York, once the fulcrum of world shipping. That exhibition will be complete, Mr. Boulware said, when Wavertree assumes its place again in the museum’s marina. | 0fake |
GOOD GRIEF! HILLARY TELLS ANOTHER WHOPPER Just Hours Before Iowa Caucus [Video] | Ed Henry of FOX News tells us tonight that Hillary Clinton lied again! Just hours before the very important Iowa Caucus, Hillary gives voters another reason not to trust her AND not to vote for her. | 1real |
Business groups urge Congress to resolve dispute to allow tax reform | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four of Washington’s largest business lobby groups urged Congress in a letter on Wednesday to settle their differences on government spending so they can move forward on overhauling the U.S. tax code in the next year. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Businesses penned a joint letter calling for lawmakers to adopt a budget for next year that would allow them to begin work on changing the tax code. “In our view, given the historic opportunity before Congress, no other reforms under consideration rise to the importance of pro-growth, comprehensive tax reform,” the letter states. The budget process hit a delay this week after conservative Republicans in the House continued to demand billions of dollars in cuts to the spending outline. Passing a budget is vital to begin the process of rewriting the tax code because it permits a procedural maneuver that will allow Republicans to pass a tax bill without the support of Democrats. President Donald Trump has made tax reform a key goal for this year. Additionally, Congress has become bogged down in trying to repeal Obamacare, a process that was delayed again this week and has been blamed for the inability to move on to tax reform. The joint letter urged Congress not to let other fights, alluding to health care, prevent tax reform from being completed this year. | 0fake |
U.N. Security Council to meet Friday on Jerusalem: diplomats | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council will meet on Friday at the request of eight states on the 15-member body over U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, diplomats said on Wednesday. The request for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to publicly brief the Security Council meeting was made by France, Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay, said diplomats. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday, generating outrage from Palestinians and defying warnings of Middle East unrest. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Israel considers the city its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. The U.N. has given Jerusalem a special legal and political status, which the Security Council has called upon the international community to respect. That is why we believe the Council needs to address this issue with urgency, Deputy Swedish U.N. Ambassador Carl Skau said on Wednesday. A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in December last year underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations. That resolution was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former U.S. President Barack Obama s administration, which defied heavy pressure from long-time ally Israel and Trump for Washington to wield its veto. After Trump spoke on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters: I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians. In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B, he said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley praised Trump s decision as the just and right thing to do. | 0fake |
Ted Cruz Gets Trapped In Elevator – Tells Hilarious Joke About Trump (VIDEO) | If you haven t heard by now, Ted Cruz was stuck inside of an elevator before he was scheduled to give a speech at the South Carolina Tea Party Convention on Saturday. Immediately upon being rescued, he wasted no time harping on Donald Trump, drawing immense laughter in the process: All right, so who put Donald Trump in charge of the elevator? While Cruz is a terrible candidate (he is a Republican after all), we have to say the joke wasn t too bad. But, we must add in one caveat: both candidates policy proposals are far more humorous than any joke either candidate could ever muster up..@tedcruz gets stuck in an elevator. Upon being freed Cruz jokes, Who put Donald Trump in charge of the elevator! pic.twitter.com/A6kj7dGH0L Alan He (@alanhe) January 16, 2016Both candidates spent this week sucking up to Tea Party members, but it doesn t appear Trump was well received. A video has surfaced showing Trump getting booed after trying to say negative things about Cruz. For that video, visit HERE. Compare this to the cheers Cruz received when he took a dig at Trump. Doesn t exactly seem fair, does it? Hey, it s not supposed to be. This is politics. And, a lot of people have favorites. Cruz, by all appearances, seems to be their guy. The @tedcruz elevator fiasco, as told by Caroline Klein s Snapchat pic.twitter.com/wvmOOK6rDI Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) January 16, 2016South Carolina is important because it holds the nation s third primary contest, just after Iowa and New Hampshire. While the Tea Party doesn t encompass all voters, they still represent a significant voting bloc in the state which is why both candidates were so eager to seek their approval.Things between the two are just heating up, though. Expect more shots to be taken, and a few jokes (or insults, rather) from the Donald to get back at Cruz for his elevator stunt.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
Ana Rosa Quintana logra resolver un crimen antes que Susanna Griso | Televisión Ana Rosa Quintana logra resolver un crimen antes que la Policía Nacional y que Susanna Griso EN LO QUE VA DE AÑO LA REINA DE LAS MAÑANAS YA HA CERRADO MÁS DEL DOBLE DE CASOS QUE LA POLICÍA televisión
Tras semanas recolectando pruebas, realizando seguimientos y rastreando indicios hasta dar con los culpables de un crimen, Ana Rosa Quintana ha anunciado esta mañana que su programa conoce la identidad de los culpables, que los entrevistará a lo largo de esta misma semana y que posteriormente los entregará a la policía. “Y cuando salgan de la cárcel engrosarán la plantilla de colaboradores del programa”, ha anunciado Quintana.
“Les van a caer treinta años, en mi programa”, asegura la presentadora.
Este nuevo logro de Quintana vuelve a situarla por delante de Susanna Griso, de Antena 3, en número de investigaciones cerradas en lo que va de año. La intensa competencia que mantienen estas dos periodistas cada mañana por resolver los crímenes más violentos del territorio nacional ha hecho que las dos presentadoras superen desde hace tiempo a los cuerpos de seguridad del Estado en número de detenciones.
“Yo tengo mi propio procedimiento, si tengo que apretarle las tuercas a un menda, se las aprieto, pero hay que limpiar las callees”, ha explicado Ana Rosa en su programa matinal justificando sus métodos poco ortodoxos para interrogar a los sospechosos. En lo que va de año, la reina de las mañanas ya ha cerrado más del doble de casos que la Policía Nacional.
“Va por libre y a veces no sigue el reglamento pero, maldita sea, es la mejor”, reconoce Ignacio Cosidó, Director General de la Policía.
Desde Telecinco han admitido que Ana Rosa suele respetar poco el reglamento de la cadena porque “se involucra a nivel personal” en cada crimen. Hasta en cinco ocasiones Paolo Vasile, director de Telecinco, le ha pedido que se apartara de algún caso porque estaba demasiado implicada. Según las fuentes, en esas ocasiones Ana Rosa responde de forma violenta arrojando la tarjeta del comedor de Telecinco y prometiendo atrapar al culpable “antes de que acabe la publicidad”.
Por su parte, fuentes de Antena 3 explican que Susanna Griso tiene una forma de proceder más sutil, aunque no por ello menos efectiva. “Ana Rosa se recorre los peores tugurios de la ciudad mientras fuma y bebe golpeando a la gente para sacarles información, Griso es más metódica, es una investigadora más tipo CSI, se sienta en el plató y trata de juntar todas las piezas en su mente”, explica un experto en criminología.
Además de rivalizar en resolver crímenes, las dos presentadoras también rivalizan a la hora de juzgar a los detenidos siendo ellas las encargadas de establecer las penas y las condenas de los acusados.
“Es tantísimo el trabajo que realizan que en la policía tememos que empiecen a cometer los crímenes ellas mismas para resolverlos más rápido”, admite Cosidó. | 1real |
Idaho Republicans Push Bill To Let Teachers Use Bible In Science Class | Students in Idaho are one vote away from having the Bible shoved down their throats in every subject in school.The Republican-dominated Senate education committee voted to advance Senate Bill 1321, which would permit the use of the Bible by teachers in classrooms across the state for a wide variety of subjects.According to the bill,The Bible is expressly permitted to be used in Idaho public schools for reference purposes to further the study of literature, comparative religion, English and foreign languages, United States and world history, comparative government, law, philosophy, ethics, astronomy, biology, geology, world geography, archaeology, music, sociology, and other topics of study where an understanding of the Bible may be useful or relevant. No student will be required to use any religious texts for reference purposes if the student or parents of the student object.Bill sponsor state Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll said her bill is to protect teachers because they are scared to use the Bible in their classrooms.And they should be scared to do so. The Bible has no place in most of the subjects mentioned and would not provide any useful information that would enhance the facts being taught, especially in science classes.The Bible s role in world history is indisputable but reading from the Bible is totally unnecessary to make that point.Clearly, this is an effort by conservative Christians to sneak Bible reading into schools to indoctrinate students. And it s unlikely that many students will feel free to object since teachers and other students can be bullies when it comes to religious fervor. There s also the question of whether school officials would actually properly inform students of their rights or whether school officials would actually inform parents that the Bible is being used in their child s classes.Make no mistake, this bill would allow conservative Christian teachers to force creationism upon their students in science class as a viable alternative to evolution. It would also allow teachers to tell students that God causes natural disasters to punish us while using the Bible as proof, not to mention the way the Bible could be used in history classes to teach that America was founded as a Christian nation even though the facts say otherwise.The bottom line is that the only institution the Bible belongs in is the church, but clearly, conservatives are so desperate to keep their dying religious beliefs alive that they are willing to blatantly violate separation of church and state to do it, even if it means making Idaho kids the worst educated in America.Featured Image: Berkeley | 1real |
Trump offers to mediate in South China Sea dispute | HANOI (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, which include Vietnam and China. If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let me know, Trump said in comments at the start of a meeting in Hanoi with Vietnam s president, Tran Dai Quang. Trump acknowledged that China s position on the South China Sea, nearly all of which is claimed by Beijing, was a problem. I m a very good mediator and arbitrator, he said. He also said that China was helping to resolve tensions over North Korea and added he hoped Russia would do the same. | 0fake |
Charlottesville schools, parents address children's fears after violence | CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Reuters) - When white supremacists began rallying in downtown Charlottesville this weekend, Liz Licht kept the TV off, trying to shield her three kids from the hate spewed on the streets of this normally quiet college town. But after learning that a 32-year-old woman who joined a counter-protest was killed by a man described as having neo-Nazi sympathies, Licht could no longer keep news of the violence from her nine-year-old son and seven-year-old twins. “Our son went to bed scared that night,” Licht said. “He said he never really knew evil existed until that day.” Licht joined other parents to call on the local school district to help Charlottesville children exposed to the hate and violence, especially as they leave the safe haven of home to start the school year. “We want to work with them to develop buddy systems to pair them up with someone who is an immigrant or refugee,” Licht, 41, said on Tuesday as she stood near a pile of flowers marking the street where Heather Heyer was killed. “Make it hands-on, not just talking about it.” Charlottesville Public Schools officials said they are preparing specific plans on how to address the issue when students return to classes next week. School leaders are tweaking their plans for the new year and preparing teachers to handle students’ questions about the violence and hate speech, schools Superintendent Rosa Atkins said in an e-mail. “If we miss these steps, we will miss an opportunity for healing and growth,” Atkins said. Saturday’s rally was the latest in a series of demonstrations by white supremacists in Charlottesville in recent months. It deteriorated into street fighting that culminated in Heyer’s killing, allegedly by 20-year-old James Alex Field, who injured 19 other people by crashing his car into a counter-protest. Psychologists often warn that young children can be traumatized by images of violence and urge parents to limit their exposure to news accounts of events like Saturday’s rally. But given the white nationalist ideology that drove the “Unite the Right” event, experts said parents and schools should talk directly with their children about their beliefs. “This is a really important teaching moment,” said Gail Saltz, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the Cornell School of Medicine. Schools in particular could use the incident as a way to teach students to cope with bullying, by stepping up to object to bullies, rather than being passive bystanders. “Any way that one can be helpful always relieves anxiety,” said Saltz. “You might say to a child that in your microcosm of school, it’s really important to make everyone feel respected.” Corey Eicher, 42, stopped with his daughters, aged seven and four, to leave flowers at the memorial for Heyer. He said he had tried to soothe his children’s fears by talking about the police and race. “We showed them that a lot of the police working that day were black, of every color,” Eicher said. “My older daughter is seven, so she kind of understands what is happening.” Lila’s reaction to Saturday’s events was brief: “Scary.” | 0fake |
Contested convention chances down after Trump takes NY: PredictIt | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chances of a contested Republican presidential convention slid to their lowest in more than three weeks on Wednesday after Donald Trump swept to a critical victory in New York’s primary, according to PredictIt, an online market for placing bets on U.S. and world politics. With Trump netting most of the state’s 95 delegates and further solidifying his front-runner status, the probability of a contested, or brokered, Republican convention dropped to 50 percent Wednesday morning, down 2 points from Tuesday’s closing level, according to data from PredictIt, which is run by Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. That is the lowest level since March 28 and some 29 percentage points below its peak in early April, after rival Ted Cruz crushed Trump in the Wisconsin primary and went to win all 14 Wyoming delegates last weekend. Ohio Governor John Kasich, who came in second in New York, remains a long-shot candidate. Tuesday’s outcome in New York could provide a critical turning point for Trump’s momentum. In fact, the chances of his clinching the Republican nomination have been increasing steadily. By Wednesday morning, the probability reached 63 percent, after an early April slump to 36 percent. To win the nomination outright, Trump must line up 1,237 delegates before the Republican Party’s convention in July. If he fails to do so, party leaders may face the prospect of negotiating a compromise candidate there. The next test comes on April 26, when five northeastern states hold their primaries. | 0fake |
