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Facebook’s New ‘Proactive’ AI to Scan Posts for Suicidal Thoughts | 21st Century Wire says Facebook is rolling out its latest artificial intelligence bot with the hope that the software will save lives, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The social media juggernaut will use a special algorithm to flag posts that fit a certain pattern, then route them to a human being that can escalate early intervention.The idea of proactive detection can be a slippery slope. What else are these Facebook bots flagging, and who else is mining that information?Read more at TechCrunch READ MORE AI NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire AI FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
WATCH: Trump Defender Gets HUMILIATED By Anderson Cooper For Absurd Wiretapping Claim | Donald Trump s media supporters are working overtime this week trying to defend his wiretapping accusations against President Obama.On Saturday, Trump openly made the accusation on Twitter without providing a single shred of evidence to back up his assertion. Trump made the claim after reading a conspiracy theory on Breitbart and even called for Congress to investigate.Again, Trump has provided no proof to support his accusation and an accusation without proof doesn t justify an investigation.Trump has had days to provide such evidence and has failed to produce any. But Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany claimed during a panel discussion on CNN on Monday night that Trump has evidence that he will release sometime in the future. And she got totally owned for it by Anderson Cooper.McEnany insisted that Trump has evidence that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. But Cooper was quick to remind her that if that were true he would have released it by now and that it would be easy for Trump to confirm whether his accusation is true or not simply by asking certain intelligence and law enforcement agencies. But we know this by now, the president could know this by now by picking up the phone if he really believed this and if he s really that mad about this, he can find out the information, Cooper said. He s the most powerful guy in the United States, in the world. Indeed, but FBI Director James Comey has already strongly shot down Trump s accusation, and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper said on Sunday that he would have been informed had President Obama ordered such a wiretap, whether legal or not.Cooper then dropped the hammer by pointing out that if Trump really had evidence he wouldn t be demanding an investigation by Congress. If he had that information, why is he saying that it s President Obama who did this personally and why is he calling for a congressional investigation to find out when he could find out? Cooper asked.Here s the video via YouTube:Donald Trump does not have evidence to back up his serious accusation against President Obama. He knows that he is slandering him and is desperately turning to Republicans in Congress to help him manufacture proof that is nonexistent. If Trump had any proof at all he would be screaming it out from the rooftops to prove that he was right. Because he s too much of a narcissist to keep that kind of information to himself.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Trump to nominate Nathan Sales as counterterrorism coordinator: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump intends to nominate Nathan Sales, a former Homeland Security official, as State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, the White House said on Friday. Sales is a professor at Syracuse University College of Law, and previously served as deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security and as senior counsel in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice, the White House said in a statement. | 0fake |
Three people die in avalanches in Swiss Alps | ZURICH (Reuters) - Three people have died in separate avalanche accidents in the Swiss Alps, police said on Monday. A man who was skiing close to the 2,844-metre high Hofathorn, in the southern canton of Wallis, died after being carried away by an avalanche on Monday morning. The 39-year-old from the Wallis region was quickly found and recovered by his friends but was confirmed dead at the scene by emergency services. Police in Graubunden, in the east of Switzerland, said a tourist who went missing on Saturday had also been found dead. The 31-year-old Frenchman had tried to climb the Glattwang mountain alone on Saturday afternoon after skiing with his girlfriend. When he did not return, a search was launched and the man s body was found in a ravine on Sunday morning. Police said he had triggered an avalanche on his descent which carried him more than a kilometre over rocky terrain. Separately, one of three walkers buried by a snow drift in Wallis on Saturday has died, Swiss broadcaster SRF reported, quoting the police. The group was hiking at a height of 2,700 meters in the St Luc region when the accident happened. One of them managed to get free and make an emergency call which allowed the others to be rescued. All three were flown to hospital, where one, a 29-year-old woman from the Swiss canton of Vaud, died of her injuries on Sunday evening, SRF said. (This version of the story corrects paragraph four to make clear Graubunden is in the east of Switzerland, not the west) | 0fake |
Kansas Republican wins congressional seat in special election | KANSAS CITY, Kan (Reuters) - Kansas Republican and state treasurer Ron Estes on Tuesday defeated Democrat civil rights attorney James Thompson to win a Congressional seat in a race that became an unlikely testing ground of an early backlash to President Donald Trump. Estes got about 53 percent of the vote, preliminary results showed, to win the Kansas 4th congressional district seat held by Republican Mike Pompeo from 2011 until he vacated it this year, to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “Even though we heard a lot from the national media and from people outside this state that we were not going to be able to win this race, we showed that we are still a Republican seat,” Estes told supporters at a rally in Wichita. “And we’re going to make sure we change things in Washington.” Democrats had hoped to capitalize on Trump’s poor approval rating and dissatisfaction among moderates with Republican Governor Sam Brownback to win back one of 24 seats they need nationwide to reclaim the House. The seat, which Pompeo won with nearly 61 percent of the vote in November, looked until recently like a lock for Estes, the state treasurer since 2011. But the race became surprisingly competitive and drove Republican leaders into a last minute push for Estes. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the Kansas caucus in the Republican presidential primary, campaigned for Estes over the weekend. President Trump, who carried the 4th district with about 57 percent of the general election vote in 2016, also pushed for Estes, with a message on social media network Twitter expressing support for his fellow Republican earlier in the day. The last Democrat to hold the Kansas 4th congressional district seat was Dan Glickman, who served nine terms before becoming agriculture secretary in 1995. Thompson made the race a lot closer than people would have expected earlier this year, said his campaign manager Chris Pumpelly. “People were writing us off the whole time,” he said. “They said it was a no-go, but we proved them all wrong. We made this race absolutely competitive and we are very proud of it.” | 0fake |
UK lawmakers ask Facebook for any evidence of Russian-linked Brexit activity | LONDON (Reuters) - A British parliamentary committee has written to Facebook s Mark Zuckerberg asking for information on any paid-for activity by Russian-linked Facebook accounts around the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 UK election. The request was made by Damian Collins, chair of parliament s Digital, Media and Sport Committee as part of its effort to gather evidence for an inquiry it is conducting into fake news. Part of this inquiry will focus on the role of foreign actors abusing platforms such as yours to interfere in the political discourse of other nations, Collins wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg circulated to media by the committee. He asked Facebook to provide examples of all adverts bought by Russian-linked accounts, of all pages set up by Russian-linked accounts, information on the targeting of such adverts and pages and how many times they were viewed. I believe that the information I have requested is in line with that already supplied to Facebook to several United States Senate Committees, including the Senate Intelligence Committee, in relation to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, wrote Collins. The committee of British lawmakers launched its inquiry into fake news in January but it was suspended when a general election was called for June. The closing date for submitting evidence is Nov. 7. The inquiry aims to shed light on issues such as the impact of fake news on public understanding of the world and response to traditional journalism, the responsibilities of social media platforms and how people can be educated to assess news sources. The issue of whether and how much Russia intervened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is a huge issue in Washington, where it is the subject of multiple investigations. Facebook said on Oct. 2 that some 10 million people in the United States saw politically divisive ads on its network that were purchased in Russia in the months before and after the presidential election. In Britain, interest in whether Russia also played a part in domestic political processes such as the June 2016 referendum on withdrawing from the European Union and the June 2017 general election has been increasing in recent weeks. Last week, another member of parliament, Ben Bradshaw, called on the government to get to the bottom of reports of opaque funding sources for some elements of the pro-Brexit campaign, citing widespread concern over foreign and particularly Russian interference . Russia has denied interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. | 0fake |
Storms to challenge Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands' credit quality: Moody's | (Reuters) - Moody s Investors Service said on Tuesday that Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands will face new challenges to credit quality and finances after the U.S. territories were battered by hurricanes Irma and Maria. Both territories will be heavily reliant on relief from the U.S. federal government, as they were hit by storms at a time when they were already suffering financial distress, Moody s said. Puerto Rico is undergoing a debt restructuring under federal oversight and the U.S. Virgin Islands has extremely weak liquidity. Moody s Analytics preliminary estimate of Maria s total cost to Puerto Rico, including lost output, is $45 billion to $95 billion, representing about 65-135 percent of the territory s gross national product. | 0fake |
Michigan Teacher Accused of Assault for Trying to Make Student Stand for Pledge of Allegiance [Video] | So we disrespect the flag in class now? Whether this teacher tried to get this child to stand is one thing another thing is the fact that children AND adults aren t being taught why we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. MAYBE THIS KID COULD TALK TO THE KID WHO WON T STAND: The video below was created by a student to teach students the importance and meaning behind saying the Pledge of Allegiance:STAND FOR THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE!A student in Farmington Hills, Michigan is accusing a teacher of assault. The teacher tried to get the boy to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance but the boy says he doesn t do that.The teacher was put on leave and is under investigation now.A Black Publication is trying to spin this as just more racism after other black athletes refused to stand for the National Anthem. Notice how The Root spins this alleged assault: Everybody is all about freedom of speech and expression until a black person (hey, Colin Kaepernick; hey, Jemele Hill) decides to exercise his or her right to do so. And in this particular case, a black sixth-grader out of Michigan says he was assaulted by his homeroom teacher all because he was exercising his rights and declined to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.STONE CHANEY:Stone Chaney is a sixth-grader and had just started his first week of school but may not go back because he feels his rights were violated.Stone claims: The teacher consultant comes up behind me and snatches me out of my chair violently. I was so confused. I didn t know what was going on. He says the homeroom teacher tried to force him to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance. I PLEDGE TO GOD AND FAMILY Click on Detroit reported: I don t stand because I don t pledge to a flag, Stone said. I pledge to God and family. The alleged incident happened Sept. 7. Stone said the next day, another teacher yelled at him for sitting down during the Pledge. I don t feel safe going to that school anymore because I don t know what they re going to do next, Stone said.His father addressed the district directly during their last board meeting. It s his choice to sit, Brian Chaney said. I don t make him sit. And they should respect that. Marine veteran Stephen Stevens sees things differently. I would love to be able to talk to them and get their side and explain my side so maybe we could come to an understanding, Stevens said. Because I get they have that right, but I don t believe they understand what that right really entails. If they re fighting for freedom, they re fighting for us to have choices, Brian Chaney said. Then it s our choice. The superintendent of Farmington Public Schools released the following statement: The District fully supports the right of each student to participate or not in the daily Pledge. The teacher allegedly involved in the incident has been placed on administrative leave. At this time, the District cannot speculate about the outcome of the pending investigation. The family is exploring its options. Stone hasn t gone back to school, but they re probably going to leave the district. | 1real |
Trump’s Campaign BADLY Photoshopped White Model To Make Her Appear Darker (IMAGES) | When you re accused of being racist, as the Trump campaign is, because they are, it s probably best to show some people of color modeling your campaign gear. However, when all you have is a stock photo of a white model to work with, there s apparently only one thing to do photoshop.On Twitter, Eric Ming, digital director for Donna Edwards, pointed out that Trump s campaign appeared to photoshop a model to be darker than she actually is:So it appears Donald Trump s campaign photoshopped their model to be brown: pic.twitter.com/V0DghCiQAW Eric Ming (@ericming5) March 3, 2016It looks as though since the Trump campaign likely has a difficult time finding people of color to support the candidate, they ve resorted to literally making them up.Here s the original model:Generic gray shirt from jcgapparel.comNow, here is that same model on Trump s campaign website on August 9th of last year already appearing a bit darker:via donaldjtrump.comClearly not satisfied with making her only slightly darker, the Trump campaign turned her into full Trump orange as only they can. And needless to say, they didn t even do a very good job of it. Here she is again on September 6th of last year:donaldjtrump.comThis is clearly the same model as can be seen by her collarbone, hair, etc.This is just more evidence that the Trump campaign is full of lies and deceit. It begs the question, why? Why bother doing this? Did they think no one would notice? Did they just not care?Of course, many who support him will just say that this is clearly making a mountain out of mole hill and it s not a big deal, but it kind of is. Trump s campaign is literally based on hearsay and optics. He wants people to believe in him without knowing what he s all about, and he s clearly done a great job of that. However, that s also what makes him remarkably dangerous.Featured image: jcgstore.com/flickr/photoshop HT: Fusion | 1real |
Nuclear Weapons – The Time for Abolition is Now | Share This
Nuclear weapons present the greatest public health and existential threat to our survival every moment of every day. Yet the United States and world nuclear nations stand in breach of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which commits these nations to work in good faith to end the arms race and to achieve nuclear disarmament. Forty eight years later the efforts of the nuclear nations toward this goal is not evident and the state of the world is equally as dangerous as it was during the height of the Cold War and arguably more dangerous with current scientific evidence on the catastrophic effects of even limited regional nuclear war.
This year’s presidential campaign has once again done little to focus on the dangers of nuclear weapons focusing more on who has the temperament to have their finger on the button with absolutely no indication of any understanding of the consequences to all of humanity by the use of these weapons even on a very small scale. In addition to tensions between Russia and the U.S. in Ukraine and Syria, there is a real danger of nuclear war in South Asia which could kill more than 2 billion people from the use of just 100 Hiroshima size weapons.
The rest of the world is finally standing up to this threat to their survival and that of the planet. They are taking matters into their own hands and refusing to be held hostage by the nuclear nations. They will no longer be bullied into sitting back and waiting for the nuclear states to make good on empty promises.
At the United Nations this past week, 123 nations voted to commence negotiations next year on a new treaty to prohibit the possession of nuclear weapons. Despite President Obama’s own words in his 2009 pledge to seek the security of a world free of nuclear weapons, the US voted “no” and led the opposition to this treaty.
Rather than meet our obligations under international law, the US has proposed by stark contrast to begin a new nuclear arms race spending $1 trillion dollars over the next 30 years to modernize and rebuild every aspect our nuclear weapons programs. A ‘jobs’ program to end humanity. Each of the nuclear nations is expected to do the same in rebuilding their weapons programs continuing the arms race for generations to come.
The myth of deterrence is the guise for this effort when in fact deterrence is the principle driver of the arms race. For every additional weapon my adversary has, I need two and so on and so on to our global arsenals of 15,500 weapons.
Fed up with this inaction and doublespeak, the non-nuclear nations of the world have joined the ongoing efforts of the world’s NGO, health and religious communities in demanding an end to the madness. Led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a global partnership of 440 partners in 98 countries, the International Red Cross, the world’s health associations representing more than 17 million health professionals worldwide along with religious communities including the Catholic Church and World Council of Churches they are calling for a treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.
The effort to ban nuclear weapons has several parallels to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines led by Jody Williams, recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. This effort was dismissed and called utopian by most governments and militaries of the world when it was launched by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in 1992 only to succeed in 1997 through partnerships, public imagination and political pressure resulting in the ultimate political will. The nuclear ban movement has been vigorously fought by the nuclear nations trying desperately to hold onto their weapons and pressuring members of their alliances to hold the line.
Unfortunately these weapons and control systems are imperfect. During the Cold War there were many instances where the world came perilously close to nuclear war . It is a matter of sheer luck that this scenario did not come to pass by design or accident. Our luck will not hold out forever. Luck is not a security policy. From a medical and public health stance based on our current evidence-based understanding of what nuclear weapons can actually do, any argument for continued possession of these weapons by anyone in untenable and defies logic. There is absolutely no reasonable or adequate medical response to nuclear war.
As with any public health threat from Zika, to Ebola, Polio, HIV, prevention is the goal. The global threat from nuclear weapons is no different. The only way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons is to ban and eliminate them. Our future depends upon this.
President Kennedy speaking on nuclear weapons before the U.N. Security Council in September 1961 said, “The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us”. Our children’s children will look back and rightly ask why we the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons remained on the wrong side of history when it came to abolishing nuclear weapons.
Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions . He writes for PeaceVoice . | 1real |
Senate Debate Reveals Absurd Level Of Trade Deal Secrecy | The pair noted that although legislators are allowed to look at the text of the TPP in a secure room, they are only allowed to do so under restrictions that make it nearly impossible to understand what they are reading.
First, they can't bring expert staffers with them unless they have the right clearances, and the aides who have expertise in various relevant areas -- for instance on the impacts on the environment or labor law -- generally are not cleared.
"We are unable to take any notes or consider what we just saw unless we have a photographic memory and, unfortunately, I do not," Manchin said. "I've tried to remember and look at things I knew I was looking for, but still it's almost impossible to walk out of there having the ability to sit down and evaluate what you just saw."
"I taught the uniform commercial code and the bankruptcy code. I am not afraid of hollow, technical language. But you've got to be able to dig into it, you've got to be able to spend time and figure out the cross-references and the terms of art," Warren said. "It's difficult, thick stuff to read, and it's set up to minimize your capacity to track all the pieces about what's happening."
"Right now if you’re a staff member of the [Finance] Committee you can look at it. But if you’re one of my people who works for my intelligence staff that has clearance to see what’s going on with nukes or weapons anyplace in the world, or what’s going on with the CIA, they can do that, but they can’t look at that real precious agreement that they’ve drawn up," he said.
Hatch admitted somewhat uncomfortably on Thursday that it's hard to know what's in the deal. "Look, I don't know fully what's in TPP myself," he said. "And I'm going to be one of the most interested people on Earth when that comes."
But, he argued that the bill moving through the Senate to give Obama his fast-track authority had plenty of transparency, since it requires any trade deal such as TPP to be made public 60 days before signing it with foreign partners, and another 60 days before Congress votes.
Hatch conveniently overlooked that fact that even if lawmakers find specific problems in a deal, there would be little they could do to stop it because fast-track allows no amendments and no filibusters.
The solution of posting a partially redacted version of a deal for everyone to see -- before the president gets fast-track powers -- isn't a new idea, or even a Democratic one, Manchin said. He pointed out that President George W. Bush released the text of the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement.
"He did this months before he was granted fast-track authority," Manchin said. "He wasn't afraid to let us see. He wasn't afraid of the American public to know what was in that ... it didn't squelch the deal. It didn't harm anything."
Manchin and Warren had hoped to pass their bill as an amendment to the fast-track legislation, but it was clear after the Senate advanced the measure Thursday that they wouldn't get the chance. Instead, they tried to get consent from Hatch to vote on it separately.
The Administration has taken unprecedented steps to increase the transparency of our trade negotiations. That includes working with Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle to make the full text of negotiations and easy to understand summaries of each chapter available to all members of Congress in the Capitol for the first time ever.
TPP negotiations are still ongoing. Once TPP is completed the public will have months to review the text online before it is even signed by the President and then more time before a vote is ever taken. | 0fake |
More Politicized Justice to Protect Hillary | More Politicized Justice to Protect Hillary More Politicized Justice to Protect Hillary October 27, 2016, 9:04 am by Roger Aronoff Leave a Comment 0
By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media
A recently revealed connection between Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a local Virginia politician and the FBI exposes, at the very least, another deceptive conflict of interest that was likely intended to help protect the viability of Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. These politicians believe they can get away with such actions because they trust that they can count on a complicit mainstream media to cover for their corruption.
A case in point is the funding McAuliffe arranged for Dr. Jill McCabe, the wife of the future deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe. McAuliffe steered nearly $500,000 from his political action committee, Common Good VA, and another approximately $200,000 from the Virginia Democratic Party to Mrs. McCabe for her state senate campaign in 2015. Her campaign had a total budget of $1.8 million, and according to The Washington Post, in 2015 the state allowed candidates to use campaign funds for personal expenses so long as the campaign was operating.
“No, it’s not at all a normal amount [of money],” said State Senator Dick Black, the incumbent who defeated McCabe in 2015 and kept the seat, on the Steve Batton Show . “In fact, the amount that was involved is comparable to what you would have in a full congressional, a hotly contested congressional race.” Black, who served as a pilot for the Marines during the Vietnam War, was later the head of the Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon.
“The amount of money that was put in was astounding,” Black continued. “It was four times as much as the Democrats had put into the former race when this was an open seat.” At the time that Jill McCabe announced her campaign, her husband Andrew was running the Washington, D.C. field office of the FBI. He was later promoted to the number three position, and then promoted to deputy director. His wife’s campaign failed, and, according to The Washington Post, Andrew McCabe avoided handling Virginia public corruption cases during her campaign and didn’t “participate in” campaign events.
Yet, given that the main funder of his wife’s campaign, Governor McAuliffe, is a long-time Clinton ally who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and chaired the Democratic National Committee, Andrew McCabe should have recused himself from the Hillary Clinton investigation—no matter at what level he was serving.
According to a cutting Wall Street Journal editorial , “All of this asks voters to believe that Mr. McCabe as the No. 3 official at the FBI had nothing to do with the biggest, most sensitive case at that agency. This strains credulity.” It was the Journal that broke the story this week about McAuliffe steering money to McCabe.
The editorial continues, “Before he became No. 3 at the FBI Mr. McCabe ran the bureau’s Washington, D.C. field office that provided resources to the Clinton probe. Campaign-finance records show that 98% of the McAuliffe donations to Mrs. McCabe came after the FBI launched its Clinton probe.”
Three months after McCabe’s defeat, her husband became the FBI deputy director helping to oversee the Clinton email case. Not only does this have the appearance of impropriety—it doesn’t pass the smell test.
“So the Democratic Party actually suspected that this woman was a Republican because she hadn’t been active in any politics,” said Black. “She came out of the blue, which was quite mysterious. Why this woman, why was she chosen?” Black described how another Democratic Party operative had already filed to run for the state senate seat, but the party decided that Jill McCabe would be the candidate—without holding a primary.
As we have reported, the whole FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of classified email and private server stinks—and the fix was clearly in . Not only did the FBI grant immunity to five people deeply involved in the case, it also made a deal to destroy evidence on two witnesses’ computers once it finished reviewing material found on them. “Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015,” reported Fox News. “This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public—in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said.”
In addition, the FBI failed to empanel a grand jury to look into the case, instead relying on non-aggressive interviews which were not recorded.
We have long maintained that EmailGate is not just about hiding information from the public, but is also a national security scandal. The Obama administration is clearly using political considerations to determine who receives punishment for mishandling the nation’s secrets. Among the latest WikiLeaks revelations is further proof that President Obama was well aware that Mrs. Clinton was doing government business from a private, unsecured server, though he denied it, and that staff members were scrambling to figure out how to contain the fallout.
The Washington Post reports that another government official who mishandled classified information, leaking it to the press, failed to escape judgment. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman General James E. Cartwright’s “greatest mistake was not talking to reporters or lying about it; he failed to play the Washington game skillfully enough to avoid becoming a scapegoat for a system in which senior officials skirt the rules and then fall back on their political power to save them,” writes Josh Rogin for the Post. He describes how Cartwright “was a pariah to many of the Very Important People in Washington’s national security elite.”
Cartwright “pleaded guilty to the felony charge of lying to the FBI during its investigation into the leaking of classified information about covert operations against Iran to two journalists” and could face up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine, writes Rogin.
Before that, Cartwright was known as “ Obama’s favorite general .” But clearly that is no longer the case, or presumably he would have gotten off scot-free, just like Hillary, from the highly politicized Obama Justice Department. Hillary’s mishandling of classified material was part of her daily routine for years—far more egregious than anything that Cartwright did.
As Rogin pointed out in the Post article, Cartwright spoke to The New York Times’ David Sanger about the Stuxnet program designed to slow down Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. Sanger had previously “had meetings on Iran with several other high-profile administration officials, including National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and even Clinton herself. There’s no evidence of any other Stuxnet leak investigations of high-level officials.”
But only Cartwright is taking the fall. “In his statement taking responsibility for lying to the FBI,” writes Rogin, “Cartwright asserted his motivations were patriotic. ‘My only goal in talking to the reporters was to protect American interests and lives; I love my country and continue to this day to do everything I can to defend it.’” We may have to wait for Cartwright’s memoir to find out the rest of this story.
In 2013, the Times’ Sanger said that the Obama administration was the “most closed, control-freak administration” he’d ever covered. But Hillary got a pass, in order to run for the White House to succeed President Obama. We have reported on how this administration has systematically and to an unprecedented level targeted leakers and journalists .
But the whitewash of an FBI investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices is looking more and more like a cover-up. That the McCabes felt indebted to Clinton associate McAuliffe cannot be definitively proven, but it defies common sense to assume that they both were purely impartial about the investigation into Hillary. If only the mainstream media would do their job and report on the facts of this case, instead of simply lambasting Donald Trump and his supporters for his inartful comments. If only. Roger Aronoff
Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi . He can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org . View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff . 0 | 1real |
Families returning to ruined Philippine city taught to identify bombs | MARAWI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) - Philippine teachers on Tuesday gave families returning to the destroyed lakeside city of Marawi a course on how to identify unexploded bombs in their homes and warned them to stay clear. The five-month battle to retake Marawi from pro-Islamic State rebels left the city in ruins. The government announced the end of military operations on Monday in the country s biggest security crisis in years, allowing rebuilding and rehabilitation efforts to begin.. The teachers taught children and their parents how to recognize live mortar shells, grenades, aircraft rockets and improvised explosive devices in their villages. Security forces used artillery bombardment and air strikes to flush out the gunmen who endured 154 days of the offensive by stockpiling huge amounts of weapons, including bombs. Warnings from the teachers included drawings of inquisitive children hammering bombs and trying to set them on fire. This helps us parents to understand and tell our children not to touch or get near the bombs, said Sobaida Sidic, a housewife attending the training. Authorities said 920 militants, 165 troops and police and at least 45 civilians were killed in the conflict, which displaced more than 300,000 people. Lominog Manoga, a principal at a school in Marawi overseeing the training, said it was important to teach people the risks. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had declared Marawi City liberated last week, even though fighting was not actually over. On Sunday, he said it was important to be vigilant because no country could escape Islamic State s clutches of evil . | 0fake |
Scary Interview With Trump-Loving Women Shows That His Supporters Will Excuse ANYTHING He Does (VIDEO) | The fact that supporters of Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump have a few screws loose is a widely known fact. However, considering all of the sexist, misogynistic comments that Trump has said to and about women, most of us would imagine that most Trump fans are white males. According to a recent study, Trump isn t liked by 70% of American women because of his vulgar attitude toward them and the other 30%? Well, you re about to see some of them.CNN s Martin Savidge had the opportunity to interview a few Arizona conservative women who were fierce Trump supporters, and what the interview revealed is truly depressing and baffling. It turns out, that no matter how disrespectful and degrading Trump is to them, there are still women who will not only continue to support him, but DEFEND him at all costs.One awful example of this was when Savidge brought up Fox s Megyn Kelly, whom Trump had brutally attacked on social media and made several sexist remarks about just because she called him out on his misogynistic behavior. One of the women being interviewed said Trump was completely justified in his bullying antics and said that Kelly was guilty of baiting him. Another women jumped in and said, You don t know what his connotation was! when Trump s crude reference to Kelly menstruating was brought up. Basically the group s justification for supporting Trump despite his attacks on women was: Because he insults men as well. I can t be upset that he insults women. The terrifying thing is that this group of women aren t the uneducated voters that Americans and Trump himself believes are supporting him. These are professional, educated women who have chosen to believe in a man who has violated basically everything they believe in.One of the women, who is actually Mexican-American, said that she appreciated Trump s transparency. She said: I just find that what you see is what you get with this man. And that is what I want. Another women, a church leader, said that she enjoyed that Trump was a strong man with a strong personality. Although, it s hard to believe that she s even been watching the election when she says: He really does love his country, loves people, he really has respect for women. The women also blamed Trump s rival, Senator Ted Cruz, for the nasty attacks that the candidates have made on each other s wives. Yes, these women excused this classy tweet from Trump:TwitterOne of the women perhaps the only one with a little bit of common sense admitted that she has cringed on occasion when he s said a certain thing . She said: I wonder why (Trump has) said a certain thing, but that s his personality. He s just he just lets it roll. According to one of the women, only Trump going back on his policies and on the issues could stop her from supporting him which is hilarious, considering that Trump is infamous for flip-flopping. Another woman said: It s his policies that we admire. And that s really the crux of it and has nothing to do with what he might call somebody or what kind of terminology he uses. You can watch the video below: Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Bad idea: Shell’s gearing up to start drilling in the Arctic again | After suspending its Arctic program for years following the grounding of one of its drilling rigs, the company announced Thursday that it plans to start drilling this summer in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea.
“Will we go ahead?” CEO Ben van Beurden said during the company’s fourth quarter results conference. “Yes if we can. I’d be so disappointed if we wouldn’t.”
It’s a perplexing decision. For one thing, Arctic drilling is an inherently risky activity, and Shell has a poor track record of getting it right. And even when it is done right, says Mackenzie Funk, who reported an in-depth e-book on the company’s 2012 Arctic fiasco, it’s incredibly expensive. “Simply the practicality of getting giant rigs up there, the practicality of getting oil from that far away from the rest of us to market is a huge, huge undertaking,” Funk recently told Salon.
“We will only do this if we feel that we can do it responsibly,” van Beurden told the BBC, adding, “I think that we are as well prepared as any company can be to mitigate the risks.” But Funk’s take on Shell’s prospects for safe drilling basically came down to whether the company’s going to be willing to invest enough money in the project to do it right. Seeing as how the announcement comes at a time when the price of crude oil is at a six-year low, it’s hard to imagine how they expect to do both that and profit at the same time.
Shell already plans to cut spending by more than $15 billion over the next three years due to dwindling revenues. Despite that, “Shell hasn’t taken the opportunity to cut its most high-cost high-risk project,” Greenpeace’s Charlie Kronick said in a statement. “It’s time for investors to recognise that it’s impossible for Shell to justify its continued pursuit of offshore Arctic oil.”
