title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
Highlights: The Trump presidency on April 21 at 6:12 p.m. EDT/2212 GMT | (Reuters) - Highlights for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday: Trump promises a big announcement about tax reform next week and orders an administration review of Obama-era tax rules written to discourage U.S. companies from relocating overseas to cut their tax bills. Trump tells the Treasury Department to examine two powers given to regulators to police large financial companies following the 2008 financial crisis. South Korea says it is on heightened alert ahead of another important anniversary in North Korea, with a large concentration of military hardware amassed on both sides of the border amid concerns about a new nuclear test by Pyongyang. Trump, striving to make good on a top campaign promise, is pushing fellow Republicans who control Congress to pass revamped healthcare legislation but the same intraparty squabbling that torpedoed it last month could do it again. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says Syria has dispersed its warplanes in recent days and that it retains chemical weapons, an issue he says will have to be taken up diplomatically. The Department of Justice threatens to cut off funding to California as well as eight cities and counties across the United States, escalating a Trump administration crackdown on so-called “sanctuary cities” that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The United States will not make an exception for American companies, including oil major Exxon Mobil Corp, seeking to drill in areas prohibited by U.S. sanctions on Russia, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says. Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress face their first major budget test next week, with the threat of a government shutdown potentially hinging on his proposed Mexican border wall as well as Obamacare funding. The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee says it has invited FBI, National Security Agency and Obama administration officials to testify as it restarts its investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres meets with Trump at the White House for the first time since both took office earlier this year and amid a U.S. push to cut funding to the world body and its agencies. The United States has offered to help fund Mexico’s efforts to eradicate opium poppies, a U.S. official says, as Mexican heroin output increased again last year. | 0fake |
May puts nation on high-poppy alert | November 6, 2016
Distracted by suffering refugees, confused by convoluted Brexit negotiations or just plain scared by a Trump presidency? No? Neither is your Prime Minster. Today Theresa May did what every true leader does in a crisis – which is to turn everyone’s attention to meaningless ephemera; like poppies, Grammar Schools and who should present the new ‘Bake-off’?
Taking a break from quashing the Orgreave Inquiry, Mrs May said FIFA’s stance of not politicizing sport was ‘outrageous’. A spokeswoman explained: ‘In these times of austerity, we need cheap, meaningless gestures accompanied by hollow outrage. If over-paid under-achieving footballers are not allowed to wear a poppy – then the terrorists have won. It’s a known fact that Afghan jihadists fear the poppy…although admittedly 80% of their income is based on the opium trade…um…er…I may not have thought this through…’
Armed police are expected to patrol our streets, opening fire on anyone not wearing a poppy or failing to whistle the tune from ‘The Dambusters’. A Police Inspector remarked: ‘We may be perpetuating a mawkishly sentimental view of war but don’t think for a second you can get away with recycling last year’s poppy – we’re wise to that dodge!’
Without a doubt this is the most important issue of 2016 – whether 22 footballers can wear poppies for 90 minutes in a stadium filled with 60,000 people wearing poppies. Some cynics have suggested Theresa May’s use of misdirection in these troubled times, is the political equivalent of David Copperfield pulling an elephant out his arse. Her spokeswoman countered: ‘The important thing is to remember those who sacrificed their lives in war– rather than the reasons behind it or making sure it never happens again’. Share this story...
Posted: Nov 6th, 2016 by Wrenfoe Wrenfoe Politics | 1real |
TRAGIC! JOBLESS AMERICANS Forced to Train Their Foreign Replacements Speak Out: “This is not about skills…This is about costs” [Video] | Whether from incompetence or malice, the Immigration Act of 1990 was a disaster. That is why we are in the state 60 Minutes is likely to describe tonight. Jessica VaughanHERE S THE 60 MINUTE PIECE ON THE H1B-VISA PROGRAM:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaykxCMDPo0 | 1real |
Trump Is Wrong About Terrorism and Immigration | Donald Trump predictably blames "our extremely open immigration system" for Saturday's bomb attacks in New Jersey and New York City. His critique overlooks the details of this particular case as well as the general rarity of terrorism by immigrants.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old man police arrested on Monday in connection with the bombings, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated to the United States from Afghanistan at the age of 7. He seems to have been radicalized within the last few years, a period when he spent nearly a year in Pakistan and became noticeably more religious and taciturn.
It is hard to imagine how the "extreme vetting" Trump advocates for immigrants from "any nation that has been compromised by terrorism" could have kept Rahami out of the country. What questions could have been posed to his parents that would have predicted his violent turn two decades later?
Trump faults his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, for supporting the admission of Syrian refugees, who he says pose an unacceptable risk of terrorism. But according to a recent study by Cato Institute immigration policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh, "the chance of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack caused by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion per year."
Trump has recommended "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on"—a plan that his own running mate called "offensive and unconstitutional." More recently Trump has said the moratorium should apply to all visitors from countries "compromised by terrorism," a category that arguably includes most of the world.
Some pundits favor a cleaner approach. "Confronted with the threat of Islamic terrorism," Nowrasteh notes, "well-known conservatives like Larry Kudlow, David Bossie, and Ann Coulter have called for a complete moratorium on immigration."
A broad moratorium would have the advantage of preventing all terrorist attacks by newly admitted immigrants. But it would also exclude more than 1 million innocent people each year it was in effect, at a huge economic cost. Nowrasteh cites estimates ranging from $35 billion to $229 billion a year.
Nowrasteh reports that tourists accounted for 94 percent of deaths caused by foreign-born terrorists in the United States from 1975 through 2015. Including tourists in the moratorium would raise the annual cost by another $194 billion or so.
Given the rarity of deaths caused by terrorism, Nowrasteh shows, such costs cannot possibly be justified. Based on a value of $15 million per life, he puts "the combined human, property, business, and economic costs" of attacks by foreign-born terrorists during the 41-year period covered by his study at $5.3 billion annually, which is "far less than the minimum estimated yearly benefit of $229.1 billion from immigration and tourism."
Even that calculation overestimates the potential security benefit of cutting off immigration, since it is dominated by the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an anomalous event that is unlikely to be replicated. The 9/11 attacks (which were perpetrated not by naturalized citizens or by refugees but by visitors with tourist or student visas) account for 99 percent of the 3,024 deaths caused by foreign-born terrorists from 1975 through 2015.
Excluding 9/11, the overwhelming majority of terrorist murders in the United States—more than 90 percent—have been committed by native-born Americans. Except for 2001, the risk of being killed by a foreign-born terrorist has been minuscule and flat for more than four decades.
That risk is extremely low even if you include 9/11: about 1 in 3.6 million per year. You are more than 200 times as likely to die in a traffic accident, 20 times as likely to be killed by falling down stairs, and four times as likely to drown in a bathtub.
Any politician who wants to impose large costs in response to such a tiny risk has a lot of explaining to do. | 0fake |
Zimbabwe military's statement after seizing power | HARARE (Reuters) - Following is the text of an address made by Zimbabwe Major General SB Moyo, Chief of Staff Logistics, on national television after the military seized power: Following the address we made on November 13, 2017, which we believe our main broadcaster, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and The Herald were directed not to publicize, the situation in our country has moved to another level. Firstly, we wish to assure the nation that His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, and commander-in-chief of Zimbabwe Defence Forces, Comrade RG Mugabe, and his family are safe and sound and their security is guaranteed. We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring them to justice. As soon as we have accomplished our mission, we expect that the situation will return to normalcy. To the civil servants, as you are aware, there is a plan by the same individuals to influence the current purging that is taking place in the political sphere to the civil service. We are against that act of injustice and we intend to protect every one of you against that. To the judiciary, the measures underway are intended to assure that as an independent arm of the state you are able to exercise your independent authority without fear of being obstructed as has been the case with this group of individuals. To our members of parliament, your legislative role is of paramount importance for peace and stability in this country and it is our desire that a dispensation is created that allows you to serve your respective political constituencies according to democratic tenets. To the generality of the people of Zimbabwe we urge you to remain calm and limit unnecessary movement. However, we encourage those who are employed and those with essential business in the city to continue their normal activities usual. Our wish is that you enjoy your rights and freedoms and that we return our country to a dispensation that allows for investment, development and prosperity that we all fought for and for which many of our citizens paid the supreme sacrifice. To political parties we urge you to discourage your members from engaging in violent behavior. To the youth we call upon you to realize that the future of this country is yours. Do not be enticed with dirty coins of silver. Be disciplined and remain committed to the ethos and values of this great nation. To all churches and religious organizations in Zimbabwe we call upon you and your congregations to pray for our country and preach the gospel of love, peace, unity and development. To both our people and the world beyond our borders, we wish to make it abundantly clear that this is not a military takeover of government. What the Zimbabwe Defence Forces is actually doing is to pacify a degenerating political, social and economic situation in our country, which if not addressed may result in a violent conflict. We call upon all the war veterans to play positive in ensuring peace, stability and unity in the country. To members of the defense forces, all leave is canceled and you all to return to your barracks with immediate effect. To our respected traditional leaders, you are our custodians of our culture, customs, traditions and heritage and we request you to provide leadership and direction to your communities for the sake of unity and development in our country. To the other Security Services: We urge you to cooperate for the good of our country. Let it be clear that we intend to address the human security threats in our country. Therefore any provocation will be met with an appropriate response. To the media; we urge you report fairly and responsibly. Thank you | 0fake |
Rise of Mandatory Vaccinations Means the End of Medical Freedom | posted by Eddie Mandatory vaccinations are about to open up a new frontier for government control. Through the war on drugs, bureaucrats arbitrarily dictate what people can and can’t put into their bodies, but that violation pales in comparison to forcibly medicating millions against their will. Voluntary and informed consent are essential in securing individual rights, and without it, self-ownership will never be respected. The liberal stronghold of California is trailblazing the encroaching new practice and recently passed laws mandating that children and adults must have certain immunizations before being able to attend schools or work in certain professions. The longstanding religious and philosophical exemptions that protect freedom of choice have been systematically crushed by the state. California’s Senate Bill 277 went into effect on July 1st, 2016, and marked the most rigid requirements ever instituted for vaccinations. The law forces students to endure a total of 40 doses to complete the 10 federally recommended vaccines while allowing more to be added at any time. Any family that doesn’t go along will have their child barred from attending licensed day care facilities, in-home daycares, public or private schools, and even after school programs. Over the years, California has developed a reputation for pushing vaccines on their youth. Assembly Bill 499 was passed in 2011 and lowered the age of consent for STD prevention vaccines to just 12 years old. Included in the assortment of shots being administered was the infamous Gardasil , which just a few years later was at the center of a lawsuit that yielded the victims a $6 million settlement from the U.S. government, which paid out funds from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program . The Vaccinate All Children Act of 2015 is an attempt to implement this new standard nationwide, and although it has stalled in the House, it will likely be reintroduced the next time the country is gripped by the fear of a pandemic. The debate surrounding vaccinations is commonly framed as a moral struggle between the benefits to the collective and the selfish preferences of the individual. But since the outbreak scares of Zika , measles , and ebola , the rhetoric has taken a turn toward authoritarianism. It’s commonly stated by the CDC and most mainstream doctors that the unvaccinated are putting the health of everyone else at risk, but the truth isn’t so black and white . The herd immunity theory has been consistently used to validate the expansion of vaccine programs, but it still doesn’t justify the removal of choice from the individual. The classic exchange of freedom for perceived safety is a no brainer for the millions of Americans who are willing to use government to strap their neighbors down and forcibly inject them for the greater good. Anyone who expresses concern about possible side effects is immediately branded as conspiratorial or anti-science. Yet controversial claims that certain vaccine variants cause neurological disorders like autism have led some people to swear off inoculations altogether. This all-or-nothing dynamic has completely polarized the issue and prevents any reasonable discussion from taking place. Either you accept all of the CDC’s recommended 69 doses of 16 vaccines between birth and age 18, or you want to bring back measles, polio, and probably the black plague. On the other extreme side of the debate, if you fail to acknowledge all vaccines as dangerous, you’re an ignorant sheep. Through the internet, disinformation has become widespread and created a movement of people that have written off all the benefits accomplished through immunizations. These individuals are unable or unwilling to separate the science from the shady institutions that develop and distribute new vaccines. Even if thimerosal and mercury based preservatives cause adverse reactions in some patients, it doesn’t detract from the advantages vaccine technology provides. In this debate, like most others in the US, both sides are swept up in emotion and ignorance. Regardless, the public’s trust in vaccinations has been eroded by the reputations of those companies producing them. Pharmaceutical giants like Merck and Pfizer make billions from the distribution of these shots, and the potential profits after a mandate are enough to corrupt the morals of almost anyone. In one example, former CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding left her post at the government agency in 2009 to work in Merck’s vaccine division. An investigative report published by the British Medical Journal last year found the CDC downplays its ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Further, by buying the support of politicians like Hillary Clinton — who received more donations from pharmaceutical companies and their employees than any other candidate this year — these huge companies are able to expand their influence in directing government policy . Maintaining control over what we put into our own bodies is a fundamental right, but for now, standing up to these government decrees only means ostracism from the education system and criticism from peers. In the future, however, the punishments for disobedience will likely only grow stricter. An Orange County doctor named Bob Sears is already in the crosshairs of California’s medical board after excusing a two-year-old from future vaccinations. The mother expressed concern that her daughter had an adverse reaction to a previous shot, describing the child as becoming limp “like a ragdoll” for 24 hours after the last dose. Dr. Sears’ alternative treatment recommendations break from the rules dictated by S.B. 277, and now his reputation, as well as his career, are in jeopardy. This new authority to strip doctors of their medical licenses for simply going against the state-imposed standards opens the door for the persecution of medical professionals who resist any government regulation. A vaccination is an invasive medical procedure that can have different effects on each and every individual. The Nuremberg Code’s first principle is voluntary consent, but it seems the lessons of history have been completely forgotten by today’s leaders. The transition of these shots from “recommended” to “required” is well underway, and those who think the ends justify the means are willing to forcibly make sure everyone else complies. The new benchmark set by California symbolizes a precedent that could be mimicked across the nation. Without having the discretion to choose which medications are injected into your body — or your child’s — how can anyone convince themselves they are free? This overreach and collusion can often be dismissed as a trivial issue, but the fact that voluntary consent is under attack speaks volumes to the extent that state power has metastasized. source: | 1real |
EPA hit hardest as Trump budget targets regulations | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday proposed a 31 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget, as the White House seeks to eliminate climate change programs and trim initiatives to protect air and water quality. The EPA would sustain the biggest cut of any federal agency in the White House 2018 budget, as Trump seeks to clear away regulations he claims are hobbling U.S. oil drillers, coal miners and farmers. The proposed cuts are a starting point, and Congress could temper them in its budget deliberations. The proposal would slash funding for enforcing regulations, fighting water pollution, cleaning up sites contaminated by toxic waste and promoting energy-efficient appliances. It would eliminate 3,200 EPA employees, or 19 percent of the agency’s workforce. It would effectively erase former President Barack Obama’s initiatives to combat climate change by cutting funding for the agency’s signature Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. “Consistent with the President’s America First Energy Plan, the budget reorients the EPA’s air program to protect the air we breathe without unduly burdening the American economy,” a summary of the proposed EPA budget said. Some lawmakers from Trump’s Republican party praised the proposed cuts, but some expressed concern about cuts to programs affecting their region of the country. Environmentalists blasted the plan, saying it would return America back to 1977 when smoggy skies and polluted rivers pushed lawmakers to strengthen federal clean air and clean water laws. Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, disputes the scientific consensus that human actions are the lead cause of climate change. In his former position as attorney general of oil-producing Oklahoma, he sued the EPA more than a dozen times. Pruitt believes Congress should determine whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that needs regulation. With both chambers currently led by Republicans, and influential committees headed by lawmakers from oil-producing states, that is unlikely anytime soon. The budget would also eliminate some $100 million in spending on research and international programs on combating climate change. Trump also doubts the science of climate change and has said the country can reduce green regulations drastically without compromising air and water quality. Asked about climate change programs, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, told reporters “we consider that to be a waste of your money.” “I think the president is fairly straightforward. We’re not spending money on that,” he said. The EPA had already faced sharp cuts under Obama. Janet McCabe, a former EPA air official, said Trump’s proposed budget would harm the EPA’s ability to respond to emergencies and also hurt day-to-day efforts on keeping air and water clean to protect human health. The proposed cuts would cut $427 million aimed at regional pollution cleanup programs, including in the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay. Funding for the Superfund program to clean up the nation’s most contaminated sites would drop by $330 million to $762 million. The summary said the budget seeks to give local and state governments responsibility for such clean-up efforts. Many states and municipalities also face severe budget constraints in the current fiscal environment. Trump’s proposal includes a 31 percent budget cut for the enforcement division, which fines companies for pollution. It would ax dozens of other programs including the popular Energy Star appliance efficiency program aimed at reducing U.S. energy consumption. “Turning back the clock to 1977 will not ‘Make America Great Again’. It will ‘Make America Gag Again,’” said Conrad Schneider, the advocacy director at Clean Air Task Force. One area that would see a small boost is for State Revolving Funds, low-interest loans for investments in water and sanitation infrastructure. The plan would add $4 million to the funds, bringing its budget up to $100 million. While employees at EPA headquarters in Washington worried about their jobs, some hoped opportunities might open up at the other side of the country. Representatives of California, where state energy commissions and a clean air agency are hiring, handed recruitment fliers to EPA employees on their way to work. The fliers said: “Fight Climate Change, Work for California.” | 0fake |
Senate’s Vote on Simple Bill to Fund the Government Is Anything But - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — This was not supposed to be difficult. With the election a little more than a month away and few major issues on the table, the House and Senate were going to pass a straightforward stopgap bill to fund the government through early December and then skedaddle. So much for that. A combination of Senate Democrats and Republicans on Tuesday soundly rejected a first effort by Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, to advance a temporary spending bill, leaving Congress again close to a government shutdown in the latest illustration of how nothing is ever simple on Capitol Hill these days. “It’s just a funding bill,” Mr. McConnell said in exasperation on Tuesday as his proposal to head off a government shutdown after midnight Friday headed for defeat. The vote fell 15 votes short of the 60 needed for passage. Unlike past showdowns over national issues like the new health care law or immigration policy, this shutdown conflict is more parochial, centered on Democratic demands for help for Flint, Mich. with its water, and flood relief for Louisiana and a handful of other states. Democrats say they won’t support a bill that includes the latter without the former, as Mr. McConnell’s proposal did. And they note that Louisiana, which would be a chief beneficiary, is represented by two Republican senators while Michigan has two Democrats. ”Republicans are essentially saying the disasters in our states are more important than the disasters in your state,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. “It is unfair and it is wrong. ” Democrats probably also wouldn’t mind if Republicans found themselves on the precipice of a federal shutdown because of the impasse, allowing Democrats a ripe opportunity to lampoon congressional Republicans, who control both chambers, for being unable to do the most basic work of government. The battle for control of the Senate is fierce, and both parties are seeking a final edge. Republicans know they have to be careful. Mr. McConnell has acknowledged before that his party owns the shutdown brand because of its track record, providing Democrats a lot of latitude to press their case on Flint. Republicans would probably absorb most of the public blame if federal agencies run out of money as of Saturday. The thought that Democrats might be playing hard to get for political purposes has occurred to Mr. McConnell and his fellow Republicans. “It’s almost as if a few Democratic leaders decided long ago that bringing our country to the brink would make for good politics,” he said. “Democrats are marching us down a path that leads to a shutdown in order to gain some sort of political advantage,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican. The problem for them and Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin is a familiar one. Republicans probably lack the votes to pass a stopgap funding bill without Democratic help because a number of Republicans in the Senate, and a larger number in the House, refuse to vote for any spending bill whatsoever to avoid conservative backlash or provide fodder for a future primary challenge. It is a reprise of the conundrum. Republicans have sought to mollify Democrats by emphasizing that a $200 million aid program for Flint is also included in a separate water projects measure that has cleared the Senate and will be negotiated with the House, where a measure without the Flint money is advancing. Mr. Ryan reiterated Tuesday that he believed that the public works bill was the proper way to send relief to Flint. Democrats are having none of it, arguing that there is no guarantee that the water projects measure will pass this year. They say that if Republicans really want to address the health and contamination issues in Flint, they should agree to include the money in the spending bill. And they point out that the spending is entirely paid for and that it would add nothing to the deficit, eliminating that excuse for Republicans. “There is no legitimate argument to keep the provision out of the continuing resolution other than they just don’t want to help Flint,” said Representative Dan Kildee, the Michigan Democrat who represents Flint. “It would be consistent for a poor community, a minority community, to be left behind for no good reason. ” Mr. Kildee said Mr. Ryan and Mr. McConnell must accept the fact that they are in trouble without Democratic votes to pass the spending bill. “The position that I am taking is even if I can’t appeal to their sense of morality or their sense of justice, I will appeal to their sense of mathematics,” he said. After Tuesday’s setback, congressional leaders began groping for an alternative approach given the procedural hurdles that can be raised in the Senate. One option was to add the funds for Flint, which would probably drive away Republican votes. Another was to eliminate the money for flood relief in Louisiana, West Virginia and Maryland and deprive Democrats of their argument. If presented with that choice, Democrats say, they might have to go along. The unwelcome result would be that neither the needs of Flint nor Louisiana would be addressed. Given the inability of Congress to perform even the most routine tasks, that would not be a surprising outcome. | 0fake |
White, moldy and French: Russia's response to sanctions goes gourmet | VERKHNAYA PYSHMA/YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - One thousand French goats have found a new home in Russia s Ural mountains as a local company bets on producing European-style cheeses no longer available for import. Russia banned the wholesale import of fresh food from the European Union, including dairy products, in response to sanctions imposed on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. But as images of steamrollers flattening illegally imported European cheeses were beamed across the country, Russian businesses were gearing up to fill the gap. Investment in the production of sanctioned foodstuffs has grown, and in the Ural mountains the owners of mining company UMMC have added goats to their copper and coal assets. Iskandar Makhmudov and Andrey Kozytsin, both on the Forbes list of Russia s 100 richest people, are among UMMC s main shareholders. Their company, UGMK-Agro, spent one million euros on trucking the Alpine goats 5,000 km from the Vendee region in France. Working out of a converted cowshed north of Yekaterinburg, it is aiming to be Russia s largest producer of white mold goat s cheese, a French delicacy. The company has invested 200 million rubles ($3.4 million)in cheese production and expects to turn a profit in six years. For us, sanctions have of course played a positive role. We saw a gap in the market - not quite a deficit, but some room for maneuver, Ilya Bondarev, CEO of UGMK-Agro, told Reuters. With most Russians accustomed to semi-hard cheeses, part of the challenge will be encouraging buyers to try something new. I m sorry but goat s cheese smells, and I don t like the taste of moldy cheeses, said 30-year-old Alexander, a Yekaterinburg resident. I prefer mozzarella and normal Russian cheeses, which remind me of my childhood, he said. There is also the price. A kg of UGMK-Agro s B che-de-Ch vre cheese, sold under the Coeur du Nord brand, costs 2,200-2,500 rubles ($37-$43) versus 300-800 rubles per kg for standard Russian cheeses. UGMK-Agro plans to produce 500-700 kg of cheese a day by the spring of 2018. We are launching in Moscow ... and are talking to distributors in St Petersburg, Bondarev said. But our main challenge is the creation of a local market. | 0fake |
Merkel: Didn't discuss sanctions on Russia over Syria with Obama, EU leaders | BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that President Barack Obama and European leaders did not discuss imposing sanctions against Russia over its military involvement in Syria when they met in Berlin on Friday. “We did not discuss in concrete terms sanctions against Russia with regard to this,” Merkel said at a joint news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Merkel said the leaders had, however, discussed sanctions against Russia over its role in the Ukraine conflict. She said no decision had been made yet on whether to extend those sanctions but added that progress towards implementing the Minsk peace agreement was not sufficient. | 0fake |
CNN’s Tapper: There Are ’Fair Critiques of the Media’ for Running Early Trump Rallies ’Start to Finish’ - Breitbart | On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper stated that there are “fair critiques of the media when it comes to, especially, running a lot of the Trump rallies early on, start to finish, no editorial comment,” something every cable news network did. Tapper said, “I think that there’s certainly … fair critiques of the media when it comes to, especially, running a lot of the Trump rallies early on, start to finish, no editorial comment, just like, what is this? What are we doing here? And CNN did that. Fox did it. MSNBC did it. And my boss, Jeff Zucker, has acknowledged that we did that too much, early on. I think that some of the toughest interviews that were done of President Trump, and Hillary Clinton for that matter, were on CNN. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
Hunt Continues for 2 Men Who Found Suitcase Containing Bomb in Chelsea - The New York Times | Still no sign of them. Two days after the release of an image that investigators said showed two men who had come upon a suitcase containing an unexploded bomb on a Manhattan street, the authorities said on Friday that their identities and whereabouts remained unknown. Investigators said they considered the men to be witnesses, and wanted to talk to them as part of their effort to piece together the events of last Saturday, when bombs exploded in Seaside Park, N. J. and on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. Several unexploded bombs were found elsewhere, including the one in the suitcase, which was found on West 27th Street a few hours after the bomb went off four blocks away, and five others, which turned up late on Sunday near a train station in Elizabeth, N. J. After coming upon the abandoned suitcase on 27th Street, the men discovered a plastic bag inside containing a pressure cooker that had been fashioned into a bomb. They set the bag on the sidewalk and left with the suitcase. The suspect in the bombings, Ahmad Khan Rahami, was arrested just hours after authorities released a photograph of him on Monday morning. By Tuesday night, federal prosecutors had charged him with several crimes connected to the bombings. The New York Police Department has thus far been unable to identify or find the two men. “We know nothing about them at this point,” a spokesman for the department said. The two have not been charged with any crimes, and the authorities said this week that their handling of the device might actually have disabled it. One possibility among many that investigators have discussed is that the men were tourists and may have already left the country. What remains are the images of the two, crystallized in time. In the photo distributed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they can be seen walking along 27th Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue between 8 and 9 p. m. on Saturday, around the time of the 23rd Street explosion. One of the men is wearing a polo shirt the other appears to be holding an object in one hand. Their postures suggest a shared sense of calm. | 0fake |
Susan Sarandon Brutally Slams Trump: He’s Like ‘Your Drunk Uncle At A Wedding’ (VIDEO) | Award-winning actress and political activist Susan Sarandon has been busy speaking praises for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. After expressing her support for the Vermont senator at an Iowa campaign rally, Sarandon sat down with online network The Young Turks and told them what really frightened her about this election: Republican front runner Donald Trump.Noting that Trump has made the Republican party look like an absolute circus, Sarandon said she believed that there were some sane Republicans that would never even dream of nominating Trump, who is pretty much like a figure from a Kurt Vonnegut novel. I cannot believe for a second that America would actually make Donald Trump the president. Republicans are not all bad, they re not all crazy, they re not all greedy. I think there s some very sane Republicans and they must be so embarrassed by what s going on right now. However, she is terrified of the amount of support the GOP candidate has gotten, and thinks he could be incredibly dangerous for America s future. She said: He reminds me of, like, your drunk uncle at a wedding who gets up and starts talking and just loves the crowd and just goes on and on and on and says whatever he can to get a reaction. The Oscar winner revealed that what really bothered her the most about Trump s rhetoric the way he views minorities. She explained: What concerns me is that he has made hatred and racism normal he s normalized it. He s taking this, you know, [THE]undercurrent of discontent that s looking to blame somebody and he s legitimized those feelings and that, I think, is a very dangerous thing. You can watch Sarandon s entire takedown of the racist front runner below:Sarandon has weighed in on Trump before, stating that she thought he appealed to Americans who were really starved for something authentic despite the fact that he has no idea specifically what he s talking about. She also said, I think it s great that the Republicans have to figure out how to deal with him, it s interesting. Meanwhile, Sarandon is trying to focus on supporting Sanders. She explained: For me, gender is not what s important. Issues are what s important. I want a candidate who has the courage to stand and do the right thing when it is not popular. TwitterFeatured image is a screenshot | 1real |
Nigeria NGOs slam civil society bill as grave threat to freedoms | ABUJA (Reuters) - A bill proposed by Nigerian lawmakers to regulate non-governmental organizations (NGOs) threatens freedoms by handing the government sweeping powers over civil society, an array of groups said on Wednesday. In a public hearing in Nigeria s capital of Abuja, representatives from several NGOs called for the bill to be killed, describing it as extremely dangerous , crippling for civil society and potentially endangering to life. For organizations that engage in human rights advocacy, government accountability, and the promotion of democracy, interference in their operations portends grave risks to both their work and on the lives of their personnel, said Nigerian NGO Spaces for Change in a statement. Nigeria s Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) warned that there is no doubt that the first victims of the bill would be NGOs that are traditionally active in the area of ensuring accountability and transparency of government to its citizens. The sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives, Nigeria s lower parliamentary chamber, has alleged that some NGOs were using donated funds to support the activities of armed militants and insurgents such as Boko Haram in the country s northeast, according to Nigerian media reports. The sponsor, Umar Jibril, has not made public any evidence supporting his allegations. The draft law, which passed a second reading in the lower house of parliament and is being publicly debated ahead of a final reading and vote, would regulate NGOs funding, activities and foreign affiliation in the name of national security, and have control over NGOs assets. The bill would also create an NGO Regulatory Commission, with which civil society bodies would need to register or be in breach of the law. The commission would have discretion over which groups can register, and all must re-register every two years. At present setting up an NGO is a simpler process, with many groups registering with the corporate affairs commission as a not-for-profit organization. While the constitution guarantees Nigerians assembly and association rights, the Freedom House rights watchdog says Nigeria, Africa s most populous democracy, is only partly free. In a 2017 report, Freedom House said the country had a broad and vibrant civil society but government forces continued to commit gross human rights violations with impunity, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary mass arrests, illegal detentions, and torture of civilians . NGO representatives at the public hearing described how, by giving the regulatory commission discretion to approve projects, lives could be at stake in emergencies, such as when funds are urgently needed for vaccines during an outbreak of disease. Others criticized as vague the bill s repeated justification of maintaining national security, saying it was open to broad interpretations that could give the government ample opportunity for misuse of state power without accountability. An Amnesty International statement said the bill will keep Nigerians from freely sharing their opinions, holding open discussion forums or organizing people to protest. | 0fake |
Russian criminal tattoos now in porcelain - Russia News Now | This post was originally published on this site
Valeria Monis makes unique ceramics, decorated with patterns based on Russian criminal tattoos.
Scroll down to see more VALERIA MONIS Artist Valeria Monis now lives in Israel and is working on a series of porcelain, decorated with patterns based on Russian criminal tattoos. / The cat is the symbol of a successful thief. On the forearm or shoulder it symbolises a “native occupant of prison,” on the legs it means “convicted for robbery” or “convicted for life.” VALERIA MONIS
The pattern is painted on dishes and vases. The series is called “From Russia with Love.” / Tattoos of crosses, churches, the Virgin Mary are reserved for the chest, the most significant part, and the back. VALERIA MONIS
“In Russian prisons, tattoos serve as a unique language of symbols that represent the prisoner’s personal life stories. The rules for reading them are passed on by oral tradition.” / The text reads: “I call you, I miss you, I’ll drink you drop by drop, my love.” A tattoo worn by lesbians, it was widespread in 1970s-80s. VALERIA MONIS Valeria Monis: “Each ceramic piece is designed, crafted, and illustrated 100% by hand, incorporating illustrations taken from The Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia by Danzig Baldaev.” / Tattoos of crosses, churches, the Virgin Mary are reserved for the chest, the most significant part, and the back. VALERIA MONIS
Tattoos confer a criminal’s identity; they are a seal of social standing and a repository of collective memory. In the criminal world, no tattoos means no status. / A female thief’s tattoo. The number of domes symbolises the amount of convictions or number of years served. VALERIA MONIS
A humorous tattoo typical for collective labor camps, commonly called “Misha the accordion player.” VALERIA MONIS
This rare tattoo belonged to an old thief named Shulga, whose left hand was missing. He was repeatedly convicted and well-known. VALERIA MONIS
Women’s tattoo symbolising the loss of freedom and loving parents, an unhappy fate, the burden of loneliness or the disappointment of life. VALERIA MONIS
The text reads: “Winged Russia is the queen of planet Earth.” Related | 1real |
Tokyo could ban US troops from stationing on disputed isles |
block the US from being stationed on the islands off Hokkaido in the strategic Sea of Okhotsk, if this helps persuade Russia to give them back.
The islands are inhabited, and in Russia are called the Southern Kurils – but for Japan they are Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai islet group. These territories, which became Russian after Japan’s defeat in World War II under the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, saw a rift between the two countries preventing them from signing the peace treaty to formally end the war. Tokyo insists the four islets are not part of the Kuril chain and should be returned under its control.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Bloomberg that Russia does not “trade territories.” But ahead of his visit to Tokyo in mid-December, Japan’s diplomatic sources told Kyodo News that Moscow would hand over Shikotan and Habomai islet group following the peace deal, as stated by the 1956 Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration.
The sources, however, said Russia may be concerned that the US military could be stationed on the territories after Japan gets them back. According to Article 5 of the Japan-US security treaty, Washington is allowed to station its troops in areas administered by Japan.
The Japanese government is now looking into the potential consequences, should they exclude the islands from Article 5, the sources said, with one of them adding that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could go as far as announcing that the islands do not fall under Article 5.
Other sources, however, think that “a realistic scenario is that the prime minister shows his political will and seeks consent from the United States.”
At the same time, “Russia won’t agree to hand over [the islands] unless the possibility of stationing the US military there is ruled out,” a source familiar with the Japanese-Russian ties told The Japan Times over the weekend.
Nevertheless, convincing the US to okay such conditions seems very difficult, a Japanese government source said, adding that “It could even shake the foundations of the [Japan-US military] alliance.”
For Russia, the area around the disputed islands is of “extremely high importance” because it faces the Sea of Okhotsk, a Japanese government source said, and a foreign military in these waters could hamper both essential military drills and the use of a major access route to the Pacific Ocean.
Tokyo has already rejected the report, saying they are not planning to review Article 5, TASS news agency said, citing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida reiterated it, adding that the Japan-US treaty “applies and will apply” to all territories and waters which are administered by Japan.
Earlier in the month, Tokyo also denied Nikkei’s report that Japan and Russia were discussing joint administration of the Kuril Islands.
“There is no change in Japan’s fundamental position that Japan will conclude the peace treaty with Russia by resolving the issue of the possession of the four northern islands,” Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Yasuhira Kawamura told Reuters in an email at that time.