Guantanamo shrinking but Obama goal of closing prison still elusive | GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Observed from behind a one-way mirror and heavy chain-link fence, a handful of bearded detainees in baggy t-shirts mill around inside a communal cellblock at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, vastly outnumbered by U.S. troops guarding them. This is the shrinking world of America’s notorious offshore prison, a scene that underscores how U.S. President Barack Obama is running out of time – and options – to meet his pledge to close the compound before he leaves office in January. Obama has whittled down the number of prisoners to 80, the lowest since shortly after his predecessor George W. Bush opened the facility to hold terrorism suspects rounded up overseas following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the president faces political and legal obstacles that may prove insurmountable in his final push to empty the detention center at the U.S. naval station in Cuba, according to some U.S. officials in Washington. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/1NmI52e) Still, there were growing signs during a carefully scripted media tour this week that operations are beginning to wind down at the prison, where many cells now stand empty. As inmate numbers dwindle - the latest departures being nine Yemenis sent to Saudi Arabia last weekend - participation also has ebbed in what was once a widespread hunger strike. Fewer than five inmates are being force-fed, the chief medical officer told reporters as he displayed a “restraint chair” of the type where prisoners are strapped down and nasal tubes inserted twice daily. But the 1,100-strong force of military personnel assigned to secure Guantanamo’s far-flung lockups, ranging from communal compounds for well-behaved prisoners to solitary confinement for those considered most dangerous, has remained largely unchanged. That works out to about 14 guards for each current inmate. Work inside the razor wire is labor-intensive. Squads of guards in protective visors swarmed through an eerily darkened corridor one lunch time, preparing to deliver meals in Camp Six, home to the most cooperative prisoners. Unaware of being watched and recorded through the sound-proof glass, detainees went about their routines. One waved over a guard and complained about not having enough pens for his artwork, while another sat at a steel table doing paperwork. In Washington, Republican lawmakers are readying for a legal battle if Obama tries to move prisoners to U.S. soil. Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo, announced two months ago, hinges on bringing possibly dozens of remaining prisoners deemed too dangerous to release to maximum-security prisons in the United States. But that would defy a congressional ban on such transfers. Administration officials have not ruled out that Obama might seek to bypass Congress and resort to executive action to close the prison but say privately he probably won’t make a decision until after the November presidential election. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and his party rivals vow to keep the jail open if they win the White House. At its peak, Guantanamo housed nearly 800 prisoners, becoming a symbol of the excesses of the “war on terror” and synonymous with accusations of torture. Obama, whose promise to shutter the prison dates back to the 2008 campaign, has called it a recruitment tool for terrorists. Nowadays, camp officials credit improved “compliance” by prisoners to a sense that release is getting closer. Most have been held for more than a decade without charge or trial. Only two detainees are listed for misconduct, which can entail anything from physically assaulting guards to “splashing them with bodily fluids,” said Army Colonel David Heath, commander of the Guantanamo guard force. Hunger strikers, who numbered more than a hundred at the peak of their protest in 2013, are now just a handful and there is no longer any need for extraction teams to pull them from their cells for “enteral feeding” sessions, according to Navy Captain Rich Quattrone, head of the camp’s medical facilities. He insisted the process is “safe and humane.” But Omar Farah, attorney for Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni hunger striker who lost half his body weight and was among the group sent to Saudi Arabia, said force-feeding was “utterly humiliating”. Guantanamo officials remain mindful of other potential sources of trouble, especially given Islamic religious sensitivities. For instance, when a reporter entered a model cell meant to display living conditions and began inspecting a bookshelf, camp officials rushed over and told her not to touch a copy of the Koran. Her cameraman was ordered to delete the scene. At the detainee library, where Harry Potter books are the most popular items, officials screen out anything deemed to promote jihadist themes or containing graphic violence or nudity. Inmates sometimes go a step further. A woman’s photo on the cover of an Arabic-language National Geographic was scribbled over by a detainee apparently offended by her uncovered face. | 0fake |
Gangs of ’Unaccompanied Minors’ Beating, Robbing Women in Montpellier - Breitbart | Montpellier saw a weekend of chaos as groups of up to 10 violent migrant youths launched a series of attacks on lone pedestrians. [Muggings and assaults in broad daylight have become a regular occurrence in recent weeks, as an influx of ‘unaccompanied minors’ from Morocco and Algeria have moved into Montpellier, in southern France. Early on Friday morning, two youths approached a woman as she was leaving a nightclub with friends. She was struck by a male migrant while his female accomplice snatched her mobile phone and debit card. On Sunday morning near the Place de l’Observatoire, 10 migrant youths surrounded a woman, beat her, and ran away with her handbag. When the victim’s friend tried to intervene, she too was physically attacked. When police arrested four of the 10 North African culprits, two other people approached to say that they too had been robbed and assaulted by the youths. The weekend saw a total of eight incidents in which unaccompanied minors, who are housed by local government and given vouchers to buy their own food, mugged pedestrians in Montpellier. Between 20 and 21 March, four women fell victim to the young thieves, including a grandmother who was robbed of her purse and debit card. While police have grown increasingly concerned about the attacks, the Montpellier Metropolitan notes that Hérault’s municipal department for public security “refuses to explain” the situation. On Friday, reporting on a case in which a unaccompanied minor snatched the gold necklace from an octogenarian’s neck as the lady was leaving her house, the newspaper informed readers that “police in the city have seen a steep increase in robbery with violence, most often committed by migrant youths”. Last month, Breitbart London reported on how the city of Uppsala in Sweden has been facing similar problems, with unaccompanied minors mugging pensioners in the street for drugs money. | 0fake |
BREAKING: NYC BOMBING SUSPECT ARRESTED After Shooting NJ Cop! | Ahmad Rahami has been identified as a suspect in the New York and New Jersey bombings over the weekend, and he has been taken into custody Monday after shooting a police officer in Linden, New Jersey, around 11 a.m.Thankfully the officer injuries are non-life-threatening, a senior official told NBC News. Two sources said that Rahami had also been shot and is on the way to a local hospital.This Saturday, a bomb exploded in the New Jersey shore town on Seaside Park, forcing a large charity race to cancel. Later the same day, a bombing in New York s Chelsea neighborhood injured 29 people. Officers found a possible secondary device nearby. Then on Sunday, five additional explosive devices were found near a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Rahami, a 28-year-old Afghan-born U.S. citizen, was identified as a suspect on Monday in the bombings after authorities found a fingerprint on one of the devices that had not been detonated.The suspect was sleeping in the doorway of a local bar when the bar owner happened to recognize him and called 911. The police approached Rahami and he sat up. The officer recognized him and told him to put his hands up. Rhami then shot the officer in the stomach but the officer was wearing a bullet proof vest so his injuries are thankfully minor. Rahami ran and started shooting at cars and passersby when he was shot and then taken into custody. The story is developing.Obama didn t comment on the breaking story at his news conference. He also never mentioned the suspect during the short press conference.H/T [ NY Daily ] | 1real |
In Baltimore's call for federal police probe, a new search for answers (+video) | While some Justice Department investigations are adversarial, a new model of collaborative reform is surprising police in some cities, as they find themselves included as part of the solution.
Searching for a "framework ... [to] heal," Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake put in a 911 call to the US Department of Justice to ask for a civil rights investigation into the Baltimore Police Department’s beat cop tactics.
Her call, not even a week after a local prosecutor charged six police officers with crimes including murder for their alleged role in the death of Freddie Gray, is part of a broader trend of "collaborative reform" between Washington and local jurisdictions.
What's striking about such investigations is that they don't just slam the police, but also aim to help officers stay safe and protect citizens, as well as show that they are part of the solution.
In fact, following a Baltimore Sun series on police abuses in the city last year, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts approached the Justice Department to conduct a collaborative review, which had been under way the day Mr. Gray died while in police custody.
Some DOJ investigations are adversarial, as police bristle at court orders and federal monitors. But a federal investigation into whether Baltimore cops routinely violate people’s civil rights is likely to mirror similar probes in Las Vegas and Philadelphia, where police chiefs have been able to use federal findings to gain leverage with elected officials and also use facts to rebut claims by police officers that they’re doing nothing wrong, says Sam Walker, a criminologist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
To be sure, Mr. Walker says, it’s “too early to tell” whether such interventions can bring the kind of fundamental reforms that Mayor Rawlings-Blake is hoping to find in the aftermath of Gray’s death and injuries to nearly 100 cops during violent riots.
But there is growing evidence that such collaborative efforts can help communities grapple with deep tensions between police and neighborhoods and build trust around common goals like respect, dignity, and sanctity of life.
After Las Vegas police shot a record 25 people in 2010, the city began its own reforms and asked the Department of Justice for help a year later. In 2011, the DOJ began the new collaboration program, delving deep into practices, training procedures, and policies to root out where officers were going wrong and where policies failed the people.
As of 2012, the Las Vegas department had completed dozens of difficult reforms, including rewriting its use-of-deadly-force policy to include a reference to officers acknowledging the “sanctity of human life” as they make critical split-second decisions. The department added so-called reality-based training to give officers more options than quick deployment of deadly force as they interacted with drugged, drunk, or mentally ill citizens. Since then, the number of officer-involved shootings in Las Vegas has stayed below historical averages, year to year.
In March, the Justice Department reported back on practices of the Philadelphia Police Department, which had seen a stretch of years in which police killed a person nearly every week, many of them unarmed. The DOJ team, which was made up of policing experts and not prosecutors, released a string of findings that pointed to problems in both policy and training.
Surprisingly to some, many complaints came from officers themselves. Among the findings were complaints from officers that they were not properly trained to deal with violent suspects. The training needed to be less staged and more reality-based, officers said, including allowing trainees to grapple with each other to learn tactics.
“Interview participants generally thought that the defensive tactics training offered at the academy focused too much on legal liability and not enough on teaching practical and realistic methods for surviving a physical encounter,” the DOJ report stated. “They did not believe that [training] sufficiently prepared them for a physical encounter.”
Aside from giving leaders hard facts to work with, such reports can also help defend police officers. Even though many police shootings have a racial backdrop, the Justice Department found that Philadelphia police did not have a problem with racial stereotyping. In fact, unarmed white males were more likely to be shot and killed by Philadelphia police than unarmed black males.
“I want to express regrets for all who have been shot in Philadelphia, civilians or police officers.... Every life is precious in this city and this country, so we need to maintain this level of focus," Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said in March. "We're one big city. Everyone wants to be safe. Citizens want to be safe. Police officers want to be safe."
The Justice Department has conducted 19 civil rights investigations since 2000, stepping up the efforts in the Obama era, with five police departments coming under federal monitoring in 2012 alone. Some of those investigations have been scathing, including a report in March that documented abuses by the Ferguson (Mo.) Police Department that helped fuel protests in the wake of Michael’s Brown death last August, at the hands of a police officer.
So far, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has not replied to the Baltimore mayor’s request for a separate civil rights abuse probe.
But the request makes clear that the city’s police probably have problems that go beyond the treatment of Gray.
Since 2011, the city has settled more than 100 lawsuits equaling nearly $6 million in cases where people were bruised and battered by officers, only to have trumped-up charges later dropped by a judge.
True, institutional change can be difficult. After the Baltimore Police Department promised the courts in 2010 it would curb the large percentage of false arrests in the city by offering better training, the department dragged its feet, the American Civil Liberties Union has alleged. The issue has reared up again in the Gray case, since prosecutor Marilyn Mosby has charged that officers falsely arrested Gray for carrying a legal knife.
But so far in Philadelphia and Las Vegas, one key to success has been the efforts to engage police officers in the process by showing them that they are part of the solution, and that the collaboration isn't about outsiders second-guessing their actions. In Philadelphia, Commissioner Charles Ramsey sent every officer a link to the Las Vegas report, so they could see for themselves that it was more an attempt to help officers stay safe and protect citizens than blaming them for their actions.