In the same meeting, moreover, Shell made the unprecedented decision to back a resolution from “activist shareholders” to analyze whether its business model is compatible with the global effort to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius. To reach that goal, scientists say, we’re going to have to leave three-quarters of our remaining fossil fuel reserves in the ground — and, according to a major study recently published in the journal Nature, that includes all of the oil and gas in the Arctic. So what gives, Shell? According to Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry, the company’s already invested $1 billion preparing to tap the Arctic, and just keeping things operational since the moratorium has cost it several hundred millions more each year. But even if that’s enough for it to decide it’s worth it to go ahead and drill, it still has a number of legal hurdles to overcome, chief among them being the ruling of a U.S. federal appeals court, last January, that the Interior Department’s sale of Chukchi Sea leases back in 2008 didn’t take sufficient account for the environmental risks posed by drilling. A final environmental impact statement is due out soon; in the meantime, federal regulators are informally reviewing the company’s drilling plans. The environmental group Friends of the Earth, meanwhile, points to the absurdity of the $10 billion in U.S. subsidies (that’s the low-ball estimate) from which Shell partakes each year. “The last thing the Arctic needs is an invasion from Big Oil, and the last thing those invaders deserve are taxpayer dollars,” Lukas Ross, the group’s climate and energy campaigner, said in a statement. “Shell’s dismal record of accidents and safety violations demonstrates an inability to operate in the unpredictable Arctic waters. If we are going to avoid climate catastrophe we must make the Arctic off limits to drilling.” | 0fake |
UK royal Kate makes first public appearance since pregnancy revealed | LONDON (Reuters) - Kate, Britain s Duchess of Cambridge, made her first public appearance on Tuesday since it was announced she was pregnant, joining husband Prince William and his brother Harry at events to mark World Mental Health Day. Last month William and Kate announced they were expecting her third child and that as with her two previous pregnancies, she was suffering severe morning sickness. Last month, she was too ill to take her eldest child George to his first day at school because she was too unwell and her last public appearance had come at the end of August when she joined William and Harry on a visit to a public garden at Kensington Palace dedicated to their late mother Princess Diana. However, Kate, whose official title is the Duchess of Cambridge, showed no sign of the sickness that has forced her to cancel all engagements since then when she, William and Harry hosted a reception at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to celebrate the efforts of those working Britain s mental health sector. The duchess condition is improving but she is still suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum. She is delighted to be able to be here tonight, an aide said. Hyperemesis gravidarum can cause severe nausea and vomiting and requires supplementary hydration and nutrients. The condition forced Kate to be admitted to hospital in the early months of her pregnancy with George. The couple s third baby will be fifth in line to the British throne, after grandfather Prince Charles, father William and elder siblings George, four, and Charlotte, two. William, Kate and Harry have made campaigning about mental health one of their priorities, with both royal brothers saying in recent months how their mother s death in a car crash when they were children had left deep emotional scars. All three of us have seen that mental health is at the heart of so many of the issues we are passionate about, William said in a speech to the reception. | 0fake |
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE? INDIEGOGO HOSTS FUNDRAISER FOR BLACK MAN AND BANK ROBBER WHO MURDERED WHITE COP AND MARINE VETERAN [Video] | Because #BlackCopKillersLivesMatter right?Supporters of Tremain Wilbourn, the Memphis ex-con accused of shooting Officer Sean Bolton when he interrupted a drug deal on Saturday night, have started an IndieGoGo campaign to funnel money to him and his family.Wilbourn turned himself in after a two-day manhunt. I want you to know that one, I m not a cold-blooded killer and two, I am not a coward, he reportedly told Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong. The campaign repeats his claims and says that cops are waging terrorism on black communities, and so they have to support ex-cons who kill.The description of the campaign reads in full:This year, police have killed 558 people. 68% of those people were black. Most of them were unarmed. Police brutality and terrorism on the black community remains largely unchecked and less than 1% of those police officers who murder black people without cause are charged with murder or manslaughter.Tremaine Wilbourn turned himself in to police on Monday, August 3rd for fatally shooting a police officer during a traffic stop and he wanted to make clear two things: one- he is not a cold-blooded killer, and two- he is not a coward. While the murderers of Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, 12 year old Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and countless others are free to enjoy their families and lives, these men are no longer among the living.These barbaric, unjustified murders of black men, women, and children are supported under the rule of law. We have to step up and support our people like the murderers of these men, women, and children have been supported. Please donate anything you can to support Tremaine s children and his family during this difficult time for them.So far, the campaign has raised $116 with 12 funders out of its stated $61,000 goal. We have to support our people, the campaign s founder, PK EI wrote as a comment. If Darren Wilson can raise enough to put his children through college twice, we should be able to put together this change for Tremaine s family. We Should Always Support Our Own People, Especially When The Situation Is Grime And Questionable, Or When We Are Completely Within Our Rights. Because We Are All We have To Support Us, reads another from user thinkanotherway. The campaign declares that Wilbourn did in fact, shoot Bolton to death. If nothing else, its adherence to IndieGoGo s community guidelines is questionable: Indiegogo is not a place for hatred, abuse, discrimination, disrespect, profanity, meanness, harassment, or spam, the community guidelines read. Do no [u]se the Services to promote violence, degradation, subjugation, discrimination or hatred against individuals or groups based on race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity. IndieGoGo did kill an April campaign helping a cop accused of murder: South Carolina police officer Michael Slager, charged for shooting fleeing suspect Walter Scott to death. Our Trust & Safety team regularly conducts verifications and checks and this campaign did not meet their standards, the company said at the time.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Raising 5 Sons Alone, 3 With Autism, Takes a Toll on a Mother’s Body - The New York Times | Though Melissa Ferrer moved into her new home in July, she has refused to paint her sons’ bedroom walls blue. She does not dare get too comfortable, a symptom of her years of homelessness. Ms. Ferrer, 33, is a single mother of five sons. All of them have spent portions of their childhoods in New York City’s shelter system. What made the experience even worse, Ms. Ferrer said, was that her three youngest children — Aiden Soto, 3 Angel Soto, 7 and Justin Ferrer, 8 — are autistic. They also have disorder and anxiety disorders. “It’s not a good life,” she said. “It’s hard and it’s stressful and it hurts. Not only for me to live that life but to see the children living that life and to know you’re not stable. ” Last year, she made a successful bid for affordable housing in the Bronx. But in her haste to move, she signed the rental agreement without proper due diligence. The apartment flooded every time it rained. Mold grew on the walls. The heat did not work. Insulation was shoddy. Bugs wiggled up through broken floorboards, traumatizing Justin, who has an insect phobia. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life, and I lived in shelters,” Ms. Ferrer said. “Animals were coming in and my kids, my children, are sleeping, getting bit by ants. ” This summer, with the help of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund, the family moved into a safer, cleaner home in the Bronx. Drawing from the Neediest funds, Catholic Charities also provided $321 in school clothes for the children. Despite escaping the gloomy shelters and crumbling apartments, a steady beat of chaos remains. On a recent afternoon at the family’s apartment, her sons’ mercurial temperaments were on display. They slammed doors and shouted and wailed in constant fits. Glass trinkets were removed from a coffee table and placed in a less precarious spot. One of her sons repeatedly threw a water bottle around the living room. Another snatched a tablet from his brother as he was watching a video. “God must be giving me the strength, because I don’t know where a woman like me can have so much patience,” Ms. Ferrer said. Her oldest children, Matthew Ferrer, 18, and Javon Murphy, 13, do their part to corral and calm their younger siblings. Ms. Ferrer speaks glowingly about Matthew in particular. He is rarely home, often working a job to keep the house afloat. Her pride is coupled with guilt. “He’s young, he doesn’t have any children,” she said. “He shouldn’t be having to deal with that. ” Ms. Ferrer is responsible for paying the roughly $1, 000 monthly rent. She receives $1, 486 every month in Social Security disability benefits for her three youngest children, $270 in food stamps and $300 that Matthew pitches in from his job. She does not receive child support from her children’s fathers, and because of her autistic sons’ care requirements, she has not worked in more than eight years, since shortly before Justin was born. “I never thought I’d see myself the way I’m seeing myself, struggling so much,” she said. The family’s tight finances are a steady source of anxiety for Ms. Ferrer, who worries her family may once again be without a home. As long as she has one, she is meticulous about keeping it pristine. She said she simply cannot tolerate dirty things. Each morning, she races to get her four children ready. They all attend different schools, riding different buses that arrive at different times. She does it all alone. The children’s fathers cannot be relied on, Ms. Ferrer said, and although she has many family members nearby, they do not help. “You would think, having such a big family, that we’d be together but we’re not,” she said. “Everybody’s in their own world. ” Her stress is visible. Large clumps of her hair have fallen out. She has cut her hair short to make it less noticeable. Her knees and legs ache from spending long hours on her feet, and she has begun to have panic attacks. “I might look 33, but I’ll tell you one thing, inside my body, I don’t feel 33,” said Ms. Ferrer. “I feel like I’m 70 years old. ” She dreams of going on vacation, even for a day or two, but she knows it will not be reality. Instead, respite comes in short doses at the end of the day. When her children are in bed, she showers, reflects and thanks God for giving her and her family another day. “I’m so tired,” Ms. Ferrer said. “Then I’ll get up at five in the morning, and do this all over again. ” | 0fake |
Young “TRUMP GIRL” Will Blow You Away: “We’re going to build a wall…and Mexico will pay for it”[VIDEO] | 1real | |
Trump Just Appointed The Worst A**hole Yet To Run His Whole Campaign | Since Donald Trump can t figure out why he s trailing Hillary so badly everywhere it counts, he s decided his campaign staff is the problem. As such, he s shaking things up, reducing the role of his current campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and appointing someone new to run things. The new campaign chief?Stephen Bannon, of Breitbart.Yes, that Breitbart. The same Breitbart that peddles conspiracy theories to white supremacists. The one that set out to prove the polls are all rigged only to prove that they re all correct instead. And the one the Southern Poverty Law Center says is now the news arm of the alt-right (read: extreme right movement.Trump s thinking goes something like this: He can only win with people who share his delusional frame of mind, so that s who he ll surround himself with now. He s also got a GOP pollster, Kellyanne Conway, as campaign manager, and he believes they ll be able to turn his campaign around for him: I have known Steve and Kellyanne both for many years. They are extremely capable, highly qualified people who love to win and know how to win. I believe we re adding some of the best talents in politics, with the experience and expertise needed to defeat Hillary Clinton in November and continue to share my message and vision to Make America Great Again. Hey, being outrageous and horrible made him win the primaries, so it should work in the general. That s the world that Trump inhabits, and in that world, campaign staff that try to get him to temper himself, act more presidential, and less like a bully toddler, are the whole reason his poll numbers have crashed.In fact, Trump has felt boxed in and controlled by Paul Manafort and other staffers who barely know him. He wants to focus hard on riling up his supporters through rousing rallies and media appearances (again, because that worked in the primaries and the primaries are totally like the general). Manafort wanted less of that, and more real campaigning.Breitbart has been one of Trump s champions for a while now, and one former employee says that Bannon used Breitbart for his own personal gain, possibly including a way to get close to Trump s campaign. Under Bannon, Breitbart has become a fantastic website for white supremacists and nativists the very people to whom Trump himself caters. Employees of Breitbart were afraid of Bannon, and with good reason: He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies. [He] is a smarter version of Trump: he s an aggressive self-promoter who name-drops to heighten his profile and woo bigger names, and then uses those bigger names as stepping stools to his next destination. He is everything Trump is, only worse.Some GOP operatives are already saying that the choice of Bannon will effect a pivot, but it won t be the one that the party is hoping for. If Trump s campaign was dark, hateful, bigoted, nativist and dangerous before, it will be all that times a thousand under Bannon.Which is exactly what Trump wants. Forget the fact that, if that strategy was going to work against Hillary, it would have started working by now. Trump wants someone who is going to help him draw huge crowds and vanquish his enemies, not run a successful campaign.Featured image by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images | 1real |
Bush’s Secretary Of Defense Says Trump Has No F*cking Idea What He’s Talking About | Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is not a fan of Donald Trump, and he has no problem telling the American people that the billionaire would be a mistake. On Sunday s episode of ABC s This Week, he did exactly that.Guest host Martha Raddatz asked Gates what he thought about the speech the Republican frontrunner gave on foreign policy earlier in the week and like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Gates was not impressed: I think based on the speech you d have somebody who doesn t understand the difference between a business negotiation and a negotiation with sovereign powers. For example, he, on the one hand, says we need to be a more reliable ally to our friends. And then in the next breath he basically says we re going to rip up all those burden-sharing agreements that we ve had over the decades with them and make them go their own way if they don t pay for everything. During Trump s speech he did, in fact, contradict himself. He claimed he was going to take care of our allies, but then he said that many of them aren t paying their fair share and if he were president he would make those countries (mostly in the Middle East) defend themselves. Gates also slammed Trump for his inability to take advice: One of the things that worries me, Martha, is that he doesn t appear to listen to people. He believes that he has all the answers, that he s the smartest man in the room. And I ve worked with some for some very different presidents. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama. One of the things they all had in common was a willingness to listen to people who with who had experience, and then make their own independent judgment. Now, they ve gone in different directions but they never assumed they had all the answers, and that s one of the things that troubles me. He definitely does think he knows best and that is a huge problem when you think about how much power he would have as president. Just look at his campaign, he continues to insult minorities and women even as other officials in his party tell him to knock it off. He continues to say that he will force other countries to pay for things, even though experts say that is not possible. What would happen if he were sitting in the White House and the Secretary of Defense told him that his plan to bomb the hell out of ISIS wasn t a good idea? Would he ignore his military advisers? The answer is: probably.When a person with as much experience as Robert Gates says Trump is a bad idea, the Republican Party should take him seriously.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
SHRILLARY GIVES BITTER CONCESSION SPEECH In New Hampshire | Will the Democrats ultimately choose a Marxist who s never accomplished a thing in his life or a serial criminal socialist? Choices choices MANCHESTER, N.H. Hillary Clinton spoke of being knocked down and having problems with young voters in a bitter concession speech after losing to Sen. Bernie Sanders Tuesday night in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. I don t know what we d have done tonight if we d actually won. This is pretty exciting, Clinton said to her crowd of supporters shortly after 9 PM Eastern Time, flanked onstage by husband Bill and daughter Chelsea, who did not speak. I just want to say, I still love New Hampshire and I always will. People are angry. But there s also hungry. They re hungry for solutions. What are we going to do?, Clinton said. I know I have some work to do, especially with young people, Clinton said. Even if they are not supporting me right now, I am supporting them It s not whether you get knocked down that matters, it s whether you get back up. Clinton devolved into an angry, ranting style by speech s end, calling for human rights for gays, women, workers, and others. She also pivoted to focus on South Carolina, which will be decided by the black vote, talking about how African-American parents should not have to worry about their kids being harassed or shot, and immigrant families should not have to lie awake at night waiting for a knock on the door signaling deportation.She also spoke of the contaminated water crisis in Flint, Michigan and of a hypothetical grandmother forced to choose between rent or food because some drug company raised medicine prices by 4,000 percent an apparent reference to scandal-ridden former drug CEO Martin Shkreli.Clinton lost resoundingly to Sanders in the Granite State. By the time she finished her speech, Sanders was beating her 58.5 percent to 39.7 percent with 37 percent of the precincts reporting. CNN called the race for Sanders at approximately 8 PM.Sanders win was fueled by a massive turnout by independent voters and non-Democrats.Forty-one percent of Democrat voters were independents and only 55 percent were registered Democrats, according to CNN exit polling. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Turkey's foreign ministry has suspended 25 percent of diplomats in post-coup probes: minister | ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey s foreign ministry has suspended a quarter of its diplomats over suspected ties to last year s failed coup attempt, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday. Speaking at his ministry s budget discussions in Ankara, Cavusoglu said the suspensions were based on serious documents and added that the rate of those returning to their posts showed the ministry had not made a mistake . | 0fake |
Syrian Military Knew Missile Attack Was Coming After Trump Told Putin About It | Donald Trump s bromance with Vladimir Putin seems to be going the way of most middle school relationships. Though the Russian dictator was perfectly happy to employ a team of hackers to dig into The Donald s opponents at his request and propagandists to spread fake stories about his opponents, Mr. 45 s attack on Syria was too much for the guy who is known for killing unfriendly journalists and political opponents.CNN reported that Trump s team called Russia to warn them of the airstrike in advance and according to ABC, the Syrian army seemed to know the attack was coming, allowing them to evacuate equipment and personnel:Syrian military officials appeared to anticipate Thursday night s raid on Syria s Shayrat air base, evacuating personnel and moving equipment ahead of the strike, according to an eyewitness.Dozens of Tomahawk missiles struck the air base near Homs, damaging runways, towers and traffic control buildings, a local resident and human rights activist living near the air base told ABC News via an interpreter.Let s look at what happened here: Trump warned Putin of an attack because his people were in the area. Mysteriously, the targets learned of the incoming Tomahawk missiles and were able to evacuate people and equipment.Interesting, eh?Featured image via Getty Images (Pool) | 1real |
The Clinton Shakedown Scam Summed Up With One Meme | You are here: Home / US / The Clinton Shakedown Scam Summed Up With One Meme The Clinton Shakedown Scam Summed Up With One Meme October 28, 2016 Pinterest
Regan Pifer writes that everyone should donate to the Clinton Foundation immediately!
After all, it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Bill and Hillary, along with the Clinton Foundation board members, to fly around the world in their Boeing 757, and to stay in $13,900/night villas with a 60-foot swimming pool.
That kind of luxury ain’t going to pay for itself!
Oh, and–in between the opulence and indulgence–former president Bill Clinton and his donors stopped to serve “meals to 250 underprivileged children” in Jaipur, India on July 16, 2014.
I wonder how many more meals, medicine, or school supplies could have been provided with an extra $13,900.
This is a typical Clinton Foundation site visit.
According to The Daily Caller :
The trip provides a glimpse into the lavish lifestyle of the Clinton Foundation and dozens of its wealthiest donors — all done in the name of charity, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation…
The Clinton excesses on this particular trip were seen in several Third World nations. Indonesian officials, for example, warned the foundation that Pangkalan Bun Airport’s landing strip was too short for the Boeing 757 and that the party would have to switch to a smaller aircraft.
Officially, the Indonesian stop was to visit a Clinton Climate Initiative project where a local forest preserve was being cultivated to offset carbon emissions. But flying 41 people — donors, their families and foundation staff — aboard an aircraft designed for nearly 300 sent the trip’s “carbon footprint” sky high…
…[T]he 757 and Gulfstream burned 60,000 gallons of jet fuel, worth at least $220,000 using current commercial aviation rates.
Sixty thousands gallons of jet fuel produced 200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, enough energy to power 21 average U.S. homes for a year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It would fuel a passenger car 478,000 miles in a year.
The Clinton entourage’s carbon dioxide consumption exceeded a year’s total emissions by countries like Guinea-Bissau, Tonga, the British Virgin Islands, Lichtenstein and the Solomon Islands, according to the World Bank .
The Clinton Foundation led a workshop in what not to do –a mismanagement of funds and resources for the gluttonous indulgence of donors.
Imagine if the “C” in the Clinton Foundation stood for compassion as opposed to corruption… | 1real |
Hacker Claims To Have Stolen These Controversial Photos From NASA | posted by Eddie The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has always been at the frontier of science and technology. Since 1958, NASA has done its best to allow humankind to know more about life and the universe. Thanks to this space agency, people have been able to walk on the moon. In the near future, we might even have people walking on Mars. NASA will be moving farther into the unknown areas of the Universe. I know that many of us are hoping to find life beyond the earth. But what if NASA is already aware of alien life ? Well, one hacker claims to have found NASA’s secret photos for all the world to see. Read on! 1. Is that a massive wheel from an extinct civilization? This could have possibly been a part of a huge machine. 2. The side of this cliff has been charred. This shouldn’t look like this if this portion was a representation of what occurred thousands of years ago. Is this because of extraterrestrial activity? 3. This metal vault was hidden in ice for so long. I want to know what’s inside this mysterious container! 4. Is this place from another planet? If you look closely, the area beyond shows a structure that doesn’t look like anything on the earth. 5. These golden bricks hide an unknown language. Sadly, no one has been able to decipher what these writings mean. 6. What were all those military ships doing there? Either they were observing a supernatural phenomenon, or they were trying a new military weapon. 7. Did NASA hide this asteroid impact from the public? If they did, they must have good reason to keep it away from everyone else. Did they witness extraterrestrial life? 8. Those holes don’t look natural at all. The circles are almost the same, and the placement is strange. It looks like a place where machines are hidden and deployed. 9. Using night vision, NASA supposedly captured an unknown structure. It looks like a pyramid, but it is not visible using normal cameras. 10. Was this huge skeleton a part of the Anunnaki? The Anunnaki was known in Mesopotamia as a group of Gods. 11. Large human beings probably existed at some point. However, why can’t scientists find something like this today? This creature might have been an alien that looks like a human. 12. I found this image incredibly terrifying! If this is true, then NASA has evidence of extraterrestrial life. That obviously looks like a spaceship. 13. A temple was found underneath the ocean. Source: | 1real |
May weathers new challenges on Brexit plan, more to come | LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May withstood new attempts to force concessions on her blueprint for leaving the European Union on Wednesday, the second day of a parliamentary debate that is deepening divisions over Brexit. May has been weakened by losing the Conservative Party s majority in a June election and faces hostility from many lawmakers, including some Conservatives, to various parts of the EU withdrawal bill which requires parliamentary approval. All attempts to amend the bill, on severing ties with the EU, have been voted down so far, but a debate next month on precisely when Britain should leave, and whether a time should be set at all, is be to test her authority. May urged lawmakers to work together ahead of a debate on several amendments aimed at entrenching EU protections on a wide range of issues from the environment to workers rights. We will be leaving the European Union on the 19th of March, 2019, and of course there is a lively debate going on in this place and that s right and proper, and that s important, May said during the weekly prime minister s question time. We are listening carefully to those who wish to improve the bill and I hope that we can all come together to deliver on the decision that the country took that we should leave the European Union. The debates are likely to last for weeks on a bill seen by May as crucial to give companies confidence that there will be no major legal changes that affect business when Britain leaves the EU in March 2019. On the first day of debate on Tuesday, lawmakers broke down party lines in turning on each other with catcalls, jeers and accusations of treachery. Behind the debates is the fear of pro-Brexit lawmakers that Britain may never leave the EU, and of pro-EU politicians who are worried Britain might crash out of the EU without a deal. Exit day has become the focus for most in parliament with some lawmakers saying pro-Brexit politicians want a firm date on the bill - 11:00 p.m. on March 29, 2019 - to limit flexibility in talks with the EU that are deadlocked largely over money. May and her ministers are stepping up contacts with EU officials, trying to find ways to put pressure on negotiators in Brussels to try to push the talks forward by December, movement businesses say they need to make investment decisions. On Wednesday, May met Manfred Weber, a leading lawmaker in the European Parliament and an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in London, where he expressed confidence that the difficulties in the talks could be overcome. The parliamentary debate is yet another headache for a prime minister, who has lost two ministers to scandals and faces calls to fire her foreign minister, Boris Johnson, over remarks he made about a jailed Iranian-British aid worker in Iran. She has tried to ease tensions by offering lawmakers some concessions on the bill, but has yet to convince all her lawmakers, many of whom have said they will not vote with the government on at least one of the debates, namely on exit day . | 0fake |
National Bugle Radio: The First Step towards Overthrowing Jewish Power | Share:
National Bugle Radio: The First Step towards Overthrowing Jewish Power
Farren Shoaf, host of The Alternative Media on RBN, interviews Dr. Slattery about the implications of the election of Donald Trump for the media, Jewish power, and the Jewish agenda of replacing the white majority in the United States. | 1real |
Four Illegal Aliens Arrested After ’Savage’ Gang-Related Killing of MD Teen | Imported gang violence continues to afflict Virginia: authorities charged illegal alien suspects with murder and all ten suspects for gang participation and abduction on Thursday for the “brutal” slaying of Damaris Reyes Rivas. [Police arrested ten in connection with Rivas’ death: four adults and six teenagers. FOX5 reports “Jose Ivan Castillo Rivas, 18, Springfield, Wilmer A. Sanchez Serrano, 21, Cindy Blanco Hernandez, 18, and Aldair J. Miranda Carcamo, 18” are adults. Another Venus Iraheta, who has lived in the U. S. for the past ten years — making her a “DREAMer” eligible for amnesty under an Obama executive order — is also in police custody. Police did not identify the other five juveniles. All ten face charges of abduction and gang participation. Rivas and Serrano are charged with murder. Rivas died horribly on or close to January 8 of trauma in a “savage, brutal killing,” Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler said. Police reportedly found video evidence of Rivas’ death and declined to name the gang connected to the teenager’s murder. According to Maria Reyes, Rivas’ mother, her daughter had gotten involved with the El Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha or recently. She told FOX 5 she is receiving violent threats from gang members “blaming her for the arrests” and is afraid for her own life. U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed detainers on the four adults charged with murder and has asked Fairfax County to alert them before they are released from custody. of the total population of El Salvador lives in the U. S. “El Salvador is the top country of birth for immigrants to Virginia,” the Associated Press reported in 2014. Nearly a quarter, or 23 percent, of Northern Virginia residents are foreigners, and 68 percent of the state’s population lives there, researchers found in 2014. In 1970, only one in 100 residents in Virginia was — but now, it is one in nine. Roughly 247, 000 illegal aliens live in Virginia, according to one estimate, meaning the state ranks in the top ten states with the largest populations of illegals. Among those are nearly 40, 000 illegals from El Salvador. Another estimate pegged the total number of illegals at 275, 000 in 2012, or 3. 5 percent of the state’s population. Similarly, immigration led to a boom in the Latino or Hispanic population in Old Dominion since the 1990s: “The Latino share of Virginia’s population grew from 2. 6 percent in 1990 to 4. 7 percent in 2000 to 8. 6 percent (or 707, 962 people) in 2013,” according to the American Immigration Council. Without immigration from El Salvador, there would be no in America and fewer machete murders and dismembered bodies buried in idyllic parks. Since the 1990s, has operated in the Washington, D. C. area with thousands of members. Obama administration policies encouraged hundreds of thousands of Central American illegal aliens to surge into the U. S. and the administration helped them along by shipping them unannounced to unsuspecting American communities. leaders stationed in El Salvador had told the U. S. gangs to rebuild, and the large influx of young illegal aliens made the task easier. The Obama administration shipped illegal alien minors with clear ties to strongholds. One Department of Homeland Security official noted an “uptick” in gang violence in the past two years, according to FOX5: “He said and in high schools work to recruit younger kids to help them carry out crimes because they are aware charges are less serious for juveniles. ” El Salvadoran nationals involved in gang violence at home bring their connections and plans for expansion to the United States. Chairman of the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force Douglas W. Keen pointed to “increased recruitment of unaccompanied minors” illegally arriving in the U. S. “When we debrief some of the arrestees they are telling us they were recruited at a young age and encouraged to commit crimes of assaults and larcenies. Then they move to narcotics and more violent crimes,” Keen told the Washington Post. Director of the task force Jay Lanham also told FOX5 that gangs “are recruiting people as young as children in elementary school and they lure them through social media and parties where they offer them drugs, alcohol, and sex. ” Taxpayers, of course, foot the bill for the illegal aliens’ schooling, social services, trials, incarceration, and the specialized task forces required to keep their explosive violence under control. | 0fake |
Paul Ryan sees common ground with Trump budget plan | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Republican leaders on Tuesday praised President Donald Trump’s proposed federal spending budget and said lawmakers would be able to find common ground with the administration’s plan. “At least we now have common objectives: grow the economy, balance the budget. So at least we are now on that common ground, and we will have a great debate about the details about how to achieve those goals,” U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said at a news conference. | 0fake |
EU could respond to 'market distortions' if U.S. quits climate pact: Schulz | BERLIN (Reuters) - If President Donald Trump quits the Paris Climate Agreement, U.S. producers will gain a competitive advantage over their European rivals, creating market distortions to which the EU will have to respond, German Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz said. “If Mr Trump wants to leave the climate pact, then we must talk openly about trade relations and market distortions,” Schulz said, suggesting that backsliding on environmental standards could harm the U.S.’s access to the world’s largest market. Schulz is the centre-left Social Democratic party’s candidate to oust conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel in a September election. His party is currently running second in polls behind Merkel’s conservative bloc. | 0fake |
Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too - The New York Times | It has shown up on Irish trivia Facebook pages, in Scientific American magazine, and on white nationalist message boards: the story of the Irish slaves who built America, who are sometimes said to have outnumbered and been treated worse than slaves from Africa. But it’s not true. Historians say the idea of Irish slaves is based on a misreading of history and that the distortion is often politically motivated. memes have taken off online and are used as racist barbs against . “The Irish were slaves, too,” the memes often say. “We got over it, so why can’t you?” A small group of Irish and American scholars has spent years pushing back on the false history. Last year, 82 Irish scholars and writers signed an open letter denouncing the Irish slave myth and asking publications to stop mentioning it. Some complied, removing or revising articles that referenced the false claims, but the letter’s impact was limited. The Irish slave narrative is based on the misinterpretation of the history of indentured servitude, which is how many poor Europeans migrated to North America and the Caribbean in the early colonial period, historians said. Without a doubt, life was bad for indentured servants. They were often treated brutally. Not all of them entered servitude willingly. Some were political prisoners. Some were children. “I’m not saying it was pleasant or anything — it was the opposite — but it was a completely different category from slavery,” said Liam Hogan, a research librarian in Ireland who has spearheaded the debunking effort. “It was a transitory state. ” The legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery were profound, according to Matthew Reilly, an archaeologist who studies Barbados. Unlike slaves, servants were considered legally human. Their servitude was based on a contract that limited their service to a finite period of time, usually about seven years, in exchange for passage to the colonies. They did not pass their unfree status on to descendants. Contemporary accounts in Ireland sometimes referred to these people as slaves, Mr. Hogan said. That was true in the sense that any form of coerced labor can be described as slavery, from Ancient Rome to human trafficking. But in colonial America and the Caribbean, the word “slavery” had a specific legal meaning. Europeans, by definition, were not included in it. “An indenture implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is not a contract,” said Leslie Harris, a professor of history at Northwestern University. “It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction. ” The memes sometimes pop up in apolitical settings, like history trivia websites, but their recent spread has mirrored escalating racial and political tension in the United States, Mr. Hogan said. Central to the memes is the notion that historians and the media are covering up the truth. He said he has received death threats from Americans for his work. “These memes are the No. 1 derailment people use when they talk about the slave trade,” he said. “Look in any or news story from the last two years and someone will mention it in the comments. ” The memes often have common elements: the false claim that Irish people were enslaved in America or the Caribbean after the 1649 British invasion of Ireland led by Oliver Cromwell the false claim that Irish slaves were cheaper and treated worse than African slaves the false claim that Irish women were forcibly “bred” with black men. Some of them are easy to disprove. Many of the memes use photographs, including of Jewish Holocaust victims or 20th century child laborers, to illustrate events they claim happened in the 17th century, long before the invention of photography. Many reference a nonexistent 1625 proclamation by King James II, who was not born until 1633. They often hijack specific atrocities committed against black slaves and substitute Irish people for the actual victims. A favorite event to use is the 1781 Zong massacre, in which over 130 African slaves were thrown to their deaths off a slave ship. InfoWars, the conspiracy site favored by President Trump, is one site that has falsely claimed Irish people were the victims of the Zong massacre, whose death toll it inflated by adding a zero to the end. “It almost becomes a race to the bottom of who suffered more,” Mr. Reilly said, adding that the memes are “an effort to claim a certain ancestry of suffering in order to claim a certain political position. ” The white slavery narrative has long been a staple of the far right, but it became specifically Irish after the 2000 publication of “To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland,” a book by the late journalist Sean O’Callaghan, which Mr. Hogan and others have said was shoddily researched. It received positive reviews in Ireland, however, and was widely read there. In America, the book connected the white slave narrative to an influential ethnic group of over 34 million people, many of whom had been raised on stories of Irish rebellion against Britain and tales of bias in America at the turn of the 20th century. From there, it took off. Mr. O’Callaghan’s work was repeated or repackaged on Irish genealogy websites, in a popular online essay, and in articles in publications like Scientific American and The Daily Kos. The claims also appeared on IrishCentral, a leading news website, where many of the Facebook comments were critical of . The memes became popular on white nationalist message boards, websites and sites like InfoWars. On social media, they are primarily a creature of Facebook, where they have been shared millions of times. Ireland has a long history of verifiable tragedies: centuries of British occupation, famine, emigration and sectarian violence. Three decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland ended only in 1998, and paramilitary violence has intermittently flared ever since. Mr. Hogan said it was upsetting for many Irish people to see that history “used as a weapon” by Americans who claim a connection to the country. He said that for some people, it seemed like the meme was “replacing the actual history of their Irish heritage. ” It is true that sentiment was present in the United States until well into the 20th century, but that is a separate issue from 17th century indentured servitude, Ms. Harris said. The descendants of indentured servants, Irish or otherwise, did not face a legacy of racism similar to the one faced by people of African descent, she said. Nevertheless, she called the meme’s existence unsurprising. “There has been a huge backlash against talking about slavery that continues to this day,” she said, not to mention Jim Crow and other forms of discrimination against blacks that “grew out of enslavement. ” “This continued misuse of Irish history devalues the real history,” Mr. Hogan said. “There are libraries filled with all the bad things that actually did happen. We don’t need memes and these dodgy articles full of lies. ” | 0fake |
European Parliament urges EU probe of Malta after journalist killed | STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - EU lawmakers urged the European Commission on Wednesday to investigate Malta s adherence to the rule of law, in a move that could lead to sanctions following the murder of a campaigning journalist that has rocked the tiny Mediterranean island. The European Parliament s non-binding resolution, backed by an overwhelming majority of deputies but criticised by the Maltese government, also voiced serious concerns about police independence and international money-laundering on the island. The move follows the murder on Oct. 16 of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese investigative journalist who had accused senior figures in both the government and opposition of corruption and involvement in international money-laundering. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, leader of the ruling Labour Party, denies the allegations of corruption and says everything will be done to find the journalist s killers. The European Parliament calls on the Commission to establish a dialogue with the Maltese Government regarding the functioning of the rule of law in Malta and to ensure respect for European values, the text of the resolution said. This would be the first step in an oversight procedure that could trigger sanctions, including the suspension of Malta s voting rights in the EU, if systemic threats to the rule of law were confirmed and not addressed. No EU member has been subject to these penalties, but Poland is currently under supervision over the independence of its judiciary, and lawmakers have also called for the activation of the procedure for Hungary. The Commission, which monitors member states application of EU rules, has so far avoided commenting on the state of the rule of law in Malta, the EU s smallest member state with a population of just 420,000 people. The EU executive s vice president Frans Timmermans told deputies on Tuesday there were no general concerns at this stage on the application of anti-money laundering rules in Malta. But in their text adopted on Wednesday the lawmakers cited several high-profile cases of alleged corruption and risks of money laundering involving government members, as well as the island s flourishing online gaming industry and a Maltese scheme to sell citizenship to wealthy individuals. The Maltese government said in a statement the EU text contained factual inaccuracies and partisan political bias . It is clear enough for the Maltese Government that most of this misinformation was led by highly politicised local actors, and can be read in a situation where some groups in the European Parliament are trying to gain leverage in negotiations on situations in their Member States, the Maltese government said. In the resolution, backed by 466 lawmakers and opposed by 49 while 167 abstained, the deputies also accused Maltese police of failing to investigate several serious allegations of corruption and breach of anti-money laundering and banking supervision obligations . The text also regretted that there has been no police investigation to date in Malta of the revelations regarding the Panama Papers , despite the appearance of 714 companies linked to Malta and high-ranking officials in the leaked documents about tax schemes in offshore jurisdictions. Sources familiar with the work of Maltese authorities and a Reuters review of Maltese and EU data show possible shortcomings in Malta s efforts to prevent money laundering. Muscat told Reuters last month Malta s financial services sector was as transparent, solid and compliant as any other European jurisdiction . | 0fake |
Trumpcare Is Officially Dead, Senator Collins Confirms She’s Voting No | Graham-Cassidy, the latest and worst in a line of Republican healthcare bills collectively dubbed Trumpcare, looks dead. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) just joined Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Rand Paul (R-KY) as one of the few to break party lines and refuse to vote for the bill. While not everyone is against the bill for the best of reasons, Susan Collins could not have been more clear about the many issues she had with the legislation.Here s her statement: First, both proposals make sweeping changes and cuts in the Medicaid program. Expert projections show that more than $1 trillion would be taken out of the Medicaid program between the years 2020 and 2036. This would have a devastating impact to a program that has been on the books for 50 years and provides health care to our most vulnerable citizens, including disabled children and low-income seniors.Second, both bills open the door for states to weaken protections for people with pre-existing conditions, such as asthma, cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes. Some states could allow higher premiums for individuals with pre-existing conditions, potentially making their insurance unaffordable. States could also limit specific categories of benefits for Affordable Care Act policies, such as eliminating coverage for mental health or substance abuse treatment.Third, physicians, patient advocates, insurers, and hospitals agree that both versions of this legislation would lead to higher premiums and reduced coverage for tens of millions of Americans.The CBO s analysis on the earlier version of the bill, incomplete though it is due to time constraints, confirms that this bill will have a substantially negative impact on the number of people covered by insurance.There has been some discussion that the new version of the bil includes additional money for my home state of Maine. The fact is, Maine still loses money under whichever version of the Graham-Cassidy bill we consider because the bills use what could be described as a give with one hand, take with the other distribution model. Huge Medicaid cuts down the road more than offset any short-term influx of money. But even more important, if Senators can adjust a funding formula over a weekend to help a single state, they could just as easily adjust that formula to hurt that state. This is simply not the way that we should be approaching an important and complex issue that must be handled thoughtfully and fairly for all Americans. There you have it Susan Collins just hammered the final nail into Trumpcare s coffin.On September 30th, a special rule allowing Republicans to pass legislation with only a simple majority (50 votes and a tiebreak) will expire. After that, any healthcare legislation that Republicans want to pass will have to get at least eight Democrats on board.Republicans can t govern or even get their own party to agree, so good luck with that.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
Anonymous: "Soros Has Just Funded Jill Stein To Call For Legal Vote Recount In Election Reversal" - Conservative Daily Post |
Posted by Alex Cooper | Nov 25, 2016 | Breaking News Hacking Group “Anonymous” Has Issued A CHILLING Announcement
Something seriously bad is happening right now and it’s about to shift the face of democracy in the free world.