Russia has always insisted that any change in the status of the islands is out of the question, as it would constitute a reassessment of the results of World War II, which is expressly banned by international treaties. | 1real |
Oregon governor blasts federal response to refuge standoff | (Reuters) - Oregon’s governor blasted the federal government’s response to the occupation of a wildlife refuge by a group of armed men saying the situation was “absolutely intolerable” and costing the state about $100,000 a week. Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, said she had been asked by federal officials to limit her public comments about the protest which began on Jan. 2 at the remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and that she had no wish to escalate the situation. “But I will say this ... The situation is absolutely intolerable and it must be must be resolved immediately. The very fabric of this community is being ripped apart,” Brown said on Wednesday at a news conference. “The residents of Harney County have been overlooked and under-served by federal officials’ response thus far.” The takeover at Malheur was the latest flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over the U.S. government’s control of millions acres of land in the West. The occupiers have declared their move is in support of two local ranchers who were returned to prison this month for setting fires that spread to federal land. The ranchers’ lawyer has said the occupiers do not speak for the family. Law enforcement officials have so far kept their distance from the buildings at the refuge, 30 miles (48 km) south of the small town of Burns in rural southeast Oregon’s Harney County, in the hope of avoiding a violent confrontation. One of the occupiers was arrested last week after he drove a government vehicle to a local supermarket. Brown called the situation a “spectacle of lawlessness” which must end and said she had conveyed her very grave concerns to the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House. “Federal authorities must move quickly to end the occupation and hold all of the wrongdoers accountable,” the governor said. “And until Harney County is free of it, I will not stop insisting that federal officials enforce the law.” The chair of the local Native American tribe has also called on the federal government to remove the occupiers. Brown said the standoff was costing Oregon about $100,000 per week, mostly in additional law enforcement costs, and that she has asked her finance officials to “scour the budget” so they could subsidize the expense to Harney County. “We will be asking federal officials to reimburse the state for these costs,” she said. | 0fake |
Arizona GOP Poised To Ban Social Justice Classes, Events, And Lectures In Public Schools | Another day, another assault on the First Amendment from the freedom-loving Republican Party.In Arizona, a state facing an unprecedented teacher shortage, the Republican-led State House has introduced a bill to ban social justice courses, lectures and events from public schools, including state universities.HB 2120, introduced by Reps. Bob Thorpe and Mark Finchem, seeks to:15-112. Prohibited courses, classes, events and activities; enforcement; exceptions A. A school district or charter school in this state shall not include in its program of instruction any courses, or classes, EVENTS OR ACTIVITIES that include DO any of the following:And if the schools don t comply with the law (intentionally or unintentionally)? They lose 10 percent of their already depleted funds:B. If the state board of education or the superintendent of public instruction determines that the school district or charter school has failed to comply with subsection A OF THIS SECTION within sixty days after a notice has been issued pursuant to this subsection, the state board of education or the superintendent of public instruction may direct the department of education to withhold up to ten per cent PERCENT of the monthly apportionment of state aid that would otherwise be due the school district or charter school.In other words: don t teach anything that helps build up tolerance and acceptance of any repressed minority group or you will be punished with the money your districts so desperately need.When it comes to the state university system (institutions of higher learning), the legislation almost mirrors that for public k-12 schooling:A UNIVERSITY UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF THE ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS OR A COMMUNITY COLLEGE UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF A COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT SHALL NOT INCLUDE IN ITS PROGRAM OF INSTRUCTION ANY COURSES, CLASSES, EVENTS OR ACTIVITIES THAT DO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:Like K-12 institutions, state colleges and universities would be stripped of 10 percent of their state funding if found to be intentionally or unintentionally in violation.The problem with this law is clear: it s too broadly written, it stifles education, and it deprives students of their ability to learn about different ideologies and current events in today s America. On the surface, it sounds good no public school should be able to promote violence, resentment or hatred towards the United States government or any group of people. However, once we start telling people they can t advocate for the social justice of anyone, no matter who it is being oppressed, we become complacent with discrimination and oppression of peoples all across the globe.Does this mean professors wouldn t be able to lecture or promote the human rights of those living in Israeli-Palestinian territory? Does it mean they cannot promote the never forget mantra of Nazi Germany atrocities because it s promoting social justice for Jews, Poles, the disabled, Gay and Romani people?The list and the subsequent debate could go on and on.This Orwellian, revisionist history is dangerous and it s un-American. It stifles freedom of speech even speech we may not agree with and shields students from different opinions and outlooks on life. Students paying thousands of dollars to attend a state university should not have their right to speak and learn freely striped of them by their government.The snowflake Republicans are at it again, and this time they re the ones who need a safe space from the big, bad social justice warriors.Featured image via KTAR News | 1real |
WHO Cancer Agency Under Fire for withholding ‘carcinogenic glyphosate’ Documents | WHO Cancer Agency Under Fire for withholding ‘carcinogenic glyphosate’ Documents IARC urged its scientists not to publish research documents on its 2015 weedkiller glyphosate review RT.com - October 27, 2016 Comments
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), facing criticism over its classification of carcinogens, has reportedly been advising its scientific experts not to publish internal research data on its 2015 report on “probably carcinogenic” glyphosate.
The IARC urged its scientists not to publish research documents on its 2015 weedkiller glyphosate review, according to Reuters. The agency told Reuters on Tuesday that it tried to protect the study from “external interference,” as well as protect its intellectual rights, since it was “the sole owner of such materials.”
The scientists had been asked earlier to release all the documentation on the 2015 report under US freedom of information laws.
The groundbreaking review, published in March 2015 by the IARC – a semi-autonomous agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) – labeled the glyphosate herbicide as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Glyphosate is a key ingredient of Monsanto’s flagship weedkiller well-known under the trade name ‘Roundup.’ It is one of the most heavily used herbicides in the world and is designed to go along with genetically-modified “Roundup Ready” crops, also produced by Monsanto.
The IARC’s report caused problems for both the notorious agrochemical giant and the agency itself.
The report sparked a heated debate around the use of Roundup, and caused several EU countries – including France, Sweden, and the Netherlands – to object to the renewal of the glyphosate’s EU license. The vote on prolonging the glyphosate license for 15 years failed several times in June 2016, but the license was temporarily extended for 18 months during last hours before its expiration.
The controversial report has seemingly made the IARC a target for attacks from multiple directions, and raised scientific, legal, and financial questions.
Various critics, including those in the chemical industry, said the IARC’s evaluations are fuel for “unnecessary health scares,” since the IARC allegedly studies the potentially harmful substance itself, and not a “typical human” exposure to it. It remained unclear whether the critics urged a WHO body to test the potentially carcinogenic chemical on humans.
The critics also brought up other controversial statements from the IARC, over whether such things as mobile phones, coffee, red meat, and processed meat could cause cancer.
The agency defended its methods as scientifically sound and “widely respected for their scientific rigor, standardized and transparent process and…freedom from conflicts of interest.” Numerous freedom of information requests by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), a US conservative advocacy group, have since been turned down with this reasoning.
E&E Legal told Reuters that it is pushing a legal challenge over whether the documents in question belong to the IARC or to the US federal and state institutions where some of the experts work. Basically, it’s being decided whether the IARC, as part of the WHO, is truly independent and free from “conflicts of interest.”
According to Reuters, officials from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be questioned by a congressional committee about why American taxpayers fund the cancer agency, which faces much criticism over its allegedly faulty classification of carcinogens.
“IARC’s standards and determinations for classifying substances as carcinogenic, and therefore cancer-causing, appear inconsistent with other scientific research, and have generated much controversy and alarm,” a letter from US Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to NIH director Francis Collins states, as quoted by Reuters.
The Oversight Committee demanded a full disclosure of NIH funding of the IARC, and even money spent in relation to the cancer agency’s activities.
IARC opponents from scientific circles vowed to provide their data on the matter. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which believes glyphosate is “unlikely pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans,” promised to release its raw data on the subject as part of its “commitment to open risk assessment.” The food safety watchdog made this statement in late September, and still has to deliver the promised information. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 1real |
Special Report: How a defrocked judge became the chief legal enforcer for Maduro's Venezuela | CARACAS (Reuters) - Last March, Chief Justice Maikel Moreno shocked Venezuela when his Supreme Court nullified the powers of the National Assembly and transferred them to the 32-judge tribunal. Even in a country used to political upheaval, the decision triggered major protests, forcing Moreno to roll back much of the move three days later. But the power play illustrated Moreno s role as enforcer for the embattled administration of President Nicolas Maduro, now branded a dictatorship by a growing number of governments, from France and the United States to South American neighbors Colombia and Peru. The 51-year-old bodyguard-turned-judge and his court have overruled virtually every major law passed by the opposition-led assembly. Moreno s past, however, remains unknown even to most Venezuelans. To trace his ascent, Reuters examined documents and interviewed associates, colleagues and friends of the chief justice in five countries. The picture that emerges is of a jurist who, by leveraging personal connections and handling politically sensitive cases that other lawyers and judges rejected, endeared himself to Maduro and fellow members of the late Hugo Chavez s Bolivarian Revolution. In his rise to Venezuela s top judicial perch, Moreno left behind a past that includes allegations he participated in extortion and influence-peddling rackets and his arrest in 1989 on suspicions of killing a teenager, according to government documents and people familiar with his history. Reuters found no evidence Moreno was ever tried or convicted of any criminal charges. In a brief text-message exchange with Reuters on Nov. 7, Moreno said the allegations of jail time, long rumored in Venezuela, were invented by sensationalists. He offered to give Reuters an interview, but then did not respond to requests to schedule one. He did not respond to additional questions by text about his career or other episodes in which he was accused of wrongdoing. Neither the Supreme Court nor Maduro s government responded to separate requests for comment. Documents including a 2006 intelligence report by the Supreme Court s security division and a high court ruling against Moreno last decade point to episodes in which Moreno was accused of being on the wrong side of the law from the 1989 shooting to his ouster as a lower court judge in 2007 for what the high court said was the improper release of two murder suspects. Opponents of the Maduro government say Moreno is instrumental in propping up an administration that is increasingly authoritarian. In recent months, the top court has sentenced five opposition mayors to prison. It approved the ouster of Venezuela s chief prosecutor, who fled the country in mid-August, joining a growing exodus of Maduro critics. In May, Moreno s court gave the green light for Maduro to proceed with the election that created the Constituent Assembly, a legislature that now supersedes the National Assembly and cemented for many the country s tilt toward authoritarian rule. At least 125 people died in four months of protests that ensued after the court sought in March to neuter the assembly. The greatest affront to the people is to put a criminal in charge of the judicial system, said Luis Velazquez, a former Venezuelan judge who investigated Moreno on behalf of the Supreme Court a decade before Maduro appointed Moreno to run the top bench. During his investigation, Velazquez says he found an arrest record for Moreno after the 1989 shooting death of the teen and investigated a phone call in which another judge in a separate case recorded Moreno allegedly pressuring him to release a suspected arms and drug trafficker. The chief justice is not the first senior Venezuelan official to be accused of abuse of power. The U.S. government earlier this year accused Vice President Tareck El Aissami of drug trafficking. It sanctioned Maduro himself for having deliberately and repeatedly abused the rights of citizens with repressive tactics. And it sanctioned Moreno and seven other Supreme Court justices for allegedly usurping the legislature and restricting the rights and thwarting the will of the Venezuelan people. Venezuela s government has dismissed the accusations and criticized the sanctions, which bar Americans from engaging in business with any of the officials and freezes any assets the officials may have in U.S. jurisdictions. El Aissami, the vice president, denied ties to the drug trade and slammed the United States on Twitter for miserable provocations and vile aggression. Under Chavez and now Maduro, the economy has cratered and social stability has ruptured in a country that was once one of Latin America s most prosperous and still boasts the world s largest proven oil reserves. After an October vote in which Maduro s Socialist party candidates swept a majority of gubernatorial elections, the president dismissed accusations of fraud and defended the legitimacy of his government. I am not a dictator, Maduro said. I have a moustache and look like Stalin, but I m not him. Little in the public record exists about Moreno s youth. He was born on New Year s Eve, 1965, in the eastern city of El Tigre, according to public tax and electoral documents. In the late 1980s, court, intelligence and newspaper records show he worked as a bodyguard for then-President Carlos Andres Perez. It is not clear how he became a bodyguard or joined the president s security detail. That era in Venezuela, marked by food shortages and high inflation similar to the conditions roiling the country now, set the stage for the eventual entry of Chavez, a disgruntled leftist Army officer, into power. With anger and hardship mounting, riots erupted in 1989. Hundreds of people died. On the evening of April 26, Moreno and two other Perez bodyguards were in Parque Central, a working-class neighborhood of Caracas, the capital, according to an account two days later in El Nacional, a national newspaper. For reasons that are not clear, a brawl broke out. Ruben Gil, a 19-year-old student, entered the fray with a baseball bat, the newspaper said. The bodyguards opened fire, shooting Gil dead. Presidential Bodyguards Kill Youth, read the front-page headline, above a picture of Gil s weeping mother, Carmen Romelia Marquez de Gomez. Police arrested Moreno, according to the newspaper account, people familiar with the incident and an intelligence report prepared a decade ago by the security division of Venezuela s Supreme Court. A mugshot from his arrest, included in the report and dated the week after the killing, shows Moreno was arrested for homicide. The Supreme Court commissioned the report, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, in 2006. The 32-member court was already aligned with the leftist government by then, because of appointments made by Chavez, but several judges there had begun to question Moreno s rulings as a lower court judge. The report, which has never before been made public, was signed by Luis Enrique Villoria Garcia, director general of the court s security division at the time. Reuters was unable to reach Villoria to discuss the report. One page appears to be missing from the 19-page copy reviewed by Reuters. But details from the report regarding the homicide and Moreno s removal from the bench in 2007 were independently verified by people familiar with its contents. Those people include one senior government official, three former Supreme Court judges and three former senior intelligence officials. Important details about the homicide and Moreno s arrest remain unclear. Notably, Reuters was unable to find a paper trail documenting whether Moreno was tried, sentenced or imprisoned. The Supreme Court report says he was jailed until sometime in 1990, and cites a criminal case number for a homicide charge against him, 522755, but Reuters could not find any files associated with the case. A security guard at Lebrun, a central judicial archive in Caracas, would not grant Reuters access to records there. The Supreme Court did not respond to requests seeking permission to search the archive. Gil s mother died a decade ago, according to people close to the family. Two people close to Gil told Reuters that witnesses and family members at the time of the brawl said Moreno fired the shot that killed the 19-year-old. These people, who requested anonymity, saying they were afraid of reprisals, said Gil had been a gang member and that an existing, but unspecified rivalry with Moreno had sparked the brawl. One person, who says he saw Gil s body in a Caracas morgue, said the young man was shot in the back. Gil s death certificate, reviewed by Reuters, cites gunshot as the cause of death. Three people close to the family said legal proceedings followed Gil s death, but none of them knew what became of the case. I have wanted to denounce him for years, but I have been too scared, one of these people said. Moreno has never publicly denied, confirmed or discussed shooting Gil. He told friends and colleagues the killing was in self-defense, according to a person close to Moreno who spoke on condition of anonymity. Another person, who also asked not to be named, told Reuters that Moreno said any fallout from the killing had been resolved. At some point in 1990, according to the intelligence report, Moreno was released from jail. It said he had received an illegally granted procedural benefit but gave no further details about his release. In the text exchange with Reuters, Moreno disputed the assertion of jail time, saying it and the other details from the report are not true either. He did not clarify or directly address other specifics from the report. Once free, Moreno pursued a law degree at Santa Maria University, in Caracas. He worked as a bailiff while he studied, according to his official biography. While Moreno studied, Chavez in 1992 led a failed coup attempt against Perez s increasingly unpopular government. Chavez was jailed, but freed in 1994 thanks to the work of Cilia Flores, a firebrand attorney fond of leftist causes. In the next decade, Flores became a close aide of Chavez and the head of the National Assembly. She was also a friend of Moreno. It is not clear how she knew him, but Flores years before had also studied law at Santa Maria. The government did not respond to Reuters requests to speak with Flores. Reuters could not reach her outside government channels. Completing his law degree in 1995, Moreno worked for two years as an attorney before taking a job as a legal advisor at Corporacion Alas de Venezuela C.A., a holding company for Venezuelan airline Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela. By that time, Chavez had won increasing support from working-class Venezuelans and was on track to win the 1998 presidential election. Moreno was already bragging about his close ties to Flores and other ascendant Chavistas. He made sure everyone knew about that relationship, said Nelson Ramiz, who owned Aeropostal but gave up control of the airline and moved to Miami in 2007 after a dispute with regulators. After three years at the airline, Moreno worked as a legal advisor to the metropolitan police in Sucre, a district of Caracas. He also began advising the National Assembly and became an auxiliary judge for a district in the country s northeast. For the rest of the 1990s, Moreno alternated between work as an attorney and judge, sometimes wearing both hats at nearly the same time. It is not unusual for some attorneys in Venezuela to also work as judges. But Moreno s choice of cases sometimes created what critics saw as conflicts of interest. In one episode, he defended a suspect in a high-profile homicide trial and later, as judge, heard related charges against another suspect. Both cases stemmed from shooting deaths that occurred during a short-lived coup against Chavez in April 2002. During the coup, gunfire erupted as opposition supporters marched toward Miraflores Palace, seat of the presidency. Witnesses later said they saw rooftop snipers, gunmen on a bridge and gun-wielding police officers during the shooting. By the time the violence ended, 19 people were dead. Basic facts of the event, which fueled years of controversy and trials, are still disputed by critics and supporters of the Chavez and Maduro governments. Richard Penalver, a government supporter accused of being one of the shooters, hired Moreno as his defense lawyer. In 2003, Moreno secured Penalver s acquittal, a victory for the pro-government camp. Shortly thereafter, this time as pre-trial judge, Moreno agreed to hear whether a case should proceed against Ivan Simonovis, a former Caracas police commissioner who faced charges related to four of the deaths. Government opponents argued that the charges were manipulated and that Simonovis was being made a scapegoat. They also perceived a conflict for Moreno because of his recent role in clearing Penalver. Although the defense asked Moreno to recuse himself, according to one of the attorneys and a Simonovis family member, Moreno refused. He sent the case to trial, where Simonovis was convicted the following year and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Simonovis, now serving time under house arrest because of an illness, is not allowed under the terms of his sentence to discuss the case with Reuters. Few other judges were willing to hear such a polarizing case. None of us wanted to take on political cases, one former Supreme Court justice told Reuters. Maikel did, though, to ingratiate himself with the Chavez government. At the time, Moreno was getting ever closer to crucial powerbrokers, especially Flores and her longtime boyfriend - Chavez s confidante and future successor, Maduro. The judge and the power couple grew to have regular contact, the former justice said. Moreno began throwing his weight around with other judges. In 2004, Caracas judge Luis Melendez recorded a telephone conversation in which Moreno said he was phoning at the behest of Jose Vicente Rangel, Venezuela s vice president at the time. Disturbed by a prior call from Moreno, Melendez taped the follow-up conversation and gave the recording to internal inspectors of the national judiciary. In the recording, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, Moreno is heard pressuring Melendez to release Saul Cordero, a suspected criminal charged at the time with drug and arms trafficking. Reuters also reviewed a transcript of the call printed on Supreme Court letterhead during its investigation of Moreno in 2006. The important thing is for him to be out, Moreno told Melendez. Do what needs to be done. The senior government official and one other person familiar with the recording said it was authentic. It is not clear whether Melendez released Cordero. But Cordero was never tried on the charges and eventually was named a police chief by a pro-government mayor in the municipality of Caroni. Reuters could not reach Cordero, Melendez or Rangel for comment. By 2006, word of the phone call and of Moreno s controversial role in the 2002 shooting trials was increasingly well-known in judicial circles, according to several judges, attorneys and other officials active at the time. The Supreme Court ordered its security division to investigate. The resulting intelligence report unearthed allegations that helped derail Moreno s first stint as a judge. The report, for instance, held that Moreno s efforts to affect judicial outcomes went beyond pressuring colleagues. It cited testimony by numerous witnesses alleging Moreno took part in an extortion ring known as Los Enanos, or the Dwarves that secured payments from defendants in exchange for lenient sentences or acquittals. Moreno was never charged for anything related to the alleged extortion. But his behavior, the report warned, was a threat to the courts, to Chavez and to the revolution. In 2007, the Supreme Court found Moreno in contempt of the tribunal and defrocked him as an appeals court judge. Citing grave and inexcusable errors, the high court found Moreno had improperly released two murder suspects, according to its ruling. Reuters could not determine on what grounds Moreno had released the two suspects. Despite his ouster, Moreno remained calm, according to people who spoke with him at the time. Allies like Maduro, whom Chavez had just named foreign minister, would help him. Maduro and Cilia will protect me, Moreno told Ramiz, according to the former airline owner s recollection of a conversation with Moreno shortly after the dismissal. The two had remained friendly after Moreno left Aeropostal. Almost immediately, Maduro sent Moreno to a diplomatic post in Rome. After a year, Maduro sent Moreno to Trinidad and Tobago, a Caribbean country much closer to home, where he held a commercial post with the Venezuelan embassy until 2010. Moreno then returned to Caracas and studied for a doctorate. Chavez, stricken by cancer, died in March 2013. Maduro, by then vice president, succeeded Chavez the following month. Weeks later, he married Flores, making her first lady. With his allies firmly in power, Moreno revived a judicial career that three senior judges said would have remained moribund without such connections, given Moreno s arrest in the 1989 killing and his later ouster from the court system. The country s 1999 constitution, rewritten by Chavez, stipulates the head of the Supreme Court be of good repute. In 2014, Maduro named Moreno, with a fresh doctorate in constitutional law, to the top court. Since then, Moreno s influence has only grown. In February 2017, Maduro named him chief justice, outraging critics, including Gabriela Ramirez, the national ombudsman at the time. Ramirez unsuccessfully sought to derail the appointment, citing to senior officials Moreno s ouster from the appeals court. Under Moreno as chief justice, the court proceeded to dismiss every legal challenge to Maduro s authority that has reached the bench. | 0fake |
Trump Escalates Confrontation With China In Move That Could Spark A Massive War | Donald Trump is moving the United States closer to a war with China over some tiny islands.The relationship between the United States has been cordial and peaceful for decades now, but Trump plans to change all that. For someone who claims that our military is depleted, Trump sure has no problem putting our country on the brink of war.China is currently making claims to islands in the South China Sea, which is an international body of water. The matter could probably be settled through diplomacy, but Trump has chosen to bully China instead. And he is inviting a catastrophic war in the process.According to Reuters,The comments at a briefing from White House spokesman Sean Spicer signaled a sharp departure from years of cautious U.S. handling of China s assertive pursuit of territory claims in Asia, just days after Trump took office on Friday. The U.S. is going to make sure that we protect our interests there, Spicer said when asked if Trump agreed with comments by his Secretary of State nominee, Rex Tillerson, on Jan. 11 that China should not be allowed access to islands it has built in the contested South China Sea. It s a question of if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yeah, we re going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country, he said.Tillerson s remarks at his Senate confirmation hearing prompted Chinese state media to say the United States would need to wage war to bar China s access to the islands where it has built military-length air strips and installed weapons systems.The strong language suggests Trump is considering military action or a naval blockade to keep the islands out of Chinese hands, but even Chinese state media has warned that such action would lead to war between the two nations.And that would be a catastrophe. Not only would this be a war between two nuclear powers, it would be a war between the two largest economies in the world, which means a war between China and the United States would have serious global ramifications.But war is apparently what Trump is thinking about as he has repeatedly treated China with antagonism since before Election Day.And Americans should not expect our allies to help us either. If Trump starts a war with China, America would be on its own. Our troops would be fighting and dying because of Trump s fragile ego. The deficit and the national debt would also skyrocket, especially since Trump has promised Corporate America that he will cut their taxes in half, which would deprive the government of revenues to keep our military strong. That means Trump will get the revenues from the middle class and the poor.China s military and navy are improving rapidly, and they are the most populous nation on Earth. That means Trump would have a reinstate the military draft he himself dodged during the Vietnam War to get enough soldiers to put on the front lines. Even thinking about a military confrontation is insane.The longer Trump is allowed to remain in office, the more dangerous he becomes. This country is now on a path to a war that will cripple our nation and Trump doesn t give a damn because he thinks it makes him look tough. In reality, it just makes him look like an idiot.Featured Image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images | 1real |
As ‘Me Too’ Posts Flood Social Media, Video Surfaces Of Trump Bragging About Hiring A ‘HOT’ Teenager | Everyone knows what a dirtbag Donald Trump is when it comes to women. His wives, his ex-wives, his mistresses, and even perfect strangers could literally all be participating in the #MeToo posts going on right now on Facebook and Twitter.The movement really took off after a tweet by actress Alyssa Milano:If you ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write me too as a reply to this tweet. pic.twitter.com/k2oeCiUf9n Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) October 15, 2017Sophie Gilbert wrote an excellent piece in The Atlantic about the use of the tag to draw attention to the fact that not some, not many, but most women have had to endure some sort of sexual harassment in their everyday lives, and most of them many, many times.But in the middle of it all, another tweet came across the feeds of at least Scott Dworkin s quarter of a million followers on Twitter Monday morning. It s a recently uncovered video of Donald Trump back in 2007 giving a highly-paid speech to the Learning Annex. In it, a woman named Juliet in the audience at one point raises her hand during the Q&A portion of the event, and asks Trump, How many jets do you have and how might I apply to be a flight attendant? Seizing the opportunity to be the jackass he s been his whole life, skeevy Donald has the lovely young woman escorted to the stage. As she approaches, his face contorts into appreciative looks and he tells the audience, I think she s hired, I don t know. Leering at her body, he puts his arm around her and says, deadpan, You re hired. Trump then proceeds to tell the audience a story. I had a case, it was very interesting. A beautiful girl who was 17 or 18 and applied to be a waitress. So beautiful. She s like a world-class beauty like the young lady who just asked a question about the actress. She s so beautiful. And my people came and she said, Mr. Trump, she has no experience. So I interviewed her anyway because she was so pretty. And I said, Let me ask you, do you have any experience? She goes, No, sir. I say, When can you start?' Before Juliet can leave the stage, presumably having been brought on purely as a prop for his anecdote, he squeezes her and kisses her. Then he stares at her body as she leaves the stage. This isn t my interpretation of what Trump is doing, you ll see in the video yourself. And as if making faces, raising his eyebrows, pursing his lips as he watches her walk away isn t enough, he turns back to the microphone and explains his addiction to women: See now, if she worked on my plane, that s like a death wish for me, right? That s like an alcoholic. People are alcoholics. You put Scotch in front of them, it s like [Trump waves his hands around the way he did while making fun of a disabled reporter], it s like, this would be my form of alcoholism. It is so sad that the biggest trend on social media right now is people sharing their stories of abuse publicly, just to spread awareness about how pervasive the problem is And the country is being led by one of the biggest, most public perpetrators of that kind of abuse the world has ever known.Watch the video here:Featured image via Leon Neal/Getty Images | 1real |
MIKE ROWE ASKS: Why Are OUR Tax Dollars Funding Colleges That Burn the Flag? [Video] | 1real | |
‘Half my family’ is here illegally!…State Senator Wants Entire State to Be Sanctuary State [Video] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUr8pYr5AXs | 1real |
WATCH: Flint Pastor Who Shut Trump Down Hits Back With Grace And Class After He Insults Her | If Donald Trump thought he was going to get away with calling the pastor of the black church he visited in Flint, Michigan a nervous mess, he was dead wrong. Pastor Faith Green-Timmons is a strong woman and rock in her community. She didn t let Trump get away with trying to use her church as a platform to attack Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and, as he always done when he feels embarrassed or attacked, Trump went on Fox News and trashed Pastor Green-Timmons. That isn t all, either Trump flat-out lied about what happened while he was at the church and how his visit was received.Well, this pastor was the wrong one for Trump to decide to start another one of his personal feuds with. Refusing to sink to Trump s pattern of low-road insults when there is any sort of conflict whatsoever, Pastor Green-Timmons had this to say regarding Trump s remarks and her interruption of his statements in her church: They had plans to make it a little more than they originally said, and I said, No, you re going to stick to the original plan. And so when he asked to come in to make a statement and the statement began to go beyond what he originally said, I asked him to stick to what he said. You came here to welcome our workers and thank them for what they have done and that s what he stuck to. So, in other words, Trump wanted to do things his way, and he got shut down by a strong black lady pastor and he can t stand it. Pastor Green-Timmons continued: When I heard from the Trump camp that they wanted to come by and see that we give out water, we give out foods that help mitigate lead and asked if he could come all are welcome. It s a public event. Then, Pastor Green-Timmons turned her attentions to some of Trump s more bigoted and insulting statements regarding African-Americans and others. Still, despite the horrible things Trump has said, this lady continued to show class: I wanted him to see the best of Flint in the sense that we re an educated congregation. Some of the statements that I ve heard him make about African-Americans, Mexicans and others were degrading. I wanted him to see intelligent people, loving people, caring people, who have done well with the resources that they had. Exactly. Trump speaks about minority communities in some of the most bigoted, ignorant, and insulting language imaginable, and this pastor just wanted to give him a chance to see some educated, thriving black people who are not out joining gangs and getting shot on every street corner. The thing is, though, Trump will continue to hold on to his racist opinions, for he is incapable of changing them. It s too bad this pastor wasted her wisdom, time, and space on such a disgraceful person.Watch Pastor Green-Timmons speak below:Flint Pastor Rev. Faith Green Timmons explains why she interrupted @realDonaldTrump speech #TrumpInFlint pic.twitter.com/jtfqBwb00g Cameron Ridle (@CameronRidle) September 14, 2016Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Russia, China agree North Korea, Syria crises should be resolved by diplomacy | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and China agreed that the North Korean and Syrian crises should be resolved by diplomatic means, Russia s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday. It said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counter-part, Wang Yi, discussed the crises during the United Nations General Assembly. | 0fake |
Media Was Silent When Obama Adopted Defense Proposals from Pro-Soviet Think Tank | TEL AVIV — Amid the flurry of reports about the Trump administration and Russia — largely innuendo that has yielded no documented connections between the two sides — it may be instrumental to review the largely unknown history of how President Obama’s administration adopted defense budget recommendations by the Institute for Policy Studies, a radical organization known for its close associations with the Soviets during the Cold War. [In fact, throughout the Cold War, the Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS, was repeatedly accused of holding positions that undermined U. S. national security and serving as a de facto Soviet propaganda institution. Yet that same group and contributed to an annual report titled “Unified Security Budget for the United States,” an extensive yearly list of U. S. military defense spending recommendations compiled by progressive think tanks. The report seeks to the Defense Department to “strengthen our capacity to prevent and resolve conflict by means,” according to one IPS description of the report. A 2011 report on the IPS’s taskforce for the “Unified Security Budget” reveals how previous Unified reports influenced Obama administration defense proposals: The Unified Security Budget project has contributed to this debate by outlining a set of cuts in unneeded military programs that formed the core of a proposal by the Sustainable Defense Task Force for $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years. A majority, though not a supermajority, of the members of the President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform adopted the annualized figure of $100 billion, and many of the recommendations from this proposal. The IPS’s influence over Obama administration military proposals remains largely unreported except for previous investigations by this reporter. The annual Unified Security Budget was several times by the Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, who served as counselor to President Obama and later chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. A sampling of the IPS’s defense spending recommending can be seen in its 2012 “Unified Security Budget” report. That extensive report was previously summarized by this reporter: The 2012 budget, reviewed in full by (this reporter) called on Obama to use the U. S. Armed Forces in part to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide. The budget called for massive, slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change. The report makes clear the stated objective of transforming the U. S. Armed Forces to stress conflict resolution and diplomacy. The report takes issue with the use of forces on the ground in various countries to secure or influence the strategic position of other nations. It recommends scaling back all U. S. ground forces by 20 percent and reducing the Navy’s surface fleet by 20 percent, including two carriers and carrier combat air wings. It also calls for reducing the Air Force by two combat air wings while cutting standing peacetime overseas deployments in Europe and East Asia by up to 50, 000 troops at a time. The budget’s authors strongly argue for the reduction of the U. S. nuclear arsenal to no more than 292 deployed nuclear weapons and the complete elimination of the Trident II nuclear missile. It’s a process Obama already initiated in April 2010 when he signed a deal with Russia reducing stocks of plutonium. The report further recommended the U. S. cease all missile defense development, among other cut backs. Here is more of my previous summary: The report goes through a list of current missile defense programs, including Midcourse Defense, Airborne Laser, Kinetic Energy Interceptors and a number of others, pushing for all programs to be cut. “It is unwise to fund more advanced systems for missile defense while current ones have yet to be proven effective against their targeted threats,” complains the report. The military’s vital Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation program is to be cut by $10 billion across the board. Next on the chopping block is the complete cancellation of the second Virginia Class submarine. While the Unified Security Budget describes the new model as “unnecessary to address any of the threats facing the United States today” and “a weapon looking for an enemy,” the is designed for covert collection of intelligence, transportation of special operations teams and launching of tactical Tomahawk missiles — flexible capabilities tailored to rapid responses required by the ’s conflicts with irregular combatants. Similarly targeted for cancellation are the Osprey helicopter and the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the Joint Strike Fighter. A closer look at IPS, which influenced Obama administration policy, is warranted. The organization was founded in 1963 by former government workers Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet, both of whom were known for their ties to groups and activism on behalf of communist regimes. Discover the Networks relates that after the group was founded, “IPS headquarters quickly became a resource center for national reporters and a place for KGB agents from the nearby Soviet embassy to convene and strategize. ” Indeed, Ladislav Bittman, a former KGB agent, claimed in his book, The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider’s View that the IPS worked as a de facto Soviet disinformation operation. Harvey Klehr, professor of politics and history at Emory University, documented the close links between the IPS and Soviet ideology in his 1988 book, Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today. During the Cold War, IPS fellows “consistently maintained that the Soviet threat is largely and a product of the complex in the United States,” he wrote. Just like their 2009 defense budget recommendations, the IPS during the Cold War pressed for the U. S. to “dangerously” downsize its military, Klehr related. He wrote: This view encouraged the IPS to demand dangerously steep cuts in American defense efforts and to claim that they would represent no danger to American security. At the request of congressmen, IPS made a study of the federal budget in 1977. In addition to recommendations for a socialist housing program and health system, and altering capitalist control over the educational system, the IPS suggested a fifty percent cut in defense spending, an end to the American role in the Middle East, and withdrawal from NATO. Klehr further documented numerous IPS links to alleged Soviet front groups. IPS signed an agreement in 1982 with the Soviet’s Institute of the USA and Canada, headed by Georgiy Arbatov, for exchanges on peace and disarmament. Since then IPS has sponsored an annual meeting of American experts and Soviet officials. Although portrayed by the Soviets as an “independent” “think tank,” the Institute of the USA and Canada has been widely identified as an instrument of Soviet foreign policy influence. Located in Moscow, the IUSAC is nominally under the direction of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In practice, however, it operates under the direction of the International Department of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee. According to the testimony of John McMahon, then deputy director of Central Intelligence (during the House Selected Committee on Intelligence Hearings on Soviet Active Measures in 1982) the International Department “directs Western dialogue activities of Soviet organizations such as the Institute” with a view toward influencing Western perceptions of peace and disarmament. In his book, Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam, author Robert Chandler further documents FBI memos describing the IPS as a nerve center. The FBI produced thousands of documents on IPS’s activities. Some are available to the public through the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI withheld hundreds of documents. The documents collected by the FBI described IPS as a “Think Factory,” which “helped train extremists who incite violence in the United States and whose educational research serves as a cover for intrigue and political agitation” (FBI file ) or “the Rand Corporation of the Left,” and “IPS apparently exercises considerable influence in the New Left Movement and may have as its goal the destruction of the United States Government. ” In this context, the mainstream media described the IPS in the 1970s and 1980s as follows: Wall Street Journal — “A funnel for disinformation,” Forbes — “A radical Washington propaganda mill,” National Review — “The perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB. ” This reporter previously documented the Cold activities of the IPS. The IPS has been implicated in activity. The Center for Security Studies was a 1974 IPS and strove to compromise the effectiveness of U. S. intelligence agencies, according to Discover the Networks. The mastheads of two and publications, Counterspy and the Covert Action Information Bulletin, were heavy with IPS members. Further, the group’s former director, Robert Borosage, penned a book shortly out of college attacking the CIA and ran the CIA watchdog, Center for National Security Studies. The group has been particularly concerned with researching U. S. defense industries and arms sales policies. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With research by Brenda J. Elliott. | 0fake |
Hillary Makes SCANDALOUS Stop After Rachel Maddow Breaks Down On LIVE TV | Hillary Makes SCANDALOUS Stop After Rachel Maddow Breaks Down On LIVE TV Posted on October 30, 2016 by Rebecca Diserio in Politics Share This Hillary Clinton drinking on plane (left), Hillary at Jennifer Lopez concert last night (middle), Hillary at Miami bar today (right)
Hillary Clinton is getting desperate and so is her lapdog media now that FBI Director James Comey dropped the bomb, re-opening the email investigation. Crazy happenings have just transpired in the last 24 hours, and you’ll love Hillary’s scandalous stop that’s making it so much worse as Rachel Maddow gets caught having a breakdown on live TV.