"Cops are always leery of something," Mr. Ramsey told the Baltimore Sun. "We did as much as we could to alleviate any concerns and fears." | 0fake |
Grace & Steel Podcast: Hillary Unveils Final Campaign Slogan: “Something Wicked This way Comes” | November 8, 2016, 11:00 am A+ | a- Warning
Episode 60 of my podcast is now posted here (with copious links) and on YouTube . I joked a few weeks ago that Hillary Clinton will not be elected President because “God doesn’t hate America.” And then I woke up on Saturday and learned that John Podesta, Hillary’s grey eminence, has an especial interest in a Satanic artist called Marina Abramović. Later that day, I learned that a DC pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong (which is owned by David Brock’s ex-lover) is an especial favorite of the Hillary team and has, shall we say, a sinister take on what constitutes “kid friendly.”
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? We recorded this show before James Comey announced that the FBI investigation into Hillary’s emails is OFF ON OFF. Hillary’s supporters made a little holiday in their hearts, but I can’t but help think this is too late to save her. There has never been a major-party candidate for President who boasts such a unique combination of incompetence and corruption. The elite and the media are entirely on her side, but of course Wikileaks has revealed that so many members of the MSM can be regarded only as unofficial Hillary staffers, and in the event the people are no longer buying what they are selling.
I daresay Hillary has a program, but the MSM has not deigned to inform us what it is. They know that the destruction of the American nation is no longer as popular as it once was, and that Hillary faces a challenger, Donald Trump, who has promised the American people that “Invade the world; invite the world; immiserate the world” will no longer be American policy when he becomes President.
So the MSM has instead instructed Americans that they daren’t vote for Trump because he’s a sexual vulgarian and a big meanie who has engaged in fat shaming. They forget (or at least pretend to) that it was Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, who administered the coup de grâce to American public modesty.
Trump has a program, one that is expressed powerfully and succinctly in his two-minute YouTube video, “Donald Trump’s Argument For America.” America First. America for Americans, not America for bankers, globalists and the theorists of “Cheap chalupas.” Fancy that. The MSM was roused to fury by Trump’s heartfelt patriotism and accused him of “anti-Semitism.” A serious error. These people have no idea of the force they have unleashed. In asserting that it is forbidden to criticize Jewish malefactors solely because they are Jewish, they have given credence to the most sweeping anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. You hear the words “failed”&“corrupt”& you think, “He means the Jews.” So revealing #Trumpslide https://t.co/TMVJCO4I3G
— Kevin Michael Grace (@KMGVictoria) November 5, 2016
The MSM forgets (or at least pretends to) that Trump is not John McCain or Mitt Romney. He has no interest in virtue-signalling, particularly to those who do not bother to hide their dishonesty and malice. Trump has demonstrated, repeatedly, that he cannot be cowed.
This is indeed an existential election, and I remain confident that America will choose the candidate committed to the American nation.
Epilogue: At long last, the Grace & Steel podcast has solved its recording problem. We now employ Audacity (free!) as our primary recording program, with Total Recorder as a backup. Aspiring podcasters, of which there are many, will benefit from the detailed (and illustrated) instructions compiled by my broadcasting partner, Kevin Steel. And listeners to our podcast will discover that the result of our struggle is a profoundly improved broadcasting quality. | 1real |
(VIDEO) RIOTERS TAKE SELFIES WITH TORCHED POLICE CAR | 1real | |
WHY IS THE MEDIA SILENT As Hillary Cackles About Her Key Role In Muslim Invasion Of Europe? [VIDEO] | Whenever Hillary cackles, you can be pretty sure she s either hiding something or she s deflecting from a topic she refuses to address. The trail of destruction she left behind in Libya while acting as our incompetent Sec. of State, including the deaths of four brave Americans in Benghazi, should be enough to disqualify her for a janitorial position at the Pentagon. Yet today, we find our corrupt media pushing for Hillary to become our next President of the United States. The undeniable connection between Hillary s incompetence in Libya and the current Muslim migrant crisis is explained below. You probably know that the European Union has clamped down finally on the arrivals of migrants in Greece (from Turkey) with their latest scheme to return those who have no legitimate claim to asylum back to Turkey.So it is no surprise that smugglers are finding a new (old!) route. It is not really new because ever since the Obama Administration launched its foolish attack on Libya (with its equally foolish European partners), Libya has been a launch pad for invasion, albeit the flow from there slowed during the winter months as the invasion of Europe by mostly Muslim migrants was directed at the Turkey/Greece route.And, in this hot US Election 2016 season why is there no mention of the fact that Hillary (and her girls) are to blame for the hellhole Libya has become?At least strongman Libyan leader Col.Muammar Gaddafi was able to keep the invasion of Europe from launching from Libya! Now it is a crime-ridden hellhole where smugglers ply their trade with impunity.Here is Hillary cackling about the death of Col. Mummer Gaddafi:https://youtu.be/yn6yktWU5qAHere is what UKIP s Nigel Farage said last year:Libya was actively working with Italy to prevent illegal aliens from trying to cross the Mediterranean on boats. Then the US and Britain armed and provided air support to Sunni Jihadists to topple Gaddafi. Now, people from all over Africa are packing into small boats and trying to illegally enter Europe.USA Today tells us how the Turkey to Greece smugglers are turning their attention again to Libya. Refugees will not sit idle in Turkey they say:Abu Hassan, the administrator of a Facebook page dedicated to smuggling, said that s already happening. People are now traveling from Turkey to Libya by air and then to Italy by sea in a more expensive and more dangerous journey, he said.Of course the government of Turkey is complicit too, surely they must know that refugees are hopping planes to Libya in increasing numbers!Every photo of invaders of Europe from Libya should be juxtaposed with this video of Hillary cackling after her plans killed Gadaffi! (Watch Huma hand her a phone in front of the cameras).Via: Refugee Resettlement Watch | 1real |
Few ideas, less hope leave Syria crisis on back burner at U.N. | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - At the entrance to the United Nations building in New York a sign advertises an upcoming party to celebrate the end of the annual gathering of world leaders. Next to it a weathered box with crumpled papers urges people to donate for Syrian refugees. The contrast is striking a year after nations jousted verbally for a week in the same halls attempting to strike a ceasefire deal as Russia and Iran backed Syrian government troops in a brutal advance on the then rebel bastion of Aleppo. But tensions in the Korean Peninsula and a growing crisis over the fate of a nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers has relegated talk of resolving the six-year-old Syrian civil war to back rooms and bilateral chitchat as international diplomacy struggles to find a strategy to end the crisis. On the ground, violence between government forces and rebels has been drastically reduced after the creation of de-escalation zones in the west of the country negotiated between Russia, Turkey and Iran in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. A separate effort between Russia, Jordan and the United States has also helped in the south. Its backers say the zones have restored some security to Syrians and open the way for local reconciliation. Its detractors warn that they will fragment the country and lead to a more radicalised opposition. You don t have the U.S. and the Europeans around the table and that is a huge defeat for all of us. This Astana process is just a military de-escalation process and it must be supplemented with a political process, French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country supports rebels and urges the departure of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told reporters this week. But there appears little momentum for that. While all actors in the conflict agree on the common goal of defeating Islamic State and al-Qaeda-backed militants, an objective that is well on course, there is no consensus on how to breathe fresh life into the political process. That has been compounded by the arrival of the Trump administration whose priority in Syria is focused on destroying Islamist groups and curbing Iran s influence. Meanwhile, they have reduced support for some opposition groups. The American withdrawal has left Russia dominating the entire process, Riad Hijab, the head of the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), told Reuters in New York. The last major international attempt to resolve the crisis ended in failure when the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) was cast aside after Syrian government forces retook Aleppo in 2016. U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva that have pitted a government delegation against a divided opposition for several years with the ultimate aim of implementing an existing U.N. roadmap have been kept on life-support as sponsors of the warring parties fail to pressure them to engage in dialogue. The question is, are these de-escalation areas going to be limited for six months or do they risk becoming a de facto partition of Syria? U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura told a sparsely attended meeting on the crisis. It s time for Geneva to ensure sustainability of de-escalation, he said. If we miss this we will be regretting it once again. Those talks are tentatively scheduled to resume at the end October. There is growing pressure on the Riyadh-based opposition, which has suffered repeated reversals since the start of the year, to restructure by including groups that have closer ties to Russia, but also shaking up its top leadership. Western and Arab diplomats argue that it aims to merely strengthen Moscow s hand in any future negotiating process. Now that the opposition no longer has the hope to win the war, things can be different, but if we put up a fragmented, demoralized and radicalised opposition in Geneva versus a regime that, while weak, believes it can win, then nothing will happen in Geneva, a senior European diplomat said. It s time for the sponsors to blow the final whistle. But after a week at the United Nations, there was little sign of progress. A French effort to get the five permanent members of the Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - to talk to each other yielded no concrete results. There s a lot of wariness and mistrust from Russia who think we have a hidden agenda and the United States ... who are obsessed with Iran, said a senior French diplomat. At no point have the powers ever been clear on what they want so we want to now have that conversation. How Russia and Iran see the political evolution remains unclear given their interests and influence in Syria have never been greater. Iran s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, whose country may be feeling under pressure after this week s barrage of threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, on Thursday urged all the sponsors to commit to ourselves that there will be no solution without a political solution. Speaking at the high-level Syria meeting, Russia s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov pushed for a new round of Geneva talks. However, he condemned as unacceptable the West s attitude in refusing to help fund reconstruction of areas taken back by Syrian government-backed forces, a sign perhaps that Moscow is concerned about its long-term role in the country. The United States, Britain and France have all dismissed that idea, believing they can use the promise of reconstruction to push Assad and his allies to the negotiating table. Absent a credible political horizon that can lead to a transition that s supported by a majority of the Syrian people, the reality is the international community will not be coming in with significant reconstruction assistance, said Brett McGurk, U.S. special envoy for the coalition against Islamic State. | 0fake |
MSNBC’S CHRIS MATTHEWS DEFENDS VA SHOOTER: “He did understand inequality” [Video] | Chris Matthews tried his best to create sympathy for the loser who shot random Republicans. Can you believe it? MSNBC host Chris Matthews got political in his defense of Alexandria shooter James T. Hodgkinson: We don t know what sadness was in this guy s life ,,,,Blah, Blah, Blah INEQUALITY!Matthews had the unbelievable gaul to bring up sympathy for this guy making an excuse for his heinous act by using class warfare inequality is exactly the twisted thinking that caused this loser to shoot people:Hodgkinson was a hater of Republicans and President Trump. He volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 election. His deranged view of conservatives lead to the shooting.Check out the word salad ramble of Matthews trying to somehow justify what would make someone shoot Republicans: Howard, you and I know each other. You know what goes into somebody s we can say wacky behavior because they re dead. We don t know what sadness was in this guy s life what his prospects were. Something that made him mad at the world so he focused on Republicans. He did understand inequality as an issue. Bernie Sanders wrote about that in the paper the other day. There s nothing wrong with the issue. It s a great issue to fight for if you re a progressive. But he got it into his head that he was going to get better equality of incomes in this country by killing people. That s not going to happen. | 1real |
Kim Davis Goes Off On Gay People, SCOTUS And Shoving Things Down People’s Throats (VIDEO) | Just when you thought Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis would drift off into obscurity (as she should) she reemerges just as hate-filled and full of drivel as ever during an interview with Frank Wright of D. James Kennedy Ministries. Neither of these people understand how the Constitution works as supreme law of the land.Davis still seems to believe that the laws of the Bible reign supreme over her actions serving the public.She said: I was obeying my law I had couples bring in the whole Supreme Court ruling and I said, You know, I really don t need to see this because that s not a law, that s a ruling [and they d say] Well, why won t you do this? And so then I go to the Bible and I d tell them, [and they d respond,] Don t be reading me the Bible. Well, you asked why I couldn t issue you a marriage license and I m explaining to you, I m showing you why I cannot. They didn t want to hear that though. They wanted to shove that paper down my throat and make me eat it for my dinner. Actually, Kim, the Bible has nothing to do with your job and serving the public. If you re to serve the public as your job requires you to do, you are to abide by the law, including federal law, which in this case is the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution offering equal protections to all citizens, not just the ones that fit your standard under your religion. If you don t want to do your job, might I suggest you resign. You are free to worship as you choose on your own time, but when it comes to restricting others equal protections, you are disobeying the Constitution which was made clear by the Supreme Court. They re not writing new laws to tell you what to do, they are upholding the ones written upon our nation s founding. End of story.Watch part of her interview here via Right Wing Watch:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Trump Has A New Nickname For Bernie Sanders, But It Works Better On Him (TWEET) | With Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic Primary in West Virginia, it s left Donald Trump in quite a quandary. It seems as if he s a bully with no direction. Now he doesn t know if he should keep making up nicknames for Hillary Clinton, who is the Democratic frontrunner, or Bernie Sanders who is still putting up a mighty fight in the race.Although, it looks as though he s playing his cards very carefully, because he has still put in the time and effort to give Bernie his own nickname. You know, just in case he needs it for later.Trump took to Twitter in yet another sophomoric hissy fit after the West Virginia primary, and said: I don t want to hit Crazy Bernie Sanders too hard yet because I love watching what he is doing to Crooked Hillary. His time will come! I don't want to hit Crazy Bernie Sanders too hard yet because I love watching what he is doing to Crooked Hillary. His time will come! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016So, it seems he s making sure to keep Crazy Bernie in his back pocket, all the while still hitting Hillary Clinton with the ever- genius Crooked Hillary. Although, it seems his voters are doing more to hurt Hillary than Bernie in West Virginia, with four out of ten voters who voted for Bernie saying they d vote for Trump over Clinton in the fall.Nonetheless, pretty much every nickname Trump s handed out to people have been nicknames better suited for himself: Tiny Marco, Lyin Ted, Crooked Hillary, Goofy Elizabeth Warren, and now Crazy Bernie. Maybe he believes if he projects his insecurities onto others, people won t notice it about himself. Or is that too sound of a piece of logic?Trump truly seems to believe that he can bully himself into the White House and no one will notice that he s not at all qualified for the job of Commander-in-Chief. He needs to realize that foreign policy and diplomacy are a lot harder than getting a clothing line into Macy s.Featured Photos by Chip Somodevilla, Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
Donald J. Trump is Now President of the United States of America | Go ahead. Count the survivors.