George Soros is well known by now for his donations to BLM and other extreme leftist groups, not to mention the millions he’s given Hillary.
Things just went to code red though, because Jill Stein has just initiated a campaign to demand a recount of the vote.
What is about to happen could possibly cause a civil war. Anonymous, the infamous group responsible for hacking multiple high-level officials and agencies, just made a grave announcement:
“It’s over, folks.
They are absolutely taking this from Trump. If you were able to see these stories they already have prepared for us to start running next week, your jaw would hit the ground.
They are going to “find” that the results were indeed “hacked”. They have everything set in place, and have been ready to play this out for over a week.
All 3 states (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) are going to be reversed and awarded to Hillary Clinton. Speculations are in the midst of who is pulling the strings, but this is undoubtedly going to happen.
Start preparing for the news to pour in, NOW.
When Michigan is reversed, it will send a clear message of irreversible corruption; the state had only paper ballots. Furthermore, the votes have already been certified. The stringent program was designed specifically to defend against cyber attacks.”
There is already evidence that death threats were sent to multiple electors, but that didn’t work. Jill stein has already raised enough money to trigger a complete recount of the votes in Wisconsin—the other 2 states are even cheaper. This is BAD News
Trump may have taken Michigan, but it won’t matter. Jill Stein demanded a recount, and as a third party it will be carried out. The election WILL be rigged. January 20 th is literally 2 months away. Do you seriously think they are going to remain idle for 2 months?
I’m a realist—I call it like it is and I don’t care who I offend. But, do not be mistaken. This is BAD news.
It’s already happening. Multiple fake “computer experts” have stated there are “anomalies” in the vote that favor Trump. Who have they blamed? Russia.
So then what happened next? Jill Stein was able to push a recount order on these grounds. If foul play is “detected”, a recount can be initiated (even if the “foul play” is completely false and planned as a scapegoat to initiate the recount for Hillary). Rogue Hacking Groups Like Anonymous And WikiLeaks Gave Us A TREMENDOUS Amount Of Factual Information During The Election Race. This Warning Is Not To Be Taken Lightly.
But wait a second. How is Jill Stein connected to Hillary and why would the recount benefit Clinton? The answer lies in a serious screw-up that became apparent when a bot was found in the donation system.
Go to the fundraising website and see for yourself! The campaign was started literally yesterday and already has over $4,000,000 in donations! This Is NO Coincidence. Do You Think A Man Who Has Spent BILLIONS Will Stop Now? The Media Is On His Side, Pushing The Entire Narrative!
That’s not the scary part though. What gives away the entire operation is the behavior of the donations. The funding came in at an absolutely perfect $160,000 per hour. That wouldn’t be odd, except the donations continued full speed through the middle of the night when all of America was asleep!
Jill Stein now has the money she needs to initiate the recount. Where did the funds come from? Soros. The mainstream media is pushing the narrative hard right now that the votes were hacked, even In Pennsylvania where that’s not even possible .
They are openly and brazenly lying about everything. Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are all censoring the spread of this information, creating dissent and misinformation. To make things even worse, the establishment has launched a campaign against “fake news”, allowing the mainstream media to dictate reality for hundreds of millions of Americans who receive constant news!
This is BAD news people, and it’s about to get even worse. There is no reason they would be attempting to pull this stunt unless they had absolute certainty it would execute successfully.
Please spread word of what is about to come. I will continue to keep you informed, but you must join me in this fight and spread word. This news is being suppressed on literally every channel. We must fight back.
Alex Cooper, CDP, Reports. | 1real |
FOX News MOCKS MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Who Actually Said “Big Story” of G20 Was How Far President Trump and Putin Spread Their Legs [VIDEO] | MSNBC s Chris Matthews deemed the big story of the much anticipated G20 meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin to be the manspreading that took place.Matthews started his Hardball show with a clip of of President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin as they appeared to be having a casual conversation, while sitting next to each while facing the media. The big story was the way they both engaged in the art of manspreading, widening their legs as far as the wings of the chairs would allow them. When they stopped laughing, Fox News hosts mocked MSNBC s thrill-up-his-leg for Obama Chris Matthews for making such an embarrassing and petty observation. Fox News host went on to discuss President Trump s very successful foreign trip G20 meeting with world leaders, discussing things like Trump s movement in encouraging China to reign in North Korea. | 1real |
What’s Organic? A Debate Over Dirt May Boil Down to Turf - The New York Times | If a fruit or vegetable isn’t grown in dirt, can it be organic? That is the question roiling the world of organic farming, and the answer could redefine what it means to farm organically. At issue is whether produce that relies solely on irrigation to deliver nutrients to plants — through what is known as hydroponic and aquaponic systems — can be certified organic. And the National Organic Standards Board, an advisory group that makes recommendations to the federal secretary of agriculture, will get an earful on the topic at its meeting in St. Louis this week. On one side are the growing number of big and small growers raising fruits and vegetables in these systems. They say their production methods are no different from those of farmers who grow plants in dirt — and, they add, they make organic farming more sustainable by, for instance, reducing water use. “Soil to me as a farmer means a medium that contains biological processes, and that doesn’t have to be dirt,” said Marianne Cufone, an aquaponic farmer and the executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition, which lobbies for aquaculture. Not so, say the farmers who have spent years tending their soil so that it produces the nutrients plants need. They argue that organic production is first and foremost about caring for the soil, which produces environmental benefits that go beyond growing plants. “Soil has always been the basis of organic production,” said Steve Sprinkel, an organic farmer in Ojai, Calif. “The soil is alive and releasing micronutrients to plants that use their roots to scavenge and forage those things, and so taking care of the soil is the bedrock of organic farming. ” Sales of organic food in the United States hit $40 billion last year, sending grocers scrambling to find enough organic produce to fill their cases. Keeping up with the demand is difficult and expensive, and financiers and entrepreneurs, many of them from Silicon Valley, have started pouring money into these alternative systems. Whether the systems help bring down the price of organic products remains to be seen. Equipment like lighting and organic nutrients are expensive — soil growers count on their dirt to deliver some of those nutrients at no cost — and hydroponically and aquaponically grown fruits and vegetables usually are sold for the same price as organic produce grown in dirt. “It’s like using an intravenous needle to administer exactly what we think the plant needs instead of allowing the plant to get what it needs in the amount it needs out of the ground,” said Dan Barber, a chef in New York and author of “The Third Plate. ” In the end, the decision about whether these growing systems can continue to be certified falls to the United States Department of Agriculture. In 2010, the Organic Standards Board recommended that hydroponic systems be ruled ineligible for organic certification because they excluded “the ecology intrinsic to organic farming systems. ” At that time, there were only 39 hydroponic growers with organic certification. The U. S. D. A. has not acted on the board’s recommendation, allowing organic certification of crops grown in hydroponic systems to continue. According to a survey this year, the number of hydroponic growers with organic certification dropped to 30, but there were 22 certified aquaponic growers and 69 certified operations growing plants in containers lined with things like peat moss and coconut husks that do not provide nutrients on their own. “The recommendation did not adequately address the diversity of practices and systems in the industry,” Miles McEvoy, the official who oversees the U. S. D. A.’s organic program, said in a statement. Mr. McEvoy noted that the U. S. D. A. had assigned a task force to report on current practices — but that group split into two camps, mirroring the current debate. The Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 states: “An organic plan shall contain provisions designed to foster soil fertility, primarily through the management of the organic content of the soil through proper tillage, crop rotation and manuring. ” “To me, it seems simple and always has been,” said Sam Welsch, chief executive of OneCert, an organic certification business in Nebraska that has refused to certify hydroponic produce. “There are things the law and regulations require you to do to the soil that you cannot do in a hydroponic system. ” The Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry policy group, filed a legal complaint with the U. S. D. A. this month challenging certification of hydroponic produce and citing the federal law and regulations that govern organic farming. “They’ve illegally been allowing this to happen,” said Mark Kastel, of the organization, “and now millions of dollars have been invested in infrastructure and the industry is circling the wagons to protect it. ” The Organic Trade Association, which represents the industry, is lobbying in favor of allowing certification of hydroponically and aquaponically grown crops. Nate Lewis, its farm policy director, said some parts of the federal organic law were clearer than others. He points to its language on cattle, saying it is clear the animals must have outdoor access and eat organic feed in order for their meat to be certified as organic. But the law for plants, he said, was not so obvious. “I would not agree that the law on this is black and white,” Mr. Lewis said. David Chapman, an organic farmer in Vermont who has been a leader of the opposition to certifying produce from the new systems, said he would be driven out of business if the U. S. D. A. declared hydroponically grown tomatoes could be certified as organic. “Most people have no idea that the organic tomatoes and peppers they’re buying are hydroponically grown,” Mr. Chapman said. “I think most consumers believe those things are grown in the soil, and that farmers like me are taking care of the soil as they grow them. ” Some 24 countries in Europe, including England, the Netherlands and Spain, as well as Mexico, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, do not allow organic certification for hydroponically grown produce. Mr. Chapman said hydroponic producers there would like access to the American market, where they could label their products organic and charge a higher price. In fact, one big Canadian hydroponic grower, Golden Fresh Farms, began building 20 acres of greenhouses in Ohio this year. “In Holland, they’ve gotten so good at producing tomatoes hydroponically that they’ve destroyed their own market, so they’re desperate for access to the U. S. organic market,” he said. Driscoll’s, the berry company, is one of the largest hydroponic growers, using the system to grow hundreds of acres of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. Soren Bjorn, an executive vice president of Driscoll’s, said growing the produce hydroponically was hardly different from what the company does when it grows its berries in sandy soils. “Part of the benefit of that is there’s no disease in the soil, but there’s also very little nutrition in sand,” he said. “So for certain kinds of berries, we add the vast majority of nutrients through irrigation. ” But Driscoll’s takes issue with describing its system as hydroponic. Rather, Mr. Bjorn said, it grows some of its organic berries in containers in beds of peat moss, coconut fiber or mulch. “Hydroponics may also be contained,” but it’s a system, he said, “lettuce floating around on water, for instance. ” Mr. Lewis of the Organic Trade Association said, however, that little distinguishes a container system from a hydroponic system. “There really isn’t much difference,” he said. Colin Archipley’s farm, Archi’s Acres, grows kale, herbs and other produce hydroponically in greenhouses in San Diego. He is frustrated that there is even a debate over whether his produce is organic. “The reason this has become such a big deal is that systems like ours are becoming more popular because they’re more efficient, which means farmers are more sustainable and profitable,” he said. “That’s put competition on farmers, specifically in Vermont, and so what this really is about is market protection. ” | 0fake |
WATCH TUCKER CARLSON DESTROY Racist Flamethrower For Questioning “Hero” Label For White OSU Cop [VIDEO] | Author, filmmaker and social media sh*t-storm starter Tariq Nasheed, is an unashamed and outspoken racist on Twitter. Yesterday, after the black, Muslim, Somalian immigrant terrorist used a vehicle and a butcher knife to attack innocent students on the Ohio State University campus. Within one minute of encountering the terrorist, a white police officer Alan Horujko shot and killed the terrorist before he could harm or kill more people. Officer Alan Horujko ordered the attacker, later identified as Abdul Razak Ali Artan, to drop the butcher s knife and then shot him when he didn t obey the command, university president Michael Drake said. The officer encountered the individual by 9:53 the subject was neutralized by 9:53, Drake said, underscoring how quickly events unfolded.Director of Ohio State s Department of Public Safety Monica Moll echoed Drake s sentiments, saying Horujko is owed a debt of gratitude. FOX NewsOhio State police officer Alan Horujko. (Ohio State University Police via AP)Tariq Nasheed took to Twitter to criticize the media who called the white cop a hero :So white officer Alan Horujko who shot and killed the Black Somali stabbing suspect in Ohio is being paraded as a hero. Thats interesting Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) November 28, 2016Nasheed refers to police officers as, race soldiers in this tweet about the black, Muslim, ex-con, wife and kid beater who had a criminal history of attacking cops, who was killed by a police officer after he shot at them:NC is an open carry state yet race soldiers can execute Black ppl in possession of a gun,by ASSUMING if the gun is legal or not #KeithScott Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) November 30, 2016Here Nasheed defends the excessive use of the word racist which many feel has been so overused that it has lost its relevance:Many white supremacists now are trying 2 create this narrative that the word "racist" is ineffective. Thats not true https://t.co/UOVpmZs29K Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) November 28, 2016 | 1real |
Trump Team Begins Making List Of Executive Orders To ‘Erase Obama’s Presidency’ On Day One |
In what amounts to the first pang of just how profound America’s Election Day screw up truly was, Trump’s campaign is reportedly already working on a plan to scrub that last eight years of progress out of existence on Trump’s very first day in office . No Obama accomplishment will remain. They even have a name for the plan: The First Day Project.
Organized by the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to deprive Obama of any lasting effect to his time in office. It’s a perverse sort of vengeance from a group of clowns who have spent the last decade smearing the president at every possible step of the way.
Trump aides are organizing what one Republican close to the campaign calls the First Day Project. “Trump spends several hours signing papers—and erases the Obama Presidency,” he said. Stephen Moore, an official campaign adviser who is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained, “We want to identify maybe twenty-five executive orders that Trump could sign literally the first day in office.”
Thinking back over Obama’s list of wins – from gay rights to healthcare to the economy – the idea that these achievements can be erased by a collective of spiteful, bitter men in a matter of hours is almost too much to bear. The suffering to the people whose rights will surely be rolled back will be immense.
And on a separate, but equally terrifying front, Trump’s campaign surrogate Omarosa told reporters that Trump has been compiling an “enemies list”– an assortment of people on the right and left who openly stood against him – and he plans on punishing those on the list when he gets to office.
“I would never judge anybody for exercising their right to and the freedom to choose who they want. But let me just tell you, Mr. Trump has a long memory and we’re keeping a list.”
Erase his predecessor, punish his enemies. In this way, with pen and sword, Trump plans to dismantle a democracy. The oldest, greatest one in the world – up until the point when it wasn’t.
Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Share this Article! | 1real |
U.S. prosecutors probing leak of CIA materials to WikiLeaks: sources | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, have expanded a long-running grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks to include the leak of Central Intelligence Agency documents to the website, a source familiar with the inquiry said. The source, who is familiar with the investigation and requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said the probe is focused on who leaked descriptions and technical information on techniques and tools the CIA has used to eavesdrop on intelligence targets to the website. U.S. agencies have made only vague public comments on the latest WikiLeaks disclosures, but security and law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation said in the wake of the leaks that it is focused on whether an intelligence contractor was responsible. At this point, they said, investigators do not think Russia or another foreign government was involved. U.S. officials have confirmed that Alexandria-based prosecutors have been conducting a federal grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and its sources. Some court documents on elements of the inquiry have been made public. The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the CIA, which has not publicly confirmed the authenticity of the material made public by WikiLeaks. The website said the material it published comprised thousands of pages of internal CIA discussions about hacking techniques and the use of popular products such as Apple Inc iPhones; Google Inc Android devices; and Samsung Electronics television sets to spy on people. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his website would provide technology companies with access to the CIA hacking tools it acquired, enabling the companies to patch software vulnerabilities. | 0fake |
CAUGHT ON TAPE: RNC Committeeman Urges Republicans To Rally Against Trump [Video] | Is the Republican establishment is in panic mode over Trump s staying power in nationwide GOP polls? Instead of sitting around gnashing their teeth, perhaps they should let the voters decide you know,try something new and actually listen to the American people Your thoughts?A Republican National committeeman delivered a call-to-arms against Donald Trump during a closed-door GOP meeting on Thursday, urging his colleagues to take a forceful stand against those who he said are destroying the party s brand.At a breakfast at the RNC winter meeting, Holland Redfield, an RNC committeeman who represents the minority-rich Virgin Islands, rose to address party Chairman Reince Priebus. In the five-minute impromptu speech, a video recording of which Redfield provided to POLITICO, Redfield did not explicitly mention Trump s name. But he made clear that angry voices in the party pose a grave threat to the GOP s future, and expressed alarm at what he described as crushing pressure to play nice. You can argue with me, but we re almost terrorized as members of our party. Shut up. Toe the line, embrace each other, and let s go forward. I understand that. But there is a limit to loyalty. I am loyal to this party by speaking out on these very issues, he said at the private breakfast meeting.At one point, Redfield essentially argued that those in the room have been held hostage by Trump s threat to run as a third-party candidate if the party hierarchy treats him unfairly. Read more: Politico | 1real |
Democratic debate: 6 takeaways | (CNN) Hillary Clinton , Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley met for the second Democratic presidential primary debate on Saturday night, an event that finally saw a fight between the front-runner and her chief opponent, but also coming a day after a deadly terror attack that shocked the world.
From left, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley prepare to debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, November 14. It was the party's second presidential debate.
From left, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley prepare to debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, November 14. It was the party's second presidential debate.
Here are the six key takeaways from the debate:
Clinton distanced herself from President Barack Obama's now-controversial comment in an interview Thursday that the U.S. had "contained ISIS." During Saturday's debate, Clinton asserted that ISIS "cannot be contained" and must simply be "defeated."
As she has in the past, Clinton also suggested that she had argued "early on that we needed to find a way to train and equip moderates." Clinton reportedly argued for a more forceful administration plan to help the Syrian opposition early on in the civil war that has since exploded.
The Vermont senator in the first debate appeared unprepared or unwilling to go after Clinton with any real vigor.
But Saturday night, Sanders suggested Clinton is in the pocket of Wall Street and tied her vote to authorize the war in Iraq to the rise of ISIS. Clinton, meanwhile, knocked Sanders on his mixed record on guns and suggested his policy proposals are too simplistic.
In the most forceful exchange of the night, Sanders pointed to the millions of dollars in donations Wall Street has funneled to Clinton's campaigns over her political career.
"Why over her political career has Wall Street been a major, the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? Maybe they're dumb and they don't know what they're going to get, but I don't think so," Sanders said. "I have never heard a candidate, never, who has received huge amounts of money from oil, from coal, from Wall Street from the military industrial complex, not one candidate -- 'Oh these, these campaign contributions will not influence me.' But why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions? They expect to get something, everybody knows that."
As she did in the first debate, Clinton hit Sanders on guns, calling the Vermont senator's vote to shield gun makers from some lawsuits a "terrible mistake" and urging Sanders to admit as much, as she has done regarding her Iraq vote.
Sanders responded by suggesting there's little daylight between himself and Clinton and O'Malley on guns.
3. ...but he still holds back
Sanders didn't take the gloves off completely during Saturday night's debate in Iowa.
Instead, he took a pass on one of the biggest points of contention of the 2016 cycle: Clinton's record as secretary of state.
Given a chance to slam Clinton's tenure, Sanders demurred, instead pivoting to his "disagreement" with Clinton over her vote in favor of the Iraq War in 2002, more than six years before she became secretary of state.
Republicans are already picking apart Clinton's track record as secretary of state, but Sanders' simply wouldn't take the bait.
4. The moments that could come back to haunt Clinton
However, Clinton's response to Sanders -- when she beat back the suggestion that she is influenced by Wall Street donors -- could really come back to bite her.
Clinton explained her connection to Wall Street by tying her relationship to her role in helping to rebuild New York's financial district after the 9/11 attacks.
Twitter was ablaze Saturday night over the response, and the Republican National Committee was quick to blast out a best-of compilation of political observers' reactions.
Clinton at one point said she is "from the '60s" -- a moment in the debate that could be replayed in political ads down the line suggesting she is part of the past, not the future, of American leadership.
The debate Saturday night began with the candidates pausing on stage, taking a moment of silence to remember the victims of the terrorist attacks that ripped Paris apart just a day earlier.
Clinton said while "our prayers are with the people of France tonight...that is not enough" and called for better coordinated efforts to root out ISIS, the radical group that claimed responsibility.
She said Americans should see the terrorist attack as a reminder that the election "is not only about electing a president, it's also about choosing our next commander in chief."
Sanders made brief note of the terrorist attacks at the top of his opening statement, but quickly pivoted to the core message of the campaign: "a rigged economy" that benefits billionaires.
Still, Sanders made a bold claim in his reference to Paris: "Together, leading the world, this country will rid our planet of this barbarist (sic) organization called ISIS."
And O'Malley, after saying his heart goes out "to the people of France in this moment of loss," quickly called for "fresh thinking" and "new approaches" -- a definitive nod to his youth and the generational contrast the 52-year-old offers to Clinton's 68 years and Sanders' 74.
All three candidates refused to say the fight was with radical Islam, instead focusing on using the word "jihadist" to describe the threats spotlighted in the Paris attacks.
6. O'Malley gets a zinger, then shrinks away
But O'Malley also missed a couple of key moments where he could have shined.
His central contention is that it's time for a new generation of leadership -- meaning no more baby boomers like Clinton. But he lacked a strong, convincing response to one of the debate's final questions: When have you been most tested in your life, and how did it prepare you for the presidency?
O'Malley's response conceded that he is untested -- that nothing he's been through as mayor of Baltimore or governor of Maryland comes close to the crises he would face as President.
Trump later responded to O'Malley's insult on Twitter by calling him a "clown." | 0fake |
Not Paying Taxes Doesn’t Make Trump ‘Smart,’ It Makes Him A Shamelessly Un-American Freeloader | Trump, not surprisingly, took the bait during the first showdown between him and Hillary Clinton at the first presidential debate. He admitted to not paying income taxes (because it makes him smart ), and a recent bombshell report from the New York Times may confirm what we already know: he doesn t pay a time in federal income taxes because he, as a brilliant business man, lost almost $1 billion, allowing him to forgo paying federal income taxes for almost 20 years. However, because he refuses to release the rest of his tax returns, no one can confirm nor deny this.When you allegedly skip out on paying your federal income taxes (especially for 20 years), that doesn t make you a smart businessman, that makes you a shameless freeloader. When you skip out on paying your income taxes, you don t pay for:The list goes on and on. It doesn t matter what party one is from (that includes you, Al Sharpton), or how you feel about taxes, we all owe them and we all contribute to this great country called the United States. And to have a presidential candidate be smug enough to say that not contributing to these programs make him smart is an insult to the millions of business owners who play by the rules and pay their fair share. While even illegal immigrants pay $1.1 billion a year in personal income taxes (out of $12 billion overall), the Trump campaign and its merry band of deplorables still think he s done nothing wrong. Maybe he didn t do anything illegal, but just because something is legal doesn t make it right or ethical (we ve heard that for years from Republicans).And the last 18 years aren t the only times Trump has skipped out on paying his fair share. According to the Clinton campaign website, Trump payed zero, or nearly zero, in federal income taxes in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1991, and 1993. So these 5 years, plus alleged 18 years from 1995 to 2013, means there have been at least 23 years Trump paid virtually nothing. Ask the middle class and lower class how much they paid in 23 years.So don t ever tell me Trump cares about our troops, vets or military ever again. Don t ever tell me Trump cares about tackling the national debt ever again. Don t ever tell me Trump cares about Social Security or our retirees. Because if he really, truly did, he wouldn t take his irresponsible budgeting and turn it into a personal gain for himself at the expense of the American taxpayers. If he truly cared, he would have stepped up and fulfilled his obligation to the country that has given him so much. People who have less than him (and who aren t even citizens) are giving more than he is.People from both sides do this. But the man is running as President of the United States. The other person? She pays her taxes. Go on her website, there s over 15 years of full tax returns on there.I might be able to look past Trump s skipping on taxes for over 20 years if he wasn t such a sleazy businessman. If Trump was actually charitable (when there isn t legal contingencies attached to it), I might be forgiving. If he actually paid his independent contractors (which he doesn t), I might look the other way. If he didn t decimate local economies with his mishandling of money (he s done that several times), this wouldn t be as big an issue.For decades, local communities and economies have been cleaning up the messes he s made with his destructive, greedy behavior. For decades, small businesses have closed up shop, resulting in thousands of job losses, because he refused to pay them what they earned. And all the while this has been going on, we the taxpayers have been subsidizing his tax free lifestyle while he makes billions more. That right there is what s at the heart of this it s not the fact that he used an unfair tax system to his advantage, it s that it s unethical, and it s un-American, and he puts on a facade of caring when everyone knows he d do it again in a heartbeat.There is no difference between Donald Trump and the common small town snake oil salesman, and his supporters are the townspeople being manipulated into believing what he did (and will continue to do) is actually good for them. It s amazing that the same people who complain about lazy minorities and working poor not paying their taxes are all of a sudden A-OK with this guy skipping out on paying billions in taxes for 23 years.Some people can t afford to pay their taxes. Some people misfile their taxes and owe back-pay. But you want to know the difference between these people and Donald Trump? In Trump s own words, these people don t have seven billion fucking dollars in the bank! That little zinger was said in 2011 at his Comedy Central Roast 2011, one of the years Trump wasn t paying federal income taxes, yet he had seven billion f-ing dollars in the bank. Good to know.The 2016 Republican Presidential candidate is officially the Freeloader candidate, and we re all paying for his smart business savvy. I hope it was worth it. And if you think Trump is going to eliminate this little loophole, knowing who his friends in business are, you ve got another thing coming to you.Featured image via Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images | 1real |
The Story of How the DOJ Tried to Thwart an FBI Investigation Into the Clinton Foundation | at 1:27 pm 2 Comments
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published a fascinating and troubling article detailing how aggressively the Department of Injustice moved to stymie efforts of FBI agents who wanted to investigate pay-to-play criminality with regard to the Clinton Foundation.
Of course, none of this should come as a surprise. The Justice Department under President Obama never met a powerful person it cared to prosecute. Indeed, under Eric Holder’s crony reign (same now with Loretta Lynch), it’s been apparent for a very long time that senior leadership at the DOJ see the institution’s primary role to be the coddling and protection of oligarch criminals, especially those in the financial sector (see: Must Watch Video – “The Veneer of Justice in a Kingdom of Crime” ).
The death of the rule of law in America, otherwise known as the two-tier justice system, has been a key topic of mine since the very beginning. In fact, I think it is the number one cancer plaguing our society at this time. As I warned in the 2014 post, New Report – The United States’ Sharp Drop in Economic Freedom Since 2000 Driven by “Decline in Rule of Law” :
In my opinion, the U.S. is living on borrowed time. The entrepreneurial spirit is still very much alive, and a lot of innovative things are happening in the tech area, but other than that, the U.S. economy looks very much like a third word oligarchy. From my perspective, we need to reinstate the rule of law at once. The bad actors amongst the rich and powerful will continue to feast relentlessly on the productive parts of the economy so long as they they are never held accountable for their crimes. Simply put: The rule of law must be restored immediately.