Hillary embarrassed herself last night at a free concert given in her name by Jennifer Lopez and her ex-husband Marc Anthony. Hillary came out on stage and pandered so badly to the Latino community that it came off as repulsive. Rachel Maddow cries on live TV over Hillary Clinton’s campaign imploding over new email scandal with Anthony Weiner.
After Rachel Maddow learned that Hillary sustained what she called “a brick being thrown right at the Clinton campaign,” referring to James Comey’s actions, she was caught fighting back tears as another liberal hack tried to convince her that the FBI’s decision to re-open the email scandal is a big deal.
Maddow was hoping he would tell her not to worry and that Hillary can still win, but when she didn’t get that news she wanted, she became enraged and then fought back tears. However, it all got worse with what Hillary did this morning.
This morning, Hillary Clinton was caught making a stop at a Miami bar before noon. That’s right, calling it a campaign stop, Hillary strolled into the bar, which looked like a sleazy kind of place, and created even more controversy for the candidate since her drinking has been a sore subject since day one of this campaign. False alarm on missing hillary. She's at a bar in Florida…… Mid day on a Sunday "campaigning" #GoHillary
— Known patriot (@NCSBM) October 30, 2016
As Mad World News previously reported, “WikiLeaks email from her campaign advisor Jen Palmeri to campaign chairman John Podesta seems to indicate that having to sober Hillary up was a routine occurrence. However, since everyone was scared of her, no one wanted to do it.”
“Should I call her and talk this through or better to leave with you? I’m worried she’ll get on with Cheryl and we’ll end up in a bad place. I’m in a session that lasts till 3:30 your time. Is that timely or should I walk out?” …
“I just sent. Was getting my hair cut and trying to write all this on an iPhone. I think you should call her and sober her up some .” [via Wikileaks ]
Hillary’s drinking problems are well known by Washington insiders, so after the last 24 hours, seeing the fallout as her campaign was squashed, making a stop at a Miami bar before noon makes perfect sense.
Hillary’s going to need a lot more than Jennifer Lopez gyrating while wearing a thong on stage and Rachel Maddow crying on live TV to breathe life into her dead campaign. We better be on high alert for some manufactured scandal coming at Donald Trump. Too bad for Hillary, it will be seen for what it is — Hillary and her henchmen trying to save her unsalvageable campaign. | 1real |
Legal Scholars Worried Trump Would Break Laws, Be Worse Than Nixon | What happens when conservative lawyers from the Cato Institute, Georgetown University and the Hoover Institution get together?Well, besides their opposition to Obamacare, they all come to the conclusion that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President of the United States, is bad for the law.In a recent article from the New York Times, these lawyers, all politically conservative, lambasted the billionaire mogul for his attacks against the First Amendment, individuals, the separation of powers, and the rule of law all together.In other words, these lawyers, without saying it, contend that Trump would be more crooked, more criminal, and more disastrous than Richard Nixon.Pointing out that his promise to tighten libel laws undermines the First Amendment, and that his proposal to ban Muslims from coming into the U.S. violates the Constitution s guarantees of religious freedom, due process and equal protection, attorney Ilya Sharpiro who works with the Cato Institute said plainly, Who knows what Donald Trump with a pen and phone would do. But it was Volokh Conspiracy (a conservative legal blog) writer and attorney David Post who had the harshest words for Trump. Saying his comments regarding Gonzalo P. Cruiel, the judge presiding over the Trump University case, resembled authoritarianism, Post argues that these outbursts disqualified him: This is how authoritarianism starts, with a president who does not respect the judiciary. You can criticize the judicial system, you can criticize individual cases, you can criticize individual judges. But the president has to be clear that the law is the law and that he enforces the law. That is his constitutional obligation. So not only does Trump hate the law, he has vowed to restore Trump University after the judge s decision. This blatant disregard for the rule of law should send chills down every American s spine. If Donald Trump, a now public, political figure and possibly future president, can openly disregard the law, who s to say the average American can t?Randy E. Barnett, a law professor at Georgetown who was the architect behind the first major challenge to Obamacare, feels Trump doesn t know his limits: You would like a president with some idea about constitutional limits on presidential powers, on congressional powers, on federal powers, and I doubt he has any awareness of such limits. Richard Epstein, attorney with the Hoover Institution, was more blunt: I don t think he cares about separation of powers at all I think Obama s been much worse on that issue [constitutional limits] pretty consistently, and his underlings have been even more so. But I think Trump doesn t even think there s an issue to worry about. He just simply says whatever I want to do I will do. I never thought the day would come when conservative lawyers would view Trump more dangerously than they do President Obama.Maybe Trump really does suck. Perhaps Republicans will begin to see the light when Hillary Clinton thrashes him on the debate stage.Featured image via Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images | 1real |
Germany: Rule of law must hold in Spain | BERLIN (Reuters) - It is important for Spain to uphold the rule of law to preserve stability, German Chancellor Angela Merkel s spokesman said on Wednesday as Catalonia moves toward declaring independence from the EU state. Germany is watching developments there closely. We have a great interest in the stability of Spain. Therefore it is important ... that the rule of law is adhered to, spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters. Describing the conflict between Madrid and Catalonia as an internal matter, he said any solution can only take place within the Spanish constitution and democratic order and he declined to condemn police action over the weekend. Chancellor Merkel is not pursuing a mediation mission. It is an internal matter for Spain, he added. | 0fake |
After Iran shock, nervous Europe girds for next Trump salvo | BERLIN (Reuters) - Following Donald Trump s decision to decertify the Iran nuclear deal this month, shaken European capitals are asking themselves what the U.S. president will do next. Diplomats have sketched scenarios they fear could plunge transatlantic relations into crisis: a trade war, military conflict over North Korea, or the collapse of a Cold War-era arms treaty. They wonder if their post-war alliance can survive if any of them come true. Since Trump took office nine months ago, governments in Berlin, Paris and London have wavered between alarm at his rhetoric and a shaky sense that his worst instincts can be contained by the grown ups in his cabinet and pressure from allies. But the Iran decision, taken despite personal appeals from France s Emmanuel Macron, Germany s Angela Merkel and Britain s Theresa May, has changed the calculus in Europe, according to diplomats, politicians and analysts. No longer is there an underlying confidence that Europe can muddle through three more years of Trump without fear of major, and possibly lasting, disruptions to the relationship. Nor is there faith that Trump, when the stakes are high, will listen to what his advisers and partners tell him. The anxiety is especially acute in Germany, whose own identity is anchored in its relationship with the United States and whose reliance on Washington, particularly in defense and security matters, runs deeper than that of France or Britain. There is a sense of desperation in Berlin, a sense that Trump does not know what is at stake, that he doesn t understand the historical factors that are at play here, said Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to Washington and chairman of the Munich Security Conference. The transatlantic relationship is all about trust. In that sense, the Iran decision takes us to a new level. It is a breach of trust, he said. Trump s decision to decertify the Iran deal will not necessarily kill it. That depends on Congress, which must now decide to impose new sanctions against Tehran. But the consensus in Europe is that a landmark diplomatic achievement has been seriously undermined. Merkel alluded to the breakdown in trust back in May, when she said Europe might not be able to rely on the United States and must take its fate into its own hands. That came after a contentious G7 meeting in Sicily at which Trump ignored pleas from allies to stick with another multilateral agreement, the Paris climate accord. Since then Merkel, focused on an election and efforts to form a coalition, has said little about the transatlantic relationship or Trump. Macron meanwhile, has done his best to charm the American president, inviting him to Paris for Bastille Day celebrations and meeting him again at the United Nations last month. I don t despair of making him change his mind, Macron said in New York of Trump s stances on climate and Iran. In private however, European officials say they are worried that Trump s rejection of the Iran deal could be a harbinger of other disruptive salvos from Washington. One senior European diplomat said the next conflict would likely be over trade, describing Trump s attempt to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and his threats to abandon it as a litmus test . European firms, especially German carmakers who produce in Mexico and export to the United States, could be hit hard by a breakdown of NAFTA. There are also fears that Trump could carry out a threat to introduce steel import tariffs, which would hit European exporters as well as the Chinese. So far there has been a lot of bark and no bite from Trump on trade, but that doesn t mean it will stay that way, said the European diplomat. We have to be prepared for real protectionist measures. Any steps that penalize European firms directly or indirectly would create a downward spiral. ANTI-AMERICANISM North Korea is another area of concern. Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, believes the reaction in Europe to a military conflict on the Korean peninsula could be as messy as the Iraq war . The European public could view Washington as the aggressor in such a conflict. This could fuel anti-American sentiment, making it difficult for European leaders to stand with Trump and emboldening voices that are already calling for a break from Washington no matter how unrealistic that looks in practice. We have to wake up to the fact that we may be dealing with Trump for some time, and that there may not be a correction when he leaves, one German diplomat told Reuters. It hasn t dawned on people here that this is existential and you have to react. Concerns about such sentiments led a group of a dozen Germany-based foreign policy experts to issue a manifesto this month, entitled In Spite of It All, America , which warned Berlin against turning its back on Washington because of Trump. Former ambassador Ischinger shares that view. But he too is concerned the relationship could deteriorate further. One of his biggest fears is a collapse of the INF Treaty, a nuclear arms reduction pact signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Washington and Moscow accuse each other of violating the treaty and Gorbachev himself warned this month that it was in peril. Should the INF unravel, Ischinger believes the divisive 1980s debate about deploying nuclear weapons in Europe could resurface with devastating consequences for transatlantic ties. All hell could break loose, politically speaking, he said. For generations of Germans, Ischinger says, the symbol of the transatlantic alliance has been U.S. presidents from John F. Kennedy to Reagan, and from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama. I can no longer tell my children that they are part of this alliance with Trump as president, he said. It is rather sad. I don t know how the loss of this symbol can be replaced. | 0fake |
All Brexit arguments settled by 0.5 per cent third-quarter growth | All Brexit arguments settled by 0.5 per cent third-quarter growth 28-10-16
ALL debates about the negative impact of Brexit have been settled for good by Britain’s 0.5 per cent third-quarter growth.
Leading Remain campaigners, including former chancellor George Osborne, are preparing public apologies and the nation’s 16 million Remain voters are expected to follow suit.
Joanna Kramer of Bristol said: “It’s not easy to admit you’re wrong but I don’t see I have any choice.
“Britain is thriving with only a 0.2 per cent decline on expected growth, national pride has exploded into a proud display of healthy scepticism towards supposed child refugees, and I was a fool.
“How could I have been so blind not to see that glory would be upon us this soon, if only we had the courage to take back control?
“I’m sorry, everyone. I’m sorry I was a traitor.”
Brexit voter Stephen Malley said: “What am I going to do for conversation now?”
Share: | 1real |
California Braces for More Rain. How Bad Can It Get? - The New York Times | It’s raining in California. Again. A storm system hitting north and central California on Monday and Tuesday will deliver two to three inches of rain to the Central Valley, and up to 10 inches of rain to the mountains, said Eric Kurth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. The service has issued a flood warning through Wednesday across most of the Sacramento River Valley and the surrounding areas. It is the latest in a string of storms this winter that have dropped an unusually high amount of water on the state, which had spent more than five years under dire drought conditions. “On its own, this system wouldn’t be much of a concern,” Mr. Kurth said. “But we have elevated stream levels, river levels. We are seeing some of the rivers up at flood levels. ” Last week, more than 180, 000 residents were ordered to evacuate from below the Oroville Dam when a damaged emergency spillway and a swollen reservoir raised concerns about a collapse. Crews rushed to fix the damaged embankment at the dam, 70 miles north of Sacramento, and to prepare it for more rain. On Saturday, a storm with winds near hurricane strength swept through Southern California, killing at least two people, flooding roads and triggering mudslides. A sinkhole in Studio City swallowed a car. Interstate 5 in the central Sacramento Valley was flooded briefly over the weekend. “That was an area that typically we don’t see much flooding,” Mr. Kurth said. “But things are so saturated. ” Across the northern part of the state, swollen rivers were lapping over their banks and reservoirs were close to flood stage. The National Weather Service reported nearly a dozen rivers were at their flood stage on Sunday. The San Joaquin River was at “danger stage” on Sunday and nearing the top of its levees at a measuring station near Vernalis, Tim Daly, a spokesman with San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services, told The Associated Press. In Colusa County, about 60 miles north of Sacramento, Jim Saso, the assistant sheriff, told The A. P. that he was warning residents to be prepared for evacuation. “We’re telling those people to keep a bag close by and get ready to leave again,” he said. The Don Pedro Reservoir in Tuolumne County, southeast of Sacramento, was at 826 feet on Sunday — four feet below its flood level, CBS 13 reported. Authorities were preparing to release water through its spillway as early as Monday afternoon, the first time in 20 years that would have happened, CBS 13 said. The ultimate effect of the storm depends on how much of the moisture lands as rain in the valleys as opposed to snow higher up in the mountains, Mr. Kurth said. “That set of storms previously that brought a lot of trouble, the issues with the Oroville Dam, that system was very warm,” he said. This storm is not quite as warm, meaning that some of the higher amounts of moisture could be in the form of snow in the mountains and would not affect the rivers immediately. “If we get water locked up in the form of snowpack and that stays through the spring, we get a gradual water flow into the spring months and maybe into the summer,” he said. “If we get it all in the form of rain, maybe like those other storms, it’s all running down into the streams and maybe into the rivers causing some flooding. ” “We do need water. Water is good. But it’s better in the form of snow,” he said. This latest storm is what’s called an “atmospheric river” — a weather event more commonly known as the “pineapple express. ” It is moist tropical air from the central Pacific trapped in a band between different pressure systems, Mr. Kurth said. When it hits California, it unleashes a high amount of rain. “It’s like a fire hose of moisture when we get these atmospheric rivers,” he said. An atmospheric river is not especially unusual. “We usually get a couple every year,” he said. “On average we get maybe three to five or so. This year we’ve gotten quite a few more. ” How many more? “More than a dozen prior to this one,” he said. This storm also brings “pretty strong winds,” which could potentially top 60 miles an hour on Monday evening, Mr. Kurth said. The wind, when combined with the oversaturated ground, means that trees tend to topple more frequently — and when they do, they often take powers lines with them. Or they fall across highways, snarling traffic in regions that were spared flooding. ”I’ve seen more of that this year than I’ve ever seen by far,” Mr. Kurth said. The saturation also leaves areas vulnerable to mudslides. “Major arteries over the Sierras have been blocked for long periods of time, and I expect we’ll see much more of that today, too,” he said. California has been in a drought for more than five years, resulting in mandatory conservation. Reservoirs were parched, and the snowpack that helps feed the state’s rivers and streams with its spring thaw had been nearly nonexistent at times. But this year has brought a tremendous amount of rain and snow, and that has helped. “You would be to say we have a surface water drought right now,” Jay Lund, a water expert at the University of California, Davis, told The New York Times last week. Aided by the recent storms, the snowpack for the central Sierra mountains was at 182 percent of its normal level on Sunday. And the United States Drought Monitor reported that nearly 44 percent of the state was free of a drought warning last week, compared to less than 1 percent at this time a year ago. But that still leaves more than 20 million people that it estimates are living in an area affected by drought, the monitor reported. The brunt of this storm will hit on Monday and Tuesday, Mr. Kurth said, with showers continuing on Wednesday. Thursday will be “relatively dry,” he said, but warned of another potential storm arriving on Friday or Saturday. “We’re not going to see a real period. Maybe just a day or two,” he said. | 0fake |
Draft opposition statement calls for Assad to leave at start of transition: Arabiya | RIYADH (Reuters) - The draft of a final statement by a Syrian opposition meeting in Riyadh calls for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad at the beginning of any transition, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said on Wednesday. An array of opposition groups and figures began meeting earlier in the day in a bid to unify the group s position ahead of U.N.-backed peace talks to end the country s six-year civil war. Some opposition members have hinted that the new communique could drop any mention of Assad, softening a long-standing demand that he not have a role in any transition. | 0fake |
China's Xi set to codify legal clout, anti-graft campaign at congress | BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Communist Party once shunned the rule of law, preferring to rely on what Chairman Mao Zedong called rule of man essentially using the authority of party leaders to govern. In recent years, though, as China s economy modernizes, the party has increasingly been turning to the law to exert central authority over the bureaucracy and keep citizens under control, according to legal experts and diplomats. And under President Xi Jinping, that trend has been accelerating, they say. Emblematic of that drive is a move to enshrine in law Xi s signature anti-graft campaign, which has ensnared nearly 1.4 million party members in the past five years. The move, announced last year, will be finalised at the Communist Party Congress that opens Wednesday. Don t underestimate the importance of writing these things down, says Jessica Batke, who covered China for the U.S. State Department and now writes on China s leadership for the Hoover Institution. Legal reforms are part of efforts by the Communist Party under Xi to grant more freedoms to ordinary people, while drawing red lines and creating harsher punishments for those who cross them, Batke said. Human rights groups often criticize China for only paying lip service to the rule of law and say the Communist Party systematically ignores due process when prosecuting activists and dissidents. Courts are being pushed by the Communist Party to be more accessible and fair in the hope that law becomes an effective tool to resolve disputes and stabilize society. But the reforms also help the leadership enforce central control by codifying previously informal restrictions, or campaigns like the anti-corruption drive, legal experts say. What Xi is trying to do is centralize power in order to exert that power over China s unruly bureaucracy, said Carl Minzer, a Chinese law expert at Fordham Law School in New York. Under Xi, the legislature has issued a flurry of new laws governing issues like internet controls, espionage and even how to sing the Chinese national anthem. New rules and laws are also being used to punish people who oppose the party, according to Maya Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. The justice ministry has taken a tougher line on lawyers taking on rights cases. Last year it ordered law firms to support Party activities, which activists say raises the risks of taking on sensitive cases for lawyers. This month, Zhu Shengwu became the first lawyer to be stripped of his license for online posts critical of the Communist Party under the new measures. His posts had mocked the anti-corruption campaign and said the party was lawlessly administering justice. Under Xi Jinping s rule of law reform, political and executive power has been legalized so as to erode the possibility of resistance, said Fu Hualing, an expert on Chinese law at the University of Hong Kong. Xi s anti-corruption campaign will be overseen by a new National Supervision Commission, which will be given legal authority with a law still being drafted. The new body will take over from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and merge multiple anti-graft units into a single body, according to an announcement from the CCDI last year. It will also expand the graft campaign s purview to include employees at state-backed institutions. The CCDI, justice ministry and the National People s Congress, China s legislature, did not respond to requests for comment. The extent of the commission s power is closely tied to the fate of Wang Qishan, who has overseen the anti-graft campaign and is expected to stay in a leadership role despite being past the customary retirement age of 68, sources have told Reuters. Wang s exact position is likely to be made clear at the congress. One scenario would see him usher in the next phase of the graft fight as head of the super-ministry. Wang has said that the new commission should be granted detention powers by law, raising concerns among rights activists that practices like the informal detention of suspects for questioning could be validated. Rights groups consider the practice illegal and say that suspects are often tortured. Details about the commission are expected to be announced next year at an annual meeting of the National People s Congress, according to diplomats and legal experts. | 0fake |
U.S. Republican Senate campaign wing ends fundraising tie with Moore: Politico | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican Party’s Senate campaign wing has severed its fundraising deal with Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore, Politico reported on Friday, a day after allegations emerged that he initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32. Politico said Federal Election Commission paperwork filed on Friday showed the National Republican Senatorial Committee was no longer listed as part of a joint fundraising committee with the campaign of Moore, who is now 70, or the Alabama Republican Party and the Republican National Committee. | 0fake |
Chicago immigrant claims U.S. retaliated over her activism | CHICAGO (Reuters) - A Chicago activist sued U.S. immigration authorities on Wednesday alleging they denied renewal of her immigration status in retaliation for her political activity. Irere Unzueta, 29, who came to the United States from Mexico in 1994 when she was 6 years old, applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2013 and was granted immigration relief despite a history of arrests at demonstrations. But when she applied last year to renew her DACA status - which allows undocumented immigrants who entered the country before they were 16 to work legally and be exempt from deportation for a two-year period - it was denied. According to the lawsuit against the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency cited Unzueta’s civil disobedience in its explanation of the denial, saying that “Ms. Unzueta’s case raised public safety concerns.” The denial “punishes her for engaging in constitutionally protected, peaceful political actions,” Mony Ruiz Velasco, a lawyer who represented Unzueta in her application for DACA, said at a news conference on Wednesday. Unzueta told reporters she has lost two job opportunities while fighting to renew her immigration status and said she brought the lawsuit because she is worried that hundreds of other students who spoke up about immigration issues could be targeted. She has never been convicted of any crime. The media office at USCIS said they do not comment on individual cases. President Barack Obama initiated DACA in 2012, and then tried to expand it in 2014. The Supreme Court is considering challenges by a number of states to the expanded DACA and to a separate Obama program that would have granted immigration benefits to parents of children who are legally in the United States. The DACA designation is not a path to permanent resident status but has been controversial because Obama enacted it unilaterally. Unzueta and her family participated in a wave of campaigns around the country to push for DACA. She attended high school in Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2009. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, asks the court to find that the immigration authorities erred in denying Unzueta the renewal she sought. Although her application for immigration relief was denied, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has not initiated deportation proceedings against Unzueta. | 0fake |
(VIDEO) PRICELESS! DETROIT SINKHOLE TURNED INTO SOMETHING TOTALLY OUTSIDE THE BOX | The sinkhole never got repaired so the people in this Detroit neighborhood decides to make lemonade out of lemons. Only in Detroit! | 1real |
Syria's Assad: Trump can be our natural ally | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with Russian state television that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump could become a natural ally to Damascus if he shows he is sincere about fighting terrorism. “If Trump can genuinely fight against terrorism, he can be our natural ally,” Assad, speaking through an interpreter, said in the interview which was broadcast on Wednesday. Assad said he was encouraged by Trump’s declarations during the election campaign about fighting violent Islamists and not interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. But it was unclear if Trump would carry through on those promises once in office, Assad said. | 0fake |
Detained Illegal Aliens End 3-Day Hunger Strike | Illegal immigrants detained at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, stopped a hunger strike shortly before Easter Sunday. The detainees demanded more money for doing chores, better food, and medical care. [Nearly 750 detainees reportedly refused their meals nearly half of the 1, 500 inmate capacity of the detention center. The hunger strike began earlier in the week on April 10 when some of the male detainees refused their lunches. Some women at the detention center later joined in the protest, the Seattle Times reported. Protesters planned to fast for at least three days because the U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency reportedly does not recognize hunger strikes that are any shorter. All but one detention had stopped the strike by Saturday morning, said a spokeswoman for ICE. The detention facility was at the center of a publicized hunger strike in 2014 when Time reported that Paulino Ruiz “was sick of eating a boiled potato at every meal. ” He also reportedly claimed to be with the $ he received for doing custodial chores. He further alleged harsh treatment by detention center personnel. Ruiz is a legal resident who came to the United States at the age of three. He was scheduled for removal by immigration officers after he served prison time for robbery. All but just a handful of inmates stopped their strike after it had gone on for more than a week, Time reported. Breitbart Texas reported in that more than 60, 000 illegal aliens that were housed in a Colorado detention center are suing the federal contractor who operates the detention center. They allege the facility compelled “forced labor” in violation of federal human trafficking laws and are seeking money damages and restitution. Lawyers for the GEO Group, Inc. counter that no other court has ever recognized trafficking or unjust enrichment claims for cleaning bathrooms, serving meals, doing laundry, and performing other housekeeping duties. There is a supervised program of daily cleaning by all detainees, and GEO implements these requirements “through an program. ” “Nobody trafficked them there,” the defendant argued in a motion filed with the court which authorized the class action lawsuit. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 0fake |
BLACK VETERANS FOR TRUMP, too! | Donald Trump is on track to win more black votes than any time since 1960. In the past month, the number of black voters for Donald Trump has increased significantly. These black Trump supporters from Chicago don't want anything to do with #CrookedHillary #TrumpPence2016 #MAGA pic.twitter.com/8JRRR7Ai1l
— RSBN TV (@RSBNetwork) July 29, 2016 Gateway Pundit If Democrats lose 25% of the black vote they would lose Virginia, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina. Black Likely Voters for TRUMP @Rasmussen_Poll Oct 3 – 9% | 1real |
Venezuela government and opposition to resume dialogue effort | CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s government and opposition will resume efforts to hold dialogue, the third attempt in a year by the administration of President Nicolas Maduro and his adversaries to break up a bitter political stalemate. Previous dialogue efforts have ended in recriminations between the two sides and no concrete progress amid a dire economic crisis that has led to increased malnutrition and preventable diseases. Opposition leaders said that even though Maduro has previously used the talks to stall for time instead of implementing serious reform, a new round would still be needed to help ensure free and fair presidential elections, which are currently scheduled for 2018. We have developed relations in Latin America so that in the company of friendly countries and governments, we can facilitate the conditions for a presidential election, Julio Borges, president of the opposition-led National Assembly, told a news conference. The opposition in September walked away from dialogue with the ruling Socialist Party, insisting the government had not met demands including the release of imprisoned opposition activists and mechanisms to allow foreign humanitarian assistance. Legislator Luis Florido, spokesman for the opposition in the dialogue process, said the opposition would seek a new elections council and would push for presidential elections. He added that Paraguay, Mexico and Chile would accompany the process. Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said via Twitter, the dialogue continues on Nov 15 in the Dominican Republic. The two sides in September held exploratory meetings with the backing of Dominican President Danilo Medina. | 0fake |
Katie Rich of ‘S.N.L.’ Is Suspended for Tweet Mocking Barron Trump - The New York Times | Katie Rich, a writer for “Saturday Night Live,” has been suspended from her position at that show following a widely criticized post she made Friday on her personal Twitter account in which she mocked Barron Trump, the son of President Donald J. Trump. She was suspended immediately after her tweet, and her suspension is indefinite, according to someone familiar with the plans at “S. N. L. ,” who was not authorized by NBC to comment on personnel matters. That tweet on Friday, during Mr. Trump’s inauguration ceremony, drew widespread condemnation, and Ms. Rich subsequently deleted the post (which said “Barron will be this country’s first homeschool shooter”) and deactivated her Twitter account. Her name did not appear in the closing credits of “Saturday Night Live” in its broadcast on Saturday. On Monday afternoon, Ms. Rich reactivated her account and posted a message that said: “I sincerely apologize for the insensitive tweet. I deeply regret my actions offensive words. It was inexcusable I’m so sorry. ” The suspension of Ms. Rich, who was hired to join “S. N. L. ” at the end of 2013, comes at a delicate time for the program, when it has felt emboldened to lampoon Mr. Trump but has faced his swift retaliation on Twitter. Following the show’s broadcast of Jan. 14, in which the actor Alec Baldwin played Mr. Trump in a parody of his news conference from earlier that week, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter the following day: “NBC News is bad but Saturday Night Live is the worst of NBC. Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!” Mr. Trump made no public comments about Saturday’s show, in which Mr. Baldwin did not appear. NBC said on Monday that Mr. Baldwin will host “Saturday Night Live” on Feb. 11 and appear throughout that program. | 0fake |
Elon Musk Ted Talk Claims Teslas Traveling Coast to Coast by Year End - Breitbart | Elon Musk entertained the 2017 TED Conference by previewing how Tesla intends to solve almost all vehicle congestion by massive boring under cities to create an tunnel transport system. [TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a media group that every year since 1990 has created and freely distributed a series of interviews that feature innovative TED figures under the motto “ideas worth spreading. ” Musk, who originally hails from Canada, sat down with TED’s Head Curator Chris Anderson in Vancouver to talk about solving his new The Boring Company which will solve transportation congestion through a system of robotic transporter sleds that will lower vehicles to underground tunnels, and then whisk them to their destination at 130 miles per hour. Musk gave as an example the of Los Angeles, where an trip from downtown to Westwood usually takes about 40 minutes. Riding in his electric powered tunnels, travel time would be slashed to a 5 to hop. Andersson asked him why he was not onboard for the development of flying cars that have been all the rage lately, due to announcements by Google, Uber, and others that the world of the series the Jetsons is about to arrive. Musk answered, “I do rockets, so I like things that fly. There’s a challenge of flying cars in that they’ll be quite noisy. If something’s flying over your head, a whole bunch of flying cars going all over the place, that is not an situation … You’ll be thinking, ‘Did they service their hubcap, or is it going to come off and guillotine me? ’” Musk referred to the jumbotron and played a video simulation of how a vehicle would drive on to a robotic electric powered cart that would be lowered to the appropriate tunnel level and then quickly accelerate. Musk commented that the greatest advantage of a system is that the carts can move at unlimited speeds in tunnels without generating huge externality complaints. Andersson asks Musk how tunnels would meld with Musk’s Hyperloop initiative. Musk commented that the SpaceX’s Hyperloop test track being built in Reno, Nevada, adjacent to his Gigafactory is already the second biggest vacuum chamber in the world. The only one bigger is the Large Hadron Collider under the France — Switzerland border that is used as an atomic particle accelerator that cost $7. 5 billion. For transportation, Musk believes a vacuum tunnel system can transport people, freight, and vehicles in capsules at a fraction of the current time and costs. Musk said that based on initial Hyperloop testing, “We’re cautiously optimistic that it’ll be faster than the world’s fastest bullet train, even over a . stretch. ” Asked by Andersson, “What’s happening at Tesla?” Musk said that the company’s $35, 000 Tesla Model 3 will arrive in July, and it will have the same autopilot features as Tesla’s $100, 000 vehicles that claim to offer driving. “Once you solve cameras for vision, autonomy is solved if you don’t solve vision, it’s not solved … You can absolutely be superhuman with just cameras. ” Musk stated that Tesla will have a large enough charging network that they will conduct a LA to New York test national test by the end of 2017: “November or December of this year, we should be able to go from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York, no controls touched at any point during the entire journey. ” Musk displayed the first picture of the Tesla Semi truck, which he recently unveiled as part of his Master Plan, Part Deux: “With the Tesla Semi, we want to show that an electric truck actually can any diesel semi. If you had a tug of war competition, the Tesla Semi will tug the diesel semi uphill. ” Musk suggests will be quick and nimble, “like a sports car,” he says. Musk sees solar electricity as the fuel source of the future that will powerhouses, vehicles and almost all terrestrial corporate activity. With the spiking demand, Tesla plans to announce four more Gigafactories by the end of the year. | 0fake |
Judge criticized by Trump unseals documents in Trump University case | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A judge, called a “hater” by Donald Trump for his handling of a lawsuit related to the businessman’s Trump University real estate school, has unsealed documents related to the case. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for the Nov. 8 election, is fighting a lawsuit that accuses his school venture of misleading thousands of people who paid up to $35,000 for seminars to learn about the billionaire’s real estate investment strategies. In an order signed on Friday, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel said that materials, including Trump University procedures on dealing with students and the media, should be unsealed. He noted they had already been published by the media organization Politico and that a magistrate judge described them previously as “routine” and “commonplace.” At a rally in San Diego on Friday, Trump criticized Curiel for his handling of the Trump University case. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump. A hater. He’s a hater,” Trump said. “We’re in front of a very hostile judge. The judge was appointed by Barack Obama,” Trump said, adding he believed Curiel was Mexican. Curiel is an American who was born in East Chicago, Indiana, and graduated from the Indiana University School of Law. Legal scholars said Trump could face consequences for slamming the judge, although many speculated that Curiel was unlikely to sanction him formally. “Mr. Trump’s conduct could be subject to sanction for indirect criminal contempt of court,” said Charles Geyh, a legal ethics expert at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. “He has impugned the honesty of the judge in a pending case, and has done so in the context of a political rally that seems calculated to intimidate by inciting anger among his supporters,” he said. Arthur Hellman, an expert on federal courts and judicial ethics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said the judge was in a difficult position. “He can’t respond directly. He’s not supposed to talk out of court about proceedings before him. Judges have gotten into trouble defending themselves from attacks. The judge’s hands are really tied,” he said. Trump has drawn criticism for his comments about immigrants from Mexico, some of whom he has said were criminals and rapists. He has proposed building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico to prevent illegal immigration and requiring Mexico to pay for it. Hispanics are a critical voting bloc in U.S. presidential elections. Last week, Trump knocked one of the highest-profile Hispanic women in the Republican Party, criticizing New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez for her handling of the state’s economy. Her office said his criticisms were not substantive. Martinez has been touted as a potential vice presidential pick for a Republican ticket. | 0fake |
Senior U.S., Russian diplomats to meet in Washington next week | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon will meet with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in Washington next week, the State Department spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The meeting is set for Monday. Russia canceled an earlier meeting between the two senior diplomats last month after the United States added 38 individuals and organizations to its list of those sanctioned over Russian activities in Ukraine. “We’re pleased to have the meeting on the books,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters on Tuesday. | 0fake |
Nuclear Weapons in South Korea under Discussion | New Eastern Outlook | Country: South Korea In October 2016, the Presidential Advisory Council on Democratic and Peaceful Unification of Korea suggested to the President of the Republic of Korea returning US tactical nuclear weapons to the country. The report entitled “The policy of promotion of the second plan on Korean reunification” states that the search for opportunities to place US tactical nuclear weapons in the Republic of Korea and the permanent basing of American strategic forces may serve as a pressure tool both on the DPRK, and on China to toughen sanctions in respect of Pyongyang. The placement of US tactical nuclear weapons in the Republic of Korea is justified in the report by the following example – SS-series ballistic missiles were placed in the territory of the former USSR that were targeted on Europe, in response to this, the USA placed Pershing II – the American medium-range ballistic missiles of mobile basing – in Europe. Earlier, on September 12, 2016, 31 representatives of the Saenuri governing party signed a statement, which proposed that the Parliament discuss launching an independent South Korean nuclear program. The same former leader of the parliamentary group Won Yoo-chul, who is one of the major proponents of the idea to publicly discuss the issue of nuclear weapons in the South, has announced that the Republic of Korea should consider any protection measures from the provocative acts of the North, including nuclear weapons for the purposes of self-defense. Won Yoo-chul believes that American strategic nuclear weapons should be placed in the South in the short-term in order to achieve nuclear balance with the North. However, in the long-term, the South should create its own nuclear potential exceeding that of North Korea at least two times. According to Chung Mong-joon, member of South Korea’s Parliament, as the Rubicon in terms of the peninsula denuclearization has been crossed, the Republic of Korea needs the nuclear weapons. The statement also emphasizes the fact that this is not an opinion of just a few members of Parliament. The day before, on September 11, the leader of the Saenuri governing party Lee Jung-hyun announced to journalists that the adoption of strict measures was required. He said that “in the current situation this is the topic of discussion to focus on; yet it is the issue that has been always avoided.” It goes without saying that the opposition called such a proposal unrealistic and potentially leading to increased conflict. The speaker of the Democratic Party of Korea Yoon Kwang-suk has called the proposal unspeakable. The Republic of Korea government also opposes the placement of the nuclear weapons in the country as it contradicts the denuclearization principle on the Korean peninsula. Meanwhile, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, one of the three leading conservative publications, surveyed 16 experts on security and international relations. They are divided into three groups: nine of them support denuclearization, four of them approve of the idea of obtaining the nuclear weapons for the purposes of self-defense or the placement of US tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea, and the remaining three experts propose using nuclear weapons against the North. Moreover, this division clearly correlates with their liberal or conservative outlook. Academics have noted that the South Korean bomb will go against the non-proliferation system, which may lead to a split in the international community. The Republic of Korea will have to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which will result in international sanctions and the termination of the Cooperation Agreement with the USA on nuclear power engineering. Thus, Seoul will lose access to enriched uranium, which will lead to disruption in the energy sector. In addition, it will send the wrong signal to the DPRK that nuclear weapons might be accepted by the international community. The nuclear armament of Seoul will mean a recognition of Pyongyang’s nuclear status and it will completely bury the prospects for the peninsula’s denuclearization. That is why some experts have proposed relying on the US nuclear “umbrella”, stating that Washington is unlikely to allow Seoul to obtain its own nuclear weapons, and any countermeasures may affect the country’s economic situation. Another position suggests using the nuclear program as part of a bargaining strategy in order to reach the “zero option” and to eliminate nuclear weapons in both the North and the South. Those who support the proposal of the Saenuri Deputies consider the independent nuclear program to be a well-minded response. The USA withdrew tactical nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula in 1991, and the majority of its nuclear torpedoes and mines were destroyed. It will be difficult to place American tactical nuclear weapons again. Moreover, “we should not entrust the destiny of our nation in foreign hands.” Is there any guarantee that the USA will join the nuclear war for our sake in the changing international environment? What is the public opinion on this issue? An opinion poll conducted by the Gallup Korea agency among 1,010 people showed that 58% of the respondents supported the idea of South Korea obtaining its own nuclear weapons. 34% of the respondents spoke out against it: most of them young people. The remaining 7% refused to answer or said they could not give a definite answer. Relying on the containment model that currently exists between India and Pakistan, supporters of the Seoul bomb suppose that the current technological level will mean a bomb can be made in 8-12 months . However, according to a statement made by an official of the US National Security Council Jon Wolfsthal on September 21, 2016, neither the independent program nor the placement of the US tactical nuclear weapons would boost the security of the Republic of Korea . The USA is able to attack its enemies from any part of the world, and all its potential opponents are aware of this. Therefore, he does not believe that these actions will play an additional role in dissuading the DPRK from turning to a military solution. Neither the USA nor the Republic of Korea is interested in the South Korean nuclear program. In the author’s opinion, the entire fact of bringing this issue for the public discussion is indicative, as South Korean nuclear weapons would truly cause great harm to the non-proliferation system. Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D. in History, Chief Research Fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook ”.