The US Presidential election ended yesterday.
Little information has come out since I reported on the situation 20 or so hours ago.
Both sides have demanded James Comey release more information, and he hasn’t even made a public statement.
But the situation is clear.
Hillary Clinton is now facing certain indictment. There is simply no way this investigation would have been reopened 11 days before the election if that were not the case. We must not let #CrookedHillary take her CRIMINAL SCHEME into the Oval Office. #DrainTheSwamp pic.twitter.com/GtPkj4xIz6
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2016
No one is going to vote for a Presidential candidate who may well be in prison a few weeks after she takes office. If they’re continuing the investigation through November, she could well be locked-up before she has a chance to be sworn in.
She is now nonviable. I half expect that they will pull her before Monday. Well, maybe not half-expect. Quarter-expect, perhaps. I don’t even know if they’re allowed to pull her at this point. I think they would have to put in Kaine.
So far she’s made only a three sentence comment on it, and her staff has said nothing but that the FBI needs to explain more. Basically, they appear to believe they still own the FBI. But if they did own the FBI right now, this wouldn’t have happened. There’s no way.
The most logical analysis I have seen is that the agents of the FBI were revolting because of Comey’s criminal collusion, and they exerted some form of pressure on him. I’m not sure what form of pressure they would have that would carry more weight than the pressure Hillary has.
Basically, we’ve witnessed Kek intervention.
A lot of people were saying Trump was going to win no matter what, and I kept that face up on the site. But tbh fam, I was a bit worried. They are going to have all these illegals voting, which will make a difference. They’re going to do bussing. etc.
Trump could contest it, but his only real leverage would be to threaten a putsch. And though I love this idea, I’m not 100% sure it would have actually happened.
But now, none of that matters.
Because not even the kike media can continue portraying Hillary as a viable candidate.
We’ve won, brothers.
All of our hard work this year has paid off.
And make no mistake – every meme you posted, every comments section you trolled – all of that is what made this happen.
Kek sent us Trump. Sent the crazy old bastard right down an elevator into our laps.
And then he said “DO IT FAGGOTS.”
And we did it.
We memed Jeb into a character of an obsessive cuckold weirdo.
We memed Ted Cruz into Lyin Ted Cruzman Sachs.
We memed Hillary into a freefall collapse of Hillary on 9/11.
And now we’ve pulled-off the greatest meme of all time:
They’re going to lock her up.
Take a bow, brothers.
This is a small step for memes. But it is a giant leap for our agenda to secure a homeland for our people and a future for White children.
I’m still a little bit in shock.
This joy that I feel – I cannot describe it.
There is actually a very decent chance that by November 9th, I will actually be tired of winning.
In Conclusion
Dear kikes: remember when I told you “now is not the time for fear, that comes later?”
Well.
The night has never been darker and our enemies have never been closer.
But lo, the people rejoice, and they sing songs of gladness.
For The Don is rising.
And soon, the swamp will be drained, and our enemies shall know justice.
Hail Victory. | 1real |
It’s Time to Repeal and Replace the Mainstream Media | I’ve now worked in journalism/media for seven years. And I sit here this morning amazed at the historic transition media as an industry has taken during that time. To say it’s a seismic shift would be a gross understatement.
Everything has changed .
I remember when I first started reporting the news I would often say there is no such thing as non-partisan media. I fully stand by that statement.
Anyone who writes for a living knows that by implanting a single word in a targeted sentence, even if the story is 1,200 words long, can change the underlying message of a report with ease. That’s what media does. What we call “mainstream media” is notorious for this. You’ve probably seen it happen countless times, but in most cases you probably don’t notice it.
For example, when a bad jobs report comes out the media will report something like “ New Jobs Unexpectedly Slightly Below Projections .” Using the word unexpectedly implies everyone should be optimistic because it’s expected that job creation will naturally be higher in our current economy.
This is nonsense. It doesn’t take a world class economist to figure out Washington policy has broken our economic engine. And it doesn’t require a Harvard level analyst to tell us all the job situation is in shambles.
Media uses this tactic to protect those in power. It’s all a game to hide the truth.
There is no non-partisan news. Reporters/writers will either advocate for the truth and seek to uphold American principles of personal liberty, a free market and sound government that works for the people it claims to represent, or they’ll advocate against it. That’s a fact. Those are the options.
So what has changed over the past seven years? In short, the audacity of the advocacy happening in media has reached unprecedented levels. Hosts from ALL (yes, even Fox News) TV news networks actively participated in trying to elevate Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Anyone who watched the debates through an objective lens knows this. Megyn Kelly ambushed Donald Trump and we all know it. The DNC was helping craft talking points with journalists, and TV networks were helping the DNC funnel debate intel to Clinton’s campaign.
And do we need to mention the polls? Seriously? We’re supposed to trust a media that was either a) dead wrong in their reporting of where the electorate stood, or b) they blatantly lied and fabricated numbers in an effort to suppress the vote against Clinton. Both options are equally damnable.
How is it that so much of America pounds their chests proclaiming the media is corrupt, but in the next breath looks to that same media to confirm news? Last night, for example, our team called Pennsylvania a full two hours before Fox News or any other TV network. Yet when we did we were hit with comments calling us names, mocking us and saying we should have waited for “official” calls from “media.”
This is insulting. We have a full time staff. We have offices. We have TV and audio studios. We are media .
Our team worked tirelessly, combing through county data in multiple states. We didn’t take that call for Pennsylvania lightly. But we made the call when we faithfully concluded Clinton had no reasonable path to overtaking Trump’s lead. This was fact for us. This was truth. We didn’t care if Fox News, CNN or any others called it. We saw what we saw and we made a call.
Breitbart is media. Drudge Report is media. I could list hundreds of sources that many don’t consider media that are actually far more accurate (and honest in what they believe in) than what would be considered official media, whatever that means.
At some point America is going to have to proclaim enough is enough. The networks are dishonest and they work against your best interests. They work against the needs of you and your family. They work against the truth. They work for those in power, and they do everything they can to protect that power. Because at the end of the day, the networks care about their seats at the Gala’s and their access to powerful politicians.
They sit in their high castles, eating expensive steak, drinking fine wine while having no financial concerns at all. Do you think their agenda includes telling you the truth when doing so would cut off their access to the power they hold close? Of course not. They aren’t going to bite the hand that feeds them.
When you watch their shows, share their stories and look to them to confirm news, you are funding their game against you.
That has to stop.
It’s time we as a people have a very serious conversation about a meaningful boycott. Yesterday we voted at the polls. Now we need to vote with our wallets.
It’s time for the new media to become the media . Because let’s face it, old media betrayed us.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
No thanks.
-Eric Odom
| 1real |
Trump Gets HUMILIATED By His Own Joint Chiefs, Contradict His Transgender Ban | It appears Donald Trump jumped the gun when he announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military.On Wednesday morning, Trump declared that he spoke with the general and military experts and decided to discriminate against transgender people.After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017 .Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming .. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017 .victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017Well, Trump s declaration appears to have confused the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because they are telling the military not to adopt Trump s policy until he issues a direct order on the subject.According to Reuters reporter Idrees Ali, US Joint Chiefs of Staff tells military there will be no modification to transgender policy until direction received from Pres. EXCLUSIVE: US Joint Chiefs of Staff tells military there will be no modification to transgender policy until direction received from Pres Idrees Ali (@idreesali114) July 27, 2017Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford even sent a letter to the military ordering them to continue to treat all of our personnel with respect. In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect. Dunford says in letter seen by Reuters https://t.co/Y5Fckbpfdc Idrees Ali (@idreesali114) July 27, 2017Apparently, Trump s tweets do not determine official Pentagon policy.The Joint Chiefs just humiliated Trump by contradicting his Twitter declaration. Now we must wait and see how Trump responds.Dunford s letter makes it clear that the military values respect and non-discrimination, even if Trump does not. So when Trump claimed he made his decision based on consultations with his generals and military experts, was he lying? Did he just make something up to justify his decision? Did the Joint Chiefs actually approve of Trump s ban?I guess we ll learn more from Trump s impending temper tantrum.Featured Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
THREATS TO BUSINESS TO REMOVE TRUMP SIGN Prompts Even Better Pro-Trump Display [Video] | Please go to the BEST MULCH Facebook page and give them a thumbs up!Thank you all for the overwhelming support! We have gone viral! Please feel free to stop by and take pictures with Hillary! She will be out from dusk until dawn!Originally I only had the TRUMP sign posted in front of my business, within 2 hours of the sign being placed out front we received a voice mail from a blocked phone number which is played during the video. I will not be bullied into removing the TRUMP sign simply because it offended someone. My Country is just as important as my business, I will assume that the sign was to large and to high for her to destroy or steal. The voicemail was what prompted me to make the sign more noticeable and take an even more dramatic approach by adding Hilary to the jail cell. #Trump2016 Video by: Michael J Makowski Multimedia | 1real |
Hillary Clinton’s Exploits in McCarthyism | Hillary Clinton’s Exploits in McCarthyism November 8, 2016
The New Cold Warriors who surround Hillary Clinton have made Russia-bashing and McCarthyism the go-to tactics to silence the few voices warning of the grave and unnecessary risks of a new Cold War, notes James W Carden.
By James W Carden
Now that the 2016 election campaign is at long last over, an examination of the reckless, fact-free, innuendo-laden McCarthyite rhetoric which Hillary Clinton’s campaign surrogates deployed over the past several months is in order.
The first and most obvious point to be made is that the anti-Russia hysteria that characterized the election, particularly in its final weeks, did not come out of nowhere; in fact, it should be seen as part of a natural progression of the elite media’s Russophobia which took root in and around the Ukraine crisis of late 2013-early 2014 and led, almost ineffably, not only to charges of Russian election-rigging in the United States but in the identification, in the pages of Newsweek and the Washington Post , of Russian fifth-columns within the United States. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
How the Ukraine crisis poisoned America political discourse is by now well known. As I reported in The Nation almost 18 months ago, the cottage industry of unscrupulous neo-McCarthyites which has grown up around Washington, London and Manhattan in recent years has sought to stifle debate by bandying charges of unpatriotic disloyalty against anyone questioning the wisdom of U.S. policy toward Russia. (It bears noting that something similar regarding Syria policy is happening as I write, driven, for the most part, by the usual suspects.)
As one long time political scientist told me at the time, “The atmosphere here in the U.S. created by the Ukraine crisis is poisonous – and I say this having been an academic for 37 years.”
The millennial careerists who help staff the ranks of the New Cold Warriors instinctually reach for ad hominem attacks over reasoned argument – and in so doing helped make way for the tactics the Clinton campaign unleashed in 2016.
By the time the nominating conventions rolled around this summer, the Clinton campaign was engaged in a Twenty-first Century witch hunt against any Trump adviser who had so much as visited Russia. Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter Page were both hounded out of the campaign by Clinton-inspired media smears.
Clinton’s campaign, which was run by Robby Mook, a 36-year-old hot shot who clearly relished his role as a kind of millennial Roy Cohn, repeatedly attacked former Ambassador to Germany and arms control negotiator under Ronald Reagan, Richard Burt.
Burt was singled out, not only by the Clinton camp, but by Salon and Newsweek, because he had served as an adviser to Alfa Bank, the Russian bank which played a starring role in former New Republic editor’s Franklin Foer’s thoroughly debunked article on the Trump Organization’s (non-existent) “secret” email server.