When it comes to the restoration of the rule of law, there is simply no time to waste.
The rule of law has not been restored, a realization that is consistently reenforced by the lengths to which the Department of Justice goes to protect the powerful. Yesterday’s WSJ article gives us an additional glimpse into how that happens behind the scenes.
article, FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe :
The surprise disclosure that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking a new look at Hillary Clinton’s email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.
New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case. The probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity.
Some investigators grew frustrated, viewing FBI leadership as uninterested in probing the charity, these people said. Others involved disagreed sharply, defending FBI bosses and saying Mr. McCabe in particular was caught between an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton Foundation case.
Early this year, four FBI field offices—New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock, Ark.—were collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter.
Los Angeles agents had picked up information about the Clinton Foundation from an unrelated public-corruption case and had issued some subpoenas for bank records related to the foundation, these people said.
The Washington field office was probing financial relationships involving Mr. McAuliffe before he became a Clinton Foundation board member, these people said. Mr. McAuliffe has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyer has said the probe is focused on whether he failed to register as an agent of a foreign entity.
In February, FBI officials made a presentation to the Justice Department, according to these people. By all accounts, the meeting didn’t go well.
Some said that is because the FBI didn’t present compelling evidence to justify more aggressive pursuit of the Clinton Foundation, and that the career anticorruption prosecutors in the room simply believed it wasn’t a very strong case. Others said that from the start, the Justice Department officials were stern, icy and dismissive of the case.
“That was one of the weirdest meetings I’ve ever been to,” one participant told others afterward, according to people familiar with the matter.
Anticorruption prosecutors at the Justice Department told the FBI at the meeting they wouldn’t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. But the FBI officials believed they were well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people said.
According to a person familiar with the probes, on Aug. 12, a senior Justice Department official called Mr. McCabe to voice his displeasure at finding that New York FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe during the election season. Mr. McCabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn’t use overt methods requiring Justice Department approvals.
The Justice Department official was “very pissed off,” according to one person close to Mr. McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. Others said the Justice Department was simply trying to make sure FBI agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence an election. Those rules discourage investigators from making any such moves before a primary or general election, and, at a minimum, checking with anticorruption prosecutors before doing so.
“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, “Of course not,” these people said.
For Mr. McCabe’s defenders, the exchange showed how he was stuck between an FBI office eager to pour more resources into a case and Justice Department prosecutors who didn’t think much of the case, one person said. Those people said that following the call, Mr. McCabe reiterated past instructions to FBI agents that they were to keep pursuing the work within the authority they had.
Others further down the FBI chain of command, however, said agents were given a much starker instruction on the case: “Stand down.” When agents questioned why they weren’t allowed to take more aggressive steps, they said they were told the order had come from the deputy director—Mr. McCabe.
Others familiar with the matter deny Mr. McCabe or any other senior FBI official gave such a stand-down instruction.
In September, agents on the foundation case asked to see the emails contained on nongovernment laptops that had been searched as part of the Clinton email case, but that request was rejected by prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. Those emails were given to the FBI based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of
Some FBI agents were dissatisfied with that answer, and asked for permission to make a similar request to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. McCabe, these people said, told them no and added that they couldn’t “go prosecutor-shopping.”
The above revelations, in conjunction with the email server probe being reopened by the FBI, is why I now think Donald Trump has a very good chance of winning the Presidency. As I noted in Friday’s post, Another Black Swan Hits the U.S. Presidential Election :
The problems with Hillary Clinton will never go away. They will always resurface or new problems will emerge, and it has nothing to do with a “vast rightwing conspiracy” (or Putin). It has to do with her. It has to do with the fact that her and her husband are career crooks, warmongers, and shameless looters of the American public. This re-opening of the FBI investigation just hammers all of that home for everyone. We know what 4 years of Hillary will look like. It’ll be Obama cronyism on steroids, plus endless investigations with a side of World War 3. I don’t think people want that, and so more Americans than the pundits realize will take a gamble on Trump.
It’s not just me saying it. Even longtime Clinton supporter Doug Schoen is revisiting whether he can continue to support Clinton. As he wrote There will be no goodwill or honeymoon period for Clinton. Her first 100-days agenda will take a backseat to partisan divisions and polarization with little chance of constructive legislative action occurring. We have seen that a hyper-partisan, gridlocked Washington is bad for the country. There is no reason to believe that Clinton’s tenure will be anything but more of the same in this way and, most likely, a lot worse. Further, Russian President Vladimir Putin said (tongue-in-cheek) that we are not a banana republic. I greatly fear we could become one if Secretary Clinton is elected president. Our national security will continue to be jeopardized by ongoing investigations by the FBI, and potentially the Justice Department and Congress, putting us at immediate risk of more assertive actions in Europe, Middle East and Asia by the Russians and Chinese. Moreover, we simply cannot face a situation where the president elect may need or want a pardon from the president to govern. Or worse yet, need to pardon herself after she takes office. As of now, I have no confidence that either of those questions will be answered by Election Day or that we will have full clarity on an investigation into what could be as many as 650,000 emails that found their way to Weiner and Abedin’s computer. However, in good conscience, and as a Democrat, I am actively doubting whether I can vote for the Secretary of State. I also want to make clear that I cannot vote for Donald Trump as his world view and mine are very different. For more on the Clinton Foundation, see: | 1real |
WIKILEAKS BOMBSHELL : Chelsea Clinton Used Foundation CHARITY Money for Her LAVISH Wedding and “Life” – TruthFeed | WIKILEAKS BOMBSHELL : Chelsea Clinton Used Foundation CHARITY Money for Her LAVISH Wedding and “Life” WIKILEAKS BOMBSHELL : Chelsea Clinton Used Foundation CHARITY Money for Her LAVISH Wedding and “Life” Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 6, 2016 Here’s a BOMBSHELL!
It looks like Hillary’s daughter Chelsea Clinton has used the Clinton Foundation to fund her “lavish wedding and life” for a DECADE.
This stunning information comes from Doug Band the PRESIDENT of the Clinton Foundation.
So, further PROOF that the Clintons have used that scandalous foundation to LINE THEIR OWN POCKETS.
Sickening. | 1real |
Betting on a Trump win or a North Korea H-bomb: a predictions site gains traction | NEW YORK/WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Erik Duhaime is a passive stock market investor, but he isn’t afraid to short Donald Trump or go long on Hillary Clinton. The 28-year-old from Cambridge, Massachusetts, trades on PredictIt, an online political stock market that allows users to wager small amounts of money on “yes” or “no” predictions about whether an event will occur. That includes who will win the U.S. presidential election in November. “This is probably one of the ways I restrain myself from being active in the stock market,” said Duhaime, a PhD student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, who checks the site a few times a week for fun. PredictIt, which was launched in 2014, now has more than 30,000 traders registered, up from 19,000 at the end of 2015, and has received shout-outs from pundits and presidential campaign advisors alike. Users must be U.S. residents and registered voters. PredictIt says it is not like an online gambling site because it mainly exists to supply its data to universities for academic research, one of the main reasons the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission allows it to operate legally, according to a letter issued by the regulator in 2014. It is jointly run by Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and a Washington-based political consulting firm Aristotle International Inc. Unlike mainstream financial markets, bets are not big: The CFTC caps each participant’s position at $850 per market, and the average deposit when people sign up is just $100. The regulator hasn’t been as friendly to such betting sites in the past. In 2012, the CFTC filed a civil complaint against the now defunct Intrade for violating a ban on off-exchange options trading. The Ireland-based market also allowed people to wager money on “yes” or “no” questions, but it wasn’t tied to an academic institution and didn’t have a cap on the maximum amount that could be traded. Predictions markets like PredictIt and a similar venue run by the University of Iowa have emerged as an alternative to polling for election forecasters. PredictIt is bigger than the Iowa Electronic Markets, which has only about 2,000 active traders with access to its political markets. “Polling is very expensive,” said David Rothschild, an economist at Microsoft Research who runs a predictions-market aggregator called PredictWise, which draws heavily from PredictIt. “It’s a slow process. It’s not very flexible.” Knowledge of polls does also feed into betting decisions on PredictIt. “Predictions markets translate this and other information into probability,” said Rajiv Sethi, professor of economics at Barnard College. “The basic intuition is that it’s a ‘wisdom of crowds’ effect.” For example, Trump’s chances of securing the Republican nomination for the presidential election swung dramatically on the site over the past three months as the primary season progressed. A Trump share shot from 30 cents in early February when he lost to rival Ted Cruz in the Iowa primary to 80 cents a month later when Trump dominated on Super Tuesday. They then lost half their value by early April as Cruz appeared to regain momentum with a big win in Wisconsin. With Cruz and another rival, John Kasich, now out of the race, Trump had risen to 94 cents by Monday. For graphic showing Trump's ascendancy on PredictIt during primary season, see tmsnrt.rs/1WmRq For November’s election, though, Trump is trailing on PredictIt with 40 cents against Clinton’s 59 cents. While PredictIt’s precision has yet to be closely examined by academics, other predictions markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets, have proven to be just as accurate as polls, experts who have studied them said. PredictIt markets go beyond topics related to U.S. elections. Users also put the probability of a North Korea hydrogen bomb test this year at only 29 cents, and a British exit from the European Union by 2017 at just 30 cents. The idea for PredictIt was first thought up in the mid-1990s by Lew Evans, professor of economics at the University of Victoria. It took until 2008, for the market, called “iPredict” in New Zealand, to get up and running. Early on, it focused primarily on New Zealand politics, and research showed iPredict out-performed the majority of polls in predicting the results in two of New Zealand’s last three general elections. However, new anti-money laundering laws in New Zealand put an end to iPredict last year after the cost of verifying users’ identities to comply with the rules threatened to blow through iPredict’s shoe-string budget. PredictIt attracts everyone from campaign volunteers to political junkies. In mid-April, about 30 PredictIt traders gathered at a bar in New York to watch the state’s primary results roll in. “I think it’s a good source of collective wisdom,” said Brian Hegarty, who was at the event. Hegarty, who worked for Kasich’s campaign, reads political news, but also relied on picking up information through his campaign experience. That didn’t always translate to a bet in favor of Kasich. He said he put money on Republican candidate Marco Rubio to win the Minnesota caucus because he had overheard someone who was working for the Florida senator express confidence about Rubio’s chances. It turned out to be one of the few states Rubio won before dropping out in mid-March. Duhaime, the MIT student, said he usually bets against candidates he believes are likely to flame out. “For me, Trump was one of those people,” he said. “I shorted Trump way back in July, and it hasn’t been fun watching.” After Trump’s win in Indiana in early May, Duhaime was down nearly $1,000, about a third of the money he put into PredictIt. “I still think it was a one in a hundred thing,” Duhaime, who doesn’t identify as a Democrat but is a fan of President Barack Obama, said of the Trump phenomenon. “Obviously I’m bummed, but I’m sort of more concerned for other reasons.” (This version of the story corrects the spelling of Lew Evans) | 0fake |
'Charlie' draws historic crowd, world leaders to Paris | PARIS — A historic crowd of more than a million people including more than 40 world leaders jammed the streets Sunday, proclaiming "Je suis Charlie," expressing solidarity against terrorism and paying homage to victims of last week's deadly attacks.
French President François Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel were among the leaders who linked arms to start the march amid intense security. The U.S. representative was Jane Hartley, the ambassador to France.
The gathering brought together leaders of nations and causes often at odds, such as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The emotionally charged rally came just days after 17 people and three Islamic extremist gunmen were killed in three horrifying days of terror in France.
France's Interior Ministry described the demonstration as the largest in the nation's history. More than 3.7 million marched throughout the country, including between 1.2 million and 1.6 million in the capital. The ministry said a precise number was impossible to determine given the enormity of the turnout.
"Today, Paris is the capital of the world," Hollande said. "Our entire country will rise up toward something better."
Hollande and Netanyahu later visited the Grand Synagogue in Paris, which for security reasons did not hold Sabbath services this weekend for the first time since World War II.
"Today I walked the streets of Paris with the leaders of the world to say enough terror -- the time has come to fight terror," Netanyahu said. He also stressed that the enemy is not Islam, but extremists.
The attackers' primary target was the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly publication that has published spoofs of the Islamic prophet Mohammed. The slogan "Je suis Charlie" — I am Charlie — has swept across France and around the globe.
Twelve people were killed when brothers Said, 34, and Cherif Kouachi, 32, stormed the offices magazine's offices Wednesday. Two days later police tracked them to a printing house near Charles de Gaulle Airport where they were killed.
On Thursday, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, shot and killed a policewoman. On Friday he killed four people -- all Jewish -- at a kosher market and threatened more violence unless the police let the Kouachis go. He was killed later in the day during a police assault.
French prosecutors said Coulibaly is also linked to the shooting of a jogger on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Video emerged showing Coulibaly pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and claiming he coordinated the attacks with the Kouachi brothers.
Sunday was a day for healing and for unity. Rallies in support of freedom of expression were held across France and in major cities around the globe.
In New York, the Empire State Building was lit in the colors of the French flag as a solidarity gesture. The lights were to be darkened at 8 p.m. ET in memory of those killed in the Paris attacks.
In Paris, the military and police were out in force, with more than 2,000 police officers patrolling the area, French officials said. Another 2,000 officers and 1,300 soldiers were protecting key buildings, landmarks, transportation hubs and Jewish sites.
The rally, featuring family members of those who died in the attacks, drew French celebrities, Christian, Jewish and Muslim community leaders, and politicians from across the French political spectrum.
Paris public transport operator RATP made travel on its metro, bus and tram network free to reduce traffic in the center of the capital. Crowds began gathering hours before the rally started at 3 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET) in central Paris.
The boulevards and streets leading to Place de la Republique soon became blocked by the throngs, but a cheerful spirit pervaded among demonstrators. "Today is not the day to be grumpy Parisians," said one woman sporting a bright-red French beret.
Hawkers sold buttons and banners reading "Je Suis Charlie" as well as "Je Suis Ahmed" and "Je Suis Juif (Jewish)." Banners and signs in honor of those who died, cartoons drawn on posterboard and plastic, and mosaics on the ground made from pens, were also being sold.
The display of world leaders did not impress Reporters Without Borders, which issued a statement saying it was "appalled" by some of the countries represented in a rally so closely tied to freedom of expression.
"Journalists and bloggers are systematically persecuted (in) Egypt, Russia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates," the statement said. "We must demonstrate our solidarity with CharlieHebdo without forgetting all the world's other Charlies. ... We must not let predators of press freedom spit on the graves of Charlie Hebdo."
Some rallies kicked off earlier Sunday. In Dammartin-en-Groele, the small industrial town northeast of Paris where the Kouachi brothers were killed by police, tens of thousands of people came out and sang La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, and chanted "Je Suis Charlie."
Blandine Siet, 51, who lives in the Montparnasse neighborhood in south Paris, said she would join the capital city's rally with a group of friends and neighbors to protest the restrictions to freedom of expression that she fears may result from the attack onCharlie Hebdo.
"France is a free country with strong (democratic) values and I want it to stay that way," she said.
Meanwhile, thousands of people gathered Sunday for the funeral of Ahmed Merabet, the police officer shot as he lay wounded on the ground just after the Charlie Hebdo attack. Mourners waved signs reading "Thank you, Ahmed" and "Je Suis Ahmed."
Bacon reported from McLean, Va. Contributing: Jane Onyanga-Omara in London; Jabeen Bhatti in Berlin; the Associated Press | 0fake |
Joe Scarborough, Top GOP Strategist, to Trump: You Will Be Loved if You Fire Bannon - Breitbart | MSNBC host Joe Scarborough sent a subtly coded message Tuesday morning to an audience of one: President Donald Trump, you should fire Steve Bannon. [This week, Scarborough has been on a tear against Bannon — a populist firebrand, top aide to the president, and former executive chairman of Breitbart News. The Morning Joe talk show host, twice in the span of three minutes, summed up Bannon’s political philosophy as “Leninist” — that is, wanting to “destroy the American republic. ” This meme is based on a quote which Daily Beast author Ronald Radosh, an octogenarian this year, attributed to Bannon based on a conversation that Radosh claims took place in 2013. Bannon said last year that he did not remember either meeting Radosh or having that conversation. Scarborough linked a poll showing President Trump’s approval at 36 percent to Bannon’s role as White House chief strategist. Trump is stuck at that number, he argued, “because he has simply refused to listen to everybody that has told him you need to reach out and be more inclusive. ” One of the people most responsible for Trump overestimating his support, Scarborough continued, is “our favorite player of the week, Steve Bannon. [in, apparently, a Steve Bannon voice] ‘Oh, they’re going to want me to be Vladimir Lenin and tear down the government because 65 percent of Americans are against us.’ I mean, what idiots. ” “If he wants to get his 36 [percent approval rating] to 56,” Scarborough concluded, “he’s gonna have to fire Steve Bannon and anybody else who calls themselves a Leninist who wants to destroy the American republic and government and start working with Republicans and Democrats and doing what 78 percent of Americans told NBC News a week ago. They want their leaders to compromise and work with the other side and make Washington work again. ” Trump will need to take this warning seriously, given Scarborough’s impressive political chops. He served in the U. S. Congress for the better part of seven years, resigning in 2001 to spend time with his family. For a time, renowned conservative pundit Bill Kristol floated Scarborough as his pick for the 2016 presidential race — eventually settling on a National Review editor who did not run, then settling on a CIA staffer. As for expanding his populist appeal, the president would do well to seek out Morning Joe‘s invaluable look into “what the smart set in Washington and Manhattan are thinking” every day. Scarborough’s advice to President Trump has, so far, focused on surrendering to the establishment that has called him a spy since the start of his campaign: January 27, 2017: “The press always wins. Washington always wins. You figure out how to work with them or you’re going to get crushed. ” January 31, 2017: “[Trump aide Stephen Miller]’s not good on television, you guys should probably keep him off television. ” February 6, 2017: “I suggest somebody at the White House get him to write a statement — a very strong statement letting the world know that he condemns the assassination of journalists and political rivals. ” February 17, 2017: “Don’t fight the press, the press always wins. Ask Richard Nixon. The press always wins!” February 28, 2017: Trump should use his Joint Address to Congress to announce “sweeping immigration reform” (i. e. amnesty for illegal immigrants). March 22, 2017: “Next time a voice inside your head says ‘screw with the FBI,’ just stop. ” Unfortunately, Trump has signaled that he will ignore Scarborough’s tips on appeasing the media elite. A few weeks ago, the president’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account stopped following Scarborough and his partner Mika Brzezinski. Nevertheless, the MSNBC host persists with his invaluable hot takes and armchair governance. | 0fake |
Republicans Get Skewered On Twitter After Hilarious #GOPMovies Hashtag Goes Viral (TWEETS/VIDEO) | The Republican party has become the butt of nearly every single political joke, and they have only themselves to blame for turning the GOP into a laughing-stock. With the ridiculous antics of the party s presidential candidates and politicians, there isn t a day that goes by that conservatives aren t making Americans shake their heads in either shame or disbelief.Comedy Central s late-night show @midnight decided to have fun with the GOP by challenging Americans to come up with new titles for classic movies, but with a Republican spin. Using the #hashtagwars segment of the show, host Chris Hardwick asked his guests to come up with new GOP-related movie titles on the spot, and it was absolutely hilarious. You can watch the segment below:Here were some of the highlights:TwitterTwitterTwitterThe #GOPMovies hashtag produced so many comedic results, that Comedy Central encouraged Twitter users to join in on ripping Republicans. The network tweeted: For all we know, #GOPMovies are our future! Check out these examples and give us your own! Twitter was more than happy to oblige. According to social media analytics firm Zoomph, the #GOPMovies hashtag was tweeted out approximately 20 times per minute as users scrambled to capture the Republican party s racism, bigotry and all-around hateful rhetoric in their revamped movie titles. Hardwick even joined in with his own: Saving Paul Ryan a jab the speaker of the House of Representatives.Here are some of the other amazing responses:TwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterDonald Trump was also a major topic in #GOPMovies. Just the front-runner s hair alone got a lot of responses:TwitterTwitterSo did Trump s skin:TwitterAnd his anger issues:TwitterTwitterSeriously, Trump could have gotten his own hashtag. Many Twitter users also took aim at the front-runner s other antics, including his promise to build a great wall , his 1% status and his alliance with Sarah Palin.TwitterTwitterTwitterThe Republican party s war on women was also a major point of discussion:TwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterAs was the GOP s obsession with being racist and hurting minorities:TwitterTwitterAll of the responses were amazing, but this tweet pretty much summed #GOPMovies up for everyone:Twitter#GOPMovies marks the second time that Comedy Central has taken a major jab at Republicans in the last few months. Last year, Hardwick and Comedy Central hit back at the GOP with the hashtag #GOPSongs right before the Dec. 15th GOP debate in Las Vegas. Just like #GOPMovies, it went viral, proving that Americans don t even take Republicans seriously anymore.One thing is for sure these tweets deserve an award for perfectly capturing how awful and depressing the GOP is while making us laugh.Featured image is a screenshot | 1real |
CNN Hosts SHOCKED As Republican Says ‘White Males’ Have Been Left Out Of Politics (VIDEO) | Trump s campaign has been desperately trying to win over all the minority groups it has spent the last several months offending and excluding, and that was obvious after the pandering we saw Trump do at the Republican National Convention.Not only did Trump s daughter Ivanka talk about the gender wage gap to target women, but Trump also gave a shout-out to the LGBT community after basically ignoring them during his campaign. Regardless of these efforts to expand his reach, we all know who Trump s primary fanbase is: white men.While it s obvious to most of us just why conservative white males flock to Trump to champion their racist, misogynistic views of the world, congressman Sean Duffy (R-WI) had a completely different theory to why Trump is so popular for this demographic white men have been neglected in politics up until Trump. In an interview with CNN, Duffy explained that it was because FINALLY, white men had a candidate that spoke to them. Referencing Trump s closing speech at the RNC, Duffy said: I think what a lot of people want, the greatest line of the speech was when he pointed at the camera and said, I m going to fight for you. There are so many people who feel like they ve been left aside. There s a viewpoint that says, I can fight for minorities, and I can fight for women, and if you get that, you make up a vast majority of the voting block and you win. And white males have been left aside a little bit in the politics of who speaks to them.White males have been left aside a little bit in the politics of who speaks to them not in regard to the economy and culture but who speaks to them politically. Donald Trump is, I think, speaking across a wide breadth of people in a way that I think you re going to see these numbers pop. You can watch this cringe-worthy segment below:.@RepSeanDuffy: White males have been left aside a little bit in the politics of who speaks to them #RNCinCLE https://t.co/tcE7ntFYNE New Day (@NewDay) July 22, 2016The hosts were pretty much left speechless that Duffy would seriously say something this stupid out loud and on television. Duffy actually, with confidence, said that white men have finally found a candidate that plays to their concerns nevermind the fact that 80% of Congress was composed of white males in 2015, despite that they are only 31% of the American population!This is such a horrific example of someone oblivious to white male privilege. And if anyone understands how underprivileged white men are in this country, surely it s Duffy, who once complained about how he s struggling to make ends meet on his measly $174,000 per year salary.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
UK PM May heads to Brussels expecting 'constructive' meeting: spokesman | LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May is expecting a constructive meeting in Brussels on Monday with senior European Union officials as part of her attempt to achieve a smooth exit from the bloc, her spokesman said on Monday. May will meet EU Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier at 1630 GMT for talks over dinner after deadlock in Brexit talks appeared to dash her hopes that an EU leaders summit later this week could launch negotiations on future trade ties. The meeting comes after May attempted to revive talks last month in a speech in Florence, where she promised Britain would honor its EU commitments. This is about reflecting upon Florence and the constructive way it s been received and that we want to continue to move forward in a constructive manner, the spokesman told reporters. When asked if May would flesh out details of what Britain is prepared to offer in terms of a financial settlement, the spokesman said: The PM set out her position in the Florence speech in relation to the settlement, and that s where we are. May will also speak to French President Emmanuel Macron and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Monday, the spokesman said. | 0fake |
Republican ex-defense secretary Cohen backs Hillary Clinton | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Republican U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen on Wednesday said he will likely vote for U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election, citing her experience as secretary of state and former first lady. “In all likelihood, I would say yes,” Cohen who served as defense secretary under former U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, told MSNBC in an interview when asked if she had earned his vote. “I would not feel comfortable,” with Donald Trump, Clinton’s Republican rival and a political novice, having access to the nation’s nuclear codes, Cohen said. “I’d feel more comfortable with Hillary Clinton, certainly,” Cohen told MSNBC. | 0fake |
Terrorists attack police training college in Pakistan: 60 cadets killed and 120 injured | (7 fans) - Advertisement - At lease 60 cadets were killed and more than 116 injured as terrorists attack the Police Training College in Quetta, Pakistan, in one of the deadliest extremist attacks this year. Three gunmen burst into the sprawling academy, targeting sleeping quarters home to some 700 recruits, and sent terrified young men aged between 15 and 25 fleeing, Dawn News reported. Communication intercepts showed the attack was carried out by Al-Alimi faction of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi militant group, IG Frontier Corps (FC) Major General Sher Afgan said. The group itself has not claimed the attack. Most of the deaths were caused when two of the attackers blew themselves up. The third was shot dead by Frontier Corps (FC) troops. At least 120 people were injured, according to Dawn News. The IG FC said "terrorists were communicating with their handlers in Afghanistan". "There were three terrorists and all of them were wearing suicide vests," he added. The training college is situated on Sariab Road, which is considered to be one of the most sensitive areas of Quetta. Militants have been targeting security forces in the area for almost a decade.
The attack comes a day after militants belonging to the Baloch Liberation Army on a motorcycle shot dead two coast guards and a civilian and wounded a shopkeeper in a remote southwest coastal town in Balochistan.
In August, a suicide bombing at a Quetta hospital claimed by the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Pakistani Taliban killed 73 people, including many of the city's lawyer community who had gone there to mourn the fatal shooting of a colleague. - Advertisement - Pakistan says intelligence agencies of India and Afghanistan are fanning unrest in Balochistan by helping the rebels and sectarian militant outfits. According to Islamabad Policy Research Institute, the Indian consulate in Kandahar, a border town, provides a firm base to train, arm and dispatch militants across the border to undertake sabotage activities in Balochistan. Indian companies have been awarded contracts on various projects to link Kabul with Balochistan near Iranian border; and in the bargain it makes the job of the Indian intelligence agency RAW easier. Last month Indian government formally offered political asylum to secessionist Baloch leaders. The Zee News of India reported that the media is buzz with reports that Brahumdagh Bugti, grandson of Nawaz Akbar Khan Bugti, is set to get Indian citizenship. He is currently living in exile in Switzerland.
Balochistan is a key region for China's ambitious $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project linking its western province of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan.