| 1real |
Highlights: The Trump presidency on April 13 at 9:30 P.M. EDT/0130 GMT on Friday | (Reuters) - Highlights for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday: The United States drops a massive GBU-43 bomb, the largest non-nuclear bomb it has ever used in combat, in Afghanistan against a series of caves used by Islamic State militants, the Pentagon says. Trump says Pyongyang is a problem that “will be taken care of” amid speculation that North Korea is on the verge of a sixth nuclear test. Military force cannot resolve tension over North Korea, China warns, while an influential Chinese newspaper urges Pyongyang to halt its nuclear program in exchange for Beijing’s protection. The Trump administration is focusing its North Korea strategy on tougher economic sanctions, possibly including intercepting cargo ships and punishing Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang, U.S. officials say. Trump says “things will work out fine” between the United States and Russia, a day after declaring U.S.-Russian relations may be at an all-time low. Trump signals he could be moving closer to the mainstream on monetary policy, saying he has not ruled out reappointment of Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chair as he considers his choices for the U.S. central bank. [nL1N1HL14B] Trump signs a resolution that will allow U.S. states to restrict how federal funds for contraception and reproductive health are spent, a move cheered by anti-abortion campaigners. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen presses Deutsche Bank to release information about issues including Trump’s debt and any bank meetings with Trump administration officials, saying he has “great concern” about possible conflicts of interest. EXPORT-IMPORT BANK Trump’s office says he plans to revive the hobbled Export-Import Bank of the United States, a victory for American manufacturers such as Boeing Co and General Electric Co that have overseas customers that use the agency’s government-backed loans to purchase their products. Top Wall Street bankers say they are having positive discussions about financial regulation in Washington, and downplay the idea U.S. policymakers may force their institutions to split up. The United States is pushing for trade to be a key issue in top-level economic talks with Japan, a source says, an unwelcome development for Tokyo, which is seeking to fend off U.S. pressure to reduce the bilateral trade imbalance. Trump’s administration has focused on one group of illegal immigrants more than others: women with children, according to eight Department of Homeland Security officials interviewed by Reuters about agency planning. | 0fake |
WATCH: Bernie Sanders Absolutely BERNS Donald Trump During Interview | Donald Trump and his and the conservative media have been pushing a conspiracy theory that Bernie Sanders and his supporters are responsible for shutting down his rally in Chicago Friday.During a segment on CNN s State of the Union, Sanders fired back at Trump for some of the absurd claims the Republican primary front-runner has made. For a start, we should take Mr. Trump s words with a grain of salt, Sanders told the show s host, Jake Tapper. Because I think almost everybody knows, this man cannot stop lying about anything. To call me a communist is a lie. To talk about our organization, our campaign, disrupting his meeting is a lie. As I have previously pointed out, Trump decided to cancel his rally in Chicago. It was an event open to the public. The public showed up and Trump could not handle that. As Sanders notes, Trump s Republican primary rivals have even pointed out that Trump got what he was asking for. Even his Republican colleagues make this point, Sanders went on to say. His language, his intonations, when you talk about carrying people out in stretchers, you see at his rallies people sucker-punched, folks kick people when they re down. This is a man who keeps implying violence, and then you end up getting what you see. Sanders is drawing on a comment made by Marco Rubio, who said: I know people like it that Donald Trump says whatever he wants and whatever they feel like saying. Presidents cannot say anything they want. Presidents have to understand that their words have consequences, often life and death consequences, for real people in the real world. Then there is the fact that Trump has frequently encouraged his followers to inflict violence against those who protest his events. With the media focused on Chicago last Friday, many people didn t see the chaos Trump s supporters unleashed in St Louis earlier that day. I think that he, in fact, has got to tell his supporters that in the United States of America we don t go beating up people, that people have a right to peacefully protest, and I hope that becomes the tone of his campaign. You can watch the interview below in full.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwe5R3VsQYMFeatured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Trump Stole An Idea From North Korean Propaganda Parody Account To Push His Stupid Wall (DETAILS) | Jesus f*cking Christ our President* is a moron. Not satisfied with simply wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on a border wall, The Donald wants it to be see-through too not to preserve the view of scenery but because he s afraid people might be killed by gigantic sacks of drugs that are totally going to be thrown over it on a regular basis (thus negating his argument that the wall will somehow curb drug trafficking). As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don t see them they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of the stuff? It s over, the President said aboard Air Force One Wednesday according to the official White House transcript. As cray as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. Trump says border wall with Mexico should be transparent so that people aren't killed when drug couriers throw 60-lbs. bags over it. pic.twitter.com/0GXJuHjPxs Gregory Korte (@gregorykorte) July 13, 2017It s unclear if Trump actually said cray or if the White House stenographer made a typo, but the idea that we will be so beleaguered by so many flying 60-pound sacks of drugs that the border wall needs to be transparent is pretty cray. Now, Trump could have argued that there are a number of reasons for transparency to see those dirty brownish people he hates coming, for instance. But he chose the dumb one that involves throwing a 60-pound bag of heroin over a 20-foot fence.Naturally, Americans find this hilarious:The bad hombres are very strong. Juha (@juhasaarinen) July 14, 2017I imagined just this with Acme printed on the side. TJ Shannon (@tjshannon13) July 14, 2017pic.twitter.com/43I0DR0lw8 Paul Vahamaa (@pvahamaa) July 14, 2017 a steel wall with openings so that you can see through that wall he knows he s describing a fence, right? Tinz (@TinzRules) July 13, 2017Likelihood that Trump heard someone say We need transparency on the building of the Wall and didn t understand? Patrick (@PatrickCragg) July 13, 2017Crushed by Giant Bag of Dope is pretty high on most people s Preferred Ways To Die list, I ve heard. Just Dessert (@Love_CrimeDrama) July 13, 2017Crushed by Giant Bag of Dope was, in my opinion, Giant Bag of Dope s best album. David J Britton (@Tyburn_Cross) July 13, 2017I want to meet the dealer that can toss a 60 lb bag over the wall or, do they use catapults? nicefellow31 (@nicefellow31) July 13, 2017They prefer trebuchets, I m told. Carly (@whatstudentloan) July 13, 2017The beauty of this, though, is if the bag misses your head Hey! Free heroin! Christopher Keelty (@keeltyc) July 13, 2017 Some areas that are so far away from the border? Some parts of the border are far away from the border? #wtf #cray Matthew R. Kerns (@mattkerns) July 13, 2017So, these drug smugglers, they can toss 60 pound bags of coke over 20 foot walls, but can t climb a mountain? High Quality Nephew (@JohnNephew) July 13, 2017 This piece of fence would be supes far away. You d have to be totes cray to cross there. So you fo sho don t need that. def on fleek Henkepotamus (@Henke2020) July 13, 2017You laugh but this is a serious problem. pic.twitter.com/1jGkVDGmt6 Erase Rewind (@EraseRewind1) July 13, 2017If there are people throwing 60 lbs sacks of stuff over high walls we should get them on our team. Rich (@Argonzo) July 13, 2017So: you happen to stand next to a giant 900 mi. wall when BAM! You re hit with a 60 lb. bag of drugs tossed over this huge wall to no one?? Spooky Comet (@spookycomet) July 13, 2017one thing is right, this shit is cray Ella s Girl (@ellasgirl7) July 13, 2017This can t possibly be real because . . . never mind. I m sorry, I forgot who we were referring to. Kit Yona (@TheKitastrophe) July 13, 2017Wow. Vicious rivers and cray 60-lb falling bags of heroin. Why would people stand next to the wall? Will there be a Starbucks? Tom Brouns (@TAZMPictures) July 14, 2017Ask him to point out the violent and vicious rivers on a map. WTF is he talking about? John Daws (@grajillas) July 13, 2017Who the F*ck is throwing 60lb sacks of drugs over the wall? Cause pretty sure they make some $$$ in pro sports! R Goldman (@sttrzangel) July 14, 2017Where would Trump get the idea to tell Americans that criminals across the border are killing people with giant sacks of drugs? North Korean propaganda of course or what seems like North Korean propaganda until you realize it s a parody account:Six innocent children killed by south Korean criminals hurling huge sacks of illegal drugs over inter-Korean demilitarized zone wall. pic.twitter.com/bfnNlBIs4e DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) July 13, 2017If you re thinking this is disgraceful even for Trump, you probably should be aware that we have not yet seen the depths to which he is willing to sink in his quest for power.We need to face the fact that our President is completely cray and let the GOP know they need to do their jobs and remove him from office now.featured image via Getty Images/screengrab | 1real |
CalPERS Plans to Violate California Constitution, Pave Way for Hiring Under-Qualified Candidate, for Critically Important Job of Chief Actuary | by Yves Smith
No matter how bad things are at CalPERS, the giant pension fund seems determined to make them worse.
This Thursday, November 3, the California State Personnel Board is set to approve changes to the job description of CalPERS’ Chief Actuary that are depicted as minor but are anything but. We get to the CalPERS job description shortly, but as Purdue’s mathematics department describes the terrain :
An actuary is a business professional who analyzes the financial consequences of risk. Actuaries use mathematics, statistics, and financial theory to study uncertain future events, especially those of concern to insurance and pension programs.
The proposed changes both amount to a violation of the California Constitution by attempting to end the required role of the board in policy-making, and separately so far reducing the minimum qualifications for the job that they will be lower than that for the most junior actuaries now employed at CalPERS. Needless to say, that makes a mockery of the claim that CalPERS needs to dumb down the job description so severely to fill the post. CalPERS could promote someone from inside by relaxing the requirements less or not at all.
One has to assume that the motivation for allowing a person who would be deemed to be grossly unqualified under current rules to be hired in the Chief Actuary is that the new CEO, Marcie Frost, has someone specific she’d like to bring in. The fact that Frost herself does not have a college degree and certainly does not have the mathematical chops to evaluate an actuary’s professional competence certainly looks like she is giving personal loyalty far too much weight in a role where analytical rigor and professionalism are of paramount importance.
This move troublingly resembles CalPERS’ decision to hire a similarly unqualified party, Robert Klausner, in another important role, that of fiduciary counsel. Recall that Klausner was not a member of the California bar, yet in public board sessions, was giving advice on California law matters such as its Public Records Act. As we pointed out, his advice was contrary to statute. To make matters worse, Klausner had a long track record of being involved in pay-to-play scandals and of telling clients what they wanted to hear, regardless of whether he could come up with a sound legal basis for validating their actions. As California attorney Karl Olson wrote of Klausner:
This isn’t a case of the fox guarding the henhouse; this may be a case of CalPERS going across the country to hire a fox who specialized in building henhouses with no gates.
But what could possibly be foxy about the historically dull green-eyeshade role of Chief Actuary?
Recall that the biggest controversy that CalPERS is facing now, and one that is not going away any time soon, is its underfunding problem and its refusal to cut its return assumptions. CalPERS’ just-retired former Chief Actuary, Alan Milligan, repeatedly stated that he thought the pension fund needed to lower its return target, and repeated that view in his final appearances before the board in August and September. Given the recent salvo of articles excoriating CalPERS for its refusal to reduce its return targets save on a very attenuated basis that many regard as unrealistic, CalPERS must be relieved that journalists were too inattentive to pick up on the fact that the agency was disregarding the advice of its own designated risk expert. No doubt the agency is keen to get an actuary in place that won’t take positions that could make its hard-to-defend posture even more untenable.
Now let us address the particulars of CalPERS’ chicanery with its Chief Actuary job search.
The Chief Actuary is such an important role that until the board decided to quit doing its job and rubber stamp pretty much everything staff wanted to do, it was one of four direct reports to the board. Reducing the number of direct reports to one has substantially reduced the board’s power. If it was unhappy with the activities of staff, it could threaten to fire one of the direct reports other than the CEO, which gave it more surgical ways to intervene. Now it has only the nuclear option of defenestrating the CEO.
The Chief Actuary, indeed all the actuary positions at CalPERS, is a job classification that is specific to CalPERS. From a letter from an Baldwin, Chief Personnel Management Division, to the Personnel Board from the document at the end of the post:
The Chief Actuary is appointed to this single-incumbent, statutory position and serves as a key member of the CalPERS Executive Management team, the incumbent provides guidance on all actuarial issues facing CalPERS, including actuarial investigations and valuations, rate structure, health benefits and reserve funds. The Chief Actuary promotes the sound and secure operation of CalPERS enterprises through the oversight of all functions within the ACTO [Actuarial Office], and is responsible for the evaluation, development, and implementation of actuarial policies and procedures.
The revisions to the proposed role violate the California constitution by eliminating any reporting relationship between the board and the Chief Actuary. On page 4 of the document below:
First, it’s disturbing to see the lengths to which the State Personnel Board is willing to collude with CalPERS in disguising the fact that this job classification applies ONLY to CalPERS. By eliminating any reference to CalPERS, unexperienced investigators would mistakenly assumed that the greatly-watered down job requirements apply to all state agencies that have actuarial groups and thus have a senior actuary in charge, such as CalSTRS and the State Department of Insurance. The very fact of this cover-up alone is a sign that CalPERS knows it is up to no good and is desperate to cover its tracks.
Second, look at the first sentence of the first paragraph as it is proposed to read (emphasis ours):
Under the policy direction and administrative direction of the organization’s executive and/or director leve l, to manage the actuarial and employer services functions of the organization; to provide expert actuarial advice and consultation to the organization’s executive and/or director level; and to do other related work.
This is an express violation of the California Constitution. Article XVI, section 17(e) states :
The retirement board of a public pension or retirement system, consistent with the exclusive fiduciary responsibilities vested in it, shall have the sole and exclusive power to provide for actuarial services in order to assure the competency of the assets of the public pension or retirement system.
Notice the use of “exclusive and “sole and exclusive.” At a bare minimum, the board needs to retain policy oversight, but even that is being stripped away in the new job description. The board will have absolutely nada to do with the actuarial function. Also bear in mind that the changes in the proposed language, at least as far as I can tell from looking at recent board meetings, were never reviewed or approved by the board. This is a naked power grab by staff relying on long-standing complacency of CalPERS’ board.
Even more stunning is how this senior role is being downgraded. Note that all positions in the current set of the existing CalPERS pension actuary job series, from “Associate Pension Actuary” through and including “Supervising Pension Actuary” require that the employee have an Associateship in the Society of Actuaries . T he Society of Actuaries website states :
Requirements include examinations, an e-Learning course, validation of educational experiences outside the SOA Education system (VEE), and a professionalism seminar.
Notice that the new job description allows for minimum qualifications to instead be satisfied by “Membership in the American Academy of Actuaries”. What, pray tell, is the “American Academy of Actuaries”?
It is not a professional organization. One can be member without satisfying any professional credentialing requirements. For instance, one can become a member via being a member of the “Conference of Consulting Actuaries” which in turn allows for “Membership for NonSOA/CAS Credentialed Actuaries”
All actuaries not credentialed by the Society of Actuaries or the Casualty Actuarial Society are required to sign off on a form acknowledging professional awareness of the Qualification Standards and professionalism for actuaries prior to processing his/her application (required by the International Actuarial Association).
In other words, without even looking hard, there is a route to become a member of the American Academy of Actuaries by saying you’ve heard about actuarial professional ethics. You don’t even have to say you believe in them, just that you know they exist! Although there is a continuing education requirement for the Conference of Consulting Actuaries, if you click through, you can see it is required “ to retain the status of FCA or ACA ” meaning Fellow or Associate, not a mere “Member”.
Needless to say, it would be plenty demotivating to CalPERS’ existing staff of actuaries to have a new boss parachuted in above them who hadn’t gone through the sort of minimum professional accreditation they were required to meet. And it begs the question as to why CalPERS’ staff is so desperate to consider candidates that have not been subjected to a basic requirement of passing the Society of Actuaries’ exams. Would you ever consider using an attorney, even for informal advice, who had never passed a bar exam? Yet CalPERS and the California Department of Human Resources are about to put in place a job description that would let someone that unqualified in actuarial space take the helm at CalPERS.
With the vote on this dangerous change set to take place on Thursday, this plot is too far advanced for the usual Naked Capitalism reader route of writing upset missives to CalPERS board members, particularly the elected members who have reason to fear the wrath of voters, to have any effect. I hope you’ll forward this post to news organizations and ask them to look into this pronto, since this story is time sensitive.
Here are some candidates, but feel free to write others (please add helpful ideas in comments, particularly how to contact any talk radio or TV hosts who might take up this story):
Adam Ashton (aashton@sacbee.com) who posts the Sacramento Bee’s State Worker blog
James Rufus Koren (I assume james.koren@latimes.com given their official convention). He’s been doing regular coverage of CalPERS returns.
Jack Dolan (jack.dolan@latimes.com) at the Los Angeles Times. I have mixed feelings about putting Dolan onto this, since his last story on CalPERS was seriously distorted (his report grossly exaggerated the cost of cost of allowing “badges” as in mainly prison guards and state highway officers, to retire early and tried pinning CalPERS underfunding on that, when it is due to not continuing to fund the system when it appeared to be overfunded in the dot-com era, and the losses it took in the financial crisis from which it has not fully recovered). However, with CalPERS in the cross-hairs of critics, it needs to work even harder at being above reproach instead of making itself vulnerable to fully-deserved attacks. And this latest development would certainly fit with the dim view he has of the system. However, he may only do longer-form stories and something faster-turnanround may not suit his schedule.
John Gittelson at Bloomberg (johngitt@bloomberg.net). He’s an LA-based asset management reporter at Bloomberg; he’s pinged me in the past about past CalPERS stories, always an encouraging sign. | 1real |
Losses, looting as Philippine war's fortunate few return home | MARAWI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) - Khaliluddin Ismail returned home on Sunday after five months of war in the southern Philippines to find his house ransacked. But he s still smiling. At least we have something left, he said, standing in a room with clothes, toys, ornaments and damaged pictures strewn across the floor. Others have nothing. They lost their homes, they lost their lives. Ismail, 44, the Imam of a nearby mosque, considers himself one of the luckiest people in Marawi. The city was devastated by more than 150 days of battles between government forces and pro-Islamic State militants that killed more than 1,100 people and displaced some 350,000. His house is in Marawi s safe zone, an area long abandoned by residents but untouched by unrelenting shelling and military air strikes that have all but flattened the city s commercial heart, destroying thousands of homes, shops and vehicles. Six days after troops killed the last remaining rebels, Ismail was among about 4,000 people allowed to return to their homes on Sunday in Marawi s Basak Malutlot area. Many like him have discovered their houses were looted and left in disarray. I opened the door and I was shocked, but I m still happy to be home, he said. Ismail fled with his family on May 24 during a fierce three-day firefight that erupted just 50 meters away, when security forces tried to raid the hideout of notorious militant leader Isnilon Hapilon, Islamic State s anointed emir in Southeast Asia. Hapilon escaped, then issued a call to arms to hundreds of insurgents to initiate their planned takeover of Marawi. It sparked the Philippines biggest urban battle in recent history, and fears that Islamic State s extremist agenda had gained a foothold in the south of the mainly Catholic country. There were scenes of joy and chaos as a convoy of returning residents poured in to Marawi to a cacophony of horns and whistles, jamming what only a few hours earlier were deserted streets. Armed police at checkpoints cross-checked documents and pictures of each passengers from the 712 families, to guard against possible infiltration by militants. Babies cried as officials at a public hall shouted on megaphones to try to establish order as hundreds jostled to register for the sack of rice and 5,000 pesos ($97) allocated to each household. With a stern face, the district s elderly chairwoman, Jamellah Indol Saro, yelled in the local Maranao dialect at anxious residents to calm down. I told them we have to thank Allah we re still alive, she said, smiling. Some 6,500 families are due to return this week in a phased repatriation, a fraction of the 77,000 that fled to evacuation camps or nearby towns. Many face a lengthy wait for vast swathes of Marawi to be rebuilt. Retired government employee Mitormar Goling, 72, came home to find jewellery, money, furniture and antiques had been stolen. He said he feared he would have starved or been killed had he stayed behind. We felt the ground trembling from the air strikes. We didn t know if the army could protect us, said Goling, wearing sunglasses and a white skull cap. If you don t believe in their ideology, ISIS sees you as the enemy, he said, referring to Islamic State. He was among many people who said they understood that the military had to destroy the city to save it. Norida Manna s three-storey house was levelled by an air strike, but she s thankful she s alive. The office clerk and single mother of six will now live at her sister s home, from which she fled in May as troops outside battled hooded, black-clad gunmen who helped the escape of Hapilon. The rebel commander was subsequently killed in a military operation 13 days ago. My home was destroyed, but I don t blame the military. They had a job to do, she said. I have nothing left, but to us, every day is a happy one now. | 0fake |
Leaked Audio Catches Clinton Red-Handed Talking About Rigging Elections | Posted on October 30, 2016 by The Free Thought Project
Decade-old audio exposes then-Senator Hillary Clinton saying the US should have manipulated Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 to prevent a Hamas victory. The presidential candidate lamented that the US didn’t “determine who was going to win.”
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” then-New York Senator Clinton told the Jewish Press, a New York-based weekly newspaper, several months after the January election.
“And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,” she said.
Until Friday, the comment Clinton made on September 5, 2006, only existed on a private audio cassette belonging to journalist Eli Chomsky. An editor and a staff writer for the Jewish Press, he interviewed Clinton at the newspaper’s office in Brooklyn.
Chomsky, who shared and played the tape for the Observer, says it is the only existing copy of that meeting with Clinton, during which the Palestinian parliamentary election was among primary topics. The comments have been posted on SoundCloud.
Speaking to the news portal, he recalled being confused by the fact that “anyone could support the idea — offered by a national political leader, no less — that the US should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.” 2006 audio emerges of Clinton proposing election rigging in Palestine; censored by Israeli press for past 10 years https://t.co/LsMYcUzJR4
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 28, 2016
The interview took place nine months after the Hamas movement claimed 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats, pushing aside the US-favored Fatah movement and securing the right to form a new cabinet. That victory was neither welcomed in Israel, nor in the US. In Washington, where Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, officials repeatedly stated that they would not work with a Palestinian Authority that included Hamas.
Then-President George W. Bush spoke of the elections as symbolizing the “power of democracy,” but refused to deal with Hamas as long as it opposed Israel’s existence and espoused violence.
That day in September 2006, Clinton made “odd and controversial comments,” all now saved on the 45-minute record that Chomsky “held onto all these years.”
“I went to my bosses at the time,” Chomsky told the Observer. “The Jewish Press had this mindset that they would not want to say anything offensive about anybody — even a direct quote from anyone — in a position of influence because they might need them down the road. My bosses didn’t think it was newsworthy at the time. I was convinced that it was and I held onto it all these years.” Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 1real |
Gorsuch Supreme Court Nomination Gains More Democratic Support - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — A third Democratic senator announced his support on Sunday for President Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, though Republicans still face the difficult task of gaining enough Democratic votes to confirm Judge Gorsuch without potentially having to change longstanding Senate practice. The senator, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, is among a group of 10 Democratic senators who represent states that voted for Mr. Trump and who are up for in 2018. So far, two others — Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — have announced their support for Judge Gorsuch. That leaves Republicans, who hold 52 seats in the Senate, five Democratic votes short of breaking any filibuster mounted by Democrats. If the Republicans do not have enough votes to break a filibuster, they could invoke the nuclear option, allowing them to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees and hold a floor vote. Judge Gorsuch could then be confirmed by a simple majority. Mr. Donnelly said in a statement that he would vote for Judge Gorsuch because “he is a qualified jurist who will base his decision on his understanding of the law and is well respected among his peers. ” Mr. Donnelly said he believed that the Senate should keep the threshold to end a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” that he planned to decide Tuesday or Wednesday how he would vote. “I think the margin requires some level of bipartisanship, and whether it’s on legislation or a major appointment like this, that it isn’t bad for the country that you have to have people and ideas that have some level of from both parties,” he said. But Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana — a state won by Mr. Trump — said Sunday evening that he would oppose Judge Gorsuch, dealing a big blow to Republicans’ hopes of reaching 60 votes. The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote for Monday on whether to send Judge Gorsuch’s nomination to the Senate floor. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Judge Gorsuch would be confirmed this week. “How that happens really depends on our Democratic friends, how many of them are willing to oppose cloture on a partisan basis to kill a Supreme Court nominee — never happened before in history, the whole history of the country,” Mr. McConnell said. The top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, said on the same program that Republicans would not secure 60 votes. “So instead of changing the rules, which is up to Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority, why doesn’t President Trump, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate sit down and try to come up with a mainstream nominee?” Mr. Schumer said. Mr. McConnell said any change to the precedent on filibustering Supreme Court nominees would not endanger the filibuster that can be used for legislation, calling it “a longstanding tradition of the Senate. ” Another Senate Republican leader, John Cornyn of Texas, defended Mr. McConnell’s approach. “If they filibuster Neil Gorsuch, they are going to filibuster everyone that this president might propose,” Mr. Cornyn said on “Face the Nation,” referring to Democrats. “They realize that this is their last gasp to try to prevent him from being confirmed. But they won’t. ” Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri — a state that voted for Mr. Trump — announced Friday that she would oppose Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation. Ms. McCaskill published a post on Medium in which she described the “difficult decision” she faced. “I am not comfortable with either choice,” she wrote, but then added: “I cannot support Judge Gorsuch because a study of his opinions reveal a rigid ideology that always puts the little guy under the boot of corporations. He is evasive, but his body of work isn’t. ” | 0fake |
GREEN PARTY DOLT Struggles To Explain Wisconsin Election Recount [Video] | IAN JACKSON: People have been slightly concerned about the trail and as your last guest pointed out it s very decentralized.ED HENRYY: Uh-huh. When you say slightly concerned, that doesn t sound to me like there s widespread allegations or more importantly evidence of some sort of fraud. So is this giving Jill Stein supporters some sort of false hope?JACKSON: Well, I [pause] there s we re [pause] trying to find what the count is and [pause] I m not sure it s false hope. It s trying to find the truth behind the numbers. There has been these allegations by computer scientists but as your last guest pointed out, it was using different systems and using that, being engineers, um, I m a software engineer and we like our little [pause] models, but unless you actually count and check it, you don t know whether it s just a thoughy well, they used something different or if there s something to it.And you mentioned your show is all about finding truth.HENRY: Let s find that truth. My next question is, our last guest, who you cited several times, Craig Gilbert, also said, accurately, that in 2000 and 2004 the margin was even closer in the presidential race and there was no recount. So what s your case tonight?JACKSON: [pause] Well, the case [pause] tonight, you can see that there that was [pause] a real contentious election [pause], and, based on that there are people that have expressed concerns. So, it s best to find the truth and go through the process. And obviously people have been willing to put up millions of dollars [pause] to find out and count the ballots again.HENRY: Okay, so final question: if you really want to get at the truth can we get at another truth which is that it appears that Jill Stein has raised about $5 million for a recount that may or may not happen for fraud that may or may not have happened. If there s nothing found here and if there s not even a recount will you pledge tonight that you and others in the Green Party believe that that money should be refunded, so this is not just money being raised on false hope?JACKSON: Well, we re exploring that I m only treasurer for the Green-Rainbow party. We re certainly going if it doesn t get used, we re certainly going to discuss with our donors what their desire is for that money. | 1real |
Democrats want to grill Wells Fargo executives about auto insurance | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic lawmakers pushed on Tuesday for another chance to question Wells Fargo & Co’s (WFC.N) leadership about sales practices after the scandal-hit bank said it forced auto insurance on borrowers who did not need it. Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee asked its Republican leaders in a letter to summon Wells Fargo Chairman Stephen Sanger and Chief Executive Tim Sloan. That letter accompanied one sent by Representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, who wants to know how Wells Fargo wrongly charged roughly 570,000 customers for auto insurance they did not ask for or need, leading to unwarranted delinquencies and car repossessions. Unwanted auto insurance is the latest wrinkle in a months-long scandal over sales practices at Wells Fargo, where employees also created as many as 2.1 million deposit and credit card accounts in customers’ names without their permission. “Members should have the opportunity to question Mr. Sloan about the bank’s progress in addressing the damage it did to its customers,” said the Senate letter, signed by Democrats including ranking member Sherrod Brown. A spokeswoman for Wells Fargo said the bank looked forward to answering questions from Washington. “Wells Fargo understands and is committed to addressing policymaker concerns,” said Jennifer Dunn. “We are committed to fixing these mistakes and earning back trust.” Employees have said they created unauthorized accounts to hit sales goals handed down by management. The creation of fake accounts and misplaced insurance charges went on for years before the bank’s management took action. After Wells Fargo reached a $190 million settlement with regulators over the fake accounts in September, its then-Chairman and CEO John Stumpf appeared before both committees to face questions from lawmakers at heated hearings. He left the bank shortly after, to be replaced by Sloan and Sanger. Whether Stumpf’s successors will be hauled before Congress publicly is uncertain. Only Republicans can summon witnesses, since that party controls Congress. The senate letter urged Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, who chairs the banking panel, to call a Wells Fargo hearing in September. Democrats want to know how the auto insurance and unauthorized accounts practices went on undetected, and Wells Fargo plans to compensate customers who were wrongly charged for insurance, according to the letter. | 0fake |
ILLEGAL ALIEN GETS Full-Ride To Prestigious Harvard Medical School | Welcome to socialism, where colleges, universities and our government work hand-in-hand to level the playing field. It all starts by punishing the white middle and upper class legal citizens of America, who had the audacity to be born white, work hard and follow the rule of law in America Harvard University raked in an astounding $608 MILLION in federal funding in 2014.Harvard Medical School has a 5% acceptance rate.From Harvard Med School website:Student Profile:Harvard Medical School affirms that medical education is enhanced by diversity among the student body, and has one of the most diverse medical school enrollments in the country. 17% of the student body comes from groups underrepresented in medicine, and another 35% from other minority groups. Students hail from 45 U.S. states, many foreign countries, and over 100 different undergraduate institutions.Harvard s Medical School website only shows only partial scholarships are available for students from lower income families. Perhaps they make exceptions for lawbreakers?! An illegal alien has won a full-ride scholarship to Harvard Medical School, highlighting the growing inflow of migrants into the white-collar professions.Blanca Morales of Santa Ana, California was the valedictorian of Santa Ana High School and graduated with honors from University of California Irvine. Now ABC 7 news has reported that Harvard has offered her a slot plus tuition costs even though she is an illegal alien who was brought into the country at the age of five.Tuition and fees for Harvard Medical School come to over $62,000 for the 2016-17 school year.Morales s gain was eased by President Barack Obama s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive action, which provided her with a form of legal status, plus a work permit. She is the first Health Scholar DACA student to be admitted to Medical School, reads a portion of a post on the Health Scholars Program Facebook page.She s being touted as success story for the Democrats support of illegal immigration.But Morales gain marks a larger trend namely, the increasing inflow of white-collar immigrants, legal and otherwise, seeking jobs also sought by hard-pressed American professionals.Since the 1990s, blue-collar Americans have seen their wages and opportunities reduced by blue-collar immigrants.But American professionals are also losing a wide variety of jobs to a resident population of roughly 1 million white-collar foreign guest-workers.The California and New York state legislatures have allowed professional licensing boards to provide professional licenses to illegals so they can compete for white-collar jobs. Illegal immigrant Cesar Vargas lawyers convinced a New York appeals court in June of 2015 to grant him the authority to practice law. A California court made a similar decision in 2014.Lawyers have also found a way to convert Obama s 2012 DACA mini-amnesty for roughly 800,000 younger illegals status into permanent residency.DACA recipients ask the Department of Homeland Security for permission to leave the country and then return under the legal status of advanced parole. That is a benefit that is supposed to only be granted for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. The case is detailed in a letter from two U.S. Senators to Department of Homeland Security Sec. Jeh Johnson.Several universities are organizing so-called study abroad trips with white-collar illegal alien students so they can obtain advanced parole to let them continue on the path to legalization, according to the letter from Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mike Lee (R-UT).United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials have been overwhelmed with DACA applications, processing near 7 million in fiscal year 2014 alone. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has pointed out that those seeking to come to the United States legally face greater obstacles in the visa process than those who have come illegally.Favoritism towards illegals disadvantages the people who legally migrate into the United States. Self-described legal immigrant and community volunteer Francisco Rivera of Los Angeles, California told Breitbart News last August:People need to understand that not every immigrant supports immigration reform [for illegals] and I do not approve of it. You don t cut in front of people in line and expect not to pay the consequences. That s why we have rules and laws, not just in this country, but many countries. You need to get in line. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
U.N. says Sri Lanka's delay in post-war reconciliation involves risks | COLOMBO (Reuters) - Long delays in Sri Lanka s post-war reconciliation is not without cost, and its government should implement measures to resolve outstanding issues, the United Nations said on Monday. President Maithripala Sirisena s government in 2015 agreed with the U.N. to investigate alleged war crimes in the final phase of a 26-year civil war. It then requested a two-year extension to fulfill that commitment. Both sides in the conflict - the government military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - were equally responsible for war crimes, according to the U.N. The government has agreed to establish a special court to investigate the alleged crimes and return land occupied by the military in the north. However, much of the process has been delayed by the government amid worries it will lose popularity among Sinhala Buddhists, Sri Lanka s majority community, analysts say. After a two-week fact-finding mission, U.N. special rapporteur Pablo de Greiff said such delays raise questions about the determination of the government to undertake a comprehensive transitional justice program. Long delays between the acknowledgment of obligations to establish transitional justice measures and the fulfillment of these involves risks: no one should be under the impression that waiting is a costless alternative, he told reporters in Colombo after concluding his mission. He also said the process has been increasingly ethnicized. As a result, transitional justice is represented as if it were essentially a threat to the majority community, of interest to one of the minorities only and all others left at the margins, he said. Many Sri Lankans oppose foreign involvement, and supporters of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa believe the U.N. resolution on the need to investigate war crimes aims to punish the military unfairly. The international community has urged a judicial process to hold out a realistic prospect of punishment for senior figures in Rajapaksa s government and military, as well as Tamil Tiger rebels, who waged a bitter final battle in which the U.N. has said up to 40,000 people were killed. | 0fake |
DEAR MR. PRESIDENT…When We Said “Lock Her Up” We Weren’t Asking [VIDEO] | When he was running for president, Donald Trump made locking up Hillary Clinton for her criminal behavior a centerpiece of his campaign. Just the mere mention of her name would send supporters at his massive rallies into a wild chant, as they screamed, LOCK HER UP! Trump s supporters weren t chanting to be cute. Trump supporters were chanting because after decades of evading the law, Americans were quite serious about expecting candidate Donald Trump to follow through on his campaign promise to hold her accountable, and make her pay for her crimes, just like any other American would be expected to do. When we told @realDonaldTrump to LOCK HER UP! we weren t asking Mr. President, please deliver on your promise. pic.twitter.com/A6lWKhv3Yu Newt-Trump Fan Club (@NewtTrump) May 9, 2017 | 1real |
Sheriff Clarke: ’I’m Tired of One-Percenters like Mark Zuckerberg’ Lecturing Us About Who We Are - Breitbart | Saturday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox Friends Weekend,” Milwaukee County, WI Sheriff David Clarke ripped the critics of those that oppose President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting refugees from certain countries from coming to the United States and in particular Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who he pointed out has his own wall at his home in Hawaii. “First of all, I’m tired of like Mark Zuckerberg and others lecturing us about who we are,” Clarke said. “I know who I am and most Americans know who they are. We are a sovereign nation. If you’re going to be a sovereign nation, you have to have borders and you have to protect those borders. Mark Zuckerberg has no idea of who’s coming into this country and what it takes to vet those individuals. I as a law enforcement officer in my 39th year. We do a lot of vetting of people. ” “I’m tired of all the crocodile tears about the kids — the poor kids coming,” he added. “We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about able bodied grown men, fighting age that should be back in Syria, back in the Middle East, fighting for their country, coming over to the United States to spread jihad. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 0fake |
Trapped by landmines and a creek, Rohingya languish in no-man's land | COX S BAZAR, Bangladesh Reuters) - Until late last month, Syed Karim grew rice and sugarcane on a strip of unclaimed land along the international border where Myanmar ends and Bangladesh begins. On Aug. 25, the 26-year-old Rohingya Muslim man abandoned his home in a nearby Myanmar village and moved to the no-man s land, fleeing a crackdown by the military against his community in response to militant attacks. An estimated 370,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since that day. But Karim and thousands of his neighbors from Rohingya villages near the border face a unique predicament. They have fled to the safety of the buffer zone along the border and are now stuck. Bangladesh security forces have instructions to not let them in, said Monzurul Hassan Khan, a Bangladesh border guard officer. Some of the Rohingya there said they are too afraid to go back to their homes but not ready to abandon them altogether and become refugees in Bangladesh. I can see my house but can t go there, said Karim, whose Taung Pyo Let Yar village could be seen from his shack in the no-man s land. The top U.N. human rights official has called Myanmar s operations against the Rohingya as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and the Security Council is to meet behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss the situation. The 40-acre (16.2-hectare) buffer zone, about the size of 40 soccer pitches, is strung along the border, with a barbed wire fence on the Myanmar side and a creek on the other. Hundreds of tarpaulin bamboo shacks have come up on what used to be a paddy field, with hills in the south. Khan said 8,000 to 10,000 Rohingya had camped there. The UN refugee agency, which runs camps in Bangladesh, doesn t go there because of security reasons, said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for UNHCR. Tan said that they work with some NGOs to provide people in the area with plastic sheets and clothing. Myanmar has laid landmines on its side of the border, which have wounded at least four people, Bangladesh authorities and Rohingya refugees said. Buddhist-majority Myanmar says its security forces are fighting a legitimate campaign against terrorists it blames for the attacks on the security forces. Several Bangladesh officials said they suspected that about 100 fighters from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the insurgents who attacked Myanmar police posts and an army base on Aug. 25, have also been spotted in the border area. Bangladeshi security officials said they learned from informers that suspected ARSA fighters were in the area early last week, after the Eid al-Adha festival. The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said 11 suspected fighters were also being treated in a hospital in Chittagong city, north of Cox s Bazar, which is close to the border. An ARSA spokesman denied that any of its fighters were using the no-man s land to launch attacks and said none of its fighters were in Bangladesh. Mostafa Kamal Uddin, Bangladesh s home secretary, said he did not have information about the presence of Rohingya militants in Bangladesh. Karim and other Rohingya people, mostly from the border villages, said they started fleeing to the buffer zone after the Aug. 25 attacks. Khan, the border guard officer, said their numbers swelled on Aug. 27. We kept hearing gunshots and also saw a fire and smoke on their side of the border, Khan said. He pointed to two brown patches of burned trees in Taung Pyo Let Yar village from his operations base on a hilltop in Bangladesh s Gundum village near the border. His men with automatic rifles kept watch as Rohingya children waded across the creek to fetch fresh water in aluminum pots and plastic bottles from a hand-pump on Bangladeshi soil. A toddler, with the knee-deep waters rising to his neck, struggled with three plastic bottles, dropping one before turning around and picking it up and pressing forward. In interviews at the buffer zone, where Reuters was taken by Khan, residents of three villages - Taung Pyo Let Yar, Mee Taik and Kun Thee Pin said they were spared in the previous big military crackdown in October last year. But things changed on Aug. 25. Mohammed Arif, a Rohingya man from Taung Pyo Let Yar village, said he fled into the woods near the village to hide when the army came. From there, he watched a mortar shell hit his two-storey house, burning it down. He crossed over the fence on Aug. 26 with his family. Arif said he had not seen any ARSA fighters in the no-man s land. In our country, Buddha worshippers treat us like a virus that needs to be eliminated. We have heard them saying, No Rohingya in Myanmar. But we will go back, Arif said. | 0fake |
LYNCH OBJECTED TO COMEY'S DECISION TO NOTIFY CONGRESS OF EMAIL REVIEW | Home › POLITICS › LYNCH OBJECTED TO COMEY’S DECISION TO NOTIFY CONGRESS OF EMAIL REVIEW LYNCH OBJECTED TO COMEY’S DECISION TO NOTIFY CONGRESS OF EMAIL REVIEW 0 SHARES
[10/29/16] Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates objected to FBI Director James Comey’s decision to notify Congress about his bureau’s review of emails related to Hillary Clinton’s personal server, law enforcement officials familiar with the discussion said.