Yet what is most interesting isn’t so much the smears – phrases like “useful idiot” and “Kremlin stooge” which are mostly warmed-over fare from the first Cold War – but the mindset of the New Cold Warriors. How is it that these self-anointed crusaders for “humanitarian intervention” and “democratization,” these self-appointed enemies of tyranny, end up on the side of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Al Qaeda and al-Nusra affiliate in Syria, all the while stirring up sectarian and nationalist pathologies across the Middle East and Eastern Europe?
Cold War Nostalgia
The first thing to recognize is that our New Cold Warriors suffer from la nostalgie de la guerre froide . The historian John Lukacs has written at length on this pathology. In his destined to be classic The End of The Twentieth Century, Lukacs cast a gimlet eye on what he saw as the tendency of academic and media types during the first Cold War to practice “anti-Communism at a safe distance.” Russian President Vladimir Putin answering questions from Russian citizens at his annual Q&A event on April 14, 2016. (Russian government photo)
This tendency, according to Lukacs, sprang from two sources: first, from a “sense of self-satisfaction: knowing that one is on the right side, on the respectable side together with all of those right-thinking people.”
Lukacs, himself no apologist for Communism, also observed that this tendency is driven by “the exaggeration of the diabolical powers and machination of Communism and the Communists.” Substitute “Communism and the Communists” for “Putin and the Kremlin” and you have a perfect precis of New Cold Warrior thinking.
No better example of this tendency to talk a tough game against post-Communist Russia by academics and journalists safe in the knowledge that they will never be called upon to fight, was a conference convened by Franklin Foer’s New Republic in Kiev in May 2014.
Some background may be in order: The Ukrainian crisis – involving the violent ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014 – escalated into a full-scale civil war in and around April 6 in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The Western-supported government in Kiev, depicting the indigenous anti-coup movement for a Russian invasion, sent its military and privately funded militias to crush the uprising in what was called an “Anti-Terrorism Operation” or ATO.
To some, it was a tragedy of the first order that Kiev chose war and missed an opportunity to earn – via negotiation and compromise – much needed legitimacy in the east for what was, after all, a junta government.
Yet others, like Yale University historian Timothy Snyder and the New Republic’s literary editor Leon Wieseltier, embraced the ouster of Yanukovych and were positively exultant; so much so that they wasted little time in making their way to Kiev, “rallying to democracy’s side.”
The conference, “Ukraine: Thinking Together,” featured several luminaries of the liberal-interventionist left including Franklin Foer; Iraq War apologist Paul Berman; National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman; a founding father of Poland’s Solidarity movement, Adam Michnik; a historian of Eastern Europe, Timothy Garton Ash; and the preening cheerleader of NATO’s war on Libya, Bernard Henri Levy.
In a note announcing the conference, Wieseltier, sounding an awful lot like Christopher Hitchens in the run-up to the Iraq War, declared: “We cannot just sit back and watch Putin’s imperialism and repression. There are times and places where one must stand up and be counted.”
From where did this impulse to “stand and up and be counted” arise? Well, Wieseltier’s remarks in Kiev are revealing and are worth quoting at length. In his rhetoric we can hear a not-so-faint echo of Edward Arlington Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy:
“I watched the progress of Putin’s imperialism beyond his borders and fascism within his borders, I ruefully remarked to Frank Foer that the moment reminded me of what I used to call my Congress for Cultural Freedom-envy — my somewhat facile but nonetheless sincere regret at having been born too late to participate in the struggle of Western intellectuals, some of whom became my teachers and my heroes, against the Stalinist assault on democracy in Europe. And all of a sudden, pondering the Russian aggression in Crimea, and the Russian campaign of destabilization in Ukraine, I realized that I had exaggerated my belatedness. I was not born too late at all.”
That explains rather a lot. Wieseltier – and in all likelihood Levy and Foer – were suffering from a bad case of history-envy and saw in the crisis in Ukraine a chance to assuage their consciences and prove their worth on the world-historical stage. It is, it must be admitted, an odd way to go about it, socializing in Kiev with a Facebook billionaire , your friends and neocon fellow travelers from the magazine all the while homes, schools and hospitals in eastern Ukraine were being shelled to bits by the very government you traveled so far to “ demonstrate solidarity ” with.
Putin Hatred
If Cold War nostalgia plays a role in shaping the weltanschauung of the New Cold Warriors, so too does their uncritical embrace of anyone who opposes Russian President Vladimir Putin. The New Cold Warriors are, in effect, blinded by pseudo-solidarity for Putin’s “victims” like the crass performance artists Pussy Riot and the wondrously corrupt former oligarch-turned-sainted dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Screen shot of the fatal fire in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2, 2014, that killed scores of ethnic Russians while Ukrainian nationalists cheered. (From RT video)
And then, of course, there is the new Ukraine where the government, so enthusiastically embraced by Franklin Foer’s New Republic, has embarked on program of de-Communization which, since Ukraine and Communism parted ways a quarter of a century ago, means, in practice, a program of de-Russification, with all that entails, including, a conscious erasure of the Soviet Union’s role in defeating the Nazis and a whitewashing of Ukraine’s ugly history of anti-Semitism, including the role of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the nationalist OUN which was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles.
As the magazine The Forward reported: “The whitewashing, now a disturbingly widespread phenomenon, ramped up in earnest after Ukraine’s 2013–2014 Maidan uprising and the ensuing conflict with Russia. On January 1, 2014, 15,000 ultra-nationalists marched through Kiev carrying placards with [Ukrainian nationalist Stepan] Bandera’s image and chanting OUN slogans; today, marches honoring Bandera, the OUN and Ukrainian SS units take place regularly across Ukraine.
“In the spring of 2015, Ukraine’s parliament passed a highly controversial law , mandating that Bandera and his groups be regarded as Ukrainian patriots, and making denial of their heroism a criminal offense.”
In a way, these developments were probably a long time in coming and have been facilitated by the effective disenfranchisement of a large share of the Russo-phone east. Consider the spike in nationalist sentiment in Eastern Europe in the post-Cold War years.
We return briefly to the historian Lukacs who observed in 1993 “a growing nostalgia and appreciation of nationalist Eastern European governments before and during the Second World War.” He observed that in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, “schools and streets” in Slovakia and Croatia were being renamed in honor of Nazi collaborators, while in Romania “the murderous Iron Cross now enjoys a recurrent wave of nostalgic prestige.”
The American media has willfully turned a blind eye to these similar and ominous developments in Ukraine (to say nothing of the recent torchlight parades in NATO-allied Estonia ) because what matters among the New Cold Warriors is to appear to be “taking a stand” against the Russian bogeyman.
Ignoring Reality
And then there is the inability or unwillingness of the New Cold Warriors to take realpolitik considerations into account when it comes to Russia. This is odd, since they are as of one mind when it comes to far more sinister regimes like Saudi Arabia, where people quite literally have their heads chopped off in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
But, they will say, the U.S. needs Saudi Arabia because a) they have oil and b) they oppose the Iranians. As arch-neoconservative Bret Stephens recently said in an exchange with Sen. Rand Paul on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” we are “lucky” to have the Saudis as allies.
Leave that nonsense aside for the moment: the point is that the facility to think in terms of geo-strategy abandons the New Cold Warriors when it comes to Russia and Vladimir Putin. And so, the fact that Russia does not threaten American interests in our hemisphere; that it did more than most NATO allies to assist in the fight in Afghanistan (via the Northern Distribution Network); that it was a crucial player in the Iranian P5+1 negotiations (which the New Cold Warriors probably hold against the Russians, since they are nearly all opposed to the deal); and that it brokered the deal to dismantle Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons program in Syria are all studiously ignored in their analyses.
In other words, panic and handwringing over the alleged “cyber war” aside, Putin’s Russia does not threaten U.S. interests, properly defined. Indeed, Russia has, whether we find its domestic politics and widespread government corruption distasteful or not (and I do), proved to be an important partner when its core interests coincide with ours – which is more often than not.
Interests should drive policy not ephemeral, so-called “shared values” to which the New Cold Warriors themselves only fitfully adhere .
Twenty-five years ago, one U.S. president sketched out an alternative path to the one that the U.S. has been pursuing since Bill Clinton took office. In a speech much derided by those who practiced “anti-Communism at a safe distance,” President George H.W. Bush traveled to Kiev on Aug. 1, 1991, to warn against succumbing to the siren song of ethno-nationalism.
“Freedom, democracy, and economic liberty,” said Bush , “No terms have been abused more regularly, nor more cynically than these. Throughout this century despots have masqueraded as democrats, jailers have posed as liberators.” He continued in a vein almost unthinkable by an American president today: “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”
Bush was prescient: the steady diet of Russophobia and anti-Putin hysteria now underway (and de rigueur among the New Cold Warriors) is fanning the flames of ethno-nationalist hatred within Europe. Does this development enhance or detract from pan-European stability and U.S. national security?
The answer is clear. And yet the new crusaders persist, and worryingly, as of Tuesday, may have a commander-in-chief who completely shares their views waiting in the wings.
James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee for East-West Accord’s eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department. | 1real |
We Now Have Proof Obamacare Was Designed to Fail… and Here’s Why | By Melissa Dykes The oligarchy runs our society with Problem – Reaction – Solution. If anything, these leaks have proven beyond a shadow of a... | 1real |
‘Doomocracy’ Puts the Politics of Fear on Display in Brooklyn - The New York Times | The artist Pedro Reyes is a biting social critic whose pieces often hold out hope — in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary — that things will get better. In “Palas por Pistolas” (“Shovels for Guns”) in 2008, he set up a program that allowed residents of Culiacán, Mexico, a city devastated by shootings, to trade in their guns for food stamps or household appliances the guns, more than 1, 500 of them, were melted down and turned into shovels. In a 2013 work with similar implications for good but a much higher threshold for rethinking, he came up with the a burger made with plentiful, crunchy grasshopper protein instead of beef. But when he and the New York public art organization Creative Time began discussing a piece to coincide with the homestretch of the American presidential campaign, Mr. Reyes settled on an idea that allowed little in the way of light: the professional haunted house, an essentially American creation (by way of Grand Guignol and Victorian ghostiana) for generating shock and fear. “The haunted house has never really been considered an art form, but it’s a true folk art — every town has one at Halloween,” said Mr. Reyes, whose own version, “Doomocracy,” opens Friday within the sprawling Brooklyn Army Terminal in the Sunset Park neighborhood. “Haunted houses don’t have a narrative or make sense. You’re there to be terrified, to be a masochist. So those are the limits I decided to work within for this. ” Or, as Nato Thompson, Creative Time’s artistic director, puts it: “We sometimes joke that this is a where no matter which path you choose you always die. ” If that seems like a bleak metaphor for Clinton vs. Trump — or “Brexit,” or the failed Syrian or the surprise electoral defeat of the Colombian peace plan or any number of world political morasses — it well could be. “The strange thing about this project is that the worse things are in the news, the better it is for us,” Mr. Reyes, 44, said early this week in Brooklyn, preparing for final with a group of nearly 50 actors, under the direction of Meghan Finn, who will play all manner of ghouls — business executives, police officers, poll workers, drone pilots, overprescribing doctors — within the haunted house. But Mr. Reyes added that the house’s fright scenarios are less about the failures of political leaders and more about systems at work in the world economy — the military complex, the financial industry, the gun industry, the industry and Big Pharma, just to name some headliners — that have become so vast they seem to govern themselves, rendering political control almost ineffectual. And making satire a tall order. For example, one room of “Doomocracy” (through Nov. 6, groups of a dozen will be led through the rooms at timed intervals beginning at 6 p. m.) is a cozy, profoundly creepy funeral home, presided over by an undertaker who explains that the home specializes in coffins made in the shape of the item most loved by the deceased. A coffin in the shape of a Twinkie dominated the room on a recent visit. And during a rehearsal in September, an actor tinkled the organ keys, intoning earnestly: “I’d like to think that in the afterlife, kids can taste their coffins and they’re happy,” enjoying “the milkshake coffin, the fried chicken coffin” and many other available flavors. Then he crooned: “Every kid wants a candy coffin. ” In the interest of avoiding spoilers (something a reporter rarely has to worry about) some of the scenarios in the piece are probably best undescribed. But it might give an idea of the range of topical phantasmagoria to say that one room involves cheerleaders singing about abortion. Another features a kind of Tupperware party for handguns. (“I think for a lot of liberal people who have never been around guns, it’s going to be a pretty tense situation,” Mr. Reyes said.) There will be a classroom presided over by a racially computer avatar spouting corporate through a large computer screen — “I Googled ‘classroom of the future,’ and that’s pretty much what it looked like,” Mr. Reyes said — and a fake cocktail party hosted by a rich couple who are having their own spaceship built. “They just have so much money that they’re into racing space rockets,” said Mr. Reyes, a compact, bespectacled man who comes off in person like a philosophy professor moonlighting as a comedy host. “They asked Zaha Hadid to design their spaceship, but then she died, so of course they got Frank Gehry, who’s done most of their houses. ” Ms. Finn, who once directed a play that took place inside a New York City taxi and along the streets it traversed, said that compared even with those logistical challenges, Mr. Reyes’s project “is crazy, totally nuts — in the best possible way. ” The actors will have to repeat their parts, written by the playwright Paul Hufker — some of them highly emotional and physically demanding — 40 times over the course of a night. “When I enlisted people to be in this, I told them that it was going to be an act of political rigor,” Ms. Finn said. “It really is endurance performance. ” Katie Hollander, Creative Time’s executive director, said that the organization hadn’t planned earlier in the year to present a major fall piece. But when Mr. Reyes proposed a “ haunted house,” she said, “the idea stuck with us, and as the political climate became more and more terrifying to a certain extent, it just became more and more relevant, and we knew that the time this had to happen was now. So we jumped from the frying pan into the fire. It’s not a usual thing for us to do something of this complexity in such a short period of time. ” The Army Terminal, once the largest military supply base in the United States and now a center for light manufacturing, plays a starring role itself. Its towering main atrium, punctuated by concrete balconies once used for transfer of wartime supplies from train to ship, looks like a dystopian backdrop from “Brazil” or “Metropolis. ” And the terminal’s emptiness will contribute, Mr. Reyes said, to a sense of isolation almost impossible to find in the city. “It’s really pretty freaky here at night. ” Especially against the backdrop of this election, Mr. Thompson said, the project made a kind of perverse sense in 2016, the centennial of the birth of the Dada art movement. “I think that’s the kind of moment we’re in,” he said. “It seems like a joke but the joke is really not funny at all. ” Mr. Reyes acknowledged that the piece would probably be received far differently were it presented in suburban Ohio or rural Tennessee he knows he is preaching mostly to a choir of liberal art lovers who oppose many of the demons he holds up to ridicule. “But I still very much hope I can offend at least a few people,” he said. “And it’s going to be so intense that I think people are going to be shaken and pretty worn out after the hour they’re inside. ” Which might be worth something in itself. “This piece’s inner logic isn’t about hope, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve lost hope in art’s ability to help change things,” Mr. Reyes said. “I still think it’s crucial to keep a critical muscle that mocks the motivations of the system — to say, ‘Why are we doing this?’ and to say, ‘This is crazy. ’” | 0fake |
United Nations Finally Acknowledges US-Backed Rebels in Syria are Murdering Civilians | Home / Be The Change / Antiwar / United Nations Finally Acknowledges US-Backed Rebels in Syria are Murdering Civilians United Nations Finally Acknowledges US-Backed Rebels in Syria are Murdering Civilians Baran Hines November 2, 2016 Leave a comment
United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura stated Sunday that he is “appalled and shocked by the high number of rockets indiscriminately launched by armed opposition groups” which have killed hundreds of civilians in Aleppo during recent weeks. The attacks from groups supported by the United States were described as “ relentless and indiscriminate” while targeting civilians and killing children, according to the statement released by de Mistura’s office.