Security problems have mired CPEC in the past with numerous separatist attacks, but China has said it is confident the Pakistani military is in control. 18 Indian soldiers killed in an army base attack - Advertisement - The Quetta terrorist attack came five weeks after a militants attack on an army base in the garrison town of Uri in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir -- killing 18 soldiers. The attack on Sept 18, which took place near the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the disputed region, was one of the deadliest on an army base in Kashmir since militant attacks began in 1989, according to CNN. Tension remains high between the neighbors following the Uri attack. The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has been under intense pressure from his own party and the Indian public to respond to the Uri army base attack. Mr Modi came to power pledging to toughen India's response to what he calls cross-border incursions from Pakistan. He vowed that the Uri raid "will not go unpunished". On September 29, India announced that it had carried out early morning "surgical strikes" on terrorist camps in Pakistani controlled Kashmir. However, Pakistan denied that a cross border strike had taken place, saying that Indian troops had fired small arms across the Line of Control, killing two soldiers and injuring nine. The notion of surgical strike linked to alleged terrorists' bases is an illusion being deliberately generated by India to create false effects," the Pakistani military said in a statement. | 1real |
EXPOSED: TOP BILLIONAIRE DONOR Has Shady Side Deal With Clinton Campaign Manager Podesta | The man running Hillary Clinton s campaign is getting paid to advise a foundation run by a key Clinton donor, hacked WikiLeaks emails show.John Podesta, who draws no salary from the campaign, is making $7,000 per month from the Sandler Foundation, run by Herb Sandler, Politico reported.The arrangement is not normal practice for political campaigns, though campaign members are not required to disclose their financial relationships.Sandler insisted his close relationship with Podesta has not helped him or his business politically. If they re responsive, it s because they regard me as thoughtful, and a major contributor to Democratic cause Podesta knows that he doesn t get bulls t from me. He knows I have no hidden agenda. He knows that my values are similar to his and that we care about people and not the billionaires, even though I ended up by some crazy thing to be one, he added.The Sandlers ran World Savings Bank, which was sold to Wachovia in 2006 for $25.5 billion and which was accused of offering adjustable-rate mortgages that contributed to the housing collapse.Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, a conservative nonprofit, said Podesta s deal with Sandler stood in stark contrast to Clinton s efforts to portray herself as tough on the financial industry. This is another instance where the Clinton campaign has been revealed to have surprising links to some of the most dubious parts of the finance industry, Walter said.Read more: Politico | 1real |
Dick Cheney To Reporter: Because Trump Uses Twitter ‘We Don’t Need You Guys Anymore’ (VIDEO) | Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked the press and went as far as to point to MSNBC/NBC reporter Katy Tur at a rally in which she later had to be escorted out by the Secret Service. Trump is playing a dangerous game by villainizing journalists. Trump supporters agree with everything he says and when he attacks reporters, they are happy to attack them, too. They are literally attacking the Constitution because Freedom of the Press is protected by the First Amendment. To dumb it down for Trump supporters, it s the amendment before the Second Amendment.Former Vice President Dick Cheney is apparently a fan of Donald Trump s. He suggested recently that the President-elect s social media usage means that American citizens no longer needed the news media.With Dick Cheney in his corner, that should be a wake up call to his supporters.At the Reagan National Defense Forum, CNN s Barbara Starr asked the former vice president if Trump s casual tone on Twitter was dangerous. I do think you need to be careful, Cheney said. But he ll learn as he goes along. I think he is putting some brains and good people with him. I am a big fan of [Vice President-elect] Mike Pence. I think one of the reasons people get so concerned about the tweets is it s sort of a way around the press, Dick said. It s modern era, modern technology. He s at the point where we don t need you guys anymore. I apologize, Cheney added.Watch at around the 18 minute mark:Apology not accepted, Dick.Oh sure, just what we need. A president who has to learn as he goes along. Trump supporters wanted a man in the White House with zero political experience. It s like giving the keys to your Bentley to a guy who doesn t have a driver s license.The establishment sure is backing the supposed anti-establishment president-elect.Photo by Mark Wilson via Getty. | 1real |
Uganda parliament debate on presidential age cap halted as scuffles break out | KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda s parliament abruptly adjourned a debate on Tuesday over extending President Yoweri Museveni s decades in power after a lawmaker said soldiers had entered the building and members of parliament scuffled with police. There were so many (soldiers), I saw them. They were in the chaplaincy, legislator Gaffa Mbwatekamwa, among several in Museveni s ruling party who oppose extending his rule, told a local television station. Scuffles broke out between lawmakers and police shortly after speaker Rebecca Kadaga adjourned the debate, just moments starting it early on Tuesday. It was unclear what triggered the confrontation. Television footage showed chaotic scenes of lawmakers and police both trying to address the cameras. The incident followed a similar disruption to a debate on the issue in September. The army did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Police spokesman Emilian Kayima said they had no immediate comment but would issue a statement later. Lawmakers were debating a draft bill that would remove a constitutional age cap that bars Museveni from standing again. The constitution limits the age of a presidential candidate to 75, making 73-year-old Museveni ineligible to stand at the next election in 2021. Museveni has ruled for 31 years but public anger is mounting over corruption, rights violations and poor social services. The opposition, church leaders, and even some members of the ruling party oppose the amendment. Police have put down protests against it using teargas, beatings, detentions and live bullets. At least two people have been killed. A previous attempt to debate the bill in September ended with lawmakers trading punches and throwing chairs and the forcible intervention of security forces. Several legislators were hospitalized with injuries. Mbwatekamwa said he recognized some members of the military in parliament from the fracas in September. Some are in civilian clothes, some of the soldiers are the ones who manhandled us the other time, he said. Proceedings resumed about two hours after they were suspended and stretched on for about seven hours before Kadaga adjourned them again to Wednesday, when a final vote on the bill is expected. The latest attempt to debate the law started on Monday with the presentation of a report by a House committee. The speaker suspended six legislators opposed to the measure on Monday for disorderly conduct. Both police and military have been deployed around parliament this week. Lawmakers say the heavy security is designed to intimidate them, but police say it is to prevent protests. The military usually does not comment on political matters. Several African leaders have amended laws designed to limit their tenure. Such moves have fueled violence in countries including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. | 0fake |
If Your Biological Plumbing Doesn’t Match Sign On Door You’ll Have To Use Another Bathroom If This Bill Passes | PC is killing our country. This is called fighting back While counterculture crackpots are working themselves into a lather over the prospect that, in some places, men who think that they re women can go tinkle in the same restroom where a 6-year-old girl is pulling down her panties, one state legislator has decided that it might be time to push back.Indiana State Sen. Jim Tomes, who probably accepts basic biology and believes that people born with a penis are male, proposed a bill that would make it a Class A misdemeanor for trannies to use a bathroom that doesn t correspond to their birth gender.Last week, Tomes uttered the following line that s sure to ignite tempers among the social justice mob: If you were born a man, then you are obliged to use the males restroom. What s next? A hereditary monarchy?Anyone convicted of a Class A misdemeanor could face a year in prison and as much as a $5,000 fine.It should be noted, though, that the language in the legislation makes exceptions for janitors, first aid providers, and parents accompanying children under the age of 8.The bill does, however, cover schools. So if it passes and Little Boy Twinkletoes decides that he needs to use the girls locker room after gym class, then he s facing charges.Indiana saw some action in the culture war last year when the state passed a religious freedom law. That law was widely opposed by American liberals, who hate religious freedom.Via: DownTrend | 1real |
UK parliament vote on Brexit deal may come after Britain leaves: minister | LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s parliament may not vote on the final terms of the country s withdrawal agreement with the European Union until after the country has formally left the bloc in March 2019, Brexit minister David Davis said on Wednesday. It could be, yeah. It depends when it concludes ... it can t come before we have the deal, Davis told a parliamentary committee in response to a question from a lawmaker on whether if a deal was struck at the last minute before the exit took place, the parliamentary vote may not occur until after exit. He repeated the government s promise that the British parliament would get to vote before the European parliament. | 0fake |
“HARRY, HARRY!” Crowd Yells Military Hero’s Name During President Trump’s Incredible Speech to Veterans [Video] | President Trump spoke at the first ever Celebrate Freedom Rally last night delivering a barn burner of a speech to veterans and wounded warriors from Walter Reid Hospital. It was one of the best red meat speeches our President has ever delivered. We think you ll enjoy it Go to the 21:45 point for the amazing story of Harry F. Miller:Harry lied about his age to join the American forces. He was just 15 when he joined the US military during World War II. Harry was a US hero at The Battle of the Bulge!Harry s story:During the battle, the 1st Army Headquarters instructed the tank crews to go down to an ordnance depot and take whatever they needed for the tanks. We had to take good parts off of one tank and put it on another. We finally got three tanks and a tank destroyer that would operate and run, and had a gun, he said in an interview with VA. They took the three working tanks and sent them to their C Company. Those three tanks ended up taking out three German tanks, which ended up being members of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitlerbeing, Hitler s old body guards. | 1real |
WATCH: We Found Donald Trump’s Campaign Theme Song (VIDEO) | Way back in 1998, when Fox s MadTV was still on the air, an actress/singer named Nicole Sullivan performed a three-minute comedy sketch that so accurately predicts the Donald Trump campaign, we just had to write about it.For the sketch, Sullivan adopted the character of Darlene McBride, a huge-haired country music singer, who is promoting her upcoming Take Back America tour.As the video opens, Sullivan s character can be seen strumming her guitar, while belting out the words to her new song, Take Back America. Take back America to 1955, she sings. Take back America to when god was still alive. As the music fades into the background, McBride is seen sitting at a mirrored dressing table, dressed in camo, an American flag displayed proudly on the shoulder of her military fatigues. Truer words were never spoken, or sung, she says.She then introduces herself. Hi, I m Darlene McBride. You know I love this country, the way it used to be, simple-minded, with simple values, simple people. But then the big government, the Supreme Court and those bleeding heart liberals just couldn t leave well enough alone. And now look at it? A big, ugly melting pot just boilin over on what used to be a nice, white stove. From there, McBride goes on to talk about her upcoming tour, where she says she ll be coming to a city near you, to sing traditional songs with traditional values. She then provides the audience with a few samples tunes that you can hear during the tour.For starters, there s a little ditty called The Lord Loves the NRA. The lord loves the NRA, he told me so the other day. He spelled it out in bullets in the sky. He s sitting up in heaven with his AK 47. He s a rough-and-ready, macho kind of guy. Then there s the song called The Back of the Bus.Leading into that one she says Excuse me Mr. Negro, but I ve got a question to ask you. She then breaks into the song, asking in the lyrics, What s so bad about the back of the bus? Next up is a song called Nothing Would Be Finer. Nothing would be finer than to drop a bomb on Chiner in the morning. She also has a song about illegal immigration called Hey Senorita.To be fair, all of the songs in this sketch would work for any GOP candidate, not just Trump. The NRA lovin , republican-Jesus fearin racists and warmongers that vote for them would likely never realize they were listening to a musical parody of themselves.Watch the MadTV video below, courtesy of Migrainemaker on YouTube.While the sketch might seem like it was written to mock today s Teapublican Trump supporters, it s actually 18 years old.It goes to show, no matter how much time passes, the republican party does not change. It s the same today as it was almost twenty years ago, and will most likely be twenty years from now.Featured image credit: video screen capture, MadTV via Migrainemaker on youtube | 1real |
Project Veritas Video Exposes Utter Neglect in FBI’s Clinton Probe | We Are Change
Article by Aaron Kesel
Project Veritas continues with it’s series of videos – this time an undercover reporter exposed early Clinton email witness Cindy Almodovar.
In the video, Cindy Almodovar – who spoke with Huma Abedin about email issues that were going on – admits that the FBI didn’t interview her.
In December 2010, U.S. Department of State IT Systems Administrator Cindy Almodovar reported that she met with Huma Abedin for thirty minutes regarding emails at the then unknown, but now notorious, @ clintonemail.com site. Here’s is the text from that email exchange: “From: Almodovar, Cindy T Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 11:17 AM To: SES-IRM_Tech Cc: SES-IRM_FO-Mgt Subject: Meeting with Huma I met with Huma for about 30 minutes to go over mail issues. She gave me some examples listed below, but also, things are inconsistent. But issue #1 is of an e-mail which was sent to her twice this morning, did get received on <REDACTED> but was not delivered. See details below. I have a contact for the @clintonemail site, his name is Bryan Pagliano and he actually now works for State, but he apparently set all of this up.
Huma sent several tests from her clintonemail account to Lona and myself – they were received. But there are many messages and responses not received.
She sent a message this morning from her state.gov account to cheftwan@mail.house.gov.On 12/14, hdr22@clintonemail.com sent a message to huma@clintonemail.com and Valmoroli@state.gov at 10:03 pm . The subject line was blank. Huma received at Clinton address, but Lona did not receive on her state.gov account.”
As a result of subsequent investigations regarding Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. State Department reported the following: From the unclassified May 2016 State Department report ESP-16-03: Two staff in S/ES-IRM reported to OIG that, in late 2010, they each discussed their concerns about Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account in separate meetings with the then-Director of S/ES-IRM. In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system. According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again. The director referred in the OIG report is John Bentel. In 2010, he was the State Department employee who managed IT security issues for the top echelon of the department. He told FBI investigators those conversations back in 2010 never occurred. In March of 2016, Bentel refused to answer questions from Senate investigators and asserted his Fifth Amendment right 87 times during a deposition for a civil lawsuit related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.” Here’s a transcript of the exchange between Project Veritas’s journalist and Cindy Almodovar. PV Journalist: I’m working on a story. I’m interested. I want to know the truth and I want to know if you’re one of the people who came, who went to John Bentel and said they were concerned about Hillary’s private server. Almodovar: I don’t know anything about that. PV Journalist: You weren’t involved in that at all? Almodovar: You’ve got to stop this because this is like harassment. PV Journalist: This will be the last time you see me. I just want to know the truth. I’m interested. I want to know if the FBI has talked to you. Almodovar: No they haven’t. PV Journalist: They haven’t at all… …PV Journalist: I’m sure reporters and people have been coming to your door. Almodovar: No. No one has come to the door. You’re the first one.
“Even though her name stands out in the emails released by the FBI, no one from the FBI ever spoke to Aldomovar,” said Project Veritas Action founder James O’Keefe. “No one interviewed her or made any attempt to get to the bottom of what information she might have about this case that is so important to national security. It made us wonder…who else the FBI neglected to talk with.” The post Project Veritas Video Exposes Utter Neglect in FBI’s Clinton Probe appeared first on We Are Change .
| 1real |
Ex-head of Colorado Republicans charged with voter fraud | DENVER (Reuters) - A Colorado talk radio host who once chaired the state Republican Party and has accused Democrats of widespread voter fraud has been charged with forging his ex-wife’s signature on a mail-in ballot in the 2016 election, court records showed on Wednesday. Steven Curtis, 57, who served as state GOP boss from 1997 until 1999, is charged with one felony count of forgery and one misdemeanor count of tampering with a mail-in ballot, according to a criminal complaint filed in Weld County District Court. The case stems from an inquiry lodged with the Weld County Clerk and Recorder’s Office by Curtis’s former spouse, Kelly Ireland, who contacted the agency in October to check on the status of her voter registration after the couple split. Ireland was informed then that a signed mail-in ballot bearing her name and voter information had already been submitted, according to Carly Koppes, an elected Republican who serves as the county clerk. “At that point, my office researched the situation further, and the signature was questionable, so we then contacted the District Attorney’s Office to start an investigation,” Koppes told Reuters. If convicted, Curtis faces a maximum three years in prison for forgery and up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine for ballot-tampering, said Tyler Hill, a spokesman for the district attorney. Curtis’s lawyer, Christopher Gregory, declined comment. The former Republican Party boss hosts a morning political talk show on conservative Denver radio station KLZ-AM called “Wake Up With Steve Curtis.” Curtis spoke about election tampering in a segment titled “Voter Fraud and Other Democratic Misbehaviors” on his Oct. 6, 2016 broadcast. “It seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, but virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats,” Cutis said, according to an archived podcast on the station’s website. Prosecutors allege that weeks after that broadcast, he forged his ex-wife’s ballot. A spokeswoman for Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said the Curtis case is the only allegation of voter fraud in the state from the 2016 election cycle that has resulted in a prosecution. Curtis on Tuesday made his first appearance in court, where he was advised of the charges. A disposition hearing has been set for May, the District Attorney’s Office said. Republican President Donald Trump has claimed, without presenting evidence, that millions of illegal voters cast ballots in the 2016 election. | 0fake |
Spain High Court jails two Catalan separatist leaders pending investigation | MADRID/BARCELONA (Reuters) - Spain moved closer on Monday to imposing central rule over Catalonia to thwart its independence push as Madrid s High Court signaled a hardening line by jailing the leaders of two of the largest separatist organizations. In the first imprisonment of senior secessionist figures since Catalonia s Oct. 1 independence referendum, the court ordered the heads of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Omnium held without bail pending an investigation for alleged sedition. Prosecutors say that the ANC s Jordi Sanchez and Omnium s Jordi Cuixart played central roles in orchestrating pro-independence protests that last month trapped national police inside a Barcelona building and destroyed their vehicles. Around 200 people flocked to the Catalan government s headquarters in Barcelona in a peaceful show of support for both men, with some chanting Freedom and waving Democracy banners. The ANC, which has organized protests of hundreds of thousands of secessionists in the past, called for further peaceful demonstrations around Catalonia on Tuesday. Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont commented on Twitter: Spain jails Catalonia s civil society leaders for organizing peaceful demonstrations. Sadly, we have political prisoners again an allusion to Spain s military dictatorship under Francisco Franco. The High Court also banned the Catalan police chief, Josep Lluis Trapero, from leaving Spain and seized his passport while he is being investigated over the same incident, though it did not order his arrest. Last Tuesday, Puigdemont stepped back from asking the Catalan parliament to vote on independence, instead making a symbolic declaration and calling for negotiations on the region s future. In a confrontation viewed with mounting alarm in European capitals and financial markets, Puigdemont failed on Monday to respond to Madrid s ultimatum to clarify whether he had declared unilateral independence in a speech last week. He now has until Thursday to back down. In a letter to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Puigdemont gave no direct answer on the independence issue, instead making a sincere and honest offer for dialogue over the next two months. In reply, Rajoy said Puigdemont s stance had brought Madrid closer to triggering Article 155 of the constitution, under which it can impose direct rule on any of the country s 17 autonomous communities if they break the law. The Catalan government s campaign to break away from Spain has pitched the country into its worst political crisis since an abortive coup attempt in 1981. On Monday the economy ministry told the EU that it had slashed its economic growth forecasts for next year partly due to the situation. The Catalan government says 90 percent of voters in the referendum backed a breakaway, but turnout was only 43 percent as most opponents of independence in the region boycotted the vote, already declared illegal by Spain s Constitutional Court. Thousands have demonstrated in Barcelona and other Spanish cities both for and against independence. So far the crisis has been largely violence-free, except for the day of the referendum when national police assaulted voters with batons and rubber bullets. The High Court ruled that Trapero, the Catalan police chief, would have his passport withdrawn but rejected a request from the state prosecutor for him to be held in custody. Trapero is a hero to the secessionists after his force took a much softer stance than national police in enforcing the ban on the referendum. Prosecutors say he failed to give orders to rescue national police trapped inside the Barcelona building. Puigdemont last Tuesday delayed by several weeks a formal declaration of independence from Spain to allow for talks. Madrid has ruled out talks unless Puigdemont gives up the independence demand. It had given him until 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Monday to clarify his position with a Yes or No , and until Thursday to change his mind if he insisted on a split. Following his failure to do so, a regional broadcaster said he also planned to ignore a final deadline on Thursday. Suggesting that Puigdemont and his team were in no mood to follow Rajoy s game plan, Catalan interior minister Joaquim Forn said Article 155 would not allow Madrid to remove members of the Catalan government. The article s terms on direct rule, which has never been applied, are vague. It says Madrid can adopt any measure to force a region to meet its constitutional obligations, with the approval of Spain s lower house. The wording suggests this could include anything from taking control of regional police and finances to installing a new governing team or calling a snap election. Underlining the deepening crisis, some of the largest companies in prosperous Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of the Spanish economy, have already shifted head offices elsewhere and others are likely to follow if Puigdemont declares outright independence. Investors say a political split could undermine the economic rebound in Spain, the euro zone s fourth-largest economy. | 0fake |
Under Fire: White House Staff Claims See-Through Fence, Levee Flood Protection System Is a ‘Border Wall’ | President Donald Trump’s White House communications team is claiming inaccurately that there is border wall funding in the spending bill before Congress right now. The move comes as the administration is facing political heat for the failure to obtain federal appropriations in the new omnibus spending bill to pay for the construction of a border wall, as President Trump promised on the campaign trail. [The latest controversy began with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer Tweeting out photos of a levee wall along the border and border fence that illegal aliens and drug and human traffickers regularly cut through. Spicer argued, without calling any of them a “wall” like the one Trump promised on the campaign trail, that the president “just negotiated a spending deal where we can build these. ” He explicitly did not call the photos a “border wall” on his Twitter account. . @POTUS just negotiated a spending deal where we can build these pic. twitter. — Sean Spicer (@PressSec) May 2, 2017, Technically, Spicer’s Tweet is accurate. The spending bill, which funds the government until the end of the fiscal year, does account for the construction of levee walls and extra steel fencing, but that is far short of the president’s campaign promise of an actual border wall. But what Spicer did next was highly problematic and potentially hurts President Trump’s efforts to succeed later in the year in delivering an actual border wall when the next spending bill comes up in September. Spicer directed one of his deputies, Lindsay Walters, to call Breitbart News and pitch the photos in Spicer’s Tweet as a “border wall. ” Noting that Spicer directed her to call Breitbart News and argue that the photos represent a “border wall,” Walters pushed back when Breitbart News argued that a fence and a levee wall do not constitute a “border wall” that fulfills President Trump’s campaign promise. “There are two types of walls, a levee wall and a bollard wall,” Walters said in a email. “Both of which will help secure our borders. ” Technically, levee walls — or flood walls — are common parts of levees designed to deal with flooding. The Rio Grande river constitutes much of the U. S. border, so levees — and “levee walls” as Walters argued — are a part of that. They are not meant for border security, but rather for flood management. But, Walters said in a email that “A bollard wall and levee wall of this scale will prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the border. ” Walters and Spicer and others in the White House communications office have not answered why Spicer’s original Tweet did not include the term “wall” or “border wall,” but rather described them as “these. ” This all came after an earlier press briefing in which Spicer was flanked by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. Kelly reiterated the president’s commitment to building a real wall on the border and laid out his plans to do so. Mulvaney held up photographs of the steel fencing, claiming that was an improvement. Lack of progress on a border wall ahead of the 2018 midterm elections would likely hurt Republicans in what would otherwise be a chance at another GOP landslide given the 2018 Senate map. And if there is lack of border wall progress by 2020, Trump could face a loss of his hardcore supporters in the Rust Belt from states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states he turned red for the first time in years thanks to promises to once and for all secure the border. It is perhaps debatable how much Trump could have gotten this out of the Democrats in Congress — who he rightfully ripped in his speech in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, this weekend as being complicit with drug cartels and gangs like for blocking the wall for now. Some in his base would likely be willing to forgive him not funding the wall or starting construction until September or October, the next funding bill especially since the wall would become a clear election year issue heading into the midterms when Democrats who opposed it would need to explain to their constituents why they are against securing the border and protecting the country. The real issue here is that at least some of President Trump’s staff and many Republicans are not serving him well or interested in implementing his agenda, many Trump allies inside and outside the White House told Breitbart News. Walters and Spicer have not answered multiple questions on whether or not they are working out a plan to get funding for a real wall in September and are prepared for this next political battle which could have dire implications for the president and his agenda. Trump allies who spoke with Breitbart News made very clear that they do not view this as the president’s fault, noting instead that Trump would be much better served if his team were better prepared on these matters — not just the communications team, but the congressional relations and government staffing teams as well. “The greatest negotiator in the world did not fail the people that got him elected,” one Trump ally who regularly communicates with the president and his inner circle told Breitbart News. “His staff, more specifically the liberal staffers who do not know why or how he was elected, have failed his base. They dominate his ear and fail to give him the full scope of the disasters that are about to transpire, and more often than not they have proven that their loyalty lies not with Donald Trump but instead with Speaker Paul Ryan. ” Interestingly, one question Breitbart News has repeatedly asked Spicer over the course of several weeks is whether he is more loyal to Ryan or to Trump. He has refused to answer it. Walters, meanwhile, when on the phone with Breitbart News on Tuesday afternoon, acknowledged the question when Breitbart News asked it again and requested an answer from Spicer as to whether he is more loyal to Trump or Ryan. She said she would try to get one. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said this week that President Trump himself, and the White House overall, were not very involved in working on this bill — and that congressional Republicans took the lead, hence the Democrat wins and GOP failures. Schumer also advocated that Trump stay out of the next funding bill battle ahead of September, almost goading the president into a budget war. That is Trump’s next big test: Can he, now that he is familiar with the levers of power, successfully negotiate payment for a border wall in the next spending bill? Or can he find another way to get it done? Next time around, with the midterms looming, he may pay a steep price for politically outsourcing these projects to Capitol Hill leadership like Ryan — people who have a proven track record of failing him — or to staff who have repeatedly dropped the ball. “The presidency has receded,” one senior GOP congressional aide told Breitbart News. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The administration is not involved in major discussions anymore. It’s President Ryan and Mark Meadows leading the way on major negotiations. ” Rick Manning, the president of Americans for Limited Government and a top outside Trump ally, concurred. “It is tragic that this funding bill reflects Paul Ryan’s priorities but bears zero resemblance to those put forth by President Trump,” Manning said in an email. “If Paul Ryan is allowed to continue imposing his will, the President’s agenda will never get done and the GOP’s legitimacy to lead will be lost. ” “This is not what we voted for or supported,” a GOP donor who has contributed in the in the last election cycle added. “We thought we were getting President Trump. Now we’re getting President Ryan. Not sure we are better off with Hillary or Paul Ryan. ” “President Ryan is making liberals blush with gratitude,” a Senate GOP aide also told Breitbart News. “A tale as old as time, Republicans sell out and give Democrats an early Christmas. ” | 0fake |
Donald Trump doesn’t want to make America great. He wants to make it afraid. | Donald Trump is not a candidate the American people would turn to in normal times. He’s too inexperienced, too eccentric, too volatile, too risky. Voting Trump is burning down the house to collect the insurance money — you don’t do it unless things are really, really bad.
Here is Trump’s problem: Things are not really, really bad. In fact, things are doing much better than when President Obama came into office.
Unemployment is 4.9 percent nationally — a number Trump knows is far from a crisis, because it’s lower than the unemployment rate Mike Pence is presiding over in Indiana, and Trump keeps bragging about his running mate’s economic record. The deficit has gone down in recent years, and the stock market has gone up. The end of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars mean fewer Americans are dying abroad. A plurality approve of the job Obama is doing.
So Trump needs to convince voters that things are bad, even if they’re not. He needs to make Americans afraid again. And tonight, he tried.
"Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation," Trump said. "The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country."
As Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for Obama, wrote on Twitter, this was Trump’s "Nightmare in America" speech. The address had one goal, and one goal only: to persuade Americans that their country is a dangerous, besieged hellscape, and only Donald Trump can fix it.
And so Trump spoke of the "illegal immigrants with criminal records" who are "tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens." He warned of the gangs, violence, and drugs "pouring into our communities." He invoked "the mothers and fathers who have lost their children to violence spilling across our border."
Perhaps the night’s ugliest moment came when he spoke of Sarah Root, a college student killed by a drunk driver who was also an unauthorized immigrant. "I’ve met Sarah’s beautiful family," Trump said. "But to this administration, their amazing daughter was just one more American life that wasn’t worth protecting. One more child to sacrifice on the altar of open borders."
For the record, almost 10,000 people were killed in America by drunk drivers in 2010 — the overwhelming majority of them by American citizens. Trump had neither answers for nor interest in their deaths.
And it is when you tug on these threads that Trump’s speech unspools and its grossness, and uselessness, becomes clear.
There are many ways in which Americans are actually not safe. More than 600,000 Americans died of heart disease in 2015, many of them unnecessarily. More than 130,000 Americans died in accidents. More than 40,000 died by suicide. There were a record number of drug overdoses in 2014, and gun deaths in America are far beyond those in any developed country.
These tragedies can be ameliorated by policy. Cigarettes can be taxed, alcohol regulated, addicts treated, guns made less accessible. But Trump wasn’t interested in making Americans safer, and so he did not mention any of these policies. He was interested in making Americans more afraid, and so he focused on the dangers that scare us, as opposed to the ones that truly threaten us.
"The first task for our new administration will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their communities," he said.
"Liberate." The America Trump speaks of requires an occupying force sent by a strongman to free and stabilize cities that have fallen into anarchy. But our cities have not fallen into anarchy. Our borders are not swarming with illegal immigrants. Murder rates remain far below what the America of the '70s, '80s, and '90s experienced. Terrorism is a horror, but successful terrorist attacks are a rarity, and one that would be most straightforwardly addressed through gun control. No liberation is necessary.
"In this race for the White House," Trump said, "I am the law and order candidate." And the law and order candidate can only win if there is a crisis of lawlessness and disorder. But there isn’t. Trump isn’t worried about your safety. He is worried about his own electoral prospects.
And this is what made Trump’s speech so truly ugly. It is one thing to whip up fear of the Other when the Other is a threat. But it is fully another to try to scare the shit out of Americans because you’re afraid they won’t vote for you unless they’re terrified. It is demagogic to warn, on national television, of foreign criminals "roaming" our streets simply because you’re behind in the polls. It’s telling that Trump fears only the threats that can be blamed on outsiders while ignoring the more lethal, more pervasive killers that afflict the citizenry.
Trump’s speech was a procession of horrors for which he did not even bother to propose real solutions. He has no actual fix to immigration, no theories on how to reduce crime. Here, his statement bordered on self-parody. "I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end," he said. "Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored."
But then, perhaps there’s truth to his absurd promises: When the crisis is invented, the solution is simpler. Once Trump no longer needs the nation to be afraid, he will stop scaring it. It is his nightmare, and only he can wake us from it. | 0fake |
Bad Jewish Losers Lament Trump’s Victory on BBC Newsnight | By Francis Carr Begbie
ERIC CANTOR , Republican politician, and LISSA MUSCATINE, Hillary Clinton’s former speech writer, were two of the many Jews given free rein to reflect on Donald Trump a few days ago before millions of BBC viewers.
“In the end one could not help noticing one interesting if rather awkward fact about that edition of BBC Newsnight. The editor, two out of three of the main presenters, and all seven of the main interviewees in Washington and London were JEWISH. Not bad for a group said to represent less than 0.4% of the British population.” — Francis Carr Begbie
You might think that after a disaster as humiliating as the election of Donald Trump that our anointed elites would take this opportunity for a bit of humility — that this would be an opportunity for introspection and some soul-searching self-reflection.
Well, the good news is that you would be wrong. For this would involve a level of self-awareness far beyond our narcissistic elites. All around they are demonstrating a complete inability to understand the forces behind their humiliation at the hands of a man they dismissed as a joke from day one and whose demise they predicted every inch of the way.
This self-deception was wonderfully on display in an immediate post-election edition of the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight , broadcast to the nation the day after and including a number of American interviewees. In a specially extended version of the show, programme editor Ian Katz dispatched Emily Maitlis , Mark Urban and David Grossman to find answers on the day after the result.
In both London and Washington a stellar line up of the finest brains from the media and the academy were assembled to help them chew it over.
Entertainingly, the vanity, narcissism and entitlement of the BBC presenter-ocracy was fully on view, proud and undented. To the accompaniment of the Beatles tune “Fool on the Hill” anchor Emily Maitlis could barely contain her rage and sputtered about how “a game show host and someone who owned a beauty pageant” could become president.
Populism, uprising, nationalism versus globalism; as with former President Bush’s puzzlement over “the vision thing,” they seemed to be able to mouth the words but comprehension was lacking.
With every guest, Emily Maitlis showed that old habits die hard or not at all. She dripped condescension from the outset, snapping at immigration traitor , pro-Israel fanatic former US Congressman Eric Cantor who was perhaps trying to redeem himself given the new winds in the Republican Party: “We talked about the vulgarity of this man … This is a man who talked of grabbing women by the pussy. Is that a man you are proud [of]?” An angry school teacher furious with the behaviour of her immature, irresponsible charges.
Easily the funniest moment in the programme came during a virtuoso splenetic performance from historian Simon Schama who seemed to think it was Germany in 1933 all over again. Race, he said, was more important factor in the election than the economic arguments. SIMON SCHAMA, ASHKENAZI JEW
Wriggling in his seat, as if it was subjected to regular electric shocks, he said.
“It is really weird to me how we pussyfoot around the toxic malodorous element of race which has played an important part of this. Anti-semitism has long been part of populism… [beginning] in the early twentieth century. Even today there were sinister references by the likes of senator Jeff Sessions to George Soros who was singled out as a particularly odious figure in this international banking conspiracy.”
(To which many people in the Alt Right might have replied: “couldn’t have put it better myself.”)
Schama almost lost it completely when co-interviewee and neocon stalwart Melanie Phillips told him to calm down a bit.
“It is not a moment for calm, it is not a moment for calm.” he screeched. MELANIE PHILLIPS, ASHKENZI JEW AND VIRULENT ZIONIST
Melanie knows very well what these anti-semitic dog whistles are like. This too is part of populism. We are facing a cataclysmic moment. Melanie is right to say it is a populist revolt. It is nothing to do with conservative republican politics. It amuses me to hear that Eric Cantor imagines that things are going to go on as they always did in the Republican party … [that they] will restrain Donald Trump. They won’t. George Washington warned about despotism and that is what we are facing.
Melanie Phillips, for her part, agreed the most important problem was anti-Semitism, but she saw it coming from a completely different quarter.
There are noxious elements around. … Clearly some of the people supporting Trump are anti-semitic and racists but that is also true of people on the left. There is no sign that he (Trump) personally is anti-semitic or racist. People call people racist when they want to restrict as he does, legal immigration. Anti-semitism is now at record levels at liberal universities overseen by liberal professors and liberal vice chancellors.
Studio presenter Evan Davies muttered about how they had to give up something to people worried about the loss of their traditional societies and really act on illegal immigration. But Schama wasn’t listening. He was worried about David Duke.
Donald Trump re-tweeted a neo-Nazi tweet. It is not a coincidence that David Duke, KKK Imperial Wizard, is exhilarated and rejoicing with the advent of Trump who is his man. We will see race crimes, hate crimes explode now. We will have a far-right supreme court which will reverse Roe [v.] Wade.
As a glimpse into the fevered imagination of at least one strongly identifying Jew, it could not have been more revealing. Before Schama actually self-detonated on air, the programme moved on to more heavyweights.
Neoconservative think tanker Danielle Pletka , senior vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, complained she had no idea what Trump’s policies were. Which was not very helpful.
Mary Kaldor , professor of global governance at the London School of Economics, complained that Trump was “wildly unpredictable” in his stated foreign policies. “He says ‘I love Israel,’ then he says he wants to be neutral between Israel and Palestine.” For her the real danger seemed to be peace. Or as she framed it, Trump getting friendly with Putin to create an “alliance of authoritarian right wing leaders.”
But it was the Pulitzer prize-winning historian of communism Anne Applebaum who painted the most apocalyptic scenario. Applebaum, who has never seen a “Deep State” she didn’t like, said that Trump had been disdainful for NATO and cannot understand why America needs to be in Europe. His admiration for Vladimir Putin as an ideal was very worrying. ANNE APPLEBAUM . . . ANOTHER ASHKENAZI JEW
Europeans need to start from the assumption that United States is not a reliable partner. We need to keep repeating that until it sinks into people’s brains.
She really said that.
Applebaum said Trump sees no need for a relationship with the UK. He said that Trump, who has spent millions developing his two golf courses, which include Turnberry, is, apparently, “not an anglophile and has no interest in Britain. Hillary Clinton does.” Surely, asked presenter Grossman, the Brexit referendum puts Britain and the USA on the same page? Applebaum: “No, no, no.”
Both these women think it makes the election of Marie le pen more likely. Likely correct, and thank god for that!