Comey decided to disregard their objections and sent the letter Friday anyway, shaking the presidential race 11 days before the election and nearly four months after the FBI chief said he wouldn’t recommend criminal charges over the Democratic nominee’s use of the server.
The officials acknowledged there was little Lynch and Yates could do given the fallout over Lynch’s controversial meeting over the summer with former President Bill Clinton.
Lynch and Yates objected after Comey gave advance notice to top officials at the Justice Department before sending the letter to lawmakers, law enforcement officials briefed on the matter said. Justice officials didn’t sign off on Comey’s decision and he didn’t seek their approval, one official said.
Instead, he made an independent decision to go against longstanding Justice Department and FBI practice to not comment publicly about politically sensitive investigations within 60 days of an election, the official said.
Comey later explained his decision to provide Congress with the information in a letter to FBI employees.
“We don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Comey said. “I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
Clinton’s campaign and allies quickly decried the decision’s timing, and the candidate herself on Friday forcefully called on the FBI to release the “full and complete facts” about its review.
“Voting is underway, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” Clinton said at a brief news conference in Des Moines, Iowa, adding it was “imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay.”
Clinton said she was “confident whatever (the emails) are will not change the conclusion reached in July,” when Comey said he wouldn’t recommend criminal charges in the matter.
Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has spent the past several weeks on defense, seized on the issue.
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we’ve never seen before,” Trump said at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. “We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”
He later responded to Clinton’s statement, saying she “tried to politicize the investigation by attacking and falsely accusing the FBI director of only sending the letter to Republicans.”
In a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen Friday, Comey said investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Post navigation | 1real |
Ex-CIA chief: Worries grew of Trump campaign contacts to Russia | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former CIA director John Brennan said on Tuesday he had noticed contacts between associates of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia during the 2016 election and grew concerned Moscow had sought to lure Americans down “a treasonous path.” Brennan, who headed the agency until Trump became president in January, also told a congressional hearing that he personally warned the head of Russia’s FSB security service in a phone call last August that meddling in the election would hurt relations with the United States. Separately, the top U.S. intelligence official, Dan Coats, sidestepped a question on a Washington Post report that Trump had asked him and the National Security Agency chief to help him knock down the notion there was evidence of such collusion. But Coats did say he has made clear to Trump’s administration that “any political shaping” of intelligence would be inappropriate. The comments by Brennan and Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, added fuel to a controversy that has engulfed Trump since he fired FBI Director James Comey two weeks ago amid the agency’s investigation into possible collusion between people associated with his presidential campaign and Russia. “I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign,” Brennan’s said in testimony to the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee. Brennan said that he cannot say definitively there was actual collusion. Brennan’s testimony was the first public confirmation of the worry at high levels of the U.S. government last year over suspicious contacts between Trump campaign associates and Moscow. It was also the most complete account to date of the CIA’s thinking at a time when intelligence agencies were putting together evidence that Russia was interfering in the heated U.S. presidential race to help businessman Trump, a Republican, defeat Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton. Comey was heading the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into Russian interference and possible collusion with Trump’s campaign, leading to accusations by Trump critics that he has sought to curtail the FBI inquiry. In another development, Trump has retained Marc Kasowitz, a New York-based trial lawyer who has represented Trump in the past, as his private attorney for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Russia matter, a Fox Business Network reporter said on Twitter. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Moscow tried to tilt the election campaign in Trump’s favor, including by hacking into the emails of senior Democrats. Russia has repeatedly denied the allegation. Trump has denied any collusion but the FBI and congressional probes into the Russia matter have dogged the early months of his presidency. “It should be clear to everyone Russia brazenly interfered in our 2016 presidential election process and that they undertook these activities despite our strong protests and explicit warning that they do not do so,” Brennan said. Brennan said he worried that Russians tried to recruit Americans during the presidential campaign to work for Moscow. Brennan said it was possible for someone to be helpful to the Russian cause without realizing it. “They (the Russians) try to suborn individuals and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to act on their behalf either wittingly or unwittingly,” he said, adding that “individuals going on a treasonous path often do not realize it until it is too late.” Republican Representative Trey Gowdy asked Brennan: “Did you see evidence of collusion, coordination and conspiracy between Donald Trump and Russian state actors?” “I saw information and intelligence that was worthy of investigation by the bureau (FBI) to determine whether or not such cooperation or collusion was taking place,” Brennan replied, but declined to elaborate. Reuters reported last week that Trump’s fired former national security adviser Michael Flynn and other advisers to Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the presidential race. Flynn was forced out in February for failing to disclose the content of his talks with Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. Brennan said he believed he was the first U.S. official to raise the matter of election interference with the Russians, citing an Aug. 4, 2016 phone call he had with the head of Russia’s FSB, Alexander Bortnikov. He said he raised media reports of Russian attempts to meddle in the election with Bortnikov, who denied any involvement by Moscow, and told him if Russia pursued this course it would destroy prospects for improved U.S.-Russia relations. Trump’s public approval ratings dropped to a new low in Reuters/Ipsos poll data released on Tuesday, with 37 percent of U.S. adults surveyed approving of the president while 57 percent disapproving. Support for Trump appears to have dropped among Americans of all political stripes. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Coats sidestepped questions about a Washington Post report that Trump had asked Coats and Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, to help him knock down the notion that there was evidence of such collusion. But Coats did not deny Trump had made such a request. Coats said that “I don’t feel it’s appropriate to characterize discussions and conversations with the president.” The Post reported Coats and Rogers declined the request. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told Coats that the fact he had not denied the Post report should lead to “even more intensive investigation of the alleged effort by the president to enlist you in shutting down, or stifling that investigation.” “This evidence, if true, goes to criminal intent and constitutes mounting evidence of obstruction of justice,” Blumenthal added. The leaders of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said they will subpoena two of Flynn’s businesses after he declined to comply with a subpoena for documents in the panel’s Russia probe. | 0fake |
The Oregon militia standoff, explained | A militia protesting the "tyranny" of the federal government seized the headquarters of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon on January 2 and, in a video posted to Facebook, called on "patriots" from all over the country to come to the refuge with their guns to join their fight.
On January 26, six members of that militia, including leaders Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were arrested on charges of conspiracy to impede federal law enforcement officers from their official duties. The arrests happened after a shootout in which one militia member was killed, and another injured.
Ammon Bundy's father Cliven Bundy became a Fox News star in 2014 for his armed standoff in Nevada with the federal government over cattle-grazing rights. On the surface, the 2016 wildlife-reserve occupation is about a father and son from Oregon who were ordered by the court to return to prison to serve additional time for a 2012 arson on federal land. But, as with Cliven Bundy's standoff, the anti-government militiamen driving this crisis believe it's about standing up to a tyrannical federal government.
The apparent goal of the takeover is ultimately to induce the federal government to turn over government-owned land to local ranchers, loggers, and miners for their use. Here is Ammon Bundy, one of the militia leaders, explaining it in his own words:
But the men involved in the takeover — including Ammon Bundy, Ammon's brother Ryan, Jon Ritzheimer, Blaine Cooper, and Ryan Payne — are not locals. Rather, they are a small group of individuals who travel around the country attaching themselves to various local fights against the federal government, usually over land rights. Several of them were involved in Cliven Bundy's 2014 standoff.
Now they have latched onto the cause of two local ranchers from Burns, Oregon: Dwight and Steven Hammond.
Dwight Hammond, age 73, and his son Steven, age 46, are scheduled to report to federal prison on Monday. Dwight, the father, faces nearly five years in prison; son Steven faces up to four years. The Hammonds were convicted of arson in 2012 for setting fire to public land adjacent to their ranch land. They have already served prison sentences for their crimes, but they now must return for an additional term after federal appellate judges said they had been illegally sentenced the first time.
But the Hammonds' political cause isn't primarily about sentencing. Rather, it's about federal land use — and opposition to what is seen as an intrusive or outright illegal federal government.
Federal agencies own and regulate huge chunks of land in western states like Oregon and Nevada. As such, those with anti-government views, particularly in western states, often focus on the federal government 's land-use policies. Hence the significance of the Hammonds' case — and the change to their sentencing, which just further fed into views of a tyrannical federal government out of control.
Here again is Zaitz, the Oregonian journalist:
On Saturday, members of the militia attended a demonstration in Burns that had gathered to protest the Hammonds' case. After the protest, the militiamen drove to the wildlife refuge and took it over.
It seems that the militiamen may have initially planned to seize the wildlife refuge headquarters in order to establish a "sanctuary" where the Hammonds could go to evade prison.
As Ammon Bundy sees it, the locals are "not strong enough" to stand up for themselves, so the militia must act as the "tip of the spear" and lead the fight on behalf of the locals.
Thus, Bundy and his fellow militiamen have seized the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — located in a remote area some 50 miles southeast of the city of Burns — in hopes of creating a "base" where "patriots" like themselves can come, with their guns, to live and make their stand against the "tyrannical" federal government.
No. For one thing, it turned out that the Hammonds don't actually want the militia's help — or at least, not anymore.
At first, according to the Oregonian, the Hammonds "accepted the militia's offer of help to avoid prison." But they "changed their minds after being warned by federal prosecutors to stop communicating with the militia" and have now "professed through their attorneys that they had no interest in ignoring the order to report for prison."
Ammon also tried to recruit residents from the surrounding area, reportedly meeting with 10 or so locals, but they all turned him down.
The Oregonian interviewed some locals who expressed sympathy for the Hammonds and for the militia's "constitutional arguments" but ultimately rejected the militia for its extremism.
The militia, the local fire chief told the newspaper, "seems like a bunch of people ready to shoot. I don't want that in my county."
A local rancher woman said, "We're not from the militia. We're not going to come in with guns and overthrow the government."
On January 26, law enforcement officials arrested six of the militia leaders — including Ammon and Ryan Bundy — after an encounter with law enforcement resulted in a shootout. One militia member was killed and another was injured (and is recovering in a local hospital). No law-enforcement agents are reported to have been killed.
As of Tuesday night, it is not clear whether the other militia members are being ordered to leave the refuge, or will leave of their own volition — or whether the standoff will continue after the leaders' arrest.
It has been unclear throughout the occupation exactly how many militia members are inside the occupied building and what kind of weapons they may have. As reported by the Oregonian:
A reporter for the Oregonian also tweeted this:
As mentioned earlier, several of the men behind this takeover were also involved in the standoff in Nevada in 2014, which very nearly ended in bloodshed as hundreds of heavily armed militia members stood off with federal agents. Thankfully, disaster was averted when federal authorities made the decision to pack up and leave without any prior announcement.
That may not necessarily be the case this time around. In fact, at least one militia member seems to be expecting things to go very differently this time. Jon Ritzheimer, the former US Marine whose anti-Muslim rhetoric and activities raised alarms with the FBI in November 2015, posted a video to YouTube on December 31 in which he seemed to be saying goodbye to his family and explaining the reason why he felt compelled to fight the US government in Oregon. Here's the video: | 0fake |
A Majority Agreed She Was Raped by a Stanford Football Player. That Wasn’t Enough. - The New York Times | At Stanford University, in a conference room above a Starbucks and other shops, a panel of five gathered in June 2015 to decide whether a sexual assault had occurred on campus. Several months later, after a process marred by procedural errors, five different panelists convened to rule on the matter again. The case involved a woman, a sophomore, who had met a player on Stanford’s powerhouse football team at a fraternity party one Saturday night. They went back to her room where, she said, he raped her. He said they had consensual sex. Seeking to avoid the trauma of a police investigation, the accuser turned to the university’s disciplinary board, one of many on college campuses that adjudicate sexual assault cases, and it would decide whom to believe. If the panel had found that sexual assault had taken place, the man could have been expelled. Both times, three of the five panelists — drawn from a pool of administrators, faculty members and students — concluded that the man, who remained on the football team throughout the case and is on the roster for a bowl game Friday, committed sexual assault. At many schools, this simple majority vote would have been enough to find the accused responsible. But Stanford had set an uncommonly high bar, requiring at least a decision. This year, amid growing dissent over how it handles these kinds of cases, Stanford changed its procedure in a way that victims rights advocates say favors the accused. It now requires a unanimous verdict from a board, making it an outlier among prestigious universities. Only one other school (Duke) in U. S. News World Report’s list of the country’s top 20 colleges that use such panels has such a stringent requirement. As awareness of sexual assault on college and university campuses has surged, institutions have struggled to balance the desire and legal obligation to cultivate a safe campus, where victims feel comfortable coming forward, with maintaining due process for the accused. At Stanford, however, that effort has set off a particularly vigorous debate, as a school that is an innovator across fields and has a sterling image to protect faces a community in which many believe it has fallen short of leading on one of the thorniest issues of the day. In the case with the football player, the woman, who had gotten a second hearing after presenting evidence of errors in the first proceeding, remains angry and has temporarily left the school to avoid the player. “I realized that I got into this school and deserved to get an education here,” the woman said in an interview. “He was a valued football player, but I had earned my right to be here, too. ” The man, who did not reply to repeated requests for comment, remains enrolled at Stanford and is expected to be a member of the team for its game against North Carolina in the Sun Bowl on Friday. Stanford officials said they could not talk about details of the case because of confidentiality rules and federal law. But they defended the system they have put in place to resolve sexual assault allegations. Stanford’s decision to require a unanimous panel of three, in place since February 2016, stemmed from recommendations made by a task force last year. “In deciding we wanted panelists, it made sense to go to a panel,” said Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford Law professor who is now chairwoman of a sexual assault advisory committee, “and having three people decide something by a preponderance of the evidence seemed to us the appropriate way of deciding whether a sanction should be imposed on somebody for his or her behavior. ” Reports of sexual assaults on and around Stanford’s campus increased to 39 in 2015, from 21 in 2010, according to data Stanford compiles under federal law, though it is possible victims were coming forward more often, rather than there being more attacks. Still, very few sexual assault cases that have gone through the university’s internal process in recent years have led to any significant punishment for the accused, a fact that Stanford attributes to a rigorous but fair standard to guard against wrongful judgments. Advocates for sexual assault survivors consider it a sign of a system stacked against victims. A New York Times examination of the Stanford case concerning the football player, based in part on a review of more than 100 pages of documents from Stanford’s proceedings, illuminates the school’s struggles and pitfalls in adjudicating these kinds of cases. “Everyone knows sexual assault on campus is a serious problem, and one that is very difficult to tackle,” said David a professor of comparative literature at Stanford and one of dozens of faculty members who have criticized the school’s sexual assault policies. “Many of my colleagues are deeply concerned about it,” he said, “and want Stanford to be a leader in addressing this issue assertively. ” The woman who made the accusation against the football player said that she decided to speak about it so the public might have a better understanding of the lapses that can occur when such cases are handled internally. The Times is not identifying her or the man she accuses of assault. Last season, as his case was proceeding, the football player was a regular for the Cardinal, which went and won the Conference title and the Rose Bowl. The football coach, David Shaw, a member of the N. C. A. A. Commission to Combat Campus Sexual Violence, said in an interview that he was aware that a “proceeding was happening” involving the player, but that he did not know the charge. He said he saw no reason to suspend him from the team without more information. The woman, now 22, frightened she might encounter the man on campus, left the university to study elsewhere last quarter and has not decided whether to return. After the case ended, she sought a temporary restraining order in state court against the man, but was denied, court records show, because the judge found that she did not demonstrate that there was an imminent threat. Stanford was empowered to handle the case internally by Title IX, a federal law dating to 1972 mandating equal access to higher education regardless of gender, and the United States Education Department’s interpretation of that law as requiring universities to carry out investigations of alleged sex crimes on campus. Most campuses now operate under guidelines that the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights explained to university administrators in a 2011 letter aimed at making students feel safe to report allegations. It urged a legal threshold based on a preponderance of the evidence, the legal standard in civil cases, rather than the higher threshold of beyond a reasonable doubt, used in criminal cases. Many universities had used the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard, but the vast majority now have adopted the lower standard, including Stanford. At Stanford, the cases rely heavily on written statements from all parties produced by university staff members, rather than on interviews by detectives or forensic evidence, as in a police investigation, which some legal experts assert makes for a less proficient investigation. The accused and accuser appear separately before the panel. Each can submit questions, for the panel to ask the other, but it does not have to use them. This procedure reflects the broad latitude universities have been given to set up their own methods of examining and adjudicating cases. Many cases never end up before law enforcement because the accusers refuse to cooperate, trusting their universities to take action. Often, the accusers simply want the accused expelled or kept at a safe distance. “All I really wanted was a order,” the woman said in an interview. “I wanted little things to make being on campus more bearable. I knew he was never going to get suspended or expelled. That’s what kept me moving forward. ” Several independent experts said universities’ obligations to follow the law while supporting both the accused and the accuser as members of the campus community — and looking out for their own institutional interests — make flaws like those the woman found in her case all but inevitable. “Under Title IX, educational institutions are responsible for being all things to all people: the caregiver, the impartial investigator, adjudicator, sanctioner, trainer and preventer,” Gina Maisto Smith, a former prosecutor whose practice at the law firm Pepper Hamilton includes advising colleges on Title IX compliance, wrote in an email. “As much as schools are doing it better — and they are — and as much as they try to separate the process from the provision of resources and support, many, if not most, institutions lack the resources and dedicated personnel to separate and fulfill each of these roles effectively,” she added. “Even if schools have the resources to do so, exercising oversight of the entire process often leads to a perception of institutional bias and a lack of faith in the reliability of outcomes. ” Advocates for sexual assault victims say that Stanford’s process has made it more difficult for accusers to receive rulings in their favor. Critics say the university has done this to protect its public image Stanford maintains it wants to ensure fairness to the accused in a proceeding with standards lower than a criminal case. “Imagine a senior, who has paid four years of Stanford tuition,” said John W. Etchemendy, the outgoing provost, explaining why Stanford’s system includes significant protections against adverse findings for accused students. “Being expelled is really a punishment,” he said. “I think we as an institution have a duty to take that very seriously. ” This high bar for accusers has left the university open to criticism from victims’ rights advocates. “They are very keen on protecting the brand over supporting survivors,” said Stephanie Pham, a of the Stanford Association of Students for Sexual Assault Prevention. “If you ask, ‘Do I feel safe on campus?’ I do. When something happens, though, will Stanford protect me? The feeling is, no, they won’t. To have prevention, you need to hold people accountable. They haven’t. ” Earlier this month, Stanford was sued by a student who accused the university of failing to protect her from a student who she says sexually assaulted her after Stanford had heard at least one sexual assault complaint about him. He was sanctioned only belatedly, barred from campus for 10 years — after he graduated. The university called the suit “unfounded. ” Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor and vocal critic of the university’s policies on sexual assaults, declined to comment on the case involving the football player because she did not know the specifics of it. But she said she doubted that the university’s proceedings complied with Title IX — particularly its requirement to have unanimous rulings, the standard in criminal cases, though Stanford’s proceedings are administrative actions. “You have to look at the process holistically, and when you see a series of hurdles and roadblocks, this becomes a very unfriendly place, if not one of the most unfriendly in the nation,” said Ms. Dauber, one of five Stanford professors (including Mr. ) who wrote an open letter in December 2015 to the provost complaining about the new policy. “The victim should not need to garner three votes to win while the respondent needs to garner only one. That is basic inequality. ” While defending current protocols, Stanford officials acknowledged that the school had relied on a flawed process for investigating campus sexual assault in years past. Before 2010, such cases were handled through the same disciplinary process as less egregious offenses like cheating. Rarely did claims result in students being expelled. That system, Mr. Etchemendy acknowledged, “was not . ” Stanford then set up what it called the Alternative Review Process, which included the panels that the woman who accused the football player went through. Of the 22 cases adjudicated by its panels, 13 resulted in a finding that the accused had acted improperly. Yet only one student has been expelled for sexual assault since 2014, Stanford officials said, with a few others voluntarily withdrawing, which Stanford counts as an expulsion. (Among them was Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer whose criminal sentence of six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on campus in 2015 received notoriety for its perceived leniency.) When the new policy was rolled out in February, the aim was to make expulsion the “expected” punishment for sexual assault, though after a panel determines that sexual assault has occurred, it must also decide unanimously to expel a student. Under the new system, one case has produced an expulsion. That outcome came through a “ resolution” process — also in the new system — allowing the Title IX coordinator to propose a resolution of the case acceptable to both students, forgoing a hearing. It is a process that some other universities have decided is inappropriate to apply to sexual assault cases — it potentially creates pressure for an accuser to negotiate with an assailant — and that the Department of Education has discouraged. Stanford officials said 10 of 16 cases so far under the current system had been decided in this way. But some faculty members, as well as lawyers who have represented accusers in the process, have objected to this option, calling it a form of plea bargaining. “It is frustrating because universities should be getting this right, and they are not, and the idea that they can keep pushing this under the rug doesn’t make the campus any safer, as we keep seeing as these incidents come to light,” said Crystal Riggins, a lawyer who has represented accusers at Stanford. “The process is complex and takes a long time. It is very difficult to get a decision from a panel, and these young women are terrified and traumatized and just want it to be done. ” The woman who agreed to talk about her case described an arduous process that took nearly nine months and, she said, was plagued by several lapses. On the afternoon of June 25, 2015, the woman, along with her lawyer, took their places at a crowded table inside the Tresidder Memorial Union at Stanford. Her lawyer was there only for support and was prohibited, under the rules of the proceeding, from guiding her testimony. In the middle of the table was a telephone for the young man to listen to the proceeding. She had about 30 minutes to give her account of what had happened four months earlier. Afterward, the football player was allowed to email questions to the panel that they could decide to ask or not. She began the hearing feeling that the deck was stacked against her. She said that only the night before did she see the accused’s statement for the first time, and that it included new statements from two of his football teammates. She said she had exchanged emails with an administrator in May and June 2015 and “not once” did that administrator “indicate that any other files had been added to the investigation file, nor did she respond to my previous questions regarding the investigation file,” according to her appeal, which included the email exchange with an assistant dean coordinating the process. When she asked to postpone the hearing so she could ask for redactions of statements that she deemed prejudicial as well as suggest questions for an investigator to ask the witnesses, she said she was denied without an explanation. “I was told to stick to the facts on my statement, and I did,” she said. “He was allowed to speculate on why I ‘targeted’ him. His teammates, who were not even involved in that night, basically said he was a great guy and was being punished for consensual sex. ” After listening to his version, she said that she offered questions to the panel. She said that they did not ask them. The next day she was notified that a majority of the panel agreed with her that a sexual assault had occurred, but the football player would not be given a finding of responsibility. By then, she said, she had already missed one quarter of school and would eventually miss two. She was, and remains, in therapy and on anxiety medications. Within days, with the help of a lawyer, she appealed the decision on the grounds that the “investigation process was so inequitable and unfair” that it violated her rights as a victim of sexual assault under Title IX. Along with numerous procedural errors, she said, she was bothered that the man’s status as a football player was injected into the proceedings by him and his teammates. Mr. Etchemendy, the provost, insisted there was no special treatment for athletes or anyone else. Despite two rulings that the football player had committed sexual assault, Mr. Etchemendy said, the coach of the football team would not have been notified because the player had not been found responsible. The player apparently received no punishment. “Unless there is reason — for safety — we do not inform the individuals’ teachers, their conductor in the choir if they’re in the choir, the football coach if they’re on the football team, or any other head of an activity that they participate in,” Mr. Etchemendy said. Before the second hearing, the panel saw statements from the accused that said he had been “reassured” by Stanford’s Title IX investigator that “situations like these more times than not result in nothing,” and that a lawyer for the Associated Students of Stanford University had reviewed his response and advised some changes, “but mostly began to sympathize with me,” and said that “what I was going through was unfair. ” The administrator organizing the hearing acknowledged that those statements should have been redacted because they were not testimony germane to whether a sexual assault had occurred. (Under the new system, an outside lawyer decides what will be allowed as evidence.) After the second panel came back the accuser appealed again. She asked that Stanford’s Office of Community Standards “issue a order to protect me” from the accused. One had been in place throughout the months of proceedings. On at least two occasions, the football player had to be asked to leave parties by a resident dean — and on another, by campus security — because of his apparently violating that order, both the accuser and the accused acknowledged in statements. “The past nine months of my life have been the worst of my life,” she wrote to Greg Boardman, Stanford’s vice provost for student affairs, on Oct. 20, 2015, as part of her appeal. “I’ve experienced fear, anxiety, depression, and hatred in ways I never imagined during the first 20 years of my life. An introduction to someone new in early February turned into my worst nightmare — every woman’s worst nightmare. ” Her appeal for a third hearing and a order was denied, without explanation. Stanford said that it accommodates accusers even after their cases come up short. They can secure special housing arrangements or even escorts to certain parts of campus. But officials said that they could not impose anything that looked like penalties, even for safety reasons, on those who are found not responsible — even if the vote found by or, now, that sexual assault had occurred. “I think you would face legal liability to that person if after that process he was told, ‘You can’t be in this part of the campus,’” said Ms. Karlan, the law professor who is chairwoman of the sexual assault advisory committee. The woman is trying to decide whether to return to campus or pursue her degree elsewhere. She said that she loved the school and that she was never happier than in her time there. She is worried about encountering the football player if she returns to campus. “But do I have to leave Stanford to feel safe?” she said. “I’m certain that this isn’t the way the Title IX process was meant to work. ” | 0fake |
Bob Dylan the Writer: An Authentic American Voice - The New York Times | “I’m the first person who’ll put it to you,” Bob Dylan said in a 1978 interview, “and the last person who’ll explain it to you. ” The Swedish Academy, which awarded Mr. Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, has put it to us, and it has no explaining to do to most readers and listeners, however much they might have been pulling for Philip Roth or Don DeLillo or Margaret Atwood. This Nobel acknowledges what we’ve long sensed to be true: that Mr. Dylan is among the most authentic voices America has produced, a maker of images as audacious and resonant as anything in Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson. [ Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize in Literature | Our pop critic on Bob Dylan, the musician ] It has never hurt that Mr. Dylan’s words were delivered, as the English poet Philip Larkin once put it, in a “cawing, derisive voice” that seemed to carry the weight of myth and prophecy. Mr. Larkin was not Mr. Dylan’s greatest fan. He found the lyrics to “Desolation Row” to be “possibly . ” It took a different Englishman, the venerated critic and scholar Christopher Ricks, to make the case most fully for Mr. Dylan as a complicated and complicating poet. In Mr. Ricks’s sly 2004 book “Dylan’s Visions of Sin,” he persuasively compared Mr. Dylan at various points with personages as distinct as Yeats, Hardy, Keats, Marvell, Tennyson and Marlon Brando. “Dylan’s in an art in which sins are laid bare (and resisted) virtues are valued (and manifested) and the graces brought home,” Mr. Ricks wrote. He added, “Human dealings of every kind are his for the artistic seizing. ” Mr. Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minn. in 1941, was inspired when young by potent American vernacular music, songs by performers like Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and Robert Johnson. When his voice became fully his own, in his work of the 1960s that led up to what is probably his greatest song, “Like a Rolling Stone,” no one had ever heard pop songs with so many oracular, tumbling words in them. When Bruce Springsteen inducted Mr. Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, he described the opening seconds of that song this way: “That snare shot sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind. ” The words that followed pulled that door from its hinge. In the chorus, they posed a question that has not stopped ringing over American life: “How does it be on your no direction home. ” At the time, Dylan wrote in his masterful memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” (2004) “I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. ” That memoir demonstrated that Mr. Dylan could write prose as fluently as lyrics. This needed proving only because Mr. Dylan’s sole novel, “Tarantula” (1966) written when he was 25, is a largely unreadable wordstew, written so as to defeat the hardiest of his idolators. As Elvis Costello said in his own recent memoir, “If you want a long career, you have to drive people away now and again, so they realize they miss you. ” Everyone has his or her own private anthology of favorite Dylan lyrics. Mine come from songs including “Idiot Wind” (“blowing every time you move your teeth”) “Brownsville Girl” (“Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content”) “Hurricane,” written with Jacques Levy (“How can the life of such a in the palm of some fool’s hand? ”) “Sweetheart Like You” (“It’s done with a flick of the wrist”) and “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread,” written with the Band (“Pack up the meat, sweet, we’re headin’ out”). Then there’s this, from “Blind Willie McTell”: Before this Nobel Prize, Mr. Dylan has been recognized by the world of literature and poetry. In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation “for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power. ” His songs have always packed social and political power to match the imagery. In his book “The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood,” Coates spoke of what Mr. Dylan’s songs meant to his father as well as to a generation: “Dylan’s voice was awful, an aged quaver that sounded nothing like the or silky RB that Dad took as gospel. But the lyrics wore him down, until he played Dylan in that addicted manner of college kids who cordon off portions to decipher the prophecies of their favorite band. Dad heard poetry, but more than that an angle that confirmed what a latent part of him had already suspected. ” What was confirmed was this: The Vietnam War was a moral disgrace. Songs are not poems, exactly. Songs prick our senses in different manner. Many of Mr. Dylan’s lyrics can no doubt, as Mr. Larkin put, look when set starkly alone on a white page. But Mr. Dylan’s work — “with its iambics, its rhymes, and its scattergun images,” as the critic Robert Christgau wrote — has its own kind of emblematic verbal genius. His diction, focus and tone are those of a caustically gifted word man his metrical dexterity is everywhere apparent. He is capable of rhetorical organization more often he scatters his rhetoric like seed, or like curses. This award is also a sign — after last year’s laureate, Svetlana Alexievich, whose work is made up of interviews — that the Swedish Academy is increasingly open to nontraditional forms of writing. In what feels like a blow for common sense and scalding wordplay, the academy has attended to Mr. Dylan’s lyrics in “Lay Lady Lay,” to wit: “Why wait any longer for the one you he’s standing in front of you?” In a 2004 interview in The New York Times, Mr. Ricks summed up my sense of the best of Mr. Dylan’s oeuvre: “I just think we’re terrifically lucky to be alive at a time when he is. ” | 0fake |
Trump to lay out what he would do in first 100 days if elected president | (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will lay out on Saturday what he would do in the first 100 days of his administration should he win the Nov. 8 election. Trump’s outline - which he will deliver in a speech in the historic town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - will cover his plans for boosting Americans’ economic and physical security and contrast them with those of Democrat Hillary Clinton, campaign aides told reporters on Friday. Clinton published a book of her own policy ideas earlier this year. Trump is trailing Clinton in most polls - although he has narrowed the gap according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday - and has less than three weeks to catch up. Much of the campaign in recent weeks has focused on allegations that he made improper advances to women over decades, something he denies. It is also being dominated by Trump’s accusation that the election is “rigged” and that he may not accept the result. Trump aides said Gettysburg, the site of a major Civil War battle and Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s famous address, was a fitting place for Trump to lay out a positive vision for the future of his party, which has suffered a schism between his supporters and the party’s establishment. Trump has planted some new policy details in recent speeches as he seeks to shift attention away from the recent controversies. In the past week, for example, he laid out ethics rules to shut the “revolving door” between government and lobbying and proposed term limits for members of Congress. Trump’s aides said he would unveil additional new policy details Saturday. They would not elaborate. | 0fake |