The battle for eastern Aleppo has become more violent as the Syrian army continues to regain control of the strategic city while targeting the UN designated terrorist group Jahbat Al Nusra, which is known as Al Qaeda in Syria. Most of the attacks by opposition groups have targeted civilians as almost 100 civilians were reported killed in 3 days in western Aleppo, which is controlled by the Syrian government.
US officials and others claim that opposition groups supported by the United States are also being targeted by the Syrian army and civilians are being killed. However, US-backed groups have continued to work directly with Al Nusra in Aleppo, and, for more than six months, have refused requests by the United States and Russia to separate from terrorist groups.
UN Envoy Staffan de Mistura condemned the attacks by these groups because they continue using inaccurate weapons to launch attacks which are claimed as self-defense against the attacks from the Syrian army.
“Those who argue that this is meant to relieve the siege of eastern Aleppo should be reminded that nothing justifies the use of disproportionate, indiscriminate [attacks,] including heavy weapons on civilian areas and it could amount to war crimes,” de Mistura said.
Opposition groups have also used chemical weapons with the most recent attack occurring on October 30, killing 3 and injuring 40 civilians in western Aleppo areas controlled by the government. Non-governmental organization Amnesty International said the attacks show “ a shocking disregard for civilian lives ” in a statement released Monday.
“ The goal of breaking the siege on eastern Aleppo does not give armed opposition groups a license to flout the rules of international humanitarian law by bombarding civilian neighborhoods in government-held areas without distinction ,” said Samah Hadid , a senior Amnesty official in the Beirut regional office.
The Syrian war has seen an increase in violence after the collapse of the September 9 ceasefire agreement negotiated by diplomatic officials from the United States and Russia. Opposition groups contributed to the collapse of the ceasefire after violating the ceasefire over 300 times in the first two weeks, according to the Syrian news agency SANA . Amnesty International also cited the United States being responsible for more than 300 civilian deaths in recent weeks.
The ceasefire agreement called for Russia to influence the Syrian government forces to stop fighting for control and for the US to influence rebel groups to separate from terrorist groups Al Nusra and Islamic State so they could be targeted by joint US-Russia military campaigns. The US has failed to achieve this since February 2016 despite US officials claiming to be in daily contact with rebel groups.
Another significant incident causing the Syrian ceasefire to fail was the September 17 attack by the United States on Syrian troops fighting the Islamic State near the city of Deir Ezzor, killing more than 80 troops and wounding over 100 others — including civilians. That incident, which the US called an accident, led to public accusations from Russia that the US is intentionally helping the Islamic State.
A few days later on September 19, Russia was accused by the US of bombing a United Nations aid convoy for Aleppo, a charge denied by Russia citing forensic evidence indicating that the attack was not an airstrike. The ongoing public tension led to the United States ending direct negotiations with Russia over the Syrian conflict on October 3 , and both sides have since traded public declarations which many see as heightened war rhetoric . Share | 1real |
In meeting with military, Trump talks of 'calm before the storm' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After discussing Iran and North Korea with U.S. military leaders on Thursday, President Donald Trump posed for a photo with them before dinner and declared the moment “the calm before the storm.” “You guys know what this represents?” Trump said after journalists gathered in the White House state dining room to photograph him and first lady Melania Trump with the uniformed military leaders and their spouses. “Maybe it’s the calm before the storm,” he said. What storm? “You’ll find out,” Trump told questioning reporters. Classical music played in the background and tables were set in the nearby Blue Room for a fancy meal. The White House did not immediately reply to a request to clarify Trump’s remark. Earlier in the evening, while seated with the top defense officials in the cabinet room, Trump talked about the threat from North Korea and preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. “In North Korea, our goal is denuclearization,” he said. “We cannot allow this dictatorship to threaten our nation or our allies with unimaginable loss of life. We will do what we must do to prevent that from happening. And it will be done, if necessary, believe me.” During his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump said the United States would “totally destroy” North Korea if needed to defend itself or U.S. allies. The president on Thursday also had tough words for Iran, saying the country had not lived up to the spirit of an agreement forged with world powers to curb its nuclear program. A senior administration official said on Thursday that Trump was expected to announce soon he would decertify the landmark agreement. Trump has filled top posts within his administration with military generals, including his chief of staff, retired General John Kelly, and national security adviser, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. McMaster, who normally dresses in civilian clothes at the White House, wore his uniform for the meeting. Without being specific, Trump pressed the leaders to be faster at providing him with “military options” when needed. “Moving forward, I also expect you to provide me with a broad range of military options, when needed, at a much faster pace. I know that government bureaucracy is slow, but I am depending on you to overcome the obstacles of bureaucracy,” he said during their cabinet room meeting. | 0fake |
Bill Herz, Last of ‘War of the Worlds’ Broadcast Crew, Dies at 99 - The New York Times | Bill Herz, the last surviving crew member of Orson Welles’s mock “War of the Worlds” newscast, which terrified American radio listeners in 1938 with vivid bulletins warning Newark residents to evacuate as invading Martians incinerated central New Jersey, died on May 10 in Manhattan. He was 99. The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Bill Kux, a cousin. Mr. Herz, who worked on other radio and theater productions as stage manager and casting director for Welles’s Mercury Theater company, staked one additional claim to fame. Until about six months ago, he had been a regular customer at Sardi’s restaurant, the gathering place for celebrities and tourists in the theater district, for some 82 years — beginning in 1933, just six years after it opened. That longevity alone distinguished him as a bon vivant in a shrinking cadre of original Broadway personalties. But he was also singled out periodically in the wider world as a relic of a bygone era, when a bogus radio news broadcast could provoke panic as war was brewing in Europe — however much that hysteria may have been overstated then and since. Welles’s CBS show “The Mercury Theater on the Air” presented an adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel “The War of the Worlds” for its Halloween episode on Sunday, Oct. 30, 1938. The live hourlong program began with an updated prelude to the original novel eerily warning that superintelligent beings had been coveting “this Earth with envious eyes. ” Then music, a weather report and other regular features were interrupted by simulated news bulletins and fake feeds from operators in the field. Mr. Herz, playing Operators Three and Five, took part in this exchange: Operator Three: This is Newark, New Jersey. … This is Newark, New Jersey. … Warning! Poisonous black smoke pouring in from Jersey marshes. Reaches South Street. Gas masks useless. Urge population to move into open spaces. … Automobiles use Routes 7, 23, 24. … Avoid congested areas. Smoke now spreading over Raymond Boulevard. … Operator Four: 2X2L … calling CQ … 2X2L … calling CQ … 2X2L … calling 8X3R … Come in, please. … Operator Five: This is 8X3R … coming back at 2X2L. Operator Four: How’s reception? How’s reception? K, please. (Pause.) Where are you, 8X3R? What’s the matter? Where are you? John Houseman, Welles’s producer, wrote in his 1972 memoir, “ ”: “Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less than 40 minutes. During that time men traveled long distances, large bodies of troops were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage battles fought on land and in the air. And millions of people accepted it — emotionally if not logically. ” (Mr. Houseman went on to a distinguished career in theater and Hollywood.) Mr. Herz also read Welles’s part, that of a Professor Pierson at a New Jersey observatory, during rehearsals. He said he was surprised by the public’s response to the radio show. “During the broadcast, outside, policemen were coming,” he told CBS News in 2013. “They were told on the radio that the Martians were coming, the Martians were coming!” (Later scholarship about the incident suggested that the broadcast provoked far less fear among the public than has been popularly portrayed.) In a 2010 profile in The New York Times, Mr. Herz was quoted as saying: “I had done Orson’s part in the dress rehearsal, and after I did it, I thought to myself, ‘Nobody’s going to believe this in a million years.’ Boy, was I wrong. ” William Herz Jr. was born in Detroit on Aug. 2, 1916, the son of Harold William Herz, a girdle salesman, and the former Fannie Lichtig. (Bill Herz called himself Jr. even though he wasn’t one.) He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh before moving to New York. He was briefly married to Susanne Guettel, whose brother Henry was a producer and film executive. No immediate family members survive. Mr. Herz had met Welles in Pittsburgh, where Welles, a young director at the time, had stopped while touring with a production of “Romeo and Juliet. ” They discovered that they had a common acquaintance in the actress Edith Meiser, a friend of Mr. Herz’s parents. Mr. Herz started working for Welles as a gofer. He later moved into Welles’s Manhattan home — Mr. Herz had been living with an aunt in Brooklyn — so that he could constantly be on call. They worked together on “Julius Caesar,” “The Cradle Will Rock” and “Too Much Johnson. ” Mr. Herz joined the Army Air Forces during World War II, managed a summer theater in Connecticut and produced and managed several plays in New York (including a few flops, one inauspiciously titled “The Strangler Fig”). After one failure, Vincent Sardi Sr. the founder of Sardi’s, generously invited him to keep an open tab in good times and bad. Another advantage to eating there was that Mackey’s Ticket Agency next door, where Mr. Herz later worked, had no restroom. Ivan Lesica, Sardi’s maître d’hôtel, said on Thursday that Mr. Herz would eat there once or twice a week and sit at Table Four, to the left of the dining room entrance, under his caricature. He would have coffee delivered in his own white mug, and typically order the chicken potpie or, appropriately enough for an habitué whom his cousin described as a confirmed curmudgeon, the crab meat sandwich. | 0fake |
UAE Arrests Foreign Couple for Premarital Sex After Doctor Discovers Pregnancy | The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has arrested a South engaged couple on “adultery” charges after a doctor discovered the was pregnant. [As reported by the UK Independent: The South African man and his Ukranian fiancee were reportedly arrested after a doctor in Abu Dhabi who treated Ms Nohai for stomach cramps discovered she was pregnant. Emlyn Culverwell‚ 29, and Iryna Nohai, 27, have not yet been charged by authorities in the Islamic country, who are reportedly still investigating. South Africa’s foreign ministry said it was unable to help the couple as it is a matter of domestic UAE law, the South African News24 website reports. Mr Culverwell’s mother, Linda, said she was unable to get any answers from either the authorities in Abu Dhabi, the South African Embassy in the UAE or the South African consulate there. The company Culverwell works for informed his family that Nohai would have to undergo further testing before charges were filed, to determine precisely how long she has been sexually active. This prompted Culverwell’s mother to exclaim, “For heaven’s sake, how can they supposedly determine that?” The Independent explains that all sex outside marriage is technically illegal in the UAE, but normally the law is not vigorously enforced against Western couples who live together. Such couples do, however, run into trouble if an unmarried woman gives birth, or even if a married woman has a baby that appears to have been conceived before the date on her marriage certificate. Unmarried sex is considered adultery in the Emirates and carries a penalty of at least one year in prison. Custody of children can be removed from women found to have engaged in adulterous relationships. In one of the more notorious cases, a British woman who reported she had been raped by two men in Dubai was charged with illegal extramarital sex, but the charges were dropped after an international outcry. A 2015 report by the BBC found that hundreds of women are imprisoned in the UAE after being accused of extramarital sex, including migrant workers who have been sexually abused. Some of them were sentenced to flogging as well as prison time, although the BBC found no evidence that the floggings were actually carried out. | 0fake |
Indonesia detains 18 in pre-emptive bid to boost Christmas security | JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian anti-terrorism police have detained 18 people with links to militant groups in a bid to cut the risk of attacks during Christmas and the New Year in the world s biggest Muslim-majority country, police said on Monday. Near-simultaneous attacks on churches in the capital, Jakarta, and elsewhere on Christmas Eve in 2000, killed nearly 20 people. Ever since, authorities have stepped up security at churches and tourist spots for the holiday. Police Chief Tito Karnavian said while there was no evidence of a specific plot, the detentions were made in a bid to head off trouble. We re doing a pre-emptive strike, Karnavian told reporters. The majority of them have links to previous incidents (and people) who we had arrested earlier, he said. Police said that 12 people had been detained in South Sumatra, four in West Kalimantan, one in Malang in East Java and one in Surabaya in the same province. Under Indonesia s anti-terrorism laws, investigators can hold people for seven days before determining whether they will be designated suspects or released, said police spokesman Setyo Wasisto. Indonesia has seen its share of militant attacks over the years aimed at foreign, Christian and government targets including blasts on the tourist island of Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people. Since then, police have managed to stamp out or weaken many militant networks although there has been a resurgence in radicalism in recent years, inspired largely by Islamic State. A series of small-scale attacks since early 2016 has been linked to Islamic State, which is believed to have thousands of sympathizers in Indonesia. | 0fake |