Alan Greenspan , former chairman of the Fed, was wheeled on to say that he, a lifelong Republican had not voted. He also explained that Trump would not be able to get rid of the current Federal Reserve Bank chair Janet Yellen without a complicated impeachment process.
Earlier in the show, Maitlis tried to get Republican Eric Cantor to condemn Trump but got no change. Cantor responded lamely about Trump’s promise to build a border wall. “I’m not so sure that is going to happen” — showing (not surprisingly) that he remains an immigration traitor at heart. And he continues to show his allegiance to Israel. Cantor said he was less interested in Trump’s immigration policies than his Middle East policies, including his intention to get rid of ISIS.
Lissa Muscatine , Hillary’s former speech writer, assured Maitlis that her old college friend had bounced back as strong as ever.
Elsewhere David Grossman did a breakdown of the vote to show that women and Hispanics had leaned to Trump in far greater numbers that anyone thought possible. (In fact, a solid majority of White women voted for Trump, proving Schama right: Trump voters are racists.) In the end one could not help noticing one interesting if rather awkward fact about that edition of BBC Newsnight . The editor, two out of three of the main presenters, and all seven of the main interviewees in Washington and London were Jewish. Not bad for a group said to represent less than 0.4% of the British population.
I should note, however, that there were a smattering of Vox pop style three-second sound-bite interviewees of men in baseball hats celebrating in bars and so on. There was also an abortive panel of a Hispanic man, black woman and Jewish New York Times reporter, and there was a Latvian politician down the line. But otherwise it was an extremely Kosher programme.
The BBC operates one of the most aggressive affirmative action policies in the Western world. In keeping with its position as the Vatican of political correctness, a finger is kept on the scales of employment opportunity to ensure that jobs are skewed heavily for favoured groups.
But given that self-awareness is one area where the elites are notably deficient, it might be s good idea to remind them of the massive Jewish overrepresentation on display here. This is one very privileged group indeed. Overrepresented and overprivileged, one might say. Like this? Share it now. | 1real |
LET THE REPARATIONS BEGIN: Rahm Emanuel Uses $5.5 Million Taxpayer Dollars To Gain Favor With Chicago’s Black Voters | We do this not because it s legally required, because it s not, Patton said at a hearing on the agreement. We do this because we believe it s the right thing to do, both for the victims and their families and for the city. This is historic, said Mr. Coverson. The only city in America that has given reparations and passed a reparations ordinance, and given an official apology for the violence that the police have done to citizens. The city of Chicago on Tuesday sought to put to rest one of its most persistent scandals, proposing a $5.5 million reparations fund for dozens of torture victims connected to former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge and his so-called midnight crew of rogue detectives.The proposal, negotiated with a key plaintiff s attorney and supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, would offer free city college tuition for victims and their families, free counseling for psychological issues and substance abuse as well as other assistance to more than 50 potential victims. The city would also issue a formal apology, create a permanent memorial recognizing the victims and ensure that eighth- and 10th-grade students attending Chicago Public Schools would be taught about the Burge case and its brutal legacy, cementing the scandal s role in city history.But as much as the proposal seeks to end a painful, controversial era Emanuel said it would close this book, the Burge book on the city s history it is unlikely to stanch the flow of torture claims from victims. A Loyola University Chicago law school dean appointed by a Cook County judge has identified some 20 additional cases in which inmates may have been Burge victims. Other inmates who have made torture claims continue to fight to overturn convictions and win their freedom. And one lawsuit over the torture is pending.Already, this stubborn scandal has cost taxpayers about $100 million in lawsuit settlements, judgments and other legal costs, according to lawyers. It brings it much closer to closure, especially from the city s point of view, said Flint Taylor, an attorney who has been pursuing the torture issue for decades and was one of the lawyers who negotiated the reparations package. But it s not done and over. But as much as the proposal seeks to end a painful, controversial era Emanuel said it would close this book, the Burge book on the city s history it is unlikely to stanch the flow of torture claims from victims. A Loyola University Chicago law school dean appointed by a Cook County judge has identified some 20 additional cases in which inmates may have been Burge victims. Other inmates who have made torture claims continue to fight to overturn convictions and win their freedom. And one lawsuit over the torture is pending.Already, this stubborn scandal has cost taxpayers about $100 million in lawsuit settlements, judgments and other legal costs, according to lawyers. It brings it much closer to closure, especially from the city s point of view, said Flint Taylor, an attorney who has been pursuing the torture issue for decades and was one of the lawyers who negotiated the reparations package. But it s not done and over. Burge was convicted in federal court of lying about the torture and sentenced to 41/2 years in prison. He was released in October but confined to his home until February. He still collects a police pension.Burge did not return calls Tuesday to his home in Florida.But John Jack Byrne, Burge s former right-hand man, on Tuesday called the reparations deal a scam perpetuated on taxpayers. Via: Chicago Tribune | 1real |
Iran provided capability for missile attacks from Yemen: U.S. Air Force | DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has provided the capability for ballistic missile attacks launched from Yemen, a senior U.S. Air Force official said on Friday. Jeffrey Harrigian, commander for southwest Asia at the U.S. Air Forces Central Command, also told reporters while on a visit to Dubai that it was important to find diplomatic solutions to tensions surrounding Lebanon instead of going to war. What we have seen, clearly from the results of the ballistic missile attacks, that there have been Iranian markings on those missiles, that s been demonstrated, Harrigian said. To me that connects the dots to Iran in terms of who s providing those missiles and that capability. Saudi Arabia, part of a coalition carrying out bombings of the Iran-allied armed Houthi movement in Yemen, has frequently intercepted missiles fired from its neighbor. Early this month, Saudi air defense forces intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Yemen over the capital Riyadh, state news agencies reported. The missile was brought down near King Khaled Airport on the northern outskirts of the city and did not cause casualties, the reports said. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has accused Lebanon and its Shi ite Hezbollah movement of declaring war on it. Riyadh has advised Saudi citizens not to travel to Lebanon, or if already there to leave as soon as possible. With respect to Lebanon, I think the goal will be to try to find diplomatic solutions, Harrigian said. I don t want to speak to specifically how the kingdom of Saudi Arabia will deal with that, but I would like to think we will be able to find a solution to that problem that would allow diplomatic efforts to achieve success versus going to war. | 0fake |
Trump leaves open possible Taiwan meet, questions Russia hacking | PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday left open the possibility of meeting with Taiwan’s president if she visits the United States after he is sworn in on Jan. 20 and also expressed continued skepticism over whether Russia was responsible for computer hacks of Democratic Party officials. In remarks to reporters upon entering a New Year’s Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump said, “We’ll see,” when pressed on whether he would meet Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president if she were to be in the United States at any point after he becomes president. Taiwan’s president will be in transit in Houston on Jan. 7 and again will be in transit in San Francisco on Jan. 13. Trump, citing protocol, said he would not meet with any foreign leaders while President Barack Obama is still in office. Beijing bristled when Trump, shortly after his Nov. 8 victory, accepted a congratulatory telephone call from the Taiwan leader and has warned against steps that would upset the “one-China” policy China and the United States have maintained for decades. Talk of a stop-over in the United States by the Taiwan president has further rattled Washington-Beijing relations. On another foreign policy matter, Trump warned against being quick to pin the blame on Russia for the hacking of U.S. emails. The Washington Post also reported on Friday that Moscow could be behind intrusion into a laptop owned by a Vermont electric utility. U.S. intelligence officials have said that they are confident Russia was behind the hacks of political figures, which could have played a role in Trump’s defeat over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “I think it’s unfair if we don’t know. It could be somebody else. I also know things that other people don’t know so we cannot be sure,” Trump said. Asked what that information included, the Republican President-elect said, “You will find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.” He did not elaborate. But he said that any computer is subject to hacks. “It’s very important. If you have something really important write it out and have it delivered by courier the old fashioned way,” Trump said, adding, “No computer is safe, I don’t care what they say.” Trump tried to end the year on a positive note, however, despite questions about the future of U.S.-Russia relations because of escalating tensions between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Trump’s promise to crack down on China’s trade practices, which he says unfairly target American workers. “Hopefully we’re going to have great relationships with many countries and that includes Russia and that includes China,” Trump said. But he criticized U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for earlier this week offering a stark assessment of Israel’s policies in the Middle East, which he said could threaten the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state co-existing with Israel. Trump called Kerry’s speech “very unfair.” As he wrapped up a four-minute informal chat with reporters, Trump also was asked what his 2017 new year’s resolution was. “Make America great again,” he said. | 0fake |
Trump officials defend immigration arrests at California courthouses | LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Federal agents have arrested illegal immigrants at California courthouses because local authorities have made such apprehensions at jails difficult, the Trump administration’s top two law enforcement officials told the state’s chief justice, who had requested a halt to the practice. In a letter to Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye made public on Friday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly gave no indication that agents would stop the arrests. Sessions and Kelly criticized California officials for limiting the cooperation of state and local law enforcement officers with U.S. agents, preventing them from going to jails to pick up illegal immigrants arrested for other crimes. “As a result, ICE officers and agents are required to locate and arrest these aliens in public places, rather than in secure jail facilities,” Sessions and Kelly wrote in the letter dated on Wednesday, using the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Kelly, whose Department of Homeland Security includes ICE, and Sessions, who as attorney general heads the Justice Department, are members of Republican President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Since taking office in January, Trump has widened the net for illegal immigrants to be detained and removed from the country, in keeping with his White House campaign promise. Immigrant rights groups say federal agents have entered courthouses with increased frequency this year, including in California, Massachusetts, Maryland and Texas. California law enforcement officers, including in Los Angeles and San Francisco, decline requests from ICE agents to hold illegal immigrants past their release dates in local jails so they can be transferred to federal custody. The stance of these law enforcement officials conforms with advice from the state’s two most recent attorneys general. These and other “sanctuary” jurisdictions that opt not to cooperate with federal immigration agents have drawn fire from conservative Republicans. On Monday, Sessions threatened to withhold millions of dollars in U.S. funding for cities that fail to assist immigration authorities. In their letter, Kelly and Sessions said agents make arrests at courthouses rather than other public places in part because visitors are screened for weapons before entering, as they are at jails. They were responding to a letter sent two weeks ago by Cantil-Sakauye, who asked the two Cabinet officials to stop immigration agents from arresting undocumented immigrants inside California courthouses. “Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our country’s immigration law,” she wrote. The presence of immigration agents in courthouses in the nation’s most populous state could undermine public trust in its judicial system, she said. Her letter went on to say that immigration agents were “stalking undocumented immigrants” at courthouses, language that drew a sharp rebuke from Sessions and Kelly. They said the use of the word “stalking” suggested criminal conduct. They said that was unwarranted because agents have full authority to arrest illegal immigrants. | 0fake |
Trump’s Own SCOTUS Nominee Just Threw Him Under The Bus Over His Stupid Tweets | Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump s nominee for the Supreme Court seat that s sat empty since Antonin Scalia died a year ago, has joined the ranks of the outraged when it comes to Trump and his damned Twitter account. Gorsuch is specifically upset with Trump s statements about the judiciary branch of the government, and told Sen. Richard Blumenthal that in a meeting earlier today: He said very specifically that they were demoralizing and disheartening and he characterized them very specifically that way, Blumenthal said of Gorsuch. I said they were more than disheartening and I said to him that he has an obligation to make his views clear to the American people, so they understand how abhorrent or unacceptable President Trump s attacks on the judiciary are. For someone who sits on the bench, it s easy to see how that would be disheartening and demoralizing. An attack doesn t have to be directed squarely at you to still feel like an attack. Trump attacked our entire judicial system and insulted all the judges within it when he went off on Judge Robart for blocking his Muslim ban. Gorsuch told Sen. Chuck Schumer as much, too.The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has been hearing arguments on the legality of the Muslim ban, and apparently the three judges hearing that case gave the lawyers arguing a really tough time. They grilled the lawyer representing the Department of Justice on whether the government even had evidence that the seven countries named in the ban are connected to terrorism.It s a pointed question because Saudi Arabia, which does have strong ties to terrorism and has exported terrorism to the U.S., is not included in the ban. When August Flentje refused to answer it and instead tried again to argue that Trump has broad authority in this area, Judge Michelle Friedland asked: Are you arguing then that the President s decision in that regard is unreviewable (by a court)? Flentje s answer was yes. In other words, Flentje argues that Trump can do what s necessary in his judgement to keep the U.S. safe, and a court can t say otherwise. That s part of what Robart weighed when he blocked the Muslim ban. The 9th Circuit will end up on Trump s radar here pretty quickly if they uphold Robart s decision.Then Gorsuch will have to determine whether he wants to serve on a court that s going to be the subject of juvenile attacks when they rule in a way that Trump doesn t like. His confirmation hearing is coming up. He probably won t withdraw, but he has a lot to think about right now.Read more:Featured image by Alex Wong via Getty Images | 1real |
Sputnik and Jill Stein Want A Vote Recount | Sputnik and Jill Stein Want A Vote Recount
Apparently the Russian news site and the Green Party candidate want a vote recount that could remove “peace with Russia” Trump and install “nuclear war with Russia” Hillary.
https://sputniknews.com/us/201611241047810414-stein-sputnik-interview-election-recount/
The post Sputnik and Jill Stein Want A Vote Recount appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org . | 1real |
Sanctuary cities see legal holes in Trump's immigration orders | (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to take away funding from self-proclaimed sanctuary cities had one big exemption for one of his favorite constituencies: the police, who would be protected from cuts. But Trump’s opponents say that very exemption makes it much more likely that a judge could strike down that section of the order as unconstitutional. It is just one example of the legal arguments that cities, immigration groups and other opponents are readying as they prepare to fight an executive order signed by Trump on Wednesday that would cut federal aid to “sanctuary” jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Lawyers for the potential challengers pointed to court rulings that said the federal government can only withhold funds to local jurisdictions if the money is directly tied to the behavior it objects to. The Trump administration cannot cut funds for sanctuary cities’ healthcare and education while preserving money for police, since those jobs relate more closely to immigration enforcement, said Richard Doyle, city attorney in San Jose, California. He said it was not clear whether existing federal funding or only future grants would be targeted. Supporters of the new Republican president’s actions say that sanctuary cities ignore federal law and think the White House will be able to answer with a strong case in court. Federal law allows Trump to restrict public assistance “of any kind where an illegal alien could possibly benefit,” said Dale Wilcox, executive director of the Washington-based conservative Immigration Reform Law Institute. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio in a news conference said his chief legal officer would be in court the “hour” after any specific action to withhold money came through. “There is less here than meets the eye. This executive order is written in a very vague fashion,” said de Blasio, a Democrat. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, also a Democrat, said his office was still examining whether it could sue before Trump made any specific move to cut funds. Trump’s order directed that funding be slashed to all jurisdictions that refuse to comply with a statute that requires local governments to share information with immigration authorities. Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the cities can argue “they are fully in compliance with that statute,” since they do share information with federal authorities, but offer limited cooperation when it comes to turning over immigrants who are not convicted criminals. There could also be procedural snarls to implementing the cuts, lawyers who specialize in federal grants said. If the U.S. government seeks to cut off grants to a certain recipient, it must go through a complicated process known as “suspension and debarment,” and cities would have the right to appeal. “It’s fair to say that they don’t understand the scope and reach of federal grants law,” said Edward Waters, who heads the federal grants practice at the law firm Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell in Washington, referring to the Trump administration. The White House would also have to negotiate with states that are home to sanctuary cities. Nearly 90 percent of $652 billion the federal government handed out through more 1,500 separate grant programs in the most recent fiscal year went to states, not directly to cities, according to a Reuters review of federal spending data. If the Trump administration wanted to try to cut off Medicaid money to Chicago, for example, it would have to work through the state government of Illinois, which could pose an additional barrier, Waters said. Advocacy groups for immigrants’ rights said they are also preparing their own legal challenges to other aspects of two executive orders Trump signed on Wednesday, examining sections that deal with expanding detention of immigrants and changing how asylum requests are processed. “All of our legal research is done, most of the complaints are all drafted,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, based in Los Angeles. She said litigation could be filed in the next days. | 0fake |
Iranian students feel robbed of their American dreams | DUBAI (Reuters) - The new U.S. immigration curbs have cast uncertainty over the futures of thousands of Iranian students in the United States, with many losing hope of being able to finish their studies or find a job in the country. President Donald Trump’s executive order bans travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries including Iran for three months, and there is little certainty of what will happen after that. Many of the students have spent their families’ life savings to pay for an American higher education, which they hope will be a ticket to a well-paid job in the West or Iran. Now they fear if they leave the country, they will not be allowed back in. They also do not know what status they will have after the three months are up, and whether they will be allowed to study, live or work in the United States. Amin Amouhadi, 32, studies at the University of Georgia. His girlfriend, who is also Iranian, is about to finish her PhD in Canada. “We were planning to get married in a month and move in together but the current ban and its possible consequences have put the future of all our plans in jeopardy,” he told Reuters. “I might quit my PhD program, (and) try to find a university in Canada to apply for. I can’t think of any other plan.” The United States is the most popular destination for Iranians studying abroad, despite decades of hostility between the two countries. The trend goes right to the top; Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet boasts more U.S. doctorates than did the cabinet of Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. About 8,700 Iranian students were at U.S. universities in 2014, a fifth of the estimated 50,000 Iranians studying abroad, according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. More than 3,000 Iranian students have received PhDs from American universities in the past three years, over 7,000 U.S. academics including 40 Nobel Laureates said in a petition against the order signed by Trump on Friday. They said the ban could lead to the departure of many talented individuals. Mohammadreza Jalaeipour, a post-doctorate student at Harvard University, has canceled a study visit to Oxford University in Britain because he was afraid he would not be able to return. The 34-year-old said he was not hopeful of extending his studies in another American university or receiving a visa for a job in the United States. “This discriminatory and inhumane order is targeted to harm Iranian society. It shows that the U.S. government is dishonest when it says they have no problem with the Iranian people and they are only against the Iranian government,” he said. Medical students could be among the hardest hit. Roozbeh Esfandiari is an Iranian who studied medicine in the United States before gaining a job as a researcher at Harris County psychiatric center in Houston. He said U.S. medicine school qualifications could not be easily transferred to other countries, so it would be a major blow for Iranian graduates if they were unable to work in the United States after several years of study. “This news (Trump’s order) is a headache for Iranian doctors applying for residency,” he said. The Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates said on its website that it was aware of the executive order and was evaluating the potential impact on international medical students and graduates. Even before Trump’s order, the road to American higher education has always been a tough one for Iranians. Since there is no U.S. embassy in Iran, students must travel to embassies or consulates in other countries to apply, which can cost them thousands of dollars. Student visas can take many months to secure. Because of security concerns, Iranians can face background stiff checks. Zahra Razavi, a computer science student at the University of Rochester, said her husband had applied for a U.S. visa several times under the Obama administration, with no success. The Trump order has crushed their lingering hopes of living together in the United States, she added. “This disaster has caused depression and deep anxiety in me. It’s impossible to continue this way. I have no choice but to say goodbye to my dreams and quit my studies.” Shirin Sajadi, an Iranian psychotherapist in Boston, wants to help shell-shocked students from her homeland by offering them free psychotherapy sessions. “There’s a sense of facing crisis and the need to make sense of the chaos surrounding us,” she told Reuters. “Many immigrants have come to this country when they had nothing but hope for a better life. They’ve worked hard, played by the rules and hoped to succeed. But now that hope is gone.” | 0fake |
‘Arab Spring’ and the Washington-Brussels-Riyadh Axis | I thought I was just scared of Trump – but it’s his America I fear ‹ › South Front Analysis & Intelligence is a public analytical project maintained by an independent team of experts from the four corners of the Earth focusing on international relations issues and crises. They focus on analysis and intelligence of the ongoing crises and the biggest stories from around the world: Ukraine, the war in Middle East, Central Asia issues, protest movements in the Balkans, migration crises, and others. In addition, they provide military operations analysis, the military posture of major world powers, and other important data influencing the growth of tensions between countries and nations. We try to dig out the truth on issues which are barely covered by governments and mainstream media. ‘Arab Spring’ and the Washington-Brussels-Riyadh Axis By South Front on November 5, 2016 …from SouthFront
When the “end of history”, meaning the establishment of a permanent Western hegemony over the entire international system, was proclaimed in the early 1990s, it was not yet obvious how the pursuit of said hegemony would evolve over the succeeding decades. The “velvet” expansion of the 1990s into the post-Soviet vacuum gave way to the “iron fist” for which the 9/11 terror strikes provided the excuse and which meant invading whichever country Washington desired. However, the “iron fist” efforts in the post-9/11 world demonstrated West’s weakness , as sustaining operations in Iraq and Afghanistan proved too much for NATO. This failure ushered the post-“post-9/11″ world, and the “Arab Spring” became the first, though far from the only, demonstration of the evolved Western strategy which fuses the earlier approaches.
The “velvet” aspect is still there: Western entities claim they are promoting “universal human values” which, evidently, is the end that justifies all means and which automatically means it is impossible to commit war crimes in its pursuit. Also, by implication, anyone who stands in the West’s way operates under the presumption of guilt. In order to promote said “universal values”, the West identifies, creates, or even invents a political movement which, although it consists of corrupt opportunists and outright criminals, ostensibly stands for “universal values”. This entity then receives overwhelmingly positive media coverage, to the point of referring to any police or military response to the violence it perpetrates as “war crimes”, in order to shape the public opinion in favor of limited military intervention in the form of airstrikes and a small number of special operations troops. Then one merely needs an excuse, a small incident, an insignificant act of violence by the target country’s law enforcement of the kind that happen in the US in a daily basis, in order to start beating the war drums against the “blood-soaked regime.” This approach was pioneered in Bosnia and Kosovo, the early exceptions to the “velvet” policy, but was then shelved in the post-9/11 era when it seemed that West’s aims could be achieved through more direct–and brutal–means, only to be resurrected by the Obama Administration and applied in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine with only minor variations.
But the “universal values” rhetoric is only camouflage aimed at securing the support of the liberal wing of the elite and obscuring the real aim of the aggression, the seizure of key national assets, be it petroleum or, in the case of Ukraine, farmland to bolster the fortunes of dominant sectors of Western economies, including finance and energy, and to preserve the fading Western hegemony. It is also evident Western powers are in an informal but very close alliance with the highly repressive governments of Gulf Arab states, which also stood to gain from eliminating the political competition posed by Libya’s government and from building pipelines to Europe over the corpse of the Syrian state. This alignment was made necessary by the West’s need for “boots on the ground” which can accomplish that which airpower alone cannot, with ISIS, Al-Nusra, Free Syrian Army, and other such formations being a NATO-trained and NATO-equipped force which can be sent where NATO soldiers can’t go, due to the domestic opposition such a move would provoke.
The insights into the finances of the various Clinton “foundations” provided by Wikileaks clearly show the inner workings of this alliance. The leaks also illustrate the key aspect of this alliance, namely the secretive and conspiratorial machinations of a small group of influential actors, as opposed to the broad elite consensus that existed during the Cold War. Nevertheless, this small group of conspirators on three continents now amounts to a de-facto Washington-Brussels-Riyadh axis. It is a relatively recent creation, dating to only the beginning of the Obama Administration. It did not exist during the George W. Bush Administration: Saudi Arabia was aghast at the idea of toppling the Sunni rule in Iraq, and the EU was mostly opposed to invading Iraq. Which made the EU’s embrace of regime change in Syria, Libya, and Ukraine all the more startling, though not entirely surprising. Just as the US foreign policies are driven by the fear of being eclipsed by rising or recovering powers like China or Russia, the 2008 crisis bared the EU’s weakness and thus provided an incentive for EU hardliners engage in reckless policies in the hopes of staving off its collapse.