LIBERALS ARE GOING To Be Furious Over What This Texan’s T-Shirt Said During Live TV Interview | Thank God a hero with a gun emerged in Sutherland, Texas, and was able to prevent an even worse tragedy at the hands of a mentally unstable man, who should ve been behind bars, or in a maximum security mental institution.Fox News Because of the right to use modern weaponry for the defense of life, liberty and property is natural, we should not need a government permission slip before exercising it, any more than we need one to exercise other natural rights, such as speech, press, assembly, travel, and privacy.Yet since the Progressive era 100 years ago ushered in by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and enabled by nearly every president since the government has taken the position that it can care for us better than we can care for ourselves. So it has severely curtailed our rights and left us reliant on the government itself for protection.The modern-day massacres are proof beyond a doubt that the government cannot protect us.Daily Caller Mike Jordan, a Texas man whose son witnessed the church shooting in Sutherland, Texas that took the lives of 26 and injured several more, wore a pretty edgy t-shirt during an appearance on Fox News Monday night.Jordan, who was interviewed by Laura Ingraham about the role guns played in the shooting that left 26 dead, wore a shirt that said, Buy a gun. Annoy a liberal. Jordan said that his son usually carries but left his firearm at home on Sunday when the shooting took place. A small town like this, you know, people go to church, they disarm, leave their guns in the car, because you don t expect something like this to happen, Jordan explained. What if this was the day he didn t leave that firearm at home? What if he did take it with him? If you have one person on the inside that is armed to return fire, it may not have stopped people from dying but it would have been a distraction, it would have gotten that guy s attention, he said. | 1real |
How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar - The New York Times | MOSCOW — Aleksandr B. Vyarya thought his job was to defend people from cyberattacks — until, he says, his government approached him with a request to do the opposite. Mr. Vyarya, 33, a bearded, bespectacled computer programmer who thwarted hackers, said he was suddenly being asked to join a sweeping overhaul of the Russian military last year. Under a new doctrine, the nation’s generals were redefining war as more than a contest of steel and gunpowder, making cyberwarfare a central tenet in expanding the Kremlin’s interests. “Sorry, I can’t,” Mr. Vyarya said he told an executive at a Russian military contracting firm who had offered him the hacking job. But Mr. Vyarya was worried about the consequences of his refusal, so he abruptly fled to Finland last year, he and his former employer said. It was a rare example of a Russian who sought asylum in the face of the country’s push to recruit hackers. “This is against my principles — and illegal,” he said of the Russian military’s hacking effort. While much about Russia’s cyberwarfare program is shrouded in secrecy, details of the government’s effort to recruit programmers in recent years — whether professionals like Mr. Vyarya, college students, or even criminals — are shedding some light on the Kremlin’s plan to create elite teams of computer hackers. American intelligence agencies say that a team of Russian hackers stole data from the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign. On Thursday, the Obama administration imposed sanctions against Russia for interfering in the election, the bedrock of the American political system. The sanctions take aim at Russia’s main intelligence agencies and specific individuals, striking at one part of a sprawling cyberespionage operation that also includes the military, military contractors and teams of civilian recruits. For more than three years, rather than rely on military officers working out of isolated bunkers, Russian government recruiters have scouted a wide range of programmers, placing prominent ads on social media sites, offering jobs to college students and professional coders, and even speaking openly about looking in Russia’s criminal underworld for potential talent. Those recruits were intended to cycle through military contracting companies and newly formed units called science squadrons established on military bases around the country. As early as 2013, Sergei K. Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, told university rectors at a meeting in Moscow that he was on a “head hunt in the positive meaning of the word” for coders. The Defense Ministry bought advertising on Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social network. One video shows a man clanging a military rifle on a table beside a laptop computer, then starting to type. “If you graduated from college, if you are a technical specialist, if you are ready to use your knowledge, we give you an opportunity,” the ad intoned. Members of the science squadrons, the video said, live in “comfortable accommodation,” shown as an apartment furnished with a washing machine. University students subject to mandatory conscription in the nation’s armed forces, but who wanted to avoid brutal stints as enlistees, could opt instead to join a science squadron. A government questionnaire asks draftees about their knowledge of programming languages. The ministry posted openings on job forums, according to an investigation by Meduza, a Russian news site based in Riga, Latvia, that first disclosed the recruitment effort. One post from 2014 advertised for a computer scientist with knowledge of “patches, vulnerabilities and exploits,” which refers to sabotage used to alter a computer. Given the size of Russia’s cybercrime underworld, it was not long before the military considered recruiting those it described as “hackers who have problems with the law. ” In an article titled “Enlisted Hacker” in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the government newspaper, a deputy minister of defense, Gen. Oleg Ostapenko, said the science squadrons might include hackers with criminal histories. “From the point of view of using scientific potential, this is a matter for discussion,” he was quoted as saying in 2013. Experts say the strategy was more than just talk. “There have been cases where cybercriminals are arrested but never ended up in prison,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, the and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that first identified the group known as Fancy Bear as the perpetrator of the Democratic National Committee hacking. Mr. Vyarya, the programmer who turned down the government’s job offer, was an attractive recruit from the opposite end of the spectrum: someone with a career protecting people against hackers. Specifically, he had experience shielding websites from a maneuver called a distributed denial of service, or DDoS attack, in which the sites are overwhelmed and disabled by a torrent of fake traffic. Among his clients were Vedomosti, an independent newspaper TV Rain, an television station and the website of Aleksei A. Navalny, the opposition leader. Mr. Vyarya said that in 2015 he was invited to accompany Vasily Brovko, an executive at the military contracting company Rostec, on a trip to Sofia, Bulgaria. But he said it turned out to be a demonstration of a new software suite capable of staging DDoS attacks. The Bulgarian firm demonstrating the software briefly crashed the website of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and Slon. ru, a Russian news website, Mr. Vyarya said. Slon. ru has confirmed its site went down inexplicably for about two minutes that day, Feb. 5, 2015. After the demonstration, Mr. Vyarya said Mr. Brovko asked him how the program might be improved. Then, according to Mr. Vyarya, Mr. Brovko offered him a job running the DDoS software, which he said the Russians planned to buy from the Bulgarians for about $1 million. Mr. Vyarya said his problems began when he turned down the offer: He was surveilled, and an acquaintance in law enforcement advised him to flee the country. He left in August 2015 for Finland to seek asylum, he and his former employer said. The Finnish government, citing safety and privacy concerns, would not comment on the asylum application. “As soon as we saw what was on the table, Sasha was given direct instructions to return to his hotel and stop all contacts,” said his former boss, Aleksandr V. Lyamin of Qrator, a cyberdefense company in Moscow, using Mr. Vyarya’s Russian nickname. But the overtures from the military contractor persisted, Mr. Lyamin said, and Mr. Vyarya fled. Rostec strongly denied Mr. Vyarya’s account. Mr. Brovko did travel to Bulgaria with Mr. Vyarya, the company said, but to evaluate software for defensive, not offensive, cybersystems. A spokeswoman for Mr. Brovko called the account of crashing sites in a product demonstration the imagination of a “mentally unstable” man. The military’s push into cyberwarfare had intensified in 2012, with the appointment of a new minister of defense, Mr. Shoigu. The next year, a senior defense official, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov published what became known as the Gerasimov Doctrine. It posited that in the world today, the lines between war and peace had blurred and that covert tactics, such as working through proxies or otherwise in the shadows, would rise in importance. He called it “nonlinear war. ” His critics called it “guerrilla geopolitics. ” But Russia is certainly not alone. “Almost all developed countries in the world, unfortunately, are creating offensive capabilities, and many have confirmed this,” said Anton M. Shingarev, a vice president at Kaspersky, a Russian antivirus company. Recruitment by Russia’s military should be expected, he said. “You or I might be angry about it, but, unfortunately, it’s just reality. Many countries are doing it. This is the reality. ” American intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, have for decades recruited on college campuses. In 2015, the N. S. A. offered a free summer camp to 1, 400 high school and middle school students, where they were taught the basics of hacking, cracking and cyberdefense. In Russia, recruiters have looked well beyond the nation’s school system. In 2013, as Russia’s recruitment drive was picking up, Dmitry A. Artimovich, a physicist, was awaiting trial in a Moscow jail for designing a computer program that spammed email users with advertisements for male sexual enhancement products. One day a cellmate, who had been convicted of selling narcotics online, sidled up to him with some news. The cellmate said that people incarcerated for cybercrimes could get out before trial, in exchange for working for the government. Another inmate had already taken a deal, he said. “It was an offer to cooperate,” Mr. Artimovich said. “Why else would you work for the government?” he added. “The salaries are tiny. But if you do something illegal, and go to prison for eight or nine years, the F. S. B. can help you,” he said, using a Russian abbreviation for the Federal Security Service. Mr. Artimovich said he decided to take his chances at trial, and served a year in a penal colony. As Russia ramped up its abilities, government agencies were also in the market for surveillance and hacking software, including some from legal suppliers in the West. In 2014, a Russian company called Advanced Monitoring that has a license to work with the F. S. B. the agency that succeeded the K. G. B. after the fall of the Soviet Union, bought iPhone hacking software from an Italian company called Hacking Team, according to invoices published by WikiLeaks. Hacking Team has since lost its export license. Western cybersecurity analysts believe they have identified the one responsible for the breaching the Democratic National Committee: a group nicknamed Fancy Bear. First known as Advanced Persistent Threat 28, the group has been active since 2007 but its abilities evolved to emphasize attacks, rather than gather intelligence, after the military placed a priority on cyberwarfare. It stepped up “faketivist” actions that released stolen data through contrived online personalities like Guccifer 2 and websites like DCLeaks, according to Kyle Ehmke, a senior intelligence researcher at ThreatConnect, a cybersecurity company. The group had been called Pawn Storm, named for a chess maneuver. It was nicknamed Fancy Bear in 2014. This year, the group appropriated the nickname for its own use, setting up the website fancybear. net and publishing hacked data from the World Agency, which showed that many American athletes, including the American tennis star Serena Williams, had medical exemptions to take banned substances. The hacking was apparently in retaliation for revelations of Russian doping in sports. President Vladimir V. Putin has said repeatedly, most recently at his annual news conference, that the information released in the recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee was more important than who was behind them. “The main thing, to my mind, is the information the hackers provided,” Mr. Putin said of this summer’s cyberattack. Democratic Party members and the Obama administration should not look abroad for someone to blame for losing the election, Mr. Putin said. “You need to learn how to lose gracefully,” he said. | 0fake |
Kellyanne Conway SHUTS DOWN ABC News Hack George Stephanopoulos After He Tries To Convince Viewers Trump Isn’t Legitimate President [VIDEO] | Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Wentworth said that If Trump wins, we ll start looking at real estate in Sydney, Australia. No crime, no guns. The couple s plans pour further scorn over Stephanopoulos s supposed objectivity given his role as a prominent interviewer for ABC, having interviewed Donald Trump twice over the election cycle. BreitbartNotice how ABC starts out the interview between Stephanopoulos and Conway by flashing a screen shot of Hillary s popular vote numbers compared to Trump s when they have nothing to do with the context of the conversation. This is called subliminal messaging, proving the mainstream media has mastered the art of manipulation. Watch the interview here. Stephanopoulos and his wife s connections to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are well documented, with Stephanopoulos having previously worked as an adviser to Bill Clinton and the couple also having donated over $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation.Trump himself pointed out Stephanopoulos s ties to the Clinton Foundation in their most recent interview. On the subject of his regrets, he admitted he had many but added that Stephanopoulos should regret donating to the foundation.These mainstream media hacks who have been given a pass by Republicans for decades are finding themselves in the very difficult position of having to defend themselves against their obvious biases: | 1real |
Hillary Clinton Surprises by Attending Pride Parade in New York - The New York Times | It is difficult to surprise at New York City’s pride parade — that pulsing kaleidoscope of pink unicorn horns and rainbow undergarments, bejeweled miniature dogs and revelers who seemed to have misplaced their shoes. But around 1:45 p. m. Sunday, beneath a virtually cloudless sky, something was afoot on Christopher Street. Lights flashed. Officers stirred. Sirens pierced the Cher soundtrack wafting over Greenwich Village. Soon, a van door opened. “Hillaryyyyyyyyy!” someone hollered from the sidewalk. And so began a very chase along the city’s foremost corridor of gay rights. For four blocks or so — beginning steps from the Stonewall Inn, the nexus of the modern gay rights movement — Hillary Clinton led a mayor, a governor, a phalanx of aides, a crush of reporters and several beleaguered security personnel on a stroll. It was an unannounced appearance for Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, two weeks after the massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. The tragedy colored the proceedings across several floats and marching groups, lurking like an unwelcome guest. Some attendees dressed in white, with the names and faces of victims displayed on placards hanging from their necks. “We Are Orlando,” a sign read. “One Pulse,” said another. Mrs. Clinton did not speak at the event, smiling and waving and occasionally venturing to the police barricades to shake hands. But her presence resonated, attendees said, communicating a measure of solidarity in a wrenching moment. “It was a nonverbal confirmation of her support,” said Micah Feinberg, 35. Women with rainbow leis around their necks reached for her. Residents overhead pointed cellphones from their open windows. A large rainbow flag flapped against a fire escape. “She’s right here,” a woman said, to no one in particular. “Right here. ” When Mrs. Clinton, moving west, reached Bleecker Street, a group rained confetti from a rooftop. “The next president of the United States!” shouted a man with a microphone. “Make some . ” Mrs. Clinton waved toward another guest in a rainbow bathing suit. Moments later, as a “Hillary” chant began to build, she stopped to acknowledge the crowd. Throughout the walk, she was joined by a horde of dignitaries eager to share in her spotlight. These included Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who remain engaged in a protracted feud, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who quickly positioned himself beside Mrs. Clinton and took care not to relinquish his perch. By about 2 p. m. Mrs. Clinton was hustled into a waiting vehicle, waving once more before heading for a flight to Indiana. (In a speech there hours later, she addressed Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, arguing it reaffirmed the need for “steady, experienced leadership” in the presidential race.) Paradegoers remained tickled by her cameo. “I saw her and was completely dumbfounded,” said Kelsey Roberts, 28, an engineer who said Mrs. Clinton was an inspiration to her in a field. Mrs. Clinton has marched in the parade before, participating as far back as 2000 during her run for the United States Senate. Her appearance on Sunday came as her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, continues to make the case that he is the true champion of gay rights in the presidential race. In the wake of the Orlando shooting, Mr. Trump has said he is the candidate most able to keep gay and lesbian Americans safe from hate crimes. While Mrs. Clinton remains likely to command the vast majority of support from gay voters, she has had a complicated history with gay rights. As secretary of state, she focused often on international gay rights, urging countries to accept gays and lesbians during a 2011 speech in Geneva. She has since denounced Russia’s treatment of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people, and in March 2013, she endorsed marriage both “personally and as a matter of policy and law. ” But while much of Mrs. Clinton’s donor base includes gay and lesbian supporters, some have questioned the deliberate pace of her evolution. There are also old wounds from her husband’s administration, which enacted the military policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act barring federal recognition of marriages. Mrs. Clinton inspired fresh criticism this year after the death of Nancy Reagan, mistakenly praising Mrs. Reagan’s “ advocacy” concerning H. I. V. despite the Reagans’ lengthy public silence on the disease. Mrs. Clinton quickly apologized. The crowd on Sunday included a handful of skeptics. “She did it strictly so that we would relate the image of her with the image of pride,” said Lexi Avidani, 24, from Long Island. “And she doesn’t support it. ” Most, though, were more effusive. Wearing a shirt that read, “SPOILER ALERT: HILLARY WINS,” Matt McDermott, 26, marveled at the progress of gay civil rights. “A year ago, we passed marriage equality in the Supreme Court, and a year later, a major party nominee is walking in the pride parade in New York,” he said. “So things change quickly. ” Loretta Tassotti, 55, said Mrs. Clinton’s gesture demonstrated that she was “not afraid. ” “This is not a Trump kind of party,” she added. Ms. Roberts, the engineer, suggested the significance ran deeper. The Orlando victims were so young, she said, that it was essential for presidential candidates to participate in the grief. Ms. Roberts looked out again on the parade route, where a collection of mourners drew near. She reconsidered the question of Mrs. Clinton’s appearance. “How could you not come?” she asked. | 0fake |
Another 300 Migrants Storm Border at Spain’s Ceuta | (AFP) — Some 300 migrants stormed the border between Morocco and Spain at Ceuta on Monday, authorities said, days after hundreds more forced their way over the frontier. [The young migrants climbed over the high border fence into the Spanish North African territory, ecstatic to have finally crossed into a European Union state. Their arrival comes just days after nearly 500 migrants made it over the fence on Friday, one of the biggest entries since the border barrier was reinforced in 2005. Ceuta and Melilla, also a Spanish territory in North Africa, have the EU’s only land borders with Africa, so are entry points for migrants who either climb the border fence, swim along the coast or hide in vehicles. The enclave has been ringed by a double wire fence eight kilometres (five miles) long. The high fence also has rolls of barbed wire. | 0fake |
A**hole Of The Day – Michele Bachmann: Muslim ‘Rape Jihad’ Is Destroying ‘Western Christiandom’ | Michele Bachmann has been pretty quiet since leaving office under a cloud of scandal and that was a damn shame. She was one of the most perfect examples of how utterly hate-filled and detached from reality the right-wing has become. But apparently Bachmann has remembered that it was her GAWD!-given mission to warn America about all the threats the voices in her head have been making up for years.Last week, Michele warned us about Obama s status as the Anti-Christ and his plan to cancel the elections and crown himself King. This week, GAWD! has told her that the evil Muslims. I kid you not, made up the entire Syrian civil war: This clearly is an invasion, Bachmann said. This is a planned invasion, not only in Europe but also in the United States, I believe for the specific purpose of destroying Western Christendom. The solution, of course, is to close all the borders to people with brown skin immigrants just to be safe. And for those of you who are about to say I m race-baiting, during her rant, Bachmann insisted that we needed to pause immigration just like Calvin Coolidge did in 1924. That pause , incidentally, was targeted specifically to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity (AKA White Supremacy ) by allowing in good immigrants from Western Europe but keeping out the bad ones from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. That s what Michele Bachmann thinks is a solution. Why? Because she s a fucking racist like a great deal of the American right-wing.If this fact upsets you, too bad.But Bachmann wasn t done being a total asshole:Bachmann said that countries with large Muslim minorities like France now experience Islamic jihad 24/7, terrorist bloodbath attacks 24/7, warning that the same thing is coming to the U.S. unless we decide to have no more immigration into the United States. I m sure this will come as a surprise to France. They ll be wondering why they haven t heard about these 24/7 bloodbaths. Maybe they re only happening in the mythical no go zones? Bachmann continues: The more that come in, the more they act upon their religious convictions and their stated religious convictions, she said. The imams from the original countries that they come from, they recruit and send these guys to come in and to bring about this destruction. Right now in Europe it s called a rape culture that s coming into Sweden and Germany and all across Europe for the specific purpose of Islamizing these countries, and they are falling. I wish I could be surprised that a conservative like Bachmann will only acknowledge the existence of rape culture as long as she can blame it on Muslims. Islamists have a plan, Bachmann later added. They have a plan to destroy Western Christendom. It s called civilization jihad. By bringing Islamists into our country and destroying us from in, they don t need to just have a nuclear bomb. If they send their invading army into our countries and if young men are doing what they did on New Year s Eve in Cologne, Germany, and other places where they are literally sexually attacking and raping and groping women and causing them to fear, we are looking at a completely ramped-up level of invasion one like we have never seen before. There are days that I truly and profoundly wish I wasn t an atheist. Why? Because it would give me great comfort to believe that after she dies, Jesus Christ will personally walk up to Bachmann in the afterlife and, after explaining to her exactly how horrible of a human being she was in life, send her to Hell along with most of the Republican Party.Hey, a man can dream, right?Featured image courtesy of Newsweek | 1real |
Egypt orders suspected Libyan militant, 14 others be held over desert attack | CAIRO (Reuters) - The Egyptian public prosecutor ordered that a suspected Libyan militant and 14 others be held for 15 days pending an investigation of their role in a deadly attack in Egypt s western desert last month, state news MENA reported on Friday. The Interior Ministry said on Thursday that Abdelrahim Mohamed al-Mesmari, from the Libyan city of Derna, was captured by Egyptian forces following an air raid in response to the attack. Security sources initially said at least 52 policemen were killed when militants attacked a patrol, firing rockets and detonating explosives in a remote part of the desert. The Interior Ministry refuted those figures and said 16 were killed. Charges against Mesmari will include premeditated murder of police officers, possession of firearms and joining a terrorist organization, MENA reported. A new and little-known group called Ansar al-Islam claimed responsibility for the October attack, posing a new threat to Egyptian security forces, which have been battling an Islamic State insurgency in the Sinai peninsula since 2013. The military last month killed 15 militants in an air raid directed at the group it blamed for the desert attack, according to the Interior Ministry, which said that all of those killed had been trained in Derna. Mesmari escaped the air raid but was later arrested along with 29 Egyptians who had been recruited to join the group, according to the Interior Ministry. (This version of the story corrects final paragraph to clarify that 29 suspects were arrested later, after the air strike in which 15 were killed) | 0fake |
ILLEGAL? THUG WITH 30 PRIOR ARRESTS Steals Ambulance…Runs Over EMT Killing Mother of 5 [Video] | The blood is on DeBlasio s hands! Career criminals are walking the streets with a violent history and sealed arrest records. THAT IS PROOF that the administration is NOT doing what is best for the civilian population. Is he an ILLEGAL being protected by politicians who support sanctuary cities?THIS MOTHER OF 5 DESERVES ANSWERS: The body of FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo being carried into the Medical Examiner s Office by fellow FDNY EMT s:The body of FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo being carried into the medical examiner Office by fellow FDNY EMT s. pic.twitter.com/HWXgu2MVt0 BMR Breaking News (@BMRBreakingNews) March 17, 2017 The NYPD identified Jose Gonzalez, 25, as the suspect who was operating the emergency vehicle and slammed into 14-year FDNY EMT veteran Yadira Arroyo and her partner Thursday night. Arroyo, a mother of five, later succumbed to her injuries and died at Jacobi Medical Center.Gonzalez, who has an extensive arrest history, faces murder, grand larceny and operating a motor vehicle impaired by drugs charges, police said. Moments before, Jose Gonzalez was going door to door begging for money:Moments before he s alleged to have run over a @FDNY EMT, Jose Gonzalez was going door to door begging for money https://t.co/eJAJaTQGxi pic.twitter.com/fx9pWzE5Wz Myles Miller (@MylesMill) March 17, 2017Read more: pix11 | 1real |
Social Justice Warriors Vow to Call the Police on People Wearing “Offensive” Halloween Costumes | Social Justice Warriors Vow to Call the Police on People Wearing “Offensive” Halloween Costumes Zombie outfits or sexy Pocahontas costumes could get you in trouble Paul Joseph Watson - October 27, 2016 Comments
Social justice warriors have vowed to call the police on people wearing “offensive” Halloween costumes!
If you thought the ‘triggering’ last year was bad, wait until you hear about what’s happening this October 31st.
If you do celebrate Halloween, please make sure you wear the most tasteless, offensive costume imaginable.
Please share this video! https://youtu.be/H2ySty3ONkY
SUBSCRIBE on YouTube: | 1real |
S.C. Pastor LOSES IT, Goes On Bizarre, Anti-Atheist Rant From Pulpit (VIDEO) | Phil Vander Ploeg says that he is a Christian apologist. Well, if that is so, then he needs to get down on his knees and apologize to the atheists of the world for telling lies about us from his pulpit at the First Baptist Spartanburg in South Carolina. Vander Ploeg says: Why doesn t God just walk into the room one day and say, Hello, I m God, I m real, and then leave? God has revealed himself far more than some people want to acknowledge. It s obvious.The only atheists in the world live in America and Europe. Everyone else knows there s a god. But we ve developed a worldview in the West that justifies our actions. That s why we don t believe in God. Well, no, sir, that isn t true at all. According to Gallup (which, by the way, is much more reliable than some nutty preacher), there are more atheists in China than anywhere in America or Europe. Last I checked, that s not the western world. Here is what Gallup International had to say about the concentration of atheists in China: China has the highest amount of atheists living in a single country with nearly 50 per cent of its population describing themselves as non-believers. Around 47 per cent of people living in China describe themselves as atheists compared to an average of 13 per cent across the world. Methinks Pastor Vander Ploeg has gotten his facts wrong. Further, he also says that people are only atheists because they want to live their lives their way, rather than God s way. Wrong again! People are atheists because they don t believe in a deity, pure and simple.Watch the insanity in action, below:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
COLLUSION FUSION: DOJ Official’s CIA Wife Was Hired to ‘Research’ Trump | 21st Century Wire says More evidence of collusion has surfaced this week just not the kind mainstream media has been incessantly reporting for months.Zero Hedge is reporting that Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, admitted in a court filing this week that his firm paid Nellie Ohr, wife of U.S. Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, to help dig up dirt in 2016 on then presidential candidate Donald Trump.Mr. Ohr was demoted from his senior post at the DOJ as associate deputy attorney general after it was revealed he met with Simpson and Christopher Steele, a retired British intelligence officer who assembled the now infamous Trump-Russia dodgy dossier. Read more at Zero Hedge, including details about the DNC s law firm Perkins Coie READ MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire RussiaGate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Sheriff: Giving Sex Offenders to ICE Damages ’Community Trust’ | The sheriff of Oregon’s most populous sanctuary county said he cannot help federal immigration officials because of state law. His office released a Mexican criminal alien convicted of sexual assault despite a hold from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. [Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese told Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson that Oregon law prohibits his providing assistance to enforcing federal law during an interview conducted by Lisa Fletcher that will air on Sunday morning. “The state law is a very clear guideline for local law enforcement and sheriff’s statewide,” Reese explained. “We can’t expend county resources or personnel towards immigration enforcement. ” Fletcher countered that one state legislator is “furious about this. ” “He says you’re not abiding by the law by not detaining some of these illegal immigrants who are held on very, fairly serious charges or who have committed fairly serious crimes, are a risk to the community,” she stated. “How do you respond to him?” The sheriff danced around the question, stating they hold people in their jails who “are accused of crimes in our communities. ” He says he hold criminals until a judge says otherwise. Sheriff Reese said by not acting as immigration agents he believes the country is better off. “It simply worries me that we’ve spent so much time and energy building community trust and something outside of our control may damage that. ” Crime victims might feel otherwise. A report issued on Thursday by U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials revealed that Sheriff Reese’s jail released a Mexican national on February 15. Immigration officials issued an immigration detainer on March 21, 2016. The report indicates the Mexican criminal alien has a prior conviction for sexual assault. The Declined Detainer Outcome Report for the week of January 3 revealed the release by the sheriff’s office of another Mexican national convicted of assault and a Tongan national convicted of amphetamine possession. Full Measure also presented an interview with immigration fugitive Francisco Aguirre, calling him the “poster child” for the sanctuary city of Portland. Aguirre, a Salvadoran national who fled to the U. S. as a teen. Oregon convicted the Salvadoran in 2014 for driving under the influence. Fletcher said he managed to avoid spending any time in jail for the crime, but it put him on the radar of ICE Enforcement Removal Operations officers. “A month later ICE knock on my door … tried to take me in custody. I let them know clearly that they wasn’t [sic] welcome there, and they must leave the property because it was private property,” Aguirre said defiantly. After the ICE officers left, Aguirre fled to Augustana Lutheran Church where he held up in a sanctuary for 81 days. Aguirre believes that despite entering the country illegally and committing another crime, he has earned the right to remain in the U. S. “You’re here illegally you committed a crime, a crime that very well could have killed somebody,” Fletcher stated. “Why do you deserve to stay in this country?” “I understand that I commit a crime by getting a DUI. But, we all, as a human being, make mistakes, and we always deserve a second chance,” Aguirre said, rationalizing his prior actions. “I been contribute [sic] to the economy of this country. I been paying my taxes, since I been living in this country. I’m willing to help my community whenever they need. ” Aguirre remains safe under Sheriff Reese’s and the other elected officials of Portland’s sanctuary city protections. Or, maybe not. Late in March, ICE ERO officers carried out a targeted enforcement operation in three Pacific Northwest states, including Oregon. During that operation. Officers arrested more than 80 criminals aliens — 19 of those included aliens with DUI convictions. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 0fake |
Jerry Jones Violates Law by Treating Police Officers to Cowboys Game - Breitbart | The owner of the Dallas Cowboys Jerry Jones will receive an ethical violation warning for providing game tickets, airfare, and hotel reservations to over 100 police officers. [Jones argued in front of a North Little Rock, Arkansas, city council commission that his gift, valued at approximately $300, 000, was a tribute to his home town’s police officers. Jones said that the gifts were not payment for ordinary work performed by police, but to “send a positive message of the work police do outside of their normal jobs,” reported ArkansasMatters. com. Arkansas state law does not allow public servants to receive gifts of over $100. Internet blogger Russ Racop exposed the first time violation and has come under fire for his criticism of the goodwill extended to the men and women in blue. As it turns out, Racop has been outed with having his own set of issues with the court system, reported the Arkansas Times. Former Attorney General Dustin McDaniel is offering free legal services to any of the officers who received the gift. However, according to the Times, Little Rock has no intention of treating the gifts as taxable income. Fortunately for Jones, a first violation of the law is considered a minor offense, subject only to a warning. Next time Jerry can just send his money to Black Lives Matters, where he will avoid admonition and probably relieve a hardy round of applause. | 0fake |
WATCH: This Video Of The GOP’S Convention Horror Show Should Terrify Everyone Who Sees It | The recently concluded Republican National Convention in Cleveland was a four-day never-ending cavalcade of dystopian nightmares, racism, fascism, sexism, and all the worst of America rolled into one.This video, produced by Blue Nation Review, compiles bits and pieces from the convention floor and the people assembled outside of the event to paint a picture of what has become of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.https://www.facebook.com/bluenationreview/videos/614383415410204/Not only does it show the convention speakers people like Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani leading the crowd in bloodcurdling chants to lock up Hillary Clinton, but it also showcases some of the bizarre comments speakers made while speaking about why they attended.Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. points out to a shocked TV crew that he thinks Obama is a Muslim working against America, while Newt Gingrich gives Melania Trump a pass for stealing Michelle Obama s speech because she s beautiful. Conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Alex Jones is shown, leading a rally calling for Clinton to be thrown in jail. Jones, who believes that the 9/11 attack was executed by the U.S. government, is a staunch Trump supporter, and Trump has appeared on his radio show.Even more shocking are the interviews with average Americans who attended the Convention. They proudly point out to the interviewers that they oppose same-sex rights for gays, believe that Obama is a black nationalist, blame Jews for controlling the world, and believe there isn t anything wrong with calling for white supremacy.At the end of the video, Trump is shown in his acceptance speech, dispensing with dog whistle politics as the Republican Party has previously done and instead explicitly telling these people that if elected President of the United States he will be their voice. It is hard to watch this compilation and see the Republican Party and the conservative movement as simply a benign political movement anymore. Instead, they come across as a very clear threat to what America stands for.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
WATCH: CA Governor Gives SCATHING Speech That Openly Defies Trump On A Major Issue | Even though Trump appears to have softened his own position on the idea that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, some of his cabinet picks suggest he s still very much a climate denier, and he himself has targeted the fossil fuel industry as ripe for repealing environmental regulations. But California has made a lot of progress of its own on the environment, and Governor Jerry Brown will not let Trump or a Republican Congress change that.He plans to act in direct defiance of anything Trump does. At the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco, he flat-out said: We re ready to ride the backlash back to sanity, sustainability, and truth! Scientific truth is such an alien concept to Trump that it s ridiculous. Then again, pretty much any type of truth is an alien concept to Trump.Brown wasn t done after that, either. He also said: We will set the stage. We ll set the example. And whatever Washington thinks they re doing, California is the future. If Trump turns off his satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite. We re going to collect that data. California does have facilities capable of launching satellites, so that s not necessarily an empty promise. In fact, Vandenberg Air Force Base has seven rocket launches scheduled for 2017 already. One launch will put a weather satellite in orbit, while another will put several Earth observation satellites in space.Trump s behavior on climate change since winning the election is alarming to anyone who trusts science over conspiracy theories and religious dogma, and California is no exception. If Trump puts laws into place, or repeals laws that California needs, Brown says: We ve got the scientists, we ve got the lawyers, and we re ready to fight. We re ready to defend. California is no stranger to this fight. It s not immediately clear how Brown will pay for his defiance of Trump and the GOP on something like launching satellites, because Vandenberg is a federal facility (obviously), and dependent on both its military budget and NASA s budget, the latter of which is at the whim of a Congress hostile to action climate change.Regardless, it s clear that he will do his best to push forward however he can, Trump s climate-denialism be damned. Judging by the response he got from scientists at the conference, they plan to help him out in any way they can, too.Watch him shred Trump to ribbons below:Featured image by Justin Sullivan via Getty Images | 1real |
Re: America Is The Loneliest Country In The World – Is It Because We’ve Abandoned The Traditional Family Structure? | America Is The Loneliest Country In The World – Is It Because We’ve Abandoned The Traditional Family Structure? 13th, 2013
Of all the nations on the entire planet, the United States is the most lonely place to be. We have the highest percentage of one person households on the entire globe, and the average size of our households has been steadily decreasing. Studies have shown that the number of close friends that Americans have is falling, and we have the highest divorce rate in the world by a wide margin. So why is this happening? Does this have anything to do with the fact that America is abandoning the traditional family structure? Back in the 1960s, the “sexual revolution” fundamentally changed the way that millions of Americans viewed sex and love. By throwing out all of the old boundaries, many Americans believed that they would ultimately be able to have more sex and more love. Today, this manifests itself in a “hookup culture” that is constantly being promoted as “healthy” in our popular music, in our television shows and in our movies. But instead of this “hookup culture” resulting in more sex and more love, most Americans are discovering that it leads to just the opposite. We have become a nation of desperately lonely people that have very few real ties to others.