Loon Versus Loon: Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin Entertainingly Rip Each Other Apart | Grab your popcorn, everybody! The Tea Party civil war has kicked off with an all-out battle of stupid between Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.Their feud has raged largely under the radar since September when Beck fired the first salvo by calling the former half-term Alaska Governor a clown for talking to Donald Trump during an anti-Iran rally. I m going to say it, Beck announced. I don t care what Sarah Palin says any more. Sarah Palin has become a clown. I m embarrassed that I was once for Sarah Palin. Honestly, I m embarrassed I don t know who she is any more, I don t know what she stands for. I saw a clip of her talking to Donald Trump. What the hell is that? I don t even know who she is any more. As we all know by now, Beck is a HUGE supporter of Republican presidential wannabe Ted Cruz, so of course that means anybody who doesn t support Cruz is dead to Beck. And that included Palin.And when America s village idiot actually endorsed Trump in an incoherent rant that left everybody craving a Yosemite Sam cartoon, Beck went nuclear on Facebook. Sarah Palin. Small Government, lower taxes, fewer regulations and the constitution? Not any more. Big government Sad excuse to abandon principles. Just because things don t go my way, I don t abandon God. Saul Alinsky is wrong. The ends do not justify the means. But wait! There s more!After a week in which Beck appeared with Cruz to get all teary eyed about Murica and how Cruz will rule the land with God on his right shoulder whispering in his ear what to do, Palin fired back at her former friend on Thursday.Writing on her Facebook page about Beck s love affair with a man she once shared the Tea Party with, Palin went after Beck on several fronts and did not show any mercy whatsoever. Ted Cruz s star spokesman and campaign partner, Glenn Beck, promises he will support a socialist vs. the pro-life, pro-2nd amendment, pro-growth, pro-American GOP front runner what s conservative about that? Palin began in reference to Beck saying he would support Bernie Sanders before he ever supports Trump.Then she pointed out that Beck once said that John McCain would have been worse for the country than President Obama.Palina also slammed Beck for proclaiming his hatred of the American victims of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, and then attacked Beck and Cruz for greeting immigrants at the border.In conclusion, Palin wrote:Beck is known for his continuous mocking of Americans who may disagree with his puzzling antics, while crying just last night, Why mock ME? what s consistent about that?Beck will go ballistic after reading this post and will ramp up his unjustified attacks against Donald Trump, me, my faith, and you for acknowledging all this I ve outlined, in his own words what s smart about that?Here s her full post via Facebook.// < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); // ]]>Ted Cruz s star spokesman and campaign partner, Glenn Beck, promises he will support a socialist vs. the pro-life, Posted by Sarah Palin on Thursday, February 18, 2016Palin just delivered a direct hit on Beck and now we all get to wait for his response, which probably won t be for too long. And we can definitely expect Beck and Palin to continue their feud in the fight for which crazy GOP candidate gets to lose in November to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.These two were so much happier before they met other crazy people. Featured image from Flickr/Flickr | 1real |
Jo Cox, EgyptAir, Golden State Warriors: Your Thursday Evening Briefing - The New York Times | (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The focus in Orlando was on comforting the bereaved. President Obama met with families of the scores of people killed and injured in the attack on a gay club early Sunday. “Their grief is beyond description,” Mr. Obama said after he and Vice President Joe Biden met privately with mourners for two hours. _____ 2. A new analysis of federal data shows that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are the most frequent targets of hate crimes in the U. S. That was true even before the attack in Orlando. One analyst suggested that, as society becomes more tolerant of L. G. B. T. people, some opponents become more radical. _____ 3. A Democratic filibuster led by Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, above, forced the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to allow a vote on two amendments in coming days. But our congressional correspondent writes that, given politics, neither is likely to pass. _____ 4. British campaigning over the Brexit vote next week was halted after a rising member of Parliament was killed in her district of northern England. Jo Cox, 41, was wrapping up a meeting with constituents at a library near Leeds when she was stabbed and shot, a rarity in a country where guns are tightly controlled. A man was arrested, but the authorities did not immediately comment on a motive. _____ 5. Donald J. Trump’s campaign is so focused on for the general election that his appearances are being mostly kept to southern, heavily Republican states where he is already popular. That puts him at a disadvantage in battleground states, where Hillary Clinton has been campaigning vigorously. In a sign that a small, but growing, crowd in the financial world is warming up to the idea of backing Mr. Trump, a who’s who of financiers will host a for the candidate on Tuesday at an undisclosed location in New York City. _____ 6. Senator Bernie Sanders spoke to his supporters via videoconference. He didn’t drop out of the race or endorse Mrs. Clinton, choosing instead to deliver a shortened version of his stump speech. Mr. Sanders pledged to make certain that Mr. Trump is defeated but added that defeating him cannot be the only goal. _____ 7. It was a busy day in sports. The the United States men’s national soccer team, above, beat Ecuador, advancing to the semifinals of Copa América. LeBron James scored 41 points, leading the Cleveland Cavaliers in a rout of the Golden State Warriors, and sending the N. B. A. finals to a decisive Game 7. And rain halted play at the U. S. Open as Jordan Spieth began defending his title. This year, the golf tournament is at Oakmont, in Pennsylvania, one of the toughest courses in North America. _____ 8. Microsoft became the first major U. S. corporation to plan a role in the burgeoning marijuana industry, announcing a project to create software. The announcement of the new offering came just days after Microsoft signaled its intent to diversify with a $26. 2 billion deal to buy LinkedIn. _____ 9. Miranda, the creator and star of “Hamilton,” confirmed that he would leave the Broadway blockbuster on July 9 (and get a haircut). Among his more immediate projects: working on a Disney film and preparing for a sequel to “Mary Poppins,” with Emily Blunt. He said he would rejoin “Hamilton” or its touring arms from time to time. “This is a role I am going to be going back to again and again,” he said. _____ 10. Gone from Lake Wobegon: Garrison Keillor hosts his final official “Prairie Home Companion” on July 1. One of our stories today looks at how he flourished on the radio show for four decades, known for a garrulous persona that is, in fact, a far cry from his introverted own. “His gaze is often floating and takes you in from a strange distance,” the writer Roger Angell said. “He is certainly the strangest person I know. ” Above, Mr. Keillor in the 1970s. _____ 11. Investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder from EgyptAir Flight 804 after locating wreckage on the Mediterranean floor. The recorder was in “a damaged state,” an official said, but may still be able to provide valuable clues as to why the Airbus 320 veered off course a month ago and plunged into the sea, killing all 66 aboard. Above, a diving robot at work. _____ 12. Finally, Orlando got an infusion of unconditional love from specially trained experts. Lutheran Church Charities sent 12 golden retrievers from its Comfort Dogs team to make the rounds of hospitals, churches and vigils. “We’ve had a lot of people here that start petting the dog, and they break out crying,” a charity official said. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake |
A MUST READ! JUDGE NAPOLITANO: HILLARY’S SECRET WAR | Mrs. Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. JUDGE NAPOLITANOIn the course of my work, I am often asked by colleagues to review and explain documents and statutes. Recently, in conjunction with my colleagues Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne, I read the transcripts of an interview Ms. Browne did with a man named Marc Turi, and Ms. Herridge asked me to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Mrs. Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the backstory.Mr. Turi is a lawfully licensed American arms dealer. In 2011, he applied to the Departments of State and Treasury for approvals to sell arms to the government of Qatar. Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country whose government is so entwined with the U.S. government that it almost always will do what American government officials ask of it.In its efforts to keep arms from countries and groups that might harm Americans and American interests, Congress has authorized the Departments of State and Treasury to be arms gatekeepers. They can declare a country or group to be a terrorist organization, in which case selling or facilitating the sale of arms to it is a felony. They also can license dealers to sell.Mr. Turi sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms to the government of Qatar, which then, at the request of American government officials, were sold, bartered or given to rebel groups in Libya and Syria. Some of the groups that received the arms were on the U.S. terror list. Thus, the same State and Treasury Departments that licensed the sales also prohibited them.How could that be?That s where Mrs. Clinton s secret State Department and her secret war come in. Because Mrs. Clinton used her husband s computer server for all of her email traffic while she was the secretary of state, a violation of three federal laws, few in the State Department outside her inner circle knew what she was up to.Now we know.She obtained permission from President Obama and consent from congressional leaders in both houses of Congress and in both parties to arm rebels in Syria and Libya in an effort to overthrow the governments of those countries.Many of the rebels Mrs. Clinton armed, using the weapons lawfully sold to Qatar by Mr. Turi and others, were terrorist groups who are our sworn enemies. There was no congressional declaration of war, no congressional vote, no congressional knowledge beyond fewer than a dozen members, and no federal statute that authorized this.When Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, asked Mrs. Clinton at a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 23, 2013, whether she knew about American arms shipped to the Middle East, to Turkey or to any other country, she denied any knowledge. It is unclear whether she was under oath at the time, but that is legally irrelevant. The obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Congress pertains to all witnesses who testify before congressional committees, whether an oath has been administered or not. (Just ask Roger Clemens, who was twice prosecuted for misleading Congress about the contents of his urine while not under oath. He was acquitted.)Here is her relevant testimony:Mr. Paul: My question is is the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons buying, selling anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?Mrs. Clinton: To Turkey? I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody s ever raised that with me. I, I .Mr. Paul: It s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons and what I d like to know is the [Benghazi] annex that was close by . Were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons and were any of these weapons transferred to other countries any countries, Turkey included?Mrs. Clinton: Senator, you will have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. And I will see what information is available and ahhhh .Mr. Paul: You are saying you don t know .Mrs. Clinton: I do not know. I don t have any information on that. VIDEO OF THIS TESTIMONY IS BELOW: This secret war and the criminal behavior that animated it was the product of conspirators in the White House, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the CIA and a tight-knit group of members of Congress. Their conspiracy has now unraveled. Where is the outrage among the balance of Congress?Read more: WT | 1real |