Is the game worth the candle? Considering the shrillness of the pro-war propaganda in both the US and the EU today, to the point of risking World War 3, the imagined benefits of regime changes must have been enormous. Stamping out the last truly sovereign states of the Middle East would have strengthened the West’s claim on global hegemony. The failures Ukraine and in Syria, and ultimately also in Libya, therefore place Western powers face-to-face with the prospect of historic decline. Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VT, VT authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians, or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. LEGAL NOTICE - COMMENT POLICY Posted by South Front on November 5, 2016, With 23 Reads Filed under Politics . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. FaceBook Comments
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DEM PARTY OFFICIAL, Chair Of Black Caucus, Bernie Sanders Supporter Calls Reactions To Shooting Of Republican Steve Scalise, “So Funny”…REFUSES To Resign | A Nebraska Democratic Party official has refused calls to resign her volunteer position after calling reactions to this week s shooting of a high-ranking Republican member of Congress so funny on social media.NOT FUNNY: Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) a married father of two young children, is listed in critical condition after a 66 yr. old Democrat and Bernie Sanders supporter opened fire on Republicans who were practicing for their annual Democrat-Republican charity baseball game in Alexandria, VA.Chelsey Gentry-Tipton of Omaha said in statement that she will not resign as chairwoman of the party s Black Caucus, saying her post was taken out of context by party officials.Screen shot below is taken from Gentry-Tipton s Facebook page:The Nebraska party s leadership asked Gentry-Tipton to step down Wednesday, several hours after she wrote, in a Facebook thread about the shooting at in Alexandria, Virginia, Watching the congressman crying on live tv abt the trauma they experienced. Y is this so funny tho? House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., was shot in the early morning incident at a Washington, D.C., area baseball field. Four others were shot or injured. The gunman was shot and later died.Messages left Thursday with Gentry-Tipton seeking an interview were not immediately returned.Jane Kleeb, chairwoman of the Nebraska Democrats, said the news media s interest in what amounts to an internal party dispute was troubling and distracted from the more important issue of gun violence. Nonetheless, she confirmed that she and the party s central committee were deeply disappointed in the comments. Anyone who commits violence against anyone is wrong, Kleeb said Thursday. Anyone who makes insensitive comments about gun violence is wrong. For me that s the end of the story. In a separate Facebook post, Gentry-Tipton refused at this point to resign. Via: Omaha World-Herald | 1real |
He Had 8 Convictions for Driving Drunk. On His 9th, He Got Life. - The New York Times | The first eight convictions for driving while intoxicated didn’t stop Donald Middleton of Houston from sliding behind the wheel and getting his ninth conviction. This time, the judge had had enough. When Mr. Middleton, 56, faced Judge Kathleen Hamilton of the 359th District Court in Texas on Tuesday, she sentenced him to life in prison. He won’t be eligible for parole for 30 years. Such a harsh sentence is uncommon for convictions, which often lead to temporary license suspensions and prison stays that allow repeat offenders to return to the road. In Mr. Middleton’s case, he still had a valid driver’s license, despite the eight convictions. Mr. Middleton’s case raises the question: How many times does someone have to be caught driving drunk before he or she can no longer legally drive? He was arrested in May 2015 after he turned into the wrong lane and collided with a vehicle driven by a who was on the way home from work at a grocery store. Mr. Middleton ran into a nearby convenience store and repeatedly asked a clerk to hide him, prosecutors said. He had a level of 0. 184, more than twice the legal limit, 0. 08, according to Justin Fowles, a Montgomery County assistant district attorney. Mr. Middleton pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated last May and has been in jail since. The teenager, Joshua Hayden, was not injured, but his father, Rowdy Hayden, said in a telephone interview that he appreciated the judge’s harsh sentence. “It angers me, as a father, that this individual skirted the justice system eight times and was still out here endangering our citizens on the roadway by drinking and driving,” said Mr. Hayden, who is a police constable in Montgomery County. “His proven track record showed he was going to continue to drink and drive. And who knows, the next time he may have killed someone. ” Mr. Middleton had four previous stints in prison for driving while intoxicated. His eighth conviction, in 2008, involved a car with several people inside they sustained minor injuries. Mr. Middleton fell out of the car and was unable to stand, Mr. Fowles said. The conviction from that episode led to a prison sentence, of which he served four years. After the most recent conviction, he was classified as a habitual offender, which enabled the longer sentence. “He had proven to us that he can’t be trusted with his own freedom, that he’s a danger to our community and that the best thing for everyone else’s safety on the roadways is for him to never be able to drive again,” Mr. Fowles said in a telephone interview. Rules for stopping habitual drunken drivers vary wildly by state, but repeat offenders tend to get multiple extra chances. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that one in three people arrested on charges are repeat offenders. In Minnesota, a man was released from prison last year after a stay for his 27th conviction related to drunken driving. In Pennsylvania, one man was arrested five times in less than a year, but never lost his driver’s license or served more than 10 days in jail. Punishments also vary by state. In New York, a third aggravated charge of driving while intoxicated can bring a $10, 000 fine and seven years in prison, although penalties can increase for multiple violations within 25 years. In Arkansas, drivers permanently lose their licenses on their fourth offense within five years, in addition to criminal penalties. J. T. Griffin, the chief government affairs officer for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the organization had focused on promoting ignition interlock devices, which require anyone convicted of drunken driving to pass a breathalyzer test before starting a car. states have laws requiring them, including New York, he said. Suspending licenses can be ineffective when many people continue to drive without a valid license, he said. “We believe in going after D. U. I. the first time, not waiting for the second or third or fourth offense,” Mr. Griffin said. “The first time is unacceptable. And nine times is just ridiculous. ” | 0fake |
Campaign In Damage Control Mode After Trump Jr. BUSTED Joking About Holocaust (AUDIO) | If there s one rule in politics, it s that you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER joke about the Holocaust but Donald Trump Jr. apparently didn t get that memo from his white supremacist friends.Sure, Trump Jr. follows numeroous prominent white supremacists on Twitter, gives interviews to Nazi talk shows, and (like his father) retweets the meth-fueled white power crowd like it s going out of style (without realizing that that sort of thing went out of style before Twitter was a thing), but no one really expected him to just joke about the Holocaust after all, even most Nazis display more tact. The media has been her number one surrogate in this. Without the media, this wouldn t even be a contest, but the media has built her up, Trump Jr said in an interview with Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT in which he explained that if Republicans lied like Hillary Clinton whose fact-checked statements reveal she actually tells the truth most of the time, unlike Donald Trump there would be hell to pay:They ve let her slide on every indiscrepancy (sic), on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing. If Republicans were doing that, they d be warming up the gas chamber right now. After the interview, Trump told NBC News that he was referencing corporal punishment, not the Holocaust, though he did not state what form of corporal punishment involves gas chambers aside from, you know, gas chambers. Like all those times Trump Jr. and his father have retweeted white supremacist imagery and propaganda, he says that this was not the least bit anti-Semitic.Hear it for yourself below: Featured image via Getty Images/Jeff Swensen | 1real |
Kaine says Clinton would seek updated war-making powers | Yahoo News Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine said in an interview published Monday that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would quickly ask Congress for fresh legal authority to make war on the so-called Islamic State and other terrorist groups around the world. “Hillary has said that that’s something she wants to do very early in her administration,” the Virginia senator said. He made his remarks in an interview with “ The Axe Files ,” hosted by David Axelrod, a former top adviser to President Obama. Kaine said the former secretary of state will press lawmakers to rewrite the Sept. 14, 2001, Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that set the stage for the invasion of Afghanistan and has underpinned the entire war on terrorism. Obama has invoked the measure to argue that his undeclared but escalating war on ISIS is legal, a position Kaine had previously dismissed as an “ Alice in Wonderland ” strategy. Clinton believes that “it’s time for us to take that now-outdated authorization, and really think about what we are confronting, and work together to reach some legislative-executive accord about what it is we’re doing,” Kaine told Axelrod. “It’s time for Congress to get back in the game and refine and revise that authorization.” Seventy percent of the current Congress wasn’t in office when lawmakers approved the 2001 AUMF, and America’s terrorist enemies have “morphed and changed,” the senator argued. Obama called in a May 2013 speech for revising and repealing the 2001 AUMF, saying it was time to get America off “a perpetual wartime footing.” His top aides have since admitted that the job will fall to the next president . No lawmaker has worked harder than Kaine to get Congress to debate and vote on an AUMF that specifically covers the Islamic State. “We have allowed President Obama to wage an executive war of his own choosing without any congressional permission for nearly two years,” Kaine told Virginia Military Institute cadets at their graduation in mid-May. “It’s not hard to imagine that a future president will use this example to also justify initiating war without the permission of Congress.” Clinton had sent mixed messages about whether she would seek a new AUMF, but lined up earlier this year squarely behind her running mate’s view. A spokesman for her campaign, Jesse Lehrich, told Yahoo News in July that the former secretary of state “agrees with Senator Kaine that if we are serious about confronting ISIS, Congress ought to express its resolve to stand behind our military and win this fight by passing a new AUMF.” After stalling at the request of vulnerable Democratic lawmakers facing the 2014 midterm elections, Obama finally submitted an ISIS-specific AUMF to Congress in February 2015, but it’s essentially dead . The legislation reflected his national security aides’ desire that it not tie his hands. The document authorized airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the following three years. It forbade the use of American ground troops in “ enduring offensive ground combat operations ” — a term the White House described as deliberately vague. It also allowed strikes against “individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside ISIL” anywhere in the world. Democrats have balked at supporting such a sweeping measure. Republicans have pointed to the three-year limit and the ground-combat language to argue that the AUMF improperly binds the hands of Obama’s successor. The truth of the matter is that both sides see political peril in the president’s proposal. Democrats recall how voting in favor of the Iraq War helped to doom Clinton’s 2008 presidential ambitions. And Republicans, who could vote to remove the language they describe as objectionable, prefer to criticize Obama’s handling of the conflict without taking any steps that might make them co-owners of the strategy. | 1real |
U.S. oil industry cheers Trump energy pick, seeks gas export boost | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. oil and gas industry on Wednesday welcomed President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of former Texas Governor Rick Perry to head the U.S. Department of Energy, and wasted no time making its first specific request of him: to support increased exports of America’s natural gas overseas. Trump named Perry as his pick for the top U.S. energy job on Wednesday morning, handing the portfolio to a climate change skeptic with close ties to the oil and gas industry, and who previously proposed abolishing the department. The choice adds to a list of drilling proponents who have been tapped for top jobs in Trump’s administration, worrying environmental groups but fitting neatly with Trump’s promise to revive oil and gas drilling and coal mining as president by cutting back on federal regulation. Jack Gerard, president of the Washington-based American Petroleum Institute representing oil and natural gas companies, said he welcomed Perry’s nomination, and called on him to make increasing exports of U.S. natural gas a “top priority.” “As the former governor of Texas, Rick Perry knows the important impact that energy production has on our nation’s economy. In his new role at the Energy Department, he has the opportunity to encourage increased exports of domestically produced natural gas,” he said in a statement. Natural gas companies are eager to access foreign markets for their supply after a decade-long drilling boom that triggered a domestic glut and depressed prices. The oil industry successfully lobbied for an end to a decades-old crude oil export ban in December 2015 following a slump in prices, a move meant to help American companies weather lower prices at home. There is no ban on natural gas exports, but U.S. law requires American companies to obtain authorization from the Energy Department before being able to ship it overseas, and there are tough permitting requirements for building the specialized facilities that make shipping gas possible. The United States exported its first cargo of liquefied natural gas earlier this year from an export facility on the Gulf Coast, but the industry has complained that boosting exports to match global demand has been constrained by a slow and opaque bureaucratic process. U.S. energy exports have long been a contentious political issue, dividing lawmakers seeking to balance the benefits of low consumer prices at home and American energy independence against opportunities for companies to expand access to potentially lucrative foreign markets. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has made energy a central part of his agenda, vowing a revival in the oil, gas and coal industries, and picking industry allies for top administration jobs. On Tuesday, Trump selected oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp’s CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. His Environmental Protection Agency pick is Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a foe of Democratic President Barack Obama’s initiatives to combat climate change. Trump said during his campaign he would pull the United States out of a global deal to curb emissions of carbon dioxide signed in Paris last year, though he has since confused observers by saying he would keep an “open mind” on the accord. An overwhelming number of scientists say carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels contributes to changes to the climate that are leading to sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms. Trump’s transition team said Perry’s tenure leading Texas, the nation’s second most populous state and a major producer of oil, gas and wind power, from 2000 until 2015 made him a strong pick for energy secretary. Trump said in a statement Perry had created “a business climate that produced millions of new jobs and lower energy prices in his state, and he will bring that same approach to our entire country as secretary of energy.” The department is responsible for U.S. energy policy and oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons program. Perry is a former presidential rival and critic of Trump who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in 2016 and 2012. His nomination requires Senate confirmation. If confirmed, he would replace Ernest Moniz, a physicist who was one of the chief negotiators in last year’s Iran nuclear deal. After his tenure as Texas governor, Perry joined the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based company building the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota that has been stalled by protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and supporters. Anthony Scaramucci, a member of the Trump transition team’s executive committee, said the president-elect was focused on preserving the environment as well as boosting U.S. energy production. “Whether you believe in climate change or not, we want clean air, we want clean water for the American people. What we also want is energy independence,” Scaramucci told CNN. Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who backed Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election, said he hoped Perry’s nomination would be blocked. “Trump no longer has to abolish departments. He can dismantle them from within,” Steyer said. “It’s now up to the Senate to defend our health, our economy and our democracy by defeating this nomination.” | 0fake |
U.S.-backed militias say they take major Raqqa position from ISIS | BEIRUT (Reuters) - The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has taken the National Hospital in Raqqa, one of Islamic State s last remaining bastions in its former Syrian capital, a militia spokesman said on Tuesday. The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, is now fighting Islamic State in the area around Raqqa stadium, said the spokesman Mostafa Bali in a message. During these clashes, the National Hospital was liberated and cleared from the Daesh mercenaries, and 22 of these foreign mercenaries were killed there, said Bali. The stadium is the last major position held by Islamic State after four months of battle in Raqqa and the departure of some of its fighters under a deal on Sunday, leaving only foreign jihadists. Islamic State has lost swathes of its territory in Syria and Iraq this year, including its most prized possession Mosul, and in Syria it has been forced back into a strip of the Euphrates valley and surrounding areas of desert. The SDF has been supported by a U.S.-led international coalition with air strikes and special forces operating on the ground since it started the fight for Raqqa in early June. | 0fake |
400,000 children still displaced from Mosul fighting: Save the Children | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Around 400,000 children are still displaced from the fighting for Mosul, one year after the start of a military offensive to recapture the Iraqi city from the Islamic State, Save the Children said on Monday. Islamic State s self-declared caliphate effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces re-took Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, after a grueling nine-month battle. Just because the fighting in Mosul has stopped doesn t mean the humanitarian needs aren t great. If anything, children need our help now more than ever - those that are still displaced and those that are returning to see what s left of their homes, said the London-based charity s Iraq country director, Ana Locsin. Large parts of Mosul have been reduced to rubble; schools, homes, hospitals, roads, playgrounds and parks. I ve spoken to dozens of children haunted by their experiences, left with psychological scars that ll take years to heal, Locsin said in a statement. With the fall of Mosul and other small towns in the country s north and west, the only area still under control of Islamic State in Iraq is a stretch alongside the western border with Syria, where the militant group is also in retreat. | 0fake |
Trump Gets His A** Handed To Him By British Lawmakers For Lying About Rising Crime Rate In UK | Donald Trump stuck his foot in his mouth again and pissed off our closest ally.A recent report indicates that the crime rate is rising in the United Kingdom due to gang-related activities and hate crimes against Muslims.Of course, rather than read the report to understand it, Trump took to Twitter to bellow about how radical Islamic terror is the cause and seemed to promote his Muslim ban as the way to keep America safe! Just out report: United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror. Not good, we must keep America safe! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2017Trump s ridiculously uninformed commentary on the crime rate in the United Kingdom did not go over very well with British lawmakers, who promptly humiliated Trump with facts.Labour Party MP Chris Bryant told Trump to back off and reminded him that America has a massive gun violence problem. Butt out of it mister president, Bryant said. You have more murders in New York or Chicago every year than we do in the whole country so we re not going to take any lessons from you. Labour Party MP Stephen Doughty chimed in by telling the Daily Mail that Trump is talking nonsense and also took aim at Trump for not doing anything to stop mass shootings in America. Donald Trump would be better placed looking at issues in his own country such as the huge number of deaths from gun violence which despite repeated atrocities from Sandy Hook to Las Vegas, the US government have failed to take action on, Doughty said.Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson slammed Trump as well, and went so far as to blame Trump s xenophobia for the rise in hate crimes. Hate crime is up and it is fueled by the kind of populist xenophobia you peddle, she said.Needless to say, the British people were not happy about Trump s comments either.please don t mention us in your propaganda, we all hate you here. TechnicallyRaarrrghh (@TechnicallyRon) October 20, 2017Once again, Trump made a fool of himself and demonstrated why America is a joke on the international stage.Featured Image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1real |
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FLORIDA COUPLE SPOTS MAN With “Death to America” Sign Then Take Matters Into Their Own Hands [Video] | This is yet another example of just how crazy it has become under Obama s divisive administration. It seems like every day is a protest. Patriotism needs to make a comeback with the next president After a couple spotted a man holding a sign that read Death to America on a curb in Middleburg, Florida, they decided to take matters into their own hands by physically beating up the man and snatching the sign away from him in a Tuesday encounter that was caught on camera.The man and woman were driving past the curb in a gray Nissan when they saw Charles Brownett standing there with his sign, which read Death to America according to WJAX-TV. The woman in the car allegedly shouted at Brownett, Why don t you leave America? to which he responded, Give me some money, the Clay County Sheriff s Office report stated. | 1real |
The #1 Reason Why People Are Voting for Trump | The #1 Reason Why People Are Voting for Trump
Can Trump’s candidacy be saved? The American Middle Class better hope so.
Trump is not a politician. He is not terribly well-spoken, for a politician. Yet, he has turned the globalists upside down as they are in an absolute panic.
Why are people voting for Donald Trump? The answers lie inside this video. | 1real |
CBD-Infused Cannabis Milk Soothes Anxiety And Is Hitting Stores Soon | By Amanda Froelich For a long time, green juice and green smoothies were considered to be the ‘peak’ of what one seeking to nourish their body could consume. While both offer numerous benefits,... | 1real |
NOT SO FUNNY GUY, Liberal WILL FERRELL Makes Movie Mocking Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s…Reagan’s Daughter Has A Few Choice Words For Him | What s next Making a comedy at the Humane Society about euthanizing pets? Patti Davis, daughter of late President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, penned a moving open letter to actor Will Ferrell on Thursday criticizing his involvement in an upcoming comedic film that will satirize President Reagan s tragic battle with Alzheimer s disease.The film, based on a 2015 Black List script, centers on a fictional story in which President Reagan begins suffering from dementia shortly after a landslide reelection victory in 1984. A young aide must convince Reagan that he is an actor playing the President in a movie.Ferrell is attached to play Reagan in the film and will produce it under his Gary Sanchez Productions banner.Here is the letter Patty Davis penned to Ferrell:Dear Mr. Ferrell,I saw the news bulletin as did everyone that you intend to portray my father in the throes of Alzheimer s for a comedy that you are also producing. Perhaps you have managed to retain some ignorance about Alzheimer s and other versions of dementia. Perhaps if you knew more, you would not find the subject humorous.Alzheimer s doesn t care if you are President of the United States or a dockworker. It steals what is most precious to a human being memories, connections, the familiar landmarks of a lifetime that we all come to rely on to hold our place secure in this world and keep us linked to those we have come to know and love. I watched as fear invaded my father s eyes this man who was never afraid of anything. I heard his voice tremble as he stood in the living room and said, I don t know where I am. I watched helplessly as he reached for memories, for words, that were suddenly out of reach and moving farther away. For ten long years he drifted past the memories that marked his life, past all that was familiar and mercifully, finally past the fear.There was laughter in those years, but there was never humor.Alzheimer s is the ultimate pirate, pillaging a person s life and leaving an empty landscape behind. It sweeps up entire families, forcing everyone to claw their way through overwhelming grief, confusion, helplessness, and anger. Perhaps for your comedy you would like to visit some dementia facilities. I have I didn t find anything comedic there, and my hope would be that if you re a decent human being, you wouldn t either.Twice a week I run a support group called Beyond Alzheimer s for caregivers and family members of those with Alzheimer s and dementia. I look into haunted eyes that remind me of my own when my father was ill. I listen to stories of helplessness and loss and am continually moved by the bravery of those who wake up every morning not knowing who their loved one will be that day, or what will be lost. The only certainty with Alzheimer s is that more will be lost and the disease will always win in the end.Perhaps you would like to explain to them how this disease is suitable material for a comedy. | 1real |
Comment on Multiple NY Police Departments Under Investigation for Hosting Gay Sex Parties With Underage Boys by john smith | Multiple NY Police Departments Under Investigation for Hosting Gay Sex Parties With Underage Boys Multiple NY Police Departments Under Investigation for Hosting Gay Sex Parties With Underage Boys Matt Agorist November 3, 2016 1 Comment
Schenectady, NY — A police officer’s suspension over an investigation into writing fraudulent checks has prompted a multi-agency investigation into alleged gay sex parties for police officers. While sex parties alone are not criminal, a source close to the investigation said the parties were attended by young boys who were not of legal age to drink or consent to having sex with adults.
Sgt. Jonathan E. Moore, 35, of the Schenectady police department, has been suspended after he and his boyfriend, Anthony Aubin, 27, were caught at trying to use a fraudulent check to purchase a $92,000 Jaguar. Aubin was arrested on felony charges for attempting to use the check.
However, according to a report in the Times Union, the arrest of Aubin, who has a lengthy criminal record and was recently on parole, has triggered a much broader, multi-agency police investigation into allegations that gay officers may have hosted or taken part in sex parties — called “breeding parties” — that allegedly were attended by teenagers who were not of legal age to drink alcohol or consent to having sex with adults.
Aside from the Schenectady police department investigation, the probe has spread to the Albany police department as well. As the Times reports, other departments may also become involved in the broader investigation, according to a person briefed on the matter but not authorized to comment publicly.
“I’m not really in a position to say anything about it at this point,” Albany police Chief Brendan Cox said Tuesday. “There is a case we are looking into but we are not in a position to even gauge whether or not there is any truth to what has been alleged.”
Moore also admitted to using the state-run criminal database for personal reasons to check the background of his boyfriend.
According to the report, Moore told police that he knew Aubin had a lengthy criminal record but had no idea the checks were fakes. The $92,000 check was purported to be from a Miami law office and the $15,000 check was from a fictitious company on Washington Avenue in Albany, reported the Times.
Moore told investigators that Aubin moved in with him several months ago and the couple was planning to make a lot of money because they had signed contracts with a Connecticut company called Bear Films to make gay porn movies.
In a statement on Wednesday, Schenectady police Chief Eric Clifford said Moore’s involvement in the pornography industry may have violated departmental policies, but he did not mention whether or not the officer will face charges.
Clifford said it’s “not appropriate to have him out on the street working for us.”
After Aubin was locked up, he apparently began rolling over on all his other connections in police departments. His allegations have sparked investigations into other officers who may have had unlawful sex with teenage boys.
Police officers having sex with underage victims is, unfortunately, a fairly common practice. Police sexual misconduct is so common that more than 1,000 officers have had their licenses revoked in just the last six years for it — nearly half of them involve underage victims.
According to the report , around 1,000 policemen across the US had their licenses revoked and lost their jobs over the last six years on account of numerous sexual offenses that included rape and possession of child pornography.
The probe involved examining records from 41 states to see how many police officers’ licenses were revoked in 2009-2014 and for which offenses. Police desertification data was not provided by nine states and the District of Columbia. The investigation included examining the records of state and local police, sheriff’s deputies, prison guards and school resource officers. However, no federal officers were included in the investigation, meaning that number is likely higher. Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter and now on Steemit Share | 1real |
Megyn [sic] Kelly: Gowdy Triumphantly Comments on the Hillary Case Reopening | October 29, 2016
Weiner's revenge. Do Jews go to jail? He may be able to finagle this into some kind of legal cloak for himself.
Can't stand Kelly's 'active listening' face. She has practiced keeping that big mandible shut - you can see her wanting to interrupt. Her neck strength must be immense.
Studies show her jaw currently weighs 74.3 lbs. Holding it shut is a catch-22 as it grows through the act of holding itself shut (she cut her hair to decrease neck strain). Leading scientists/studies show, if she does not allow herself to become a mouth breather, that her mandible will triple in size by 3/10/2018. The growth tripling time will decrease by 6 mo's every month thereafter. | 1real |
Two Trump Tweets Debunk Russian Connection Conspiracy | 21st Century Wire says Partisan liberal hypocrisy strikes again.Yesterday, Trump debunked the Russian connection conspiracy by exposing two photographs, via his Twitter, which show two key Democratic conspiracy theorists, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, meeting with Russia s Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin respectively.In the following video report, Stuart J. Hooper shows the extent of how truly ridiculous the Russian connection conspiracy really is after the outing of these new photos:Watch the video here: READ MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Some See Anti-Women Backlash in Ouster of Brazil’s President - The New York Times | BRASÍLIA — At one heated moment in the impeachment trial of Dilma Rousseff, a powerful senator pushing for her ouster decided that some of his outspoken female colleagues in the chamber needed scolding. “Calm down, girls,” the senator, Cássio Cunha Lima, part of a political dynasty from northeastern Brazil, told Senators Vanessa Grazziotin and Gleisi Hoffmann, both supporters of Ms. Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president. His remark drew sharp rebukes from the two women. “Men believe they are the owners of this space, as if we’re just here by chance,” said Ms. Grazziotin, 55, a prominent leftist senator from Amazonas State. For senators like Ms. Grazziotin, the episode reflected the emboldening of conservative voices after the impeachment of Ms. Rousseff, who argued that she had been the target of misogynistic attacks by opponents. Female politicians across Brazil are debating what her downfall means in a political realm dominated by men. Despite the inroads made by Ms. Rousseff and others, Brazil ranks remarkably low in the representation of women in politics. Of the 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress, 51 are women, placing the country 155th in the world in the percentage of women elected to the lower house of a national legislature, according to the Union. It trails places like Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan. The administration of Michel Temer, Ms. Rousseff’s successor — a former ally who emerged victorious in the power struggle to oust her — is doing little to assuage fears that women will be sidelined. Upon taking office more than three months ago, Mr. Temer named an cabinet in a country where just 48 percent of the population of 206 million is male. Depicting a suburban idyll in which a president is greeted by his spouse, a much younger housewife, the cover of this month’s edition of the Brazilian magazine Piauí captured the cultural shift to the right embodied by Mr. Temer, 75, whose wife, Marcela, a former beauty pageant contestant, is 42 years younger. Throughout the impeachment proceedings, female allies of Ms. Rousseff’s in Congress argued that the way her impeachment was carried out reflected a political establishment in which women were still supposed to serve as accessories to powerful men. A new wave of vitriolic positioning against female politicians like Ms. Rousseff is fueling these concerns. During the impeachment trial, for instance, Jaufran Siqueira, a socially conservative politician in the northeastern city of Natal, seized on a new idea for gaining votes. “This is what will happen to feminists when Jaufran is elected,” Mr. Siqueira, 25, proclaimed alongside a photograph he posted on his campaign’s Facebook page, showing a house engulfed in flames. “I can’t deny that I oppose the feminist movement,” said Mr. Siqueira, a real estate broker who emerged into the national spotlight with his campaign. “But it’s absurd to claim I’m going to set fire to women. ” He said the photo had been merely “a joke. ” Despite the increasing tensions, female political leaders in Brazil remain far from unanimous on whether Ms. Rousseff was driven from office because of her gender. Marina Silva, the former maid who is a leading contender for the 2018 presidential election, said in an interview that Ms. Rousseff’s ouster was rooted in incompetence and deeply flawed policy making, referring to charges that she manipulated the federal budget to conceal economic problems. “My understanding is that Dilma’s budget maneuvers were illegal,” said Ms. Silva, 58, an environmentalist, who repeatedly clashed with Ms. Rousseff when both were ministers in the cabinet of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the leftist Workers’ Party. “Conservatives are getting more vociferous on a global level — just look at Trump in the United States,” said Ms. Silva, referring to Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, who, when asked if he had met Ms. Rousseff, responded: “No. Who is he?” “This doesn’t mean that women won’t play a crucial role in Brazilian politics after Dilma’s impeachment,” Ms. Silva said. “Of course we will. We have too much momentum now to stop us. ” As campaigning intensifies for municipal elections, other leaders at different points on Brazil’s ideological spectrum echoed such views. “I don’t see this moment as something that disappoints the aspirations of Brazilian women,” said Teresa Surita, a supporter of Ms. Rousseff’s ouster, who is running for as the mayor of Boa Vista, a city in the Brazilian Amazon. Ms. Surita, 60, who has battled graft charges, said she remained committed to improving life in her city. A member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, the centrist party of Mr. Temer, she said that achieving her goals involved maintaining smooth ties with the federal government in the capital, Brasília. “I have to be aware of the need for support from the federal government, regardless of who is in power,” she said. While women hold only of the seats in the lower house of Congress, a more complex picture may be emerging at the local level. For instance, 51 cities have only women running for mayor this year, according to the Superior Electoral Court, and women account for nearly 33 percent of the candidates for City Council seats this year. Women are also gaining positions of prominence in the judiciary. Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, 62, a supporter of affirmative action, gay rights and fewer abortion restrictions, is rising this month to become the chief justice of Brazil. Still, others contend that Ms. Rousseff’s ouster revealed the ugly workings of Brazil’s political scene. As large protests flare against Mr. Temer’s administration, especially on the streets of São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, thousands of women are voicing opposition to the new government. “Temer took out Dilma because a man doesn’t like to answer to a woman, and as president, she was the one telling them what to do,” said Rayra Lima de Araújo, 14, a high school student who attended the antigovernment protests on Sunday with her mother, Maria da Cruz Lima, 43, an unemployed nurse. Taking the stand during her impeachment trial, Ms. Rousseff argued that her male counterparts did not have to contend with the same attacks on their character. “I’ve always been described as a woman in the midst of delicate men,” she said. “I never saw a man accused of being and we know that they are. ” But even Ms. Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, once one of Latin America’s most powerful political parties, is grappling with an internal debate over sexism as it tries to reinvent itself. Leaders in the party came under intense scrutiny this year after secret recordings revealed a range of explicitly sexist banter, including crude jokes by Mr. da Silva, the former president, about top female party members. Míriam Leitão, an economic historian and one of Brazil’s most influential columnists, said the Workers’ Party was using the debate over women in politics to try to discredit the impeachment process because it cost the party the presidency it had held for more than 13 years. “Dilma didn’t fall because she is a woman,” Ms. Leitão wrote in her column in the newspaper O Globo. “She produced a surge in inflation, a recession of historical significance, and lost her job. ” | 0fake |
Republicans In Congress Want To Give Donald Trump Unrestricted War Powers | If Donald Trump becomes president, you better prepare for World War III, because if Republicans have their way, their presumptive nominee will have unprecedented power to wage war across the globe without restrictions from Congress.Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump has bragged that he wants to have a much stronger military so strong that nobody is going to mess with us. Of course, that means increased military spending that is completely unnecessary because we already have the top military in the world and we spend more on our military than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, England, India, and Germany combined. In fact, we could slash our military spending in half and would still spend more than any other nation.Graph courtesy of Peter G. Peterson FoundationBut Republicans are gunning to keep military spending at monstrous levels and they are willing to give Trump unprecedented and unlimited war power.Earlier this year, Senate Republicans introduced a new Authorization for Use of Military Force that would authorize presidents to wage war anywhere anytime without having to ask Congress for a declaration of war as the Constitution requires.According to Huffington Post:[The AUMF] would give the president new authority to take action against the militant group also known as ISIS or ISIL. It wouldn t put any limits on the duration, geography or use of U.S. ground combat troops in the war, or on the means by which the U.S. military could act. It also would keep in place a broad AUMF from 2001 that never expired and that allows the president to take military action against anyone, anywhere, connected to the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks.In other words, Donald Trump would have complete power to go to war whenever he wants against whomever he wants and Republican lawmakers are just fine with that because they don t want the responsibility of making war decisions. I don t like the idea of telling a commander-in-chief they can t go where ISIL goes, they re limited by time, geography and means, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said. If I don t like the time, geography or means, I can cut off funding. Alabama GOP Rep. Mike Rogers thinks Donald Trump would be an improvement over President Obama, who has used diplomacy effectively in his foreign policy agenda while limiting his own war strategy to air strikes and predator drone strikes rather than sending thousands of American troops to war.South Carolina GOP Rep. Joe Wilson thinks we need to finish what we started, and he is totally okay with Donald Trump controlling the military because he suggested Trump will also try to work with the terrorists, too.Senator Chuck Grassley said he would comfortable with Trump as long as he has a plan, and Arizona GOP Rep. Trent Franks wants Trump to advocate the maintenance and strength of a military capable of dealing with the growing threats to freedom this world faces and dismiss the practice of Mr. Obama of emboldening our enemies and disheartening our friends. That s basically code meaning that Trump should rip up the nuclear deal with Iran to reduce their nuclear material and attack them instead even though the deal is working.Trump has already declared his disapproval of the deal. He also said in 2011 that America should use any and all means necessary to stop Iran s nuclear program, which includes military force.Republicans are already itching for a war against Iran. A President Trump could give them one unilaterally.Trump has also suggested in his book The America We Deserve that he would use force against North Korea, which would guarantee a new Korean War.[In a Trump presidency], North Korea would suddenly discover that its worthless promises of civilized behavior would cut no ice. I would let Pyongyang know in no uncertain terms that it can either get out of the nuclear arms race or expect a rebuke similar to the one Ronald Reagan delivered to Ghadhafi in 1986. I don t think anybody is going to accuse me of tiptoeing through the issues or tap-dancing around them either. Who else in public life has called for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea?Trump has also not been secretive about the fact that he wants to bring back the use of torture and commit war crimes against civilian populations in the effort to defeat terrorists.That s scary enough, but consider this.As president, Donald Trump would also have control over the nation s nuclear arsenal. And he has already refused to rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe and the Middle East.In short, a President Trump could usher in a nuclear Armageddon and Congress has absolutely no problem with this.If Trump somehow defeats Hillary Clinton in November and Republicans retain control of the Senate and the House, we could see World War III as the thin-skinned businessman in the White House responds to the smallest of slights or Republican prodding with military strikes that could spill the blood of thousands of American soldiers and put the country further into debt.That is what is at stake in this election so let s hope people start taking this seriously.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