Never in the history of our nation have Americans been so isolated from one another. Most people get up in the morning, drive to work or school, perhaps do a little shopping afterwards, and then drive home again. The rest of the evening is typically spent in front of the television or on some sort of electronic device.
In addition, most Americans spend precious little time attending social gatherings of any sort these days. Church attendance is at historic lows , and most people don’t take the time or the effort to get involved in other types of social groups.
And even when Americans do go out and try to meet people, the relationships that are formed are very much “on the surface” at best. The truth is that most Americans have very few “close friends”. Just take a moment and consider how many people outside your immediate family actually “love you” and would be there for you no matter what. For most Americans that number is depressingly low.
In a desperate attempt for human love and interaction, an increasing number of Americans have turned to social networking websites such as Facebook to fill that void. For the desperately lonely, some human contact is better than none. In fact, a growing number of people are so desperate for people to talk with them that they will pretend to be someone else online. Many will even use an attractive picture of someone else in an attempt to try to lure others. This has become so common that this phenomenon has even been given a name. It is known as “ catfishing “, and it has grown to epidemic levels.
Other Americans deal with their loneliness by recklessly indulging in food, drugs, gambling, shopping or other addictions. We are a fundamentally unhappy nation, and this is reflected in the fact that we lead the world in antidepressant use. In fact, the total number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled between 1996 and 2005.
Could a lot of this have been avoided if we would have just fully embraced the traditional family structure as a nation?
Wouldn’t most of us be doing a lot better if we lived in homes that were filled with happy, healthy families?
Just consider what the consequences of “free love” and the “hookup culture” have been for America…
*At 26 percent, America has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.
*100 years ago, 4.52 were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people .
*Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple. Today, that number has declined to 48 percent .
*The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low. Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people .
*Today, an all-time low 44.2 percent of Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are married.
*According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.
*In the United States today, more than half of all couples “move in together” before they get married.
*The divorce rate for couples that live together first is significantly higher than for those that do not.
*America has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
*In 1970, the average woman had her first child when she was 21.4 years old . Now the average woman has her first child when she is 25.6 years old .
*The birth rate for American women in the 20 to 24 year old age bracket has fallen to 85.3 births per 1,000 women . That is a new all-time record low.
*Approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.
*For women under the age of 30 living in the United States today, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
For most Americans, marriage has come to be viewed as a temporary agreement that can be abandoned the moment that it no longer makes them happy any longer. This “me-centered” approach to love and marriage has had a whole host of negative consequences for us as a nation.
As the National Marriage Project puts it, a marriage in America now “depends for its survival on the happiness of both spouses”…
Over the last four decades, many Americans have moved away from identifying with an “institutional” model of marriage, which seeks to integrate sex, parenthood, economic cooperation, and emotional intimacy in a permanent union. This model has been overwritten by the “soul mate” model, which sees marriage as primarily a couple-centered vehicle for personal growth, emotional intimacy, and shared consumption that depends for its survival on the happiness of both spouses. Thus where marriage used to serve as the gateway to responsible adulthood, it has come to be increasingly seen as a capstone of sorts that signals couples have arrived, both financially and emotionally—or are on the cusp of arriving.
And our young people are no longer taught to value marriage. Instead, they are told to put off marriage and to go out and “have some fun”. This message is constantly being reinforced by popular culture. For example, posted below is an actual pro-Obamacare ad . Yes, I know that this ad is almost too bizarre to be true, but it is actually a real ad. And as you can see, the messages that it is sending to our young people are not very subtle at all…
We have become a nation where “anything goes”, and most Americans seem to like it that way.
So what do you think?
Is America the loneliest country in the world because we’ve abandoned the traditional family structure?
Please feel free to share your opinion by posting a comment below… What Are The Off-White Boxes That Are Going Up On Utility Poles All Over Seattle? » K
The lack of family structure is part of it. But there is something far more basic, that has died in this Country. The dog eat dog business attitude, the money is the most important thing attitude,and the I come before everyone else attitude, All these things killed this precious concept. What is it? Trust. You can not have a good marriage, or friendship without it. Ask yourself, how many people you know, would you trust with your life? For most it is a rather small number. Sadly for some the number is 0. ISA
o here. I dont trust, nor really care for, most any of you. I learned this in childhood, by watching the true nature of adults. Adult Humans are the virus of the World, of rotting flesh, that is a parasite. This can be proven empirically. Aston Martin
Adult humans except “# Godschosenones?” because saying that all humans are viruses inclusing the shoes is # antisemitic? I see where you are going.. rbolo29 .
It’s because of the apathy of realizing there is no God; so the children play and do what they want. Kim
Probably why so many people attach themselves to their animals. I know people that treat their dog like their child. It’s because it’s all they have. ISA
Some dont treat their animals that way out of loneliness, but a dog just makes a better friend than Humans. Thats the truth. Take it or leave it. Humans are rather crappy things. Kim
Some humans, not all of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love my pet as much as anybody. But some people go overboard. A Dodgy Bloke
I think a number of components go into this. A big one is the sexual revolution I have seen personally how it’s a great thing for guys but a disaster for women. The tragic part is most women don’t see it, the want the same sexual freedom as men, but ignore the damage done. The damage is kids with no father, and a woman who has several children by different guys. The woman wakes up forty alone, has no control over her life dependent on welfare but has ultimate responsibility for what happens under her roof. Everybody wants to be loved in one form or another. I think the culture produces high expectations in what people want or expect in a spouse. Men want somebody young good looking with no issues. Woman are looking foe the same, but some have a attraction to bad boys who they find exciting. People don’t get to and know each other before they wind up in bed. They get caught up in the newness get married and wake up one morning look at their spouse and wonder ‘What did I see in you.” But I have hope that the coming hard times will reverse this because people will have to adapt, or not survive. rbolo29 .
It really doesn’t matter; because we all die in the end and if there is no God to save us; then it’s a total lost cause to even try to be moral and good. Some Dude
fix yourself and become the change you seek in others for those others are all the reflections of the changes you made from within, granting them the permission to let their own light shine.
only then will humanity rise above the din of the dark ages that still reigns with a rationale leading it only to extinction Dedalius Stanton
About to graduate from college within a short timeframe, this fearsome yet truthful article details some chilling events experienced in my academic career. Up unto this point, many of students within my campus follow a self-centered, selfish attitude, unaware that their destructive attitudes harm only but themselves. The idea of “STFU and leave me alone” concept continues to be pushed forth by faculty, peers, and the social environment. Having lived in the dorms, I’ve been through numerous roommates who refuse to talk to anyone, especially to me, stating that I’m too weird or someone who should just drop dead, yet later claim they have no friends and spend most of their time wasting it away, allowing their academic careers reach at a stag point. The same applies to my classes. I know about 70 students by name who will graduate this semester, but how many do I personally know and trust? Sadly, that number is zero. This is not because I don’t engage in conversations, but it’s rather the experiences that others around me only care only for themselves, while ignoring those that may be able to provide lasting friendships and improving the overall quality of life. rbolo29 .
It’s ok; because they will graduate and find there are no jobs waiting for them; except being a manager at McDonalds. Jim Davis
Asst. Manager at best. Aston Martin
The gullible femaleist women from colelge will probably go on dating websites to find elderly rich and wealthy men who are desperate enough to date goods which were expired a long time ago.
I agree I had similar experiences. Most people had their own little groups of friends and never really mingled with others. I think the problem is too, many people don’t know HOW to make friends. Everyone is so self-absorbed. MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse
I am sorry to hear that you had such negative experiences with roommates. Finding a good roommate these days can be a real challenge. I am glad that I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
Michael John Doe
71 percent of young men between the ages of 18 to 34 in America are not interested in marriage:
71% of young men in America do not want to get married
I guess feminism killed marriage. Kim
They can’t afford it. They are barely scraping by on their own. Ditto
Bingo. I live just as the fine article says: I get up in the morning, drive 28 miles to work, drive 28 miles home again, do some shopping, then spend the other three or four hours of my day watching TV or surfing the web. No time or money for anything else. MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse
You probably burn up a lot of gas money too. I certainly don’t miss the days when I had very long commutes to work.
Michael ISA
Cant afford it, and who would want to be married today? Even the boomer generation is throwing in the towel. If Americans can evolve, which they cant, then its over with soon. You all are still stuck in the model of 60 years ago, if not more, and are dying on the inside.
Good riddance. Lars Lonte
I totally agree with you – just compare Women from Eastern Europa or even Asia with the average Women from the East Coast or Europe (especially (West-) Germany and Great Britain as most US like states and cultures….there is a reason, why Eastern European men usually do not want to marry women from western Germany…. King Mercury
Because American women have literally priced themselves out of the dating market! American women show that they want only guys with big, wide luxury sports Ferraris with all of the latest technology, gigantic mc mansions at least 5 times the size of the Home Alone house, three quarter million dollar or higher incomes, a growing number of them are even going for gangsters and thugs that get that kind of luxury through violent crime and illegal drugs. Jonathan
Women are uncooperative, don’t care, too busy, incompetent at love and domestic life and think it’s cool to emotionally, psychologically, financially, and in every way abuse men and never receive any reciprocation for their bad behavior, nor offer any reciprocation for men’s gifts. The egomania in women has exploded, and the genie can no longer fit in the bottle. rwinkel
It’s a no brainer. Lookup “hisanic paradox” on wikipedia. The abuse of infants in this country is an important factor in the rise of sociopathy and broken families. Infants imprint just like every other mammal on the planet, and American obstetrics is unique in its disregard for children’s dignity and human rights. P.F.
America is in this state because it has turned to sin rather than YAHWEH’S HOLY LAW. Only in our LORD JESUS/YESHUA do we find fulfillment, peace, and joy. When people are filled with joy they share truth and love–when people are moaning miserably inside they become cold and detached. You can’t depend on people to bring you happiness first—you have to seek JESUS/YESHUA who teaches us how to love one another the right way, and then, and only then, will people know joy. america depends on itself to create its own happiness and you’re seeing the negative effects. Back in the 1950’s Biblical values were held strongly in the homes. That’s why you see your grandparents who were married during that time either still alive and married and buried next to each other. What you’ll see in the coming years are old ladies and men wondering around alone who are not married and who will be buried in single graves while the children carry on the negative tradition of their failed ways. Way to go america, you’re doing just fine. David McElroy
Sad, but true, P.F. If it weren’t for hope in Jesus, there’d be no hope at all! MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse
Michael David McElroy
As the oldest of 12 children from an Irish father who stayed married to our mother, I can testify as to the merciless bombardments of anti-family messages delivered to us. My mother was urged to abort many of my siblings. Teachers and other “counselors” urged us not to spend so much time together, as we were “clannish”. I fell for the encouragement to go to college and make something of myself and “get ahead” before marriage and children. Even our church was discouraging, openly saying we took too much pew space and gave too little money. (Even though we physically labored to help build the building!) I went to college, became a journalist and, after a disasterous cohabitation I thought would lead to marriage, eventually a chaplain. But I also ended up an old bachelor who thought he would have a wife and grandkids by now. My computer is my companion! CollGen2
You are a wonderful person. Your parent’s stuck together. That is the way God’s original design was. Your writing touched my heart today, thank you! All things will work out for good to those who LOVE God and are called according to HIS purpose. HE created each one of us and He also beckons us. He put an end to sin by being the perfect sacrifice on that cross. He beckoned me and I did it my way…..til trouble hit! I have a husband, 3 children and 4 grandchildren. I am alone most of the time at home, answering the phone for my small business. But, most of the time, I am immersing myself in the King James Bible and fellowshipping with my Father. He is the only one who will never leave me nor forsake me. How do I know that? I was in a coma many years ago when He beckoned me. I have tried to do things the “me” way but every road was a disaster until I surrendered my life to Him! The suffering I go through here is nothing compared to the GLORY that awaits me.”! Tim
There are good, faithful men out there who want a family. David McElroy
I’m with Tim, I was one of those guys who wanted to be a faithful husband and father. But I made the mistake of being smitten with a conniving woman who had no maternal domestic interests, being the “modern” sort. Jenn
I’m sorry that happened to you. Not all of us women are that way, but many of them seem to be these days. :-( Aston Martin
Modern westernized women are victims of the you-know-who….research who founded and promoted the femaleist movement and the truth shall make you afraid while you struggle to set free of the international bankers. SafetyViking
Good. Why buy the book when there’s a library in town? godozo
Ugly analogy. Knowledge is meant to be shared, women…not. Even the Founding Fathers and many of the old-school Robber Barons would agree (Carnegie anyone? He funded a nation’s worth of libraries.).
Try “Why buy the cow when the milk is free?”. Lifelong Mates (both male and female) ARE a limited resource, and like milk is worth paying for to keep (or keep the flow coming, depending on the item). wombleranger
I don’t like to be the one to say this but….if you remove spirituality and morals from a society you end up with the western world. America isn’t the only western power suffering this condition come to Canada where anyone with a problem gets a Prozac prescription and it’s free!!! We would be wise to remember the former Soviet Union and it’s devastation of the churches and religions. Now we must ask ourselves are we staring to become a communist nation? To quote William Penn ” .Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants”-certainly is food for thought! A lonely mind is a dangerous mind. Eileen Kuch
Very well put, wombleranger. Indeed, if you remove spirituality and morals from a society, that society starts to fragment. Just look at America today. It’s barely recognizable as the God-fearing nation it used to be.
I don’t know about your Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, but Barack Obama is the worst Presidents we ever had. He’s hell-bent on destroying the old America and turning it into a USSA, a near image of the early 20th Century USSR, where Orthodox Christian Churches were devastated and the religion driven underground.
Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants – William Penn
Great quote, too. wombleranger
Thanks Eileen. It’s comforting to see there are still moral people in this world, now we just need to wake-up the good souls from the deep sleep. It’s an uphill battle to be sure, but as long as i breath i will never forsake my dignity, morals and most of all my God. nilro
Too many nut cases out there, Animals are a better bet. Truman Golden | 1real |
No wikileakes from Kim Dotcom... nothing... zip... zero | No wikileakes from Kim Dotcom... nothing... zip... zero And there never will be from this bankrupt wannabe criminal waiting to be extradited to the US. Page 1 Related Threads 1 Mail with questions or comments about this site. "Godlike Productions" & "GLP" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike™ Website Design Copyright © 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.007s (8 queries) | 1real |
Inmates Take Employees Hostage at a Delaware State Prison - The New York Times | Inmates were holding two people hostage at a Delaware prison on Wednesday night in a standoff that began in the morning and left at least one prison employee injured, officials said. The hostages were taken at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, near the town of Smyrna, between Wilmington and Dover. It is the state’s largest prison, with 2, 500 inmates in and units. At a news conference on Wednesday night, officials revealed that a total of 27 inmates had been released by the but it was unclear whether they had been held against their will and how many inmates remained. Officials said four staff members had initially been taken hostage. Early accounts put that number at five, though officials said one person had not been accounted for at first but was later found to be safe. Robert Coupe, the secretary of the Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security, said at the news conference at about 8:15 p. m. that the authorities were communicating with the inmates via a radio belonging to a correctional officer. Inmates also have access to television and may have been watching a live broadcast of the news conference, he added. At 10:32 a. m. “a correctional officer made a radio call for immediate assistance from within C Building, which houses over 100 inmates,” Sgt. Richard Bratz of the Delaware State Police said at a news conference earlier on Wednesday. The building houses inmates who are making the transition to medium security. Other correction officers responded to the distress call, and the prison was placed on lockdown, but inmates took four employees hostage. At about 2:40 p. m. one hostage was set free and taken by ambulance to a hospital, Sergeant Bratz said, “with injuries. ” Eight inmates were released at 5:20 p. m. Shortly before 8 p. m. another staff member and 19 inmates were released. Their conditions were not immediately known. The News Journal newspaper reported that a woman had called its newsroom, stated that she was a hostage and haltingly read a statement that she said had been given to her by the inmates, complaining of mistreatment. She said the prisoners had forbidden her to give her name, and when asked how many inmates were holding her, she said she did not know because “they’ve got my face covered. ” Officials declined to discuss specifics of the inmates’ demands. Mr. Coupe said that once the takeover was resolved peacefully, “a dialogue can start then. ” Scores of law enforcement officers in riot gear, with armored vehicles, gathered around the prison’s buildings. Sergeant Bratz said officials were in contact with the but he gave no details about their demands or the progress of negotiations. “We are doing everything we can to ensure the safety of everyone involved,” he said. As a precaution, the Department of Correction placed all of the state’s prisons on lockdown. On a rural road along the prison perimeter, Carla Vereen was waiting in her car for news of her husband, who has worked in the prison as a corrections officer for 16 years. Ms. Vereen said she had not heard directly from her husband or from the prison authorities since the hostage crisis began. Also waiting was a former inmate, Rollin Lee Laub, who said he was not surprised to hear the reports that some inmates had taken hostages. “They took everything from these guys so they had nothing but idle time, which is the devil’s workshop,” said Mr. Laub, who was released from the prison in 2014 after serving almost 40 years. | 0fake |
BUSTED! NANCY PELOSI Claims No Meeting With Russian Ambassador…Photo From 2010 Proves Otherwise! [Video] | Pelosi claims to have not had a meeting with the Russian ambassador:Pelosi with the ambassador in 2010: Pelosi had her spokesperson make a statement after twitter comments about the photo came out: Leader Pelosi s answer to the question today was clearly about private, one-on-one meetings, which she has never had with Ambassador Kislyak, Hammill said. The Ambassador was incidental to the 2010 meeting between then-Russian President Medvedev and then-Speaker Pelosi. Clearly, one needs to remind Politico that Attorney General Sessions lied under oath about a secret meeting amidst Russia s hacking of our election, which he also didn t disclose in a written questionnaire. | 1real |
Microsoft Finds Cancer Clues in Search Queries - The New York Times | Microsoft scientists have demonstrated that by analyzing large samples of search engine queries they may in some cases be able to identify internet users who are suffering from pancreatic cancer, even before they have received a diagnosis of the disease. The scientists said they hoped their work could lead to early detection of cancer. Their study was published on Tuesday in The Journal of Oncology Practice by Dr. Eric Horvitz and Dr. Ryen White, the Microsoft researchers, and John Paparrizos, a Columbia University graduate student. “We asked ourselves, ‘If we heard the whispers of people online, would it provide strong evidence or a clue that something’s going on? ’” Dr. Horvitz said. The researchers focused on searches conducted on Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, that indicated someone had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. From there, they worked backward, looking for earlier queries that could have shown that the Bing user was experiencing symptoms before the diagnosis. Those early searches, they believe, can be warning flags. While survival rates for pancreatic cancer are extremely low, early detection of the disease can prolong life in a very small percentage of cases. The study suggests that early screening can increase the survival rate of pancreatic patients to 5 to 7 percent, from just 3 percent. The researchers reported that they could identify from 5 to 15 percent of pancreatic cases with false positive rates of as low as one in 100, 000. The researchers noted that false positives could lead to raised medical costs or create significant anxiety for people who later found out they were not sick. The data used by the researchers was anonymized, meaning it did not carry identifying markers like a user name, so the individuals conducting the searches could not be contacted. A logical next step would be to figure out what to do with that search information. One possibility would be some sort of health service where users could allow their searches to be collected, allowing scientists to monitor for questions that indicate warning flag symptoms. “The question, ‘What might we do? Might there be a Cortana for health some day? ’” said Dr. Horvitz, in a reference to the company’s online personal assistant software service. Although the researchers declined to offer specific details, Dr. White is now the chief technology officer of health intelligence in a recently created Health Wellness division at Microsoft. They acknowledged that data generated from web search histories was still new territory for the medical profession. “I think the mainstream medical literature has been resistant to these kinds of studies and this kind of data,” Dr. Horvitz said. “We’re hoping that this stimulates quite a bit of interesting conversation. ” The new research is based on the ability of the Microsoft team to accurately distinguish between web searches that are casual or based on anxiety and those that are genuine searches for specific medical symptoms by people who are experiencing them, he noted. Both a computer scientist and a medical doctor by training, Dr. Horvitz said he had been exploring this area in part because of a phone conversation with a close friend who had described symptoms. Based on their conversation, Dr. Horvitz advised him to contact his doctor. He received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and died several months later. The availability of vast sets of behavior data based on individual web queries using the search engines offered by companies like Google and Microsoft has for a number of years been seen as a potential indicator of information. In 2009, Google published a research paper that explored the potential of early detection of flu epidemics based on statistical analysis of web search logs, though the results of that effort ultimately fell short of what had been hoped. More recently, Microsoft researchers have had significant success in finding early evidence of adverse drug reactions from patterns observed in web logs. In 2013, they detected unreported side effects of prescription drugs before they were found by the Food and Drug Administration’s warning system. The researchers are exploring evidence related to a range of devastating diseases. They also said that unlike the drug interaction data, which would be of direct value to the F. D. A. as an early alert, it was possible that symptom alert data might be made available as part of a broader online health service that a company like Microsoft might offer. | 0fake |
WOW! NEW REPORT: IRS Didn’t Tell 1 Million Taxpayers That Illegals Stole Their Social Security Numbers! | REMEMBER BECKY GERRITSON OF ALABAMA WHOSE TEA PARTY GROUP WAS TARGETED BY THE IRS? SHE GAVE AN IMPASSIONED SPEECH TO CONGRESS. It seems the IRS hasn t changed its tune!The IRS has discovered more than 1 million Americans whose Social Security numbers were stolen by illegal immigrants, but officials never bothered to tell the taxpayers themselves, the agency s inspector general said in a withering new report released Tuesday. Investigators first alerted the IRS to the problem five years ago, but it s still not fixed, the inspector general said, and a pilot program meant to test a solution was canceled and fell woefully short anyway. As a result, most taxpayers don t learn that their identities have been stolen and their Social Security files may be screwed up. Taxpayers identified as victims of employment-related identity theft are not notified, the inspector general said. The report alarmed lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who were shocked that the IRS had gone for so long without fixing the issue. It is stunning that the IRS has chosen to aid and abet identity thieves for so long instead of protecting the innocent victims of the theft, said Sen. Daniel Coats, Indiana Republican.Victims numbers are stolen by illegal immigrants who need to give employers a valid Social Security number in order to get a job. Employers are prohibited from probing too deeply into numbers, even when they suspect fraud. But the IRS learns of the scam when the illegal immigrants file their taxes using a special Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) the agency doles out chiefly to illegal immigrants as a way of making sure they re paying taxes even if they re not supposed to be in the U.S. Between 2011 and 2015 the agency flagged nearly 1.1 million returns where someone appeared to have stolen a valid Social Security number, the inspector general said.Read more: WT | 1real |
Republicans start small on ObamaCare, cross fingers for court intervention | Republican leaders have yet to spell out their strategy for tackling ObamaCare now that they control Congress, and so far have pursued a piecemeal approach -- but are crossing their fingers that a looming Supreme Court case will give them an opening to unravel the law.
GOP leaders huddled this week at a retreat in Hershey, Pa., where the Affordable Care Act was a chief topic.
Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, on Thursday called ObamaCare a "terrible law" that needs to be replaced because it's "beyond repair."
But Ryan also said he did not have a "timeline" for doing so.
Leaders still say they want to repeal the law. But while the 114th Congress kicked off with major statements on energy and immigration -- the House voted recently to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and reverse President Obama's immigration actions -- proposals pertaining to ObamaCare have been far more modest.
Last week, the House passed a bill that would define a full-time worker under the health law as working 40 hours per week. The law currently uses a lower threshold -- part of a formula that determines which businesses have to provide health insurance to workers. Lawmakers are concerned the provision is leading businesses to cut back hours to skirt the mandate.
And legislation has been proposed in both chambers to repeal the law's 2.3 percent tax on medical devices such as X-ray equipment and artificial joints. The Senate version has bipartisan support and could get a vote in the coming weeks.
Critics of the law say the two provisions hurt the economy and job growth, though President Obama would likely veto both.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is also trying again to pass a bill that would allow Americans to opt out of the law's individual requirement to buy insurance -- a more sweeping measure.
Republicans still want to do more. Ryan said Thursday that ObamaCare would be replaced with something that gives Americans more choices and lowers costs, improves their access to care and is "truly patient centered" -- an apparent reference to GOP planning for the wild card in all this, the Supreme Court case.
The case, called King v. Burwell, could impact the legality of billions of dollars' worth of subsidies through the law. And Republicans want to be ready with a plan if the ruling goes against the administration.
Plaintiffs argue the law doesn't allow the federal government to offer subsidies to customers in states that don't operate their own insurance exchanges.
The White House has downplayed the case, saying such lawsuits "won't stand in the way of the Affordable Care Act and the millions of Americans who can now afford health insurance because of it." The White House argues the subsidies are being directed in accordance with the "intent of the law."
Earlier Thursday, a Republican aide who attended a session on ObamaCare said the discussions centered on the best strategy in the context of that high court case. The aide said Ryan told fellow lawmakers they must move quickly to show the country that Republicans have a patient-focused response to the case.
Opening arguments are scheduled to start in March with a decision expected in June. A victory for the plaintiffs could have a huge impact on the law, sending enrollment plummeting.
Ryan also updated fellow lawmakers about upcoming ObamaCare deadlines and gave them an overview of the law since it took effect in January 2014 -- including updates on subsidies, exchange programs and cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
Later Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner emerged from the close-door meetings at the retreat to echo Ryan's remarks.
"Our challenge, our opportunity is to pass common-sense solutions ... that repeal ObamaCare and replace it with patient-centered reforms that will help our constituents have better access to high-quality health care in America," he said at a joint press conference with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Earlier this year, McConnell made clear that Congress will vote on either repealing or "taking out pieces" of ObamaCare, but he and fellow senators had little to say at the retreat about a unified strategy.
To be sure, the GOP Senate caucus' most conservative members will be pushing for full repeal.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a potential White House candidate, said on Monday that Republicans will get "walloped" in the 2016 elections if they ignore voter mandates after midterms that gave them Senate control, which includes the push to repeal ObamaCare.
At least one Republican senator, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, has proposed legislation to repeal the law.
And this week, the influential conservative group Club for Growth sent a letter to McConnell and Boehner urging them to "continue to be diligent" in their repeal efforts. | 0fake |
Wisconsin bill giving $3 billion incentives to Foxconn advances | (Reuters) - Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled state Assembly voted 59-30 on Thursday to approve a bill that paves the way for a $3 billion incentives package for a proposed liquid-crystal display plant by Taiwan’s Foxconn. The plan still needs to be approved by the joint finance committee, which has members from both the Assembly and the state Senate, as well as the Senate before it can go to the governor. The finance committee and Senate are also controlled by Republicans. Foxconn, an electronics manufacturer formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (2317.TW), hopes to open a $10 billion plant in 2020 at a 1,000-acre site in southeastern Wisconsin. Foxconn is a major supplier to Apple Inc (AAPL.O) for its iPhones. “We are ready to take advantage of this historic opportunity ... and build a long-lasting relationship with Foxconn,” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Republican who helped negotiate the deal, said in a statement. Walker ordered the legislature into special session on Aug. 1 to consider the incentives package, which would award Foxconn $3 billion over 15 years in mostly cash incentives. Foxconn, Walker, President Donald Trump and other leaders announced the deal on the incentives last month in a White House ceremony. The 20-million-square-foot LCD plant would initially employ 3,000 people, but Walker and Foxconn said the company could ultimately employ 13,000 at the site. “We look forward to continuing to work with them to transform Wisconsin’s economy and make it a center of worldwide high-tech manufacturing,” Foxconn said in a statement, referring to the legislature. Proponents have touted the project’s investment potential and job creation, including an expected 22,000 ancillary and 10,000 construction jobs. Critics including some Democrats have attacked the plan as corporate welfare, too expensive, rushed and potentially harmful to the environment. “I think we need more time,” Democratic Representative Jill Billings said. “I want a better deal and more guarantees for my taxpayers.” Thursday’s vote did not follow strict party lines; three Democrats voted in favor and two Republicans voted against. Early in a debate that lasted several hours, Democrats proposed referring the matter to the finance committee for review, which would have stopped the debate. The Assembly rejected the proposal with a 57-32 vote. The Assembly also voted to ignore three amendments proposed by Democrats. Wisconsin would not break even on the incentive package for at least 25 years, a legislative analysis released last week said. | 0fake |
Michael Moore: ’Only Hope’ to Avoid Nuclear War Is for Pentagon to Avoid Putting Real Codes In Nuclear Football - Breitbart | On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” filmmaker Michael Moore argued that the “only hope” to avoid nuclear war is “please, Pentagon, if you’re watching, the football, the nuclear football that his aide carries around in that briefcase with the nuclear codes, I’m guessing they don’t actually have the real codes in there. They’re never going to put the real codes in there for him. ” After host Chris Hayes said that he roots for Trump to “handle the North Korea situation well. ” Moore responded, “I don’t know if I agree with that, because … it’s like rooting for a who suddenly swiped dad’s car and figured out how to take it down the road. I’m not rooting for the to get on the highway and drive that car. I want the off the highway. ” Hayes stated he’d like to avoid nuclear war. Moore countered that “you’ve got the wrong person. ” He added, “[O]ur only hope is that, please, Pentagon, if you’re watching, the football, the nuclear football that his aide carries around in that briefcase with the nuclear codes, I’m guessing they don’t actually have the real codes in there. They’re never going to put the real codes in there for him. ” Hayes then asked if this was a joke, to which Moore answered, “No, I hope it’s not a joke. If you’re watching, over in Arlington. ” Moore later added, “[H]opefully, there are safeguards set up around him. Again, if you’re watching at the Pentagon, please. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
Trump economic adviser Powell to be named deputy national security adviser | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s senior counselor for economic initiatives, Dina Powell, will be named deputy national security adviser for strategy, a senior Trump administration official said on Wednesday. Powell, who worked in the administration of President George W. Bush, will also continue to work with Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner on economic initiatives, Politico reported earlier. | 0fake |
WOW! WHISTLEBLOWER TELLS CHILLING STORY Of Massive Voter Fraud: Trump Campaign Readies Lawsuit Against FL Sec Of Elections In Critical District [VIDEO] » 100percentfedUp.com | BREAKING! NYPD Ready To Make Arrests In Weiner Case…Hillary Visited Pedophile Island At Least 6 Times…Money Laundering, Underage Sex, Pay-for-Play,Proof of Inappropriate Handling Classified Information
The amazing citizen journalist Mike Cernovich broke this story this morning at Danger and Play . Florida residents have been complaining that they’re not getting their absentee ballots. Chelsey Marie Smith, was working full-time at Broward County Supervisor of Elections main office blew the whistle on the voter fraud scheme: LIVE on #Periscope : Breaking news! Voting fraud uncovered in Florida #MAGA3X https://t.co/q7jeEz6Rgh
— Mike Cernovich 🇺🇸 (@Cernovich) November 4, 2016
The Florida State Attorney is actively investigating the fraud case that involves Secretary of Elections Brenda Snipes: Source: FL State Attorney investigators are actively reviewing Broward County Voter Fraud Case
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 4, 2016
Democrat Dr. Brenda Snipes was appointed by Jeb Bush in 2003 and is no stranger to controversy. On October 20, the Sun Sentinal reported that former Oakland Park Commissioner Anne Sallee noticed something troubling about her vote-by-mail ballot. It is missing Constitutional Amendment 2, the medical marijuana question.
Sallee, now Broward chapter director of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, knows her way around government. Yet she said she spent a week unsuccessfully trying to get someone at the Broward elections office to pay attention to her complaint.
She was cleared on Wednesday of another election snafu, the early posting of primary election results. Her office also was criticized for sending out inaccurate voter ID cards, and for printing ballots for November that include the word “no” in the “yes” line on the county’s transportation sales surtax question.
There were multiple reports that Hillary personally met with Brenda Snipes days ago: There were multiple reports Hillary personally met with Brenda Snipes days ago. No photos, but where there's smoke…
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 4, 2016
According to a former Secretary of Elections Department employee, there is a secret room where Democrat insiders fill out those absentee ballots.
The woman provided her sworn testimony via affidavit.
The affidavit by Chelsey Marie Smith accuses Broward County officials of filling out blank absentee ballots to officials who she saw filling the ballots out at the Supervisor of Elections headquarters. Via: GP Page 1: | 1real |
Hillary Clinton also wants Britain to stay in the EU | LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton wants Britain to stay in the European Union, her campaign said on Saturday, following an intervention from U.S. President Barack Obama who urged Britons to vote to remain. “Hillary Clinton believes that transatlantic cooperation is essential, and that cooperation is strongest when Europe is united. She has always valued a strong United Kingdom in a strong EU. And she values a strong British voice in the EU,” Clinton senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement provided to Reuters. Clinton, who spent four years as U.S. secretary of state during Obama’s first term, has made her foreign policy credentials a central piece of her campaign for president in the November 2016 race for the White House. Clinton’s position on the EU was first reported by Britain’s Observer newspaper. Obama, who will leave Britain on Sunday, sparked a row during his three-day trip by bluntly telling Britain it should remain in the European Union to preserve its remaining global clout. He angered critics of the EU on Friday by warning that Britain would be at “the back of the queue” for a trade deal if it left the club - one of the strongest U.S. interventions in the affairs of a western European democracy since the Cold War. | 0fake |
The Clinton Syndrome, Part 2: Can Hillary Escape This Time? | Financial Markets , Market Manipulation , U.S. Economy Clinton Foundation , FBI warrant , investigation of Hillary , James Comey FBI , Weiner laptop admin
Stewart Dougherty presents the 2nd part of his disembowelment of the Clinton crime machine. The Weiner email bomb dropped in the middle of this. As it turns out, the Weiner lap-top mishap appears to a “Black Swan” of sorts that eluded Hillary’s tentacles of control. In the piece below, Stewart presents useful background knowledge and intellectual tools with which to help you analyze and interpret the next sequence of events before and after the election (assuming the election is not postponed).
The information that emerges from the Weiner laptop is going to blow people’s minds – John Titus, Best Evidence Productions, in an upcoming Shadow of Truth
Author’s Preface: We are far more interested in markets than politics. To us, free markets represent liberty in motion. But today, politics, and particularly the most corrupt political institution on earth, the Federal Reserve, have markets in a hammer-lock. At this point, we have to understand what is happening in politics in order to understand what is likely to happen in markets. We write a great deal about politics at this critical juncture in order to help you understand markets and achieve the financial freedom you desire and deserve.
Regarding the breaking Clinton-scandal developments, we believe that in addition to the 650,000 emails retrieved from the Abedin / Weiner computer which are going to show a level of corruption in this nation never before even imagined let alone proved, the FBI’s decision to re-open the investigation was related to the Bundy acquittals on October 27, 2016. We believe that government officials are looking up the barrel of a full-blown American revolution. Not the shooting kind, but rather something much worse for them: complete moral rejection of government and Establishment corruption by the PRODUCTIVE CLASS in America, which threatens to rapidly spread into and cripple the American economy just ahead of the holiday selling season.
The National Retail Federation has just reported that 25% of shoppers are waiting for the election outcome prior to deciding how much they are going to spend during the holidays, something the NRF has never seen before. If principled, productive people feel that this election was stolen from them by Clinton and Establishment corruption, they are going to shut down. They are going to WITHDRAW THEIR FINANCIAL CONSENT from a rigged, dirty system that is looting them and destroying their futures. While the government can effectively deal with many kinds of protest, it cannot even begin to deal with a general economic boycott by the productive class, even if it is just at the margin. (All profits are at the margin.) The consequences of such a boycott upon general business activity; tax receipts at all levels from municipal to federal; the stock and bond markets; and the national mood, with its extraordinarily complex and critical interconnections and ramifications would be monumental, and perhaps beyond all American precedent.
Despite a multi-million dollar, taxpayer-funded Federal legal onslaught in the case against the Bundy’s and their co-defendants, the jurors re-confirmed something communicated throughout history. Namely, that while there are a very few things that universally disgust human beings, one of them is bullies. The people are not pleased, and the Establishment knows it is in trouble. Now on to our article.]
The Clinton Syndrome Curse: A Clinton – Obama Co-Presidency. (The Clinton Syndrome: Part 2)
In Part 1, we defined the Clinton Syndrome as a psychological condition in which voters develop a favorable attitude toward a political predator who deceives, disdains, swindles and abuses them. It is a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome, but much larger in scope and scale, as demonstrated by the fact that tens of millions of American voters currently exhibit the pathological condition. This Syndrome was identified by Inferential Analytics (IA), an accurate and reliable forecasting method we have developed and use. You can read a detailed explanation of the syndrome in our first article on the subject: “The Clinton Syndrome: The Establishment’s Weapon for National Conquest (Part 1)” LINK
In this article, Part 2, we delve deeper into what the 2016 presidential election is really all about, and outline the consequences that will occur should the Clinton Syndrome prevail on November 8 th . The Clinton Syndrome has resulted in a potentially deadly national disease which will wreak havoc if it spreads out of control at this time.
We regard as an existential threat to the United States the fact that tens of millions of American voters have no idea how deeply fraudulent the entire 2016 presidential campaign has been, from the very beginning. If Donald Trump had not appeared out of nowhere, this would never have been an election at all, but rather an orchestrated, planned enablement of the Clintons and their Establishment handlers to engage in unprecedented corruption, regime change and outright plunder.
If successful, this still-active effort to fraudulently inject the Clintons into the power seat will become a multi-trillion dollar gift to the Establishment elite who know exactly how to profit from Clinton graft and corruption; will destroy what is left of the American economy, which simply cannot sustain four more years of intense looting and fraud; and will result in the outright overthrow of the American form of governance by a deadly new political system that we call “crony communism (outlined in our article: Crony Communism: Hillary Clinton’s Game Plan for America. LINK
The people have been so confused and deceived by the multi-billion dollar avalanche of deliberately concocted lies and propaganda about this election that they don’t even know who is running for President on the Democrat ticket.
Hillary Clinton has both a co-presidential and a vice presidential running mate, neither of which is Tim Kaine, a corrupt political suck-up and hack who was selected precisely because he will do exactly what he is told, not matter how criminal or immoral.
Clinton’s co-presidential running mate is Barack Hussein Obama; her vice-presidential candidate is the United Nations. This is the Establishment’s Dream Team, cooked up to make the fastest possible progress toward their crony-communist and globalist overthrow of the United States. The Establishment realizes that the people are waking up fast to what is being done to them and their country. Therefore, they have put their corrupt machinations into high gear in order to beat the clock, which is ticking loudly.
When people say that a vote for Clinton means four more years of Obama, they have their arithmetic wrong. A Clinton victory means eight more years of Obama in the next four, and a total knock-out for the nation.
The Mainstream Media’s (MSM) deliberately false narrative is that Obama has been campaigning non-stop for Clinton because he wants to protect his “legacy,” and believes that Clinton will do this for him.
This is yet another of the “Big Lie” mind bombs that have been dropped onto the American people’s heads during this colossally fraudulent, dishonest and propagandistic Establishment onslaught to get Clinton elected.
This narrative is meant to suggest that Barrack Obama wants to retire, and then ride out the rest of his life looking upon his “legacy.”
There are two problems with this story. First, Obama’s legacy is already blowing up in his and the entire nation’s face, so there is nothing Clinton will be able to do to salvage it. Obamacare and the Iran Deal are just two examples among dozens of the collapse of Obama’s so-called legacy, which would much better be called a national damnation.
The second problem is that Obama is only 55 years old and has not given even ONE indication our model can detect that he actually wants or intends to retire. (Soros, one of his champions, is 86 years old and still wreaking havoc worldwide. These people never stop until the Reaper drops in.) In fact, what we see in Obama is the exact opposite: he demonstrates a strong desire not only to remain on the political stage, but to assume a larger presence upon it.
Speaking at a rally in Philadelphia on September 13, 2016 (while Hillary was at home recovering from “pneumonia”), Obama said, “It’s good to be back on the campaign trail.” He then said, “I really, really, REALLY want to elect Hillary Clinton.” (Please carefully consider that sentence, because it is a textbook example (although just one of hundreds over the years) of Obama’s pathological Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). He did not say, “I really, really, REALLY want YOU [the people to whom he was speaking] to elect Hillary Clinton,” but rather, “I really, really, REALLY want to elect Hillary Clinton,” making the people’s national election all about himself. Comments such as this are extraordinarily important to our analysis, and their significance has been borne out time and again over our 15+ years of doing this work. Paradoxically, the smallest factors often have the greatest implications.
Later in the same speech, Obama boasted (our comments added within brackets): “More Americans are working [in part time, minimum wage jobs], more have [100% subsidized] health care, incomes are rising [for the establishment elite], poverty is falling [according to false, politically doctored numbers] and gas is $2.00 a gallon. Thanks, Obama!!!” In Obama’s narcissistically crippled mind, the entire United States economy is a function of one thing and one thing only: him. Narcissists in positions of power are extremely destructive (e.g. Obamacare), because they are completely out of touch with what is happening in the real, as opposed their self-flattering fantasy world. In any event, this kind of campaign bragging, swagger and grandiosity is not indicative of someone who plans to retire from politics in the next few weeks.
Obama’s clear desire to remain in the game makes him valuable to Clinton, while also making Clinton valuable to him. Intersecting motives are where deals get done. And a Clinton – Obama collaboration would be ideal for the Establishment. Obama has been the gift that keeps on giving to the elite, as they have raked in trillions from his presidency. They want as much of Obama as they can get, because he is a money machine. (For example, witness Obama’s continuing efforts to ram the TPP, an Establishment fraud against the people, down the nation’s throat. Obama does whatever the Establishment tells him to do, in the full knowledge his “Library” Slush Fund will be richly rewarded for his efforts, just as the Clinton Slush Fund has been enriched by more than $1.8 billion, with a “b,” for the Clinton sell-out of people to the elite.)
Obama is the most internationally-traveled president in the nation’s history, having made 51 international trips to 56 different countries during his two terms in office. It is as if he has been running for international office, and now we can see that he has been. His globetrotting has required strength, stamina and energy, the exact physical attributes that Clinton, who has been pictured requiring assistance to climb a short set of stairs, lacks. Given her health issues, Clinton cannot possibly perform on a global stage going forward; she will be lucky to successfully navigate the White House.
This presents a problem. For the Establishment agenda to be fully executed, Clinton needs international support, and ideally, that international mandates be imposed upon the United States. But she will not be capable of traveling internationally to seal the deals that must get done.
This is where Obama comes in. While he would never step “backwards” into a role such as, for example, Secretary of State (an ego-wounding demotion), his passion for continued political involvement would find an excellent home at the United Nations.
In this Inferential Analytics scenario, Hillary Clinton will get Obama placed in a high level United Nations position. The United States pays for roughly 25% of total United Nations annual budget, far more than any other nation, and still has clout even though more and more countries are turning their backs on America.
Other nations would support the idea of a senior role for Obama if it were made clear to them that his mission would be to continue the “fundamental transformation” of the United States that he promised during his 2008 campaign and has been conducting ever since. This “transformation” has done extreme damage to the United States, and while it has been a disaster for America, it has been good for the rest of the world. Finally, they see a means by which to bring the United States to heel. The idea of the further weakening of the United States will sound to them like a very good deal. The one assurance they will seek is that in exchange for giving Obama an important role at the U.N., Obama will get Clinton to agree not to incinerate the northern hemisphere in a nuclear war, at least not until they have finalized their preparations for it.
A Clinton – Obama co-presidency will be a double body-blow to the nation, with Clinton turning it into a corrupt, crony-communist Establishment lootocracy from within, and Obama destroying it from without.
Leveraging the United Nations, Clinton and Obama can effect two personal agendas they have long sought: gun control, and a multi-million person “open borders” invasion of America. The first agenda will disarm the people, which has been Job #1 in every communist takeover in history; the second will ensure that the “Last American Presidential Election” occurs on November 8, 2016. In the future, presidents and all other politicians and government agency heads will be appointed by the Establishment, exactly as happens in communist regimes. While there might be “show elections,” the outcomes will have been pre-determined at every level far in advance.
A Clinton – Obama co-presidency will also ensure that other Establishment objectives are met. These include the institution of carbon taxes (an enormous and unprecedented new revenue source and looting opportunity); the passage of the TPP (an Establishment bonanza); and the maximum-possible imposition of the New World Order regime change agenda upon the nations and their people.
While Obama could advance the Establishment’s aims in virtually any high level position at the U.N., a role that would make him particularly deadly at the outset would be Co-chair of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), joining current head Filippo Grandhi.
Obama could make his appointment a matter of smooth sailing by stating his belief that the United States is a large, wealthy, relatively under-populated nation that could rapidly absorb a large number of immigrants. By promising to tap into the country’s private wealth, Obama could warrant that all new immigrants would be fully covered by the country’s comprehensive welfare system upon arrival, which is exactly what happens today. This idea would be intoxicating to the new Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who was the former head of the UNHCR and is an avowed socialist.
The United Nations currently reports the existence of more than 60,000,000 displaced persons and refugees in the world. If the United States pledged to take in, say, 5,000,000 of them, senior U.N. officials would be delighted. What would they have to lose? Dealing with the integration and cost issues would be America’s problem, not theirs. The U.N. could pass a resolution, written by Obama in such a way as to make it convertible into an Executive Order by Clinton, mandating the acceptance of these refugees by the United States. Clinton would put up her hands and say, “I didn’t do it. The U.N. did it, and we must do our “fair share,” while also complying with international law and being decent and responsible international citizens.”
As we have pointed out in the past, the United States government is irredeemably bankrupt by any accounting definition one wishes to use. With $20,000,000,000,000.00 in on-the-books debt, another $10,000,000,000,000.00 in debt projected to be added over the next decade (it will be far greater than this, given current trends), and at the very minimum another $120,000,000,000,000.00 in unfunded debt and contingent liabilities, there is absolutely no way the government can ever pay its obligations. So you might wonder, how could the government possibly pay for an immigrant invasion of this magnitude?
The answer is, the government won’t pay for it; the people will. This is what crony communism is all about. It is estimated that today, there is roughly $70 trillion in private wealth in America. Assuming that half of it, or $35 trillion belongs to the cronies and is off-limits, this leaves $35 trillion that is available for expropriation and looting. While this is certainly not enough to fix America’s fiscal problems, not even close, it could fund 4 years’ worth of radical fiscal adventurism as well as crony communism regime change.
As Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said during this campaign, “We are going to go where the money is,” and if you don’t take that statement seriously, we believe you are making a very big mistake. She and top colleagues such as Sanders and Warren have said in plain English, at a high decibel level that they are coming for your money, and they are, because in their minds, you don’t deserve to have any. Just as Obama once famously said, in a rare, honest, off-script, non-tele-prompted moment, “If you have a business, you didn’t build that,” he and his fellow crony communists also believe, “If you have saved some after-tax money, you don’t deserve to have that.” To them, any savings you possess represent funds the government should have gotten its hands in the first tax cycle, but didn’t. They intend to rectify that error going forward.
We have outlined this theme to demonstrate that this election is about an agenda that very few people understand, because it has deliberately been withheld from them. In actuality, the voters have no idea what Clinton truly stands for, or what the Establishment agenda, which she fully believes in and will implement, really is. The stakes in this election are therefore greater than those of any other election in our nation’s history, in our view. This is why the Establishment has spent billions of dollars rigging it. They intend to collect trillions in plunder on the other side, but they can only do so if it goes their way. As we have already seen, they will stop at nothing to get what they want.
Some Implications of a Clinton – Obama Co-presidency:
Here is a snapshot of the forecast generated by IA in the event of a Clinton – Obama victory: The Clinton – Obama Co-presidential regime will be the most secretive and non-transparent presidency in U.S. history. Clinton will become invisible, just as she often has during the campaign, not just for health reasons, but because she will turn her back on everyday citizens, whom she disdains, once she gets the prize she has sought her entire life. Obama will make secret deals all over the world (think of the secret Iran cash payments and deal, and his behind-the-scenes agitating for TPP, but on a much larger scale, as illustrations). Every one of these deals will be a dagger in the nation’s back. The American people will never again know the truth about what actually goes on behind government doors, or about the corruption that infects the entire political and establishment system. The political class will never again allow itself to suffer Wikileaks-like exposure. Politics will shift to a CIA-like “need to know” model, where information is doled out selectively and in piece-parts. Only a very few at the top will know the overall agenda, and the full set of tactics being employed to achieve it. Anyone who compromises or exposes the system will simply be executed. (Seth Rich comes to mind.) Going forward, the people will know absolutely nothing about what is really happening in Washington, D.C., or about the D.C. / Wall Street and Establishment initiatives. Orwell’s prophecy, “1984,” which is already quite real, will become even more so. The United States will experience an accelerating Brain Drain. Forward-thinking people will realize that America’s slide into predatory crony-communism can and will never be reversed, and that it will be impossible for them and their loved ones to get ahead in such a corrupt, suffocating environment. (Imagine being scolded, lectured, insulted and talked down to on a regular basis by people like Clinton, Obama and Warren, because that is exactly what will happen.) Progressive countries will put out the welcome mat for hard-working, principled, skilled, entrepreneurial Americans. No one will want America’s whining, lazy, non-productive, “entitled” mooches. That’s just a fact. Virtually every nation anyone would actually want to move to for a better opportunity grades potential immigrants according to age, education, language proficiency, skills and likelihood to be productive. Prospects are disqualified if they do not earn a sufficient score. No sensible nation on earth wants to bring in do-nothings whose only capability is to leech off its producers. Productive Americans who remain in the country for their own reasons will quietly adopt a John Galt mindset, sidestepping the corruption and crony communist expropriation by shutting down, dropping out and fading off the radar screen. This will result in an immediate slow-down of business activity, which will ultimately lead to economic collapse. Given that all profits are at the margin, relatively small percentage declines in sales can entirely wipe out income. The John Galt effect will result in the collapse of the nation’s many Ponzi schemes, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pensions (government and private) and the biggest one of all, Government Debt. These schemes simply cannot be maintained in a dramatically slowing business environment, no matter how much private wealth is looted. Government will take draconian steps to shut down all non-government-sanctioned news and information outlets. Their prime target will be the Alternative Media, which will only be further empowered, and embraced by the people. A powerful Resistance movement will spread like wildfire. Nonetheless, people should fill their minds with as much truth as they possibly can right now, because it will become much harder and more expensive to find in the future. Today’s Alternative Media is the greatest gift any people in history have ever received, and people should leverage it as best they can while they can. A steady retreat by government officials and establishment elitists to their multi-trillions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded bunkers will occur, as they seek to hide from the American people, who will be waking up by the additional tens of thousands every day. A Federal Reserve December rate hike has a 0% chance of happening if Clinton is elected; there is a 100% chance of a rate hike if Trump is elected. The Fed is a totally political organization, and they will do everything they can to punish the voters and scorch the economic earth if the people choose Trump over the Establishment agenda the Fed has been 100% behind. If Clinton wins, people will IMMEDIATELY be bombarded with MSM reports about the implications of the 2016 election upon the 2018 mid-term and 2020 general elections. This will be part of a full-scale effort to inject mass quantities of Hopium into the Trump supporters’ brains, and get them to focus not upon the rigged election of 2016, but on the “next” election where, they will falsely be told, their vote will “really count!” In the meantime, the Establishment will be doing everything necessary to ensure that the 2018 and 2020 “elections” are completely rigged, fraudulent and meaningless. A massive move into real money will begin, and this will be the subject of our next article. There are developments in this sphere that you must know about, and one of the most important Inferential Analytics themes we have ever examined was triggered on October 27, 2016. We will have a full description in the next week or so.
In conclusion, the 2016 election is an existential event for the United States. W believe that the situation is becoming so unstable that you have little time to do everything you can to prepare, and get your personal houses in order. We are writing to help as best we can, while we can.
Stewart Dougherty
Stewart Dougherty is the creator of Inferential Analytics, a forecasting method that applies to events proprietary, time-tested principles of human instinct, desire and action. In his view, forecasting methods not fundamentally based upon principles of human action are unlikely to be reliable over time. He is a graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Business School and has developed IA over a period of 15+ years.
October 31, 2016 | 1real |
U.S. Interior Secretary investigated over speech to donor's hockey team | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is investigating whether Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke broke the law when he gave a speech to a professional hockey team owned by a political donor in June, the agency said on Tuesday. Zinke is already being investigated by the Interior Department’s inspector general in connection with his travels and the use of private charter flights, amid heightened scrutiny into private plane use by administration officials. The Campaign for Accountability complained last week that a speech Zinke gave on June 26 to the Vegas Golden Knights, a National Hockey League team based in Las Vegas, violated the Hatch Act barring executive branch employees from engaging in political activity. The team is owned by Bill Foley, chairman of Fidelity National Financial Inc and a donor to Zinke’s congressional campaigns. The Office of Special Counsel’s Hatch Act unit, which is independent from the Justice Department, said in an email to Daniel Stevens, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, that it received its Hatch Act complaint “and will open a case file to address this matter.” A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment on the case. Interior Department officials said the speech did not violate any laws, rules or regulations. Melinda Loftin, the Interior Department’s designated ethics official and Edward Keable, director of Interior’s departmental ethics office, said in a joint statement that Zinke’s use of chartered flights and engagements were cleared by ethics and legal departments. “The trip - including the Secretary’s address to the hockey developmental squad - was completely compliant with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations,” they said. On Friday, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned after an outcry over his use of costly private charter planes for government business. The Campaign for Accountability questioned Zinke’s travel. “Contrary to the conclusion drawn by Interior officials, a trip to offer a motivational speech to a hockey team does not appear to fall within the mission of the Department of Interior - ‘protecting America’s Great Outdoors and Powering Our Future,’” the watchdog group wrote. In June, the Office of Special Counsel determined that Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino violated the Hatch Act in April in calling for Trump supporters to defeat a Republican congressman at the polls. | 0fake |
The Surprising Science of Cease-Fires: Even Failures Can Help Peace - The New York Times | Even if this week’s in Syria quickly collapses — as most analysts expect it to — it could have a lasting impact on the conflict. Political science research shows that change more than just conditions on the ground: They alter how a war’s participants weigh the benefits of fighting versus talking. can create something like a virtuous cycle, studies have found, making future pauses more likely. Each one has a better chance of lasting longer, discouraging violations, isolating bad actors and building trust among adversaries. This cycle is not always as visible or politically urgent as the question of who is dropping bombs where on a particular day. But, over time, it can shift the participants’ calculus in ways that build conditions for peace. Page Fortna, a Columbia University professor and leading scholar on peace negotiations, says that “piecemeal” deals, though modest and rarely successful, can eventually align the incentives of groups whose demands at the moment are unreconcilable. But there is a flip side. Sometimes can create a vicious cycle instead of a virtuous one. Distrust can deepen, the parties can move further apart, and incentives can shift to make peace even less attractive. Whether the diplomats who arranged the current pause in Syria know it or not, they are making a gamble. Two Notre Dame political scientists, Madhav Joshi and J. Michael Quinn, last year published a study examining 196 and peace deals from 1975 to 2011. They found something surprising: One of the best predictors of a peace agreement’s success is simply whether the parties had prior agreements, even if those earlier failed. Not even a war’s duration or its intensity can so reliably predict a peace deal’s outcome. Neither does the poverty or ethnic diversity of the combatants. “Failures pave the way for better agreements down the road,” Professor Quinn said. Over time, participants see as less risky. If all sides come out feeling that they at least broke even, they grow more willing to make another deal. In Syria, with the status quo so terrible, breaking even doesn’t require much. “These items could be as simple as a request that Assad refrain from calling opposition members terrorists in the press,” Professors Joshi and Quinn wrote in a Foreign Affairs article summarizing their research. “As soon as one party reciprocates, a peace process is underway. And with each successful round, just enough trust and good will may be generated to move on to the next item. ” This is trust not in the colloquial sense of proving personal integrity, but in the political science sense: Negotiators believe they understand one another’s incentives and can predict their behavior. Each side becomes more willing to make concessions, believing the other side will deliver on its end. Take, for example, Yugoslavia, where there were 91 mediated truces or from 1989 to 2000. Of those, 35 percent lasted less than a week and 13 percent lasted exactly a week. Though each appeared to be a catastrophic failure, they culminated in the 1995 Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian war that was a subset of the larger conflict, as well as later deals. We are already seeing possible hints of this in Syria. The tempo of is increasing, with the terms expanding and the outside actors investing more political capital. Those gains are slight and the process of building trust is still fragile, so it remains unclear whether the cycle will catch. Stephen B. Long, a professor at the University of Richmond, found in a 2014 paper looking at hundreds of cases from 1948 to 1998, that if violations are consistently punished with some form of retaliation — strong enough to hurt, but not to escalate — then everyone learns he is better off complying. Eventually all sides have less reason to fear they’ll be betrayed, and grow more confident entering otherwise risky or peace talks. This is among the reasons that the Korean Peninsula, though still in a formal state of war, has not had fighting in decades. Each side has proved, in countless exchanges, that it will punish any transgression by the other side, freezing a conflict that had killed a million people. The virtuous cycle takes hold when, after enough rounds, each side concludes that its adversaries will probably follow the terms of any agreement. Everyone profits if the terms of the are carried out, so everyone acts to enforce it. This was often how multiparty wars like Syria’s broke from the cycle of conflict, Professor Fortna said. This can take years. One paper suggested that the cycle does not truly take hold until a lasts for eight weeks that is a bar that Syria has yet to clear. But research papers that describe the dynamic are peppered with examples — Burundi, Nepal, the Philippines, Northern Ireland — that seemed unsolvable until they were suddenly solved. If the great hope is that Syria’s warriors can learn to trust and cooperate, then the great danger is that they will instead learn to distrust and reject. If violations are punished inconsistently, combatants perceive cheating as less risky. So while every transgression does not need to be punished, it’s important that all sides be held to a similar standard for what will provoke retaliation, and how severe. If groups believe that everyone else is likely to cheat, they have a strong incentive to cheat as well. By the same token, if groups come to see the other side as unreliable or unpredictable, they have little reason to enter into any deal. Over successive rounds, each side could bring less to the table or be less willing to follow through on its promises — further convincing one another that talks are not worthwhile. This happened in Angola, where a civil war killed half a million people from 1976 to 2002. The United States and the Soviet Union saw it as a Cold War battleground, and both intervened. They pushed their Angolan proxies to keep fighting, which destroyed trust on the ground — a worrying lesson as Washington and Moscow now find themselves on opposite sides in Syria. Whether Syria slips into a virtuous cycle or vicious one, Professor Fortna said, depends in large part on the United States and Russia. Civil wars are much likelier to end in peace if they have a mediator, often a powerful outside country, according to research by the political scientist Donald Rothchild. That mediator can impose stopgaps, such as temporary that open up space for negotiation. And the mediator makes both sides more willing to take risks for peace, because they trust that the other side will be punished if it fails to keep its word. The state of war between Israel and Egypt, for example, ended only when the United States brokered the 1978 Camp David accords. President Jimmy Carter offered billions in aid to both countries, altering their strategic calculus to make peace more attractive — and implicitly threatening Washington disapproval if either party backed out. Mediation can take subtler forms, such as Norway’s role in hosting the 1990s talks: The neutral setting reduced the political costs. Syria has no such mediator because the only two viable candidates — the United States and Russia — are engaged in the war. Nor is either likely to allow another party, such as the United Nations, to get in the middle. Professor Fortna argued that interim United agreements like this week’s could eventually move them into a sort of role. Though this is politically distasteful in Washington for appearing to put Moscow on equal strategic and moral footings, it is probably necessary. But this would require both powers to demonstrate something they have yet been unable to: the ability to extract concessions from their allies on the ground in Syria. Only then could the United States and Russia trust each other’s ability to follow through on their most important promises. That would surely take multiple rounds to accomplish, and would be only a step toward peace. This can look like failure because it is so incremental. And the success stories often take a decade or more. “There’s not a lot of incentive to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt, which is why wars are hard to end,” Professor Fortna said. “But they do end,” she added. | 0fake |
U.S. travel restrictions jeopardize rare exchanges with North Koreans | SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When more than a dozen North Korean economic officials visited California and New York in 2011, U.S. organizers hoped the tour would give the delegation ideas for market reforms and business innovations. The North Koreans quickly made clear that was not why they had come: They wanted to secure U.S. investment, particularly from restaurant giant Yum! Brands Inc (YUM.N), said Susan Shirk, a University of California at San Diego professor who helped organize the visit. They really wanted to get KFC to North Korea, Shirk said, referring to the fried chicken chain. She added that Yum did not reciprocate their interest. In recent years, a handful of visits from official delegations and athletes have provided rare opportunities for ordinary Americans and North Koreans to come together. Those exchanges are now in jeopardy after President Donald Trump included North Korea in a group of nations that will face travel restrictions to the United States because they do not share enough information about visa applicants. The new policy comes at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests, as well as escalating verbal threats from the country s leader Kim Jong Un. While the travel restrictions are unlikely to have a broad impact - the number of non-diplomatic travelers from North Korea per year rarely tops 50, according to U.S. State Department data - human rights activists worry it has severed one of the few human bonds between the isolated country and the West. The main point in inviting these people here is to give them exposure to the U.S., and see if one can open the door a bit, said Roberta Cohen, co-chair emeritus for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. A State Department official said the restrictions were necessary because North Korea does not cooperate with the United States government in any respect and fails to satisfy all information-sharing requirements on visa applicants. North Koreans wishing to visit the United States must first obtain permission from their own government, then apply for a visa in person at a U.S. embassy, typically in Beijing, said Robert King, former U.S. special envoy for North Korea human rights issues. When North Koreans arrive in the United States they never go anywhere alone, King said, and are chaperoned by North Korean government minders. In 2015, 15 North Korean weightlifters along with coaches, reserves and officials traveled to Houston for the International Weightlifting Federation world championships, said Phil Andrews, chief executive officer of USA Weightlifting. North Korea was planning earlier this year to take part in the 2017 world championships in Anaheim, California, in November, Andrews said. However, he does not know whether they will be allowed to come. The new travel restrictions do not affect people who already have visas, and they include waivers for people with certain ties to the United States. The State Department declined to comment on individual visa applications. C. Jerry Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri, said some visits serve humanitarian purposes. In 2011, four North Korean scientists traveled to Missouri to collaborate with their U.S. counterparts on soil quality testing methods, he said, in order to boost food production. Referring to the economic officials trip in 2011, Shirk said they seemed reluctant to express opinions but enjoyed their snapshot of American life, which included visits to a mushroom farm, department store and New York s Carnegie Deli. We arranged for people to go to families for dinner in San Diego, she said. They really liked that a lot. | 0fake |
As U.S. Soccer Weighs Jurgen Klinsmann’s Future, He Says, ‘I’m Not Afraid’ - The New York Times | Jurgen Klinsmann, whose status as coach of the United States men’s national team is under intense scrutiny, said Sunday night that he was “very comfortable” with his position and that he believed those calling for him to be fired were “being disrespectful” and “ignoring the facts” about his tenure as the team’s leader. Speaking in a telephone interview, Klinsmann — who had recently returned from Berlin, where he attended a state dinner last week with President Obama and Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany — said that he had exchanged text messages with Sunil Gulati, the president of U. S. Soccer, and that he expected to talk with Gulati in the coming days. That discussion will take place in the shadow of mounting criticism of Klinsmann’s performance and after the team’s two recent losses in qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, including a humiliating defeat to Costa Rica on Tuesday that has many fans calling on Gulati to fire Klinsmann. “I’m not afraid,” Klinsmann said. “What you need to do is stick to the facts. Soccer is emotional, and a lot of people make conclusions without knowing anything about the inside of the team or the sport. I still believe we will get the points we need to qualify, and I am even confident we could win the group. ” He added: “The fact is, we lost two games. There is a lot of talk from people who don’t understand soccer or the team. ” Klinsmann, who is known for his upbeat disposition, could be overly optimistic. In countries that expect to reach the World Cup tournament, as the United States does every four years, starting the final round of qualifying with two losses generally means the coach’s job is in jeopardy — and Klinsmann acknowledged that he understands that. If Gulati decides to replace Klinsmann, it could be announced as soon as this week, according to several soccer executives familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a personnel decision. This could be an ideal time to make a switch: The United States does not play its next World Cup qualifier until March, allowing a new coach several months to get acclimated. Bruce Arena, who coached the national team from 1998 to 2006, is the top candidate to replace Klinsmann if Gulati decides to make a change. Klinsmann conceded that he understood the criticism — “I am not saying I have nothing to be blamed for,” he said — and in many other countries, he probably would have been fired after a disappointing flameout in the 2015 Gold Cup, the regional championship tournament the United States hosted, or after his team’s loss to Mexico in the Confederations Cup playoff later that year. That Gulati, who pursued Klinsmann for five years before hiring him in 2011, has stuck with him this long is indicative of how much Gulati has staked on Klinsmann, a former striker for Germany. Yet now, with calls for change from both inside and outside U. S. Soccer growing, the potential for a switch is significant. Many believe that Klinsmann’s constant tinkering with lineups and formations has kept the United States team from growing tactically, and some believe that the Americans’ collapse in the second half against Costa Rica last week was indicative of Klinsmann’s no longer being able to motivate his players. Klinsmann directly disputed that charge Sunday, saying he did not believe any players quit against Costa Rica, even as they gave up three goals after intermission. “There was nobody giving up at that time,” Klinsmann said. “That was a normal emotional situation when things go wrong. When they get the second goal there, it was like a knock in your neck. I played those games many, many times. The whole stadium goes bananas. It’s totally human to put your head down for a second. And then they counter us for two more. Those games will always happen. We just couldn’t stop it, but the players did not stop trying. ” Judging the national team’s arc in 2016 solely on those games, Klinsmann added, would be unfair. He said that this year had been “very, very successful” for the national team, citing the Americans’ run to the semifinals of the Copa América as well as the development of younger players like Bobby Wood and John Brooks. That Brooks, a defender, had two rough performances against Mexico and Costa Rica — particularly Costa Rica — is, as Klinsmann said, “part of the development process,” and one of the reasons he argued that making a coaching change would be a mistake. “We are coaching a team through a transitional phase,” Klinsmann said. “We still have to break in younger players. We still have to look for leadership for the team. There are still a lot of technical and chemistry challenges ahead that are normal in this time period. And you put the final pieces together as you go towards Russia, which I am absolutely sure we will do. ” From the very beginning of his relationship with Gulati, Klinsmann said, he has stressed that patience was crucial — a point he will probably try to make to Gulati when they speak about the team’s current situation. “I always made it clear to Sunil, if you really want to move up to the top 15 in the world, you need to have consistency in what you’re doing,” Klinsmann said. “If you react emotionally, you will become a roller coaster. ” Many would argue that Gulati and others at U. S. Soccer have given Klinsmann more than enough time. And although Klinsmann is confident, a poor result in the next qualifying game — at home against Honduras, with a trip to Panama scheduled days later — would make things even more tenuous. By that time, a coaching change on the fly would be especially difficult. That is why it is expected that a resolution of the coaching situation will be reached soon. Klinsmann will either receive a vote of confidence or be fired. Either way, it has been an emotional few days for the coach, who traveled to Germany from Costa Rica and said he spent “an amazing” two and a half hours with President Obama and other world leaders. Klinsmann presented President Obama with a German national team jersey with the No. 44 on the back, and gave Merkel a United States jersey with the No. 1 on it. Of course, even President Obama asked Klinsmann a question about the national team situation. “He said, ‘It didn’t go well down there in Costa Rica, did it? ’” Klinsmann recalled. “And I said, ‘Nope, Mr. President — it didn’t go well at all. ’” | 0fake |
25 Great Books by Refugees in America - The New York Times | One way to regard the refugees in the news these frenzied past few days is as potential Americans, individuals and families escaping bad situations who imagine themselves building new lives here. What these particular refugees could become in this country, and how they could contribute to our society and culture, is a question stuck in suspended animation. But we do have the power to look to the past. And in the literary realm it’s unquestionable that refugees, once here, often make major contributions. Through the 20th century and into this one, those fleeing political persecution or war have produced important works that we think of now as at least partly American, from fiction about the harrowing experiences of exile and dislocation to political treatises by thinkers who want to understand why their homelands fell apart. This is a sampling of 25 of those works. Bertolt Brecht, “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” (1941) Country of origin: GermanyReason for leaving: Fled Nazi Germany for Denmark in 1933, and then came to the United States in 1941 when war broke out. Brecht always intended his satire about the ruthless ascension of a Chicago mobster to be performed on an American stage. He is mocking Adolf Hitler, each dopey and villainous character having a Nazi counterpart in real life. The character of the populist bully, who has a penchant for both public speaking and private was central in Brecht’s mind during his wartime exile. Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey, “Curious George” (1941) Country of origin: GermanyReason for Leaving: German Jews who escaped from their native Hamburg to Brazil and then France, only to leave again for the United States in 1940 just as the Nazis invaded. The mischievous monkey who had a canny way of getting in and out of trouble originated in the minds of Hans Augusto and Margret Rey. They conceived of the character while themselves trying to outrun the Nazis, finally escaping from France on homemade bicycles and carrying the manuscript with the first mention of George (then called “Zozo”) along with them. Karl Polanyi, “The Great Transformation” (1944) Country of origin: AustriaReason for Leaving: With Hitler’s rise, prominent socialists like Polanyi were imperiled, so he left for England in 1933 and then arrived in Vermont in 1940. After settling down to teach at Bennington College, Polanyi published his major work, which looked at how the Industrial Revolution was so disruptive that it created the conditions for both Communism and fascism. But capitalism, he argued, did not happen spontaneously. It required an enormous amount of government planning in order to function. “ was planned,” was his counterintuitive summation. Thomas Mann, “Doctor Faustus” (1947) Country of origin: GermanyReason for leaving: An opponent of Hitler’s rise, Mann left for Switzerland in 1933 and eventually emigrated to the United States in 1939. Mann, in his California exile, took the Faust legend and placed it in the context of the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. His main character, a composer, strikes a deal with a Mephistophelean figure to give him creative glory. But madness is the which becomes an allegory for where Germany is headed. Theodor Adorno, “The Authoritarian Personality” (1950) Country of origin: GermanyReasons for leaving: After being dismissed from his teaching position in 1932 by the Nazis, Adorno left to study at Oxford and then moved to the United States in 1938. Adorno wanted to understand what kind of personality type was susceptible to fascism. He found his answer, via Freud, in a harsh parenting style that led to the kind of person who would crave the approval and guidance of an authoritarian. Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951) Country of origin: GermanyReasons for leaving: In 1933, Arendt, a German