TAKE THEM OFF OR PAY HUGE FINE! #NFL Won’t Allow Player To Honor 9-11 Victims With Memorial Cleats…Disrespecting Our Flag On 9-11 Is A-Okay | We re still waiting for the NFL to make a statement about the disrespectful protests by multi-millionaire players who plan to protest an oppressive America and the cops who defend the stadiums, keeping fans and players safe while they play football on 9-11 Even as the NFL turns a blind eye to the lengthening list of players protesting America by refusing to stand for the national anthem, the league has decided to crack down on a player who announced his intention to wear cleats to memorialize the vicious terror attacks on September 11, 2001. Now a police union is vowing to pay the player s NFL fine if he ll wear them despite the league s punishment.The NFL has officially banned Tennessee Titans linebacker Avery Williamson from wearing cleats custom made as a memorial to the victims and first responders who fell in the line of duty during that terrible day on 9/11.In response the disappointed Williamson announced that instead of wearing them during Sunday s game with the Minnesota Vikings he would auction them off with the proceeds going to benefit Operation Warrior Wishes.But after hearing of the NFL s denial of Williamson s request to honor the fallen, two police unions stepped forward pledging to pay what would be a $6,000 NFL fine if the player ignored the league s demands and wore them anyway.For his part, the player said he doesn t want to cause anyone any trouble and just wanted to do a nice thing for the country. I don t want to draw negative attention, so I m just going to focus on playing the game, Williamson said of the ban on the cleats. Once I heard from them, I didn t even try to argue anything. I just left it alone. I didn t want to press the issue. The shoes Williamson calls his patriot cleats are blue with red- and white-striped Nike swooshes featuring the words Never Forget and 9/11 on the back. Also a number 11 representing the Twin Towers appear. The shoes were airbrushed by True Blue Customs in Lexington, Kentucky.In its denial the NFL reminded Williamson that all teams must be uniform on the field and no single player may wear unauthorized gear or sport special decorations upon that gear. The ban is usually aimed at keeping unauthorized financial sponsorships from appearing on field.This isn t the first time the NFL has denied a player s request to honor police or first responders, even as other players are permitted to indulge protests against the U.S.A. and support for Black Lives Matter.Only last month the NFL refused to allow the Dallas Cowboys to wear decals on their helmets showing support for the Dallas Police Department, which lost five officers in one terrible attack in July.The Arm In Arm decal was to have been worn when the team opened its preseason schedule during a game with the Los Angeles Rams.For entire story: Breitbart News | 1real |
Civil Rights Legend Switches Endorsement And Primary Vote From Sanders To Clinton | On Tuesday, Tom Hayden, one of leading dirty hippies that drove Republicans (and Democrats) completely insane in the 1960s wrote a lengthy editorial in The Nation to announce that he was dropping his support of Bernie Sanders and voting for Hillary Clinton in the California primary. While not sparing a critical eye towards Clinton, he explains that despite not being an angel, she has successfully worked within the system for almost 50 years to affect change. According to Hayden, she has the best chance to beat the Republicans and advance her agenda through both a hostile Congress and an unsure electorate.Hayden actually agrees with most (all?) of Bernie s end goals, as do many of Hillary s supporters. We all want universal healthcare, more taxes on the rich, less guns on the street, equal pay for women and an end to income inequality, but where the problem comes is HOW to get there:The populist clarity of Bernie s proposals can be problematic, even for some of his supporters. For example, to simply reject Obamacare in the belief that political revolution will lead to a single-payer solution is simplistic.Hayden is worried Bernie has done nothing to ensure he will have the political muscle to make his plans work. A one election revolution won t cut it without a Plan B, which requires at least two presidential terms and three more congressional elections. Take fracking for example. Hillary has been condemned for not calling for a total ban. But Hayden, a much more plugged in activist, is more impressed by Clinton s long term goals and less so by Sanders absolutist stand:But Hillary s position goes beyond what virtually any state has done. The New York Times writes that she has pledged to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry to pay for her ambitious climate plan and intends to install 500 million solar collectors in four years.Meanwhile, Bernie s total fracking ban leaves the question of how to do so unaddressed. His energy platform is comprehensive, but he offers no strategy to implement the Paris Summit in the short term.And it s not just Bernie s policies that Hayden is concerned with. There s also the question of his vulnerability as a candidate. Hayden, quite correctly, points out that Republicans have almost completely ignored Bernie:My second worry about Bernie s candidacy is that he has not really faced an all-out Republican-financed media assault in this entire campaign. If he s the nominee, that will be merciless.I ve had this discussion a number of times with Bernie supporters who think that Republican attacks will roll right off. But Republicans managed to convince a significant portion of the country that the center-left Obama is actually a far-left Socialist bordering on Communist and that Obamacare was a government takeover. The right-wing media machine is a propaganda tool that would make the totalitarian government in George Orwell s 1984 weep in pure jealously. By the end of the first month, Bernie would be labeled a Marxist. By the end of the second month, he would be the reincarnation of Stalin. And that would be among the nicer things they would say about him.Just to be crystal clear, a certain number of Bernie supporters insist that Obama is a center-right Republican. Yet it is undeniable that he s been successfully labeled a far-left radical by the right. How would Bernie be immune to this? There s no clear answer.Even worse, the automatic response from Bernie supporters is They ll do the same thing to Hillary! as if that would change the character assassination to come. But even that answer is unhelpful because they ve BEEN doing this to Hillary for longer than many of Bernie s supporters have been alive. The Clintons are the most scrutinized politicians to ever live, bar none. There are literally no new scandals to dig (or make) up. The Corporate Media has been trying to claim her scalp since the 90s and the right has spent millions upon millions on opposition research with only rumor and innuendo to show for it.What are they going to do? Hold some more Benghazi hearings? Good luck with that.But the main reason Hayden says he s supporting Hillary is that the black community is overwhelmingly supporting her:I intend to vote for Hillary Clinton in the California primary for one fundamental reason. It has to do with race. My life since 1960 has been committed to the causes of African Americans, the Chicano movement, the labor movement, and freedom struggles in Vietnam, Cuba and Latin America. What would cause me to turn my back on all those people who have shaped who I am? That would be a transgression on my personal code. I have been on too many freedom rides, too many marches, too many jail cells, and far too many gravesites to breach that trust.Some of Bernie s (overwhelmingly white) supporters have taken the not-so-subtly racist attitude that the black community doesn t know any better. But Hayden correctly points out that Bernie himself made the choice not to appeal to them:Bernie s campaign has had all the money in the world to invest in inner city organizing, starting 18 months ago. He chose to invest resources instead in white-majority regions at the expense of the Deep South and urban North.Blaming black people for not supporting Bernie when Bernie deliberately chose to focus his energy elsewhere is a deeply problematic attitude and a shirking of responsibility.There s (a lot) more and Hayden does not pull punches with either candidate, but his overall message is clear: Vote for whatever candidate you want in the primary, but at the end of the day, stopping the Republicans is more important than hero worship. If you want real change, you have to do more than vote in presidential elections, sit back and wait for it to come.Featured image via Getty | 1real |
Microcephaly Found in Babies of Zika-Infected Mothers Months After Birth - The New York Times | It is the news that doctors and families in the heart of Zika territory had feared: Some babies not born with the unusually small heads that are the most severe hallmark of brain damage as a result of the virus have developed the condition, called microcephaly, as they have grown older. The findings were reported in a study of 13 babies in Brazil that was published Tuesday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. At birth, none of the babies had heads small enough to receive a diagnosis of microcephaly, but months later, 11 of them did. For most of those babies, brain scans soon after birth showed significant abnormalities, and researchers found that as the babies aged, their brains did not grow or develop enough for their age and body size. The new study echoes another published this fall, in which three babies were found to have microcephaly later in their first year. As they closed in on their first birthdays, many of the babies also had some of the other developmental and medical problems caused by Zika infection, a range of disabilities now being called congenital Zika syndrome. The impairments resemble characteristics of cerebral palsy and include epileptic seizures, muscle and joint problems and difficulties swallowing food. “There are some areas of great deficiency in the babies,” said Dr. Cynthia Moore, the director of the division of congenital and developmental disorders for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an author of the new study. “They certainly are going to have a lot of impairment. ” Dr. Deborah Levine, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School who has studied Zika but was not involved in either study, said there would most likely be other waves of children whose brains were affected by the Zika infection, but not severely enough to be noticed in their first year. “A lot of the developmental abnormalities we’re not going to see until later,” she said. “There’s going to be another group seen later in childhood, I’m afraid, and another group probably when they reach school age. ” In the new study, doctors at two clinics in the northeastern Brazilian states of Pernambuco and Ceará described the cases of 13 infants who had tested positive for the Zika virus. In 11 of the babies, brain scans taken days or weeks after birth showed significant neurological damage, including improperly formed brain areas, excess fluid in some places and abnormal calcium deposits, or calcification, which probably resulted from brain cell death. But the size of their heads, though small, was not small enough to be considered microcephaly. So doctors monitored their progress as they grew. Dr. Vanessa van der Linden, another author of the study and a neuropediatrician at the Association for Assistance of Disabled Children in Recife, Brazil, where most of the babies in the study are patients, said the type of brain damage in the babies who later developed microcephaly “presented the same pattern, but less severe” than those with it at birth. The babies in the study published this fall also appeared to have a pattern of similar, but less severe, brain damage, said Dr. Antonio Augusto Moura da Silva, of the Federal University of Maranhão and an author of that study, which was published in Emerging Infectious Diseases. He and his colleagues studied 48 babies with brain abnormalities in the northeastern state of Maranhão, identified six babies who did not have microcephaly at birth, and found that three of them later developed it. “We were worried, but now that we’ve started following those cases, we are very sad,” Dr. Silva said. “The picture is really terrible. At the least, if they have microcephaly, we expect them to have a very poor quality of life. ” Experts and the authors of the studies said it was unclear why these infants’ brains did not develop enough to match their age and body size. Dr. Ernesto T. A. Marques Jr. an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Recife, who was not involved in either study, said it could be that because of the initial fetal brain damage, “the necessary pathways and hormones that organize growth of the neonatal brain are not there anymore and the brain doesn’t grow. ” It could also be the result of the immune system responding to the original Zika virus infection. Dr. Moore said that another possibility might be that there was still some infection that continued to damage the brain. But she said that seemed less likely, given that tests for Zika virus conducted on seven of the babies did not find evidence of active infection. The oldest babies in these studies are only just over a year old, too young for researchers to identify cognitive problems or delays in skills like speech. But some deficits are clear: Many of the babies had serious physical deficits tied to neurological damage, including overly tense muscles, muscle weakness and the inability to voluntarily move their hands. Still, unlike many babies born with microcephaly, most of the 13 in the new study had social interaction skills like smiling and making eye contact. And eight of them had good head control, an important skill for developing the ability to sit or walk. While cautioning that the study involved too few cases to make generalizations, Dr. van der Linden said that it appeared that most of these babies had good eye contact because the damage was less severe in brain areas involving vision than it was in areas involving motor skills. Dr. Marques said that head control, the ability to lift and support the head without help, in babies with microcephaly was “quite rare. ” Having a social smile and eye contact is less rare, he said, depending on the type of visual damage and on whether they receive enough visual stimulation to strengthen their ability to use their eyes. “At this age, 80 percent of brain stimulus comes from the eyes,” he said. “If you don’t have that working and you lose this window of opportunity, these babies cannot recover it. ” One baby, a boy, had no anomalies at birth. His limbs looked normal and his head size was proportional to his body, Dr. Moore said. But brain scans soon after birth showed excess fluid and abnormalities in his cortex and corpus callosum, which separates the two hemispheres. At 11 months old, he had microcephaly, and also epilepsy, difficulty swallowing, involuntary muscle contractions, and muscles that were too stiff and restricted his movement, she said. Another baby had a sloping forehead and slight depressions in the front of his head at birth, as well as similar types of brain damage, apparent on scans, Dr. Moore said. By the time he was 1, he had developed microcephaly that was among the most severe of the babies in the study, and had muscular and swallowing problems. But he also had good eye contact, researchers reported. In six of the cases, the mothers reported having a symptom of Zika infection, a rash, between the second and fifth months of pregnancy. That supports other evidence suggesting that babies born to mothers who were infected late in the first trimester suffer the most serious effects. But since there are no symptoms in 80 percent of cases of Zika infection, it was unclear when most of the women were infected, and researchers are still unable to say whether the virus is more damaging to babies if their mothers experience symptoms. | 0fake |
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