REDUX 1963? The Deep State vs Donald Trump | Patrick Henningsen 21st Century WireWatching this week s Senate cabinet confirmation hearings was one of the most uncomfortable sights I have ever witnessed in politics. One self aggrandizing US Senator after another, each spouting out half-truths and speaking in innuendo and supposition as if it were historical fact. The level of ignorance about world events was breathtaking. Key foreign policy cabinet nominees were Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, General James Mattis for Defense Secretary, and Mike Pompeo for CIA director. All three men were grilled by a pride of chickenhawks and self-styled foreign policy experts like Senator Roger Wick (R), Marco Rubio (R), Bob Menendez (D) and of course, by Washington s twin neoconservative ventriloquists, John McCain (R) and Lindsey Graham (R).Particularly disturbing was the chicken-hawkish bullying by Marco Rubio of Tillerson, where the Florida Senator demanded that a future Secretary of State adopt the bellicose language of the war-monger when describing the Russian President. YOU MUST COMPLY: Nominee Rex Tillerson is trolled by Senator Marco Rubio.Regarding events in Syria that Rubio believes are war crimes, but of which there is zero evidence, Rubio asked, Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal? Tillerson replied, I would not use that term. Rubio went on to list things he s seen on the internet and CNN about Putin s attacks on civilians and accused the Russian leader of killing political opposition leaders and journalists.Tillerson replied saying, I would want to have much more information before reaching a conclusion, and he called Rubio s accusations, very serious charges. That would be the mature answer. But Rubio wanted Tillerson to comply. I find it discouraging your inability to cite that, which I think is globally accepted, Rubio replied.It was a disgusting display of arrogance and propaganda laundering by Rubio, like the other trolling Senators demanding that Russia must be our enemy and we must retaliate to a election hack which never happened. In this new environment of irrationality and avarice, if you resist, and if you choose diplomacy and base your views on facts, then you are un-American. This seems to be the current culture in Washington and the mainstream media: compliance to group think and these Senate hearings showed just how far US officials are willing to go to enforce compliance on all major issues complying on Israel, on Putin, and on the supremacy of the intelligence community. One of the only voices brave enough to speak up about the sordid scene in the Senate was California Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R), who said during a recent radio interview that warmongers like Rubio are sabotaging potential future relations with Russia by calling Putin a war criminal. All of this follows the other regressive trend the crypto-fascist talking point that has been advanced in recent weeks by the likes of Wolf Blitzer and other mainstream news anchors, all of whom have insinuated that if Trump or anyone else does not swallow the entire DNI Intelligence Assessment on the Russian Hack then they are somehow disrespecting the institution of the CIA or any other so-called intelligence body, or even worse, that they are unpatriotic. Why won t the President-Elect accept the findings of the intelligence community?! crowed CNN s Blitzer and other practically brow-beating guests who appeared on the network. It s as if the only acceptable answer was total submission. For those who are old enough to remember, this is a repeat of the Iraq War deception in 2003. Low and behold, the same media operatives and political demons have been deployed to police a similar group-think regime in 2016. That should be a clue to anyone pay attention, that we are witnessing another scam.The following commentary may seem a bit far-fetched on the surface, but when you consider everything that has already gone down over the last 4 months in US politics, then the probability of another black swan event doesn t seem so far-flung. It s important to put this into historical context, and do a comparative analysis with John F Kennedy s Bay of Pigs defeat a seminal event in US geopolitics and a major set-back for the Deep State at the time, and one that was blamed on JFK s inability to facilitate a CIA win in Cuba. A number of prominent historians and researchers have credited that defeat, along with Kennedy s desire to break-up the CIA as a primary motive for JFK s assassination. When you consider this against the present day back-drop of President Obama s 5 year failure of a proxy war to overthrow the Syrian government a war which Hillary Clinton herself instituted, there are a number a striking parallels between then and now. More striking yet, is Donald Trump s public calls to reorganise the intelligence agencies a move which threatens the very fabric of the contemporary Deep State which runs Washington and the Atlanticist alliance.In so many ways, Trump might be viewed as a moral enemy of the Deep State that has been allowed to reign unhindered by any real oversight, and accountable only to itself.The danger seems palatable, so much so that some establishment journalists are breaking ranks by talking openly about the Deep State a topic previously reserved for the fringes of political and geopolitical commentary and certainly not acceptable for debate on a mainstream broadcast TV network. The Intercept s Glenn Greenwald has recently written a piece which outlines this very scenario where the Deep State has declared war on Donald Trump, and if Trump continues to push back against these institutions, the consequences could be dire. Greenwald focused on the recent fake Trump-Russia dossier which he stated was the work of the Intelligence Community. Looking at these last two weeks, it is clear that such a progression of events has been advanced already: The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There is a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combating those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach. But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it. By demonizing Russia, and then tying Donald Trump to that country, the establishment has accomplished its mission in ruining the so-called peaceful transition of power. Interestingly, this bizarre phrase was really only introduced by US media operatives this past fall, and for a reason. Now we can see why.Consider what we are seeing to play-out right now a political free-for-all, where the level of hate and irrational vitriol which has been intentionally built-up over, and is unprecedented in modern history.Based on the events we have seen over the past two months the Democrat-organized street protests and call to abolish the Electoral College, Democrat intimidation of electors, the pseudo recount by the Democratic Party and their willing agent Jill Stein, the evidence-free DNI Report on the alleged Russian Hack, and the fake Trump-Russia Blackmail dossier, as well as radical left-wing plans to shut down next week s inauguration and block the transfer of power in Washington you can be absolutely certain that the losing party will not give up and have yet to unveil some more audacious plans designed to disrupt and possibly unseat the new 45th President of the United States, Donald J Trump. The campaign to delegitimize this incoming President has been carefully coordinated through multiple actors; the corporate media (led by CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post and The Guardian), the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic Party, Soros-funded NGOs like MoveOn.org, the McCain-Graham faction, and quietly helped along by the White House. Theoretically speaking, and taken into context with the previous paragraph the level of Anti-Trump public hate is so over-the-top and intense right now that (heaven forbid) should some untimely incident, either accidental or intentional, befall the new President then the American left and its cadre of stakeholders are certain to celebrate openly and gleefully. Such an incident would invariably be followed by the proverbial, Oh well, he had it coming. This is a high stakes game much bigger in fact than any one man, or political party. Everything is at stake: NATO, the military industrial complex, the CIA, and the existence and primacy of a globalist Deep State that has ruled the US and the world since WWII. In short, the World Order, as seen by those who control the transatlantic system of international geopolitics, trade and commerce.This should be viewed as a very sensitive matter. It goes without saying that such an incident and its predictable, engineered left-wing reaction would inevitably trigger the beginnings of bona fide civil war in the United States.Will Trump be able to hang a wonderful new sign in the window at Pennsylvania Ave which reads, Change of Management ? Not if Congress and the Deep State prefers the old management.The following analysis by Zero Hedge, featuring a segment with Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald expands on this possibility, and provides a number evidence points which mark what could be seen as a progression of events leading to a dystopic conclusion . Zero Point NowJournalist Glenn Greenwald, who is not a fan of President-elect Trump, appeared on Tucker Carlson tonight to discuss the dangerous ongoing effort among powerful anti-Trump factions within the US Government s Deep State, who have collaborated with members of the Democratic Party and the traditionally liberal media to inflict maximum damage on the incoming President. Recall Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer s ominous six ways from Sunday comment from 10 days ago.Greenwald, an accomplished litigator, journalist, and author, does a masterful job illustrating the players, motives, and potential fallout from this dangerous effort within the US Government s intelligence apparatus. Greenwald goes deep, discussing how Trump s election ruined the plan for regime change in Syria, specifically mentioning, among other things, that the deep state was waiting for Obama to leave office before executing their plan: The number one foreign policy priority of the CIA over the last four to five years has been the proxy war they re waging in Syria to remove Bashar Al Assad and Hillary Clinton was quite critical of Obama for constraining them. She wanted to escalate that war to unleash the CIA, to impose a no-fly zone in Syria to confront Russia, whereas Trump took the exact opposite position. He said we have no business in Syria trying to change the government, we ought to let the Russia and Assad go free and killing ISIS and Al Qaeda and whoever else they want to kill. He [Trump] was a threat to the CIA s primary institutional priority of regime change in Syria. Beyond that, Clinton wanted a much more confrontational and belligerent posture towards Moscow, which the CIA has been acrimonious with for decades, whereas Trump wanted better relations. They viewed Trump as a threat to their institutional pre-eminence to their ability to get their agenda imposed on Washington. What you re seeing is actually quite dangerous. There really is at this point obvious open warfare between this un-elected, but very powerful faction that resides in Washington and sees Presidents come and go on the one hand, and the person that the American democracy elected to be elected on the other. There s clearly extreme conflict and subversion taking place. This really is a must-watch, and goes hand-in-hand with Tucker s interview with Dr. Stephen Cohen this week: .This is overt, and Schindler also just more or less outed Washington Post s David Ignatius as a CIA mouthpiece (along the same vein as Deep Throat, perhaps we can refer to Ignatius s source as Golden Shower?).READ MORE RUSSIAN HACK NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russian Hack FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER@ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
French President Macron to make EU reforms proposals on Tuesday | PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron will announce his proposals for European Union reforms in a speech at the Paris-Sorbonne University on Tuesday, his office said on Friday. Macron has said he would make proposals on about 10 issues including strengthening the economic and monetary union, deepening European defense, reinforcing migration policy and strengthening social and fiscal convergence in the bloc. The speech will come two days after German elections in which Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also backs deeper European integration, is seeking a fourth term. | 0fake |
OOPS! HECKLERS FORCE HILLARY OFF Stage In LA After Only One Minute [VIDEO] | Karma s a bitch or is it the other way around? LA doesn't seem to like Hillary Clinton..her campaign rally today lasted less than a minute. This is over half of it pic.twitter.com/5IwqTTuTqv Alison Arkin (@Cronikeys) May 7, 2016 | 1real |
Bernie Supporters Shower Hillary’s Motorcade With Actual Money At Clooney Fundraiser (VIDEO) | An unfortunate part of modern-day politics is the fact that money is far too involved in our elections. Yet, until Citizens United and big money is no longer allowed in elections, it s a necessary evil. Even President Obama held and still holds fundraisers. Another such fundraiser was thrown for Hillary Clinton by George Clooney and his wife Amal, and even Clooney himself said the price of attending, alongside the practice itself, is obscene. Clinton s rival in the Democratic race, Sen. Bernie Sanders, has definitely shown that it may not be necessary to hold such big money fundraisers so long as you have enough grassroots support behind you. So, whether or not he wins the nomination, his legacy will be an example of things to come in the future, and how elections should be conducted as far as raising funds. But until Citizens United is overturned, and until we can get big money out of elections, there will be fundraisers. It is what it is. It s the nature of the beast.However, with this latest fundraiser thrown by the Clooneys came a counter-fundraiser thrown by Clooney s neighbor Howard Gold, whose family founded the 99 Cents Only chain of stores. Part of the fundraiser/protest was a moment when the crowd threw money at Hillary s motorcade as it passed by.And it was very real money that, according to Dan Merica of CNN, was $1000 withdrawn by Howard Gold himself.The money was real. And was withdrawn from a bank today by Howard Gold, the Sanders counter fundraiser host. https://t.co/CMRGr7RBJQ Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) April 17, 2016It seems, however, that these protesters didn t throw the money on Clinton, but rather her Secret Service agents:Funny part about this: The car that was showered the most was full of Secret Service agents, not Clinton. https://t.co/CMRGr7RBJQ Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) April 17, 2016Yet, the point was still clearly made.The Clooneys have every right to hold fundraisers for their candidate of choice, just as the protesters have every right to speak up in dissent of big money fundraisers. And as so long as they are invited, as they were by Gold, and not trespassing on private property, more of these protests are bound to pop up as the election heats up towards a potential Democratic nominee.This has definitely been an entertaining election cycle to say the least. Watch the video here of the money being thrown:Sanders supporters outside Clinton s Clooney fundraiser in LA shower her motorcade in $1,000. pic.twitter.com/ivbu024IcG Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) April 17, 2016Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Hard Times in Venezuela Breed Malaria as Desperate Flock to Mines - The New York Times | THE ALBINO MINE, Venezuela — The 12th time Reinaldo Balocha got malaria, he hardly rested at all. With the fever still rattling his body, he threw a pick ax over his shoulder and got back to work — smashing stones in an illegal gold mine. As a computer technician from a big city, Mr. Balocha was for the mines, his soft hands used to working keyboards, not the earth. But Venezuela’s economy collapsed on so many levels that inflation had obliterated his salary, along with his hopes of preserving a life. So, like tens of thousands of other people from across the country, Mr. Balocha came to these open, swampy mines scattered across the jungle, looking for a future. Here, waiters, office workers, taxi drivers, college graduates and even civil servants on vacation from their government jobs are out panning for gold, all under the watchful eyes of an armed group that taxes them and threatens to tie them to posts if they disobey. It is a society turned upside down, a place where educated people abandon jobs in the city for dangerous, backbreaking work in muddy pits, desperate to make ends meet. And it comes with a steep price: Malaria, long driven to the fringes of the country, is festering in the mines and back with a vengeance. Venezuela was the first nation in the world to be certified by the World Health Organization for eradicating malaria in its most populated areas, beating the United States and other developed countries to that milestone in 1961. It was a huge accomplishment for a small nation, one that helped pave Venezuela’s development as an oil power and fueled hopes that a model to stamp out malaria across the globe was at hand. Since then, the world has dedicated enormous amounts of time and money to beating back the disease, with deaths plummeting by 60 percent in places with malaria in recent years, according to the W. H. O. But in Venezuela, the clock is running backward. The country’s economic turmoil has brought malaria back, sweeping the disease out of the remote jungle areas where it quietly persisted and spreading it around the nation at levels not seen in Venezuela for 75 years, medical experts say. It all starts with the mines. With the economy in tatters, at least 70, 000 people from all walks of life have been streaming into this mining region over the past year, said Jorge Moreno, a leading mosquito expert in Venezuela. As they hunt for gold in watery pits, the perfect breeding ground for the mosquitoes that spread the disease, they are catching malaria by the tens of thousands. Then, with the disease in their blood, they return home to Venezuela’s cities. But because of the economic collapse, there is often no medicine and little fumigation to prevent mosquitoes there from biting them and passing malaria to others, sickening tens of thousands more people and leaving entire towns desperate for help. The economic breakdown has “triggered a great migration in Venezuela, and right behind it is the spread of malaria,” said Dr. Moreno, a researcher at a laboratory in the mining region. “With this breakdown comes a disease that is cooked in the same pot. ” Once out of the mines, malaria spreads quickly. Five hours away in Ciudad Guayana, a rusting former industrial boomtown where many are now jobless and have taken to wildcatting in the mines, a crowd of 300 people packed the waiting room of a clinic in May. All had symptoms of the disease: fevers, icy chills and uncontrollable tremors. There were no lights because the government had cut power to save electricity. There were no medicines because the Health Ministry had not delivered any. Health workers administered blood tests with their bare hands because they were out of gloves. Maribel Supero clutched her son as he trembled, unable to speak. José Castro held his daughter as she screamed. Griselda Bello, who works at the clinic, waved her hands helplessly and told yet another patient to hold on a bit longer. The pills had run out. There was nothing she could do. “Come back tomorrow at 10 a. m.,” she said. “My God,” the patient said. “Someone might die by then. ” “Indeed, they might,” she said. In the nearby town of Pozo Verde, residents said malaria had swept in after miners began returning home sick, the government fumigators having vanished two years ago. Now, the public high school has become an incubating ground of its own: A quarter of its 400 students have contracted malaria since November. “You would think we would do something — a cordon, a quarantine,” said Arebalo Enríquez, the principal of the school, who contracted malaria, as did his wife, mother and seven other members of his family. Officially, the spread of malaria in Venezuela has become a state secret. The government has not published epidemiological reports on the disease in the past year, and it says there is no crisis. But the most recent internal figures, obtained by The New York Times from Venezuelan doctors involved in compiling it, confirms a surge is underway. In the first six months of the year, malaria cases rose 72 percent, to a total of 125, 000, according to the figures. The disease cut a wide path through the country, with cases present in more than half of its 23 states. And among the malaria strains present here is Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the most fatal form of the disease. “It is a situation of national shame,” said Dr. José Oletta, a former Venezuelan health minister who lives in the capital, Caracas, where malaria cases are now appearing, too. “I was seeing this kind of thing when I was a medical student a ago. It hurts me. The disease had disappeared. ” In El Dique, a rural town where malaria was largely unknown until two years ago, Juana García, 66, sat outside her home, newly widowed since her husband fell ill with the disease and died. She hardly spoke or moved from her chair. “She will keep fighting,” said her daughter Ana María Padrón. Inside Ms. Padrón’s adobe home, her two sons were fighting malaria, too. Almost like clockwork, their fevers began in the morning: at 8 a. m. for Omar, who is 8 at 11 for Aristides, who is 7. The family has found no medicine. The boys have only painkillers. “We pray,” their mother said. The illegal mines spill out over dozens of miles, leaving a pockmarked stretch of earth where the jungle gives way to countless craters and scars. Some are no more than tiny pools where two men sift the mud with pans, like a scene from the California goldfields more than a century ago. Others drain wide marshes with tangled networks of tubes and pumps. In another spot, hundreds of wildcatters had dug out a gaping maw of red and white soil. It sinks 15 stories deep and runs the length of a football field. They call it Cuatro Muertos, or Four Dead Men. It was not supposed to be this way. The gold reserves were once controlled by a Canadian company before President Hugo Chávez expropriated them and pledged to use their profits to fund his revolution. But the expropriation followed the pattern of mismanagement and neglect that many others did during the Chávez era. The state eventually abandoned the territory around the mine, and the potentially lucrative profits. Wildcatters have moved in, and so have the armed groups that now call themselves the law here. But at least there is food. As the country convulses from food shortages and riots, as hungry mobs ransack grocery stores, restaurants and bakeries, the mining town of Las Claritas, only a short drive from the mines, lives in a state of relative plenty. Restaurants offer full menus. Street markets are packed with fruit. Pickups drive by loaded with pumpkins. In a country where soap is in short supply, a dozen brands are on sale in a grocery store, where seven models of televisions are also available. Miners dish out fat wads of their gold earnings in cash, which run through a machine. The promise of a different Venezuela — one where there is ample food and work that pays enough — led Yudani González to abandon a program to become a preschool teacher in Ciudad Bolívar, the provincial capital, where unemployment is rampant. Instead, she headed to a ramshackle jungle camp, where she cooks for miners with one hand and cares for her two young children with the other. “Here, you can get ahead,” Ms. González said, washing her daughter in a plastic bucket on the counter as she cooked. Danneris Flores, a government employee moonlighting as a mining camp cook, sat nearby. She is an administrative assistant in a health clinic, but Venezuela’s currency has tumbled so far that her salary amounts to only about $1 a day at the current street value. So she asked for a vacation — and used it to work for a couple of weeks at the mines. Her who works for the state oil company, Pdvsa, does the same thing. In a short stint at the mines, Ms. Flores said she could earn twice her monthly wages. She counted the days until she would be home to see her three children, whom she had left after “closing my eyes and making my heart small. ” “I never imagined that I would work in a mine,” she said to Ms. González as they served a meal. “Before, people thought of going to school. ” A miner walked in to greet the women and said he had recently watched someone collapse and die of malaria on her way to a market. Ms. González said she had come down with it four times herself. Her she said, has had it three times. “They charge you two grams of gold for medicine,” she said. “You pay what they ask. ” Not everyone can find medication, even with gold earnings. José Yoel Castillo stumbled to the doorstep of the malaria clinic in Las Claritas, carried on the shoulders of two relatives as he convulsed and was unable to speak. He had been making a living in the town of Caicara del Orinoco, driving passengers on the back of a motorcycle. But an armed gang took the vehicle, and Mr. Castillo could not afford a new one. So he came to the mines. He quickly found work and money — even malaria medication the first time he became ill. But when the symptoms came a second time, he could not find treatment anywhere. “Some people can just keep working through it,” said his Alejandro López. “But others can’t. ” Even with money in their pockets, the miners know the dangers of going back home. Josué Guevara, 20, gave up last November on his university studies in industrial engineering in a city about 10 hours away. He once pictured himself as a manager at the aluminum company, Alcasa. But his family members who worked there could barely afford food, he said. “Now I have other goals,” he said, standing at the edge of the Cuatro Muertos mines, where he lives and works today. Using gasoline and other chemicals to extract the gold, Mr. Guevara earned 500, 000 bolívars — around $500 at exchange rates, about 33 times the country’s minimum wage — during a lucky stretch. But when he got malaria this spring, he did what many miners do: He returned to his hometown to recover, bringing the disease with him. “Everything has its risks,” he said. On the other side of the vast pit, Pedro Pérez, 38, sat in a structure made of tree poles and tarp where he sleeps with 10 other miners. He tested positive for malaria twice in March. The third time he fell ill, he did not bother to get tested. “I was lying here and I felt the same symptoms,” he said. He, too, went back home — to the provincial capital, Ciudad Bolívar, where his mother eventually caught malaria, as well. “It’s coming from us,” Mr. Pérez said. Mr. Pérez remembered his life before he came to the mines last fall: He was a supervisor at a metal refinery, he said. He owned a house and a 2005 Ford Focus. He and his wife, a lawyer, once jetted off on getaways to Isla Margarita, a tropical island off the north coast of Venezuela. Yet even before he lost his job last year and was unable to find another, Venezuela’s plummeting currency had whittled his salary down to about $26 a month. He eventually left home for the mine. “I am still not used to washing myself every day in a river of dirty water,” he said. “I thought I had a good life. ” A few weeks ago, his wife came to Las Claritas to buy the food and soap she could not find in Ciudad Bolívar. The couple spent three nights together in a miner’s hostel. After she left, Mr. Pérez felt the strains on their marriage. “‘I know it’s hard for you,’ I tell her, ‘but we have to accept this new reality,’” he said. Back in Las Claritas, at a table in a dark brothel that smelled of alcohol, sat Angélica, a young woman with long black hair whose parents do not know she has turned to prostitution to make her living. She left the eastern city of Maturín three months ago when riots erupted because food had gone scarce. “Before, you waited in line for hours, but you got something,” said Angélica, who did not give her last name, ashamed of her work. “But now there is nothing there. ” Today she earns the equivalent of $40 when a miner wants to spend the night with her. More often, the money comes in increments of $8, when a customer wants to have sex and leave a short time later. At times, she said, it may be a stranger who is trembling with fever, unable to perform because of malaria. Other times, it is the owner of one of the Chinese grocery stores. The men come from all corners of the country. “The most difficult part of this life is being with someone who you do not love,” she said. Venezuela rose only after malaria declined. It was the 1920s and another resource had set off a bonanza — the black gold of oil, discovered in massive supply. But a vast malaria hot zone, then of Venezuela, stood between the country and its riches. The deadly scenes were later immortalized in “Dead Homes,” a 1955 Venezuelan novel about the rural epidemics of malaria and the waves of migration to the country’s oil fields. Freeing the country of malaria became pivotal to Venezuela’s development, said Dr. Oletta, the former health minister. “Only once malaria was gone, roads could come, industry,” he said. “This was a sick country, and when it got well, things changed. ” That transformative effort was led by Dr. Arnoldo Gabaldón, the former health minister who began one of the world’s first efforts to eradicate malaria and who became a national hero during his age. Teams across the Venezuelan countryside built irrigation ditches to drain pools of standing water, distributed quinine and constructed cinder block homes in rural areas so that mosquitoes had fewer places to breed. Dr. Gabaldón founded a research center in the city of Maracay, outside of Caracas and itself a malaria zone at the time, to broaden the mission and train officials from Latin America and Africa. But it was his use of insecticides — initially DDT, then other substances — that began to turn the tide. The walls of nearly every rural home in the country were sprayed, a technique that killed mosquitoes when they landed to rest. Fumigators would leave an envelope showing the date they would return. By 1949, malaria deaths had fallen drastically: to nine per 100, 000 people from 300. By the time Mr. Chávez assumed the presidency 50 years later and began to carry out his vision for Venezuela, the regimented system of Dr. Gabaldón had long faded, though malaria still appeared to be confined to a few rural areas. But the restructuring of the economy under Mr. Chávez and his followers, including a growing dependence on oil revenue and a system of currency controls restricting American dollars, would eventually change that. In 2014 and 2015, as oil prices collapsed and the government scrambled for money to pay for goods, services and imports, there were long shortages of chloroquine and primaquine, two drugs used for Plasmodium vivax, the most prevalent malaria parasite in the Americas. By 2016, doctors said there were shortages of nearly all drugs, most notably a drug cocktail for the deadly falciparum strain that costs just several dollars for a full round of treatment. Though debilitating and even fatal, malaria is easily treatable with the proper medication. Dr. Leopoldo Villegas, an international malaria expert in Bangkok, said the government also relied on outdated methods like outdoor fogging with insecticides, which had unproven effects on adult mosquitoes that transmit malaria. And because it was not publishing epidemiological reports of new malaria cases or deaths, it was unclear how much medicine was needed each year. “This is an emergency, this is an outbreak, and it’s not being dealt with by the government this way,” Dr. Villegas said, adding that the Venezuelan government had repeatedly denied the extent of malaria’s resurgence to international organizations that could help prevent its spread. Gustavo Bretas, a Brazilian malaria expert, said that Venezuela once trained people throughout the region in malaria prevention. But Venezuela’s inability to contain its own outbreak means that it now plays the opposite role: It poses a threat to the countries around it, particularly Brazil, where there are also illegal gold mines. “It’s starting to spill over into neighboring countries,” he said, adding that the lack of government statistics made the extent of the problem hard to assess. Venezuela’s Health Ministry did not respond to requests for an interview, including a letter delivered to its offices. Oscar Noya now works in Dr. Gabaldón’s old laboratory in Caracas under a picture of his mentor in a suit and bow tie. On a recent day, malaria patients once again sat on the steps, most having arrived from the mines. Fifteen had come on a recent morning 12 of them tested positive for the disease. Dr. Noya tries to make do without many vital drugs, like artesunate, listed by the W. H. O. as an essential medicine for the treatment of severe cases of falciparum malaria. He has only three vials of it left. He needs six to treat a single patient with a serious case. One recent night, a gang entered one of his malaria laboratories and stole the computers, one of about 20 attacks this year against the Tropical Medical Institute where he works, Dr. Noya said. He wonders if the groups are aligned with the government. “We believe this is no more than intimidation because we’re not quiet and we won’t be quiet,” he said, referring to public advocacy about malaria and the spread of other diseases. Dr. Noya put away his vials of artesunate as more patients gathered outside. He looked up with an air of desperation. “Dr. Gabaldón would have died of a heart attack if he’d seen what is happening,” he said. Despite the constant churn of workers from across Venezuela, there is a clear order to the mines. It is enforced by an armed group known as the Union. One of the Union’s bosses came to the mines years ago to work as a dentist. He still does. But the squads of patrolmen on motorbikes who dominate this place are the real source of his wealth and power. He sports gold chains, two gold teeth — and brass knuckles made of gold. After the government abandoned them, the mines soon grew again, this time at an unruly pace as wildcatters plowed into the forest, creating pools of stagnant water and a population of easy prey for the mosquitoes that breed in them, paving the way for the explosion of malaria. Sitting on his patio, the boss, who declined to be named because he could be arrested by the government, took pride in what he said was the Union’s ability to fill in for the vacuum left by the state. Yes, he acknowledged, the punishments the group meted out could be gruesome, like shooting off a man’s hand when he stole, or tying others to posts at the entrance of town with a sign detailing the offense committed. But he argued that the discipline kept crime in the camps low and allowed miners to go about their business in peace — another aspect of life that has steadily eroded in Venezuela’s dangerous cities. “To get justice from the police is a joke,” he said. “You have to get your own justice. ” Eduardo Medina agreed. A former pharmacist, he said he had left the drugstore where he worked in the state of Zulia a year ago to start mining because he saw the economic crisis spread and law and order slip away. “At any time, you might go out and someone would put a pistol in your face for your phone, or knife your mother,” Mr. Medina said in his tent. “Crime is under control here. They charge us, but they solve the problems, too. ” But the appearance of calm is deceiving. Storms rage in other places where rivals vie for control of the mines. In March, at least 17 miners were killed in what the authorities believed was one such dispute. Mr. Medina, on a break, looked down into the pit where his fellow miners labored. “At any moment, you can be killed in Zulia,” he said. “But you can be killed here, too. ” For all the challenges of keeping order, the boss said, malaria was even harder. “On malaria, we are screwed,” he said. The task of monitoring the disease seems to have been delegated to people like a state health employee named Miguel Martínez, who sat at a lonely post a short walk from a brothel near the mines, examining blood samples from miners. Under his microscope, a dye had stained the malaria parasite a dark purple. The log beside him showed that half of the patients who had visited him that day had tested positive for malaria. Like many health workers in this country, Mr. Martínez was exasperated. “Just as there are no rice and beans in this country, there are no medicines,” he said. Evening approached at the mine, the time when the Anopheles mosquito begins to feed. Dusk settled over a clapboard Pentecostal church, where parishioners speak in tongues, and past a circus tent promising alcohol and a strip tease. Under a tarp, five men hammered away at a vein of quartz, which they would grind down and sift for gold. Others waded up to their shoulders in pools laden with heavy metals like mercury, angling tubes to pump the mud. Tropical birds flew in the distance. “Is the malaria really coming from the miners?” asked Aníbal Flores, 28, a miner who sleeps in a hammock between two poles beside the mine. “But where else can we go to make money? The city? There is no food there. ” Lately, many Venezuelans have taken matters into their own hands. Five hours away in the newly infected town of El Dique, residents were collecting 100 bolívars from each household to hire a fumigator to come spray their homes. In the mine, where malaria tests are sometimes unavailable, miners said they had developed an exam of their own: Drink two bottles of beer. If a sharp pain is felt afterward in the liver, where the parasites reside, then the patient has malaria, the test goes. Health officials said the measure was futile. Still, Mr. Balocha, the former computer technician who works in the Albino Mine, lives by it. Miners call it an “artisanal test. ” He was sick once again, waiting for medicine at a fence on the edge of a clinic. He recalled the words of his uncle, who phoned him a year ago when Mr. Balocha found his salary as a computer technician to be worthless in the city of Valencia. “There is money here,” said the uncle, who was mining then. “You have to know how to find it. ” Mr. Balocha started as a “palero,” a stone breaker, getting the smallest cut of the take. But it was still more than what his salary bought in the city after inflation had whittled it away, he said. He recalled the first time he got malaria, too, the “chills like you were lying down between two blocks of ice. ” “The first time you get malaria is the ugliest,” Mr. Balocha said. “You can’t control the tremors. You feel like you will die. You feel like you are a zombie. ” But he would become a millionaire here, he joked, and one day he would head to Europe — with a Latin American woman, he added — far from the mines, the malaria and the Union. He sighed, looking up at the sky. “In the mine, happiness is only temporary,” he said. | 0fake |
MELANIA FIRES BACK At Disgusting Liberal Librarian Who Called Her Gift Of Books To Students “RACIST” | First lady Melania Trump fired back Friday at a Massachusetts elementary school librarian who rejected her donation of Dr. Seuss books, claiming their illustrations are examples of racist propaganda. Stephanie Grisham, director of communications for the first lady s office, said in a statement to Fox News that the response was unfortunate, and Mrs. Trump wanted to use her platform to help as many children as she can. She has demonstrated this in both actions and words since her husband took office, and sending books to children across the country is but one example, she said. To turn the gesture of sending young students some books into something divisive is unfortunate, but the First Lady remains committed to her efforts on behalf of children everywhere. To celebrate National Read a Book Day, the first lady had sent out a collection of 10 Dr. Seuss books to one school in each state across the nation. The titles included: The Cat in the Hat ; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish ; Wacky Wednesday ; Green Eggs and Ham ; and Oh, the Places You ll Go! She followed in the footsteps of her predecessor, Michelle Obama, who often read Dr. Seuss books to children. Former first ladies Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush also read to children at Dr. Seuss-themed educational events.Remember when Mooch read Seuss to a room full of kids at the White House? Hmmm was Mooch promoting racism? I wanted to send you a special gift. Dr. Seuss s Oh, the Places You ll Go! is a book my son and I have read over and over again, and one that we want to share with all of you, the first lady wrote in her letter to students. Please also remember that you are the future of America and that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. But despite the gesture, Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian at a public school in Cambridge, wrote a letter to the first lady, which was then published on The Horn Book blog, notifying Mrs. Trump that her school would not be keeping the titles for their collection, explaining that her school didn t have a NEED for the books, due to her school and library s award-winning status. FOX News100 Percent Fed Up Soeiro on Tuesday penned an editorial for the Horn Book s Family Reading blog explaining why her school did not need the donation. My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in literary science, she wrote. Multiple studies show that schools with professionally staffed libraries improve student performance, Soeiro added.Trump s package reportedly included such Seuss classics as Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Soeiro criticized Seuss for being the only author represented in Trump s donation, citing controversy over some of his illustrations. You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a clich , a tired and worn ambassador for children s literature, she told Trump. Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes. I work in a district that has plenty of resources, which contributes directly to excellence, Soeiro wrote. My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in library science. Soeiro went on to slam the White House and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for not gifting the books to underfunded and underprivileged communities, which she suggested continue to be marginalized by DeVos policies.But Soeiro seemed to be the most offended by the books themselves.Another FACT that many people are unaware that the HYPOCRITICAL and smug liberal librarian was seen CELEBRATING Dr. Seuss only 2 years ago:Here's D.C. librarian who rejected Melania's Dr. Seuss book donation "steeped in racist propaganda" as Cat in Hat. pic.twitter.com/pek3pT5q2W Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 29, 2017 | 1real |
Don Jr. Tries To Mock Al Franken’s Resignation, Backfires Immediately | When Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) announced his plans to resign Thursday, he specifically called out Donald Trump over the Access Hollywood video and Roy Moore, an alleged pedophile who is running for the Senate seat in Alabama with the GOP s blessing. Donald Trump Jr., not known for being a brainiac, decided to mock Franken on Twitter as if he didn t listen to the Democrat s amazing speech. Junior invoked one of the former comedian s Saturday Night Live most well-known characters, writing, because I m good enough, I m smart enough, and God-darnit people like me and included the hashtag #Franken. because I m good enough, I m smart enough, and God-darnit people like me. #Franken Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 7, 2017Twitter gave Junior a wake-up call:pic.twitter.com/NmuRm5MgMz liberalgranny50 (@peppersandeggs) December 7, 2017I am sure daddy @realDonaldTrump can sympathize as he is a fellow sexual predator pic.twitter.com/Qesftp1u28 Matt Slavin (@tHemAttsLavin) December 7, 2017 Grab em by the pussy. Donald Trump. Mrs. SMH (@MRSSMH2) December 7, 2017Did you wear a diaper when you tweeted this? Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) December 7, 2017 And when you re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab em by the pussy. your dad Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 7, 2017Your father is a rapist. Ask your mom if you don t believe me.Also: you ll be in prison this time next year, traitor. Greg Olear (@gregolear) December 7, 2017This is coming from Donald I do not recall Trump Jr. Rep. Jackie Sharp (@JackieSharp) December 7, 2017Can t wait to tweet joke about you when you go to prison. pic.twitter.com/JajOLBYqc6 American Dad (@okiedokiepokey) December 7, 2017pic.twitter.com/zB2kijzXk1 Meghan Morris (@seaghost78) December 7, 2017 I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her and I failed. I ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. Your Dad #Franken #25thAmendmentNow Lesley Abravanel (@lesleyabravanel) December 7, 2017Calm down Fredo, go shoot a sedated animal or something, it s what you re good at. Motive of Christmas Past (@Falsemotive) December 7, 2017Yes, Jr, your Father (Sexual Predator) such a shining example to your 2 daughters. Nothing in the world like First Rate P*ssy he said. cantblameobamaanymor (@DrRev_Mustafa1) December 7, 2017Franken said during his speech, I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party. Trump and Moore support each other.Photo by Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images | 1real |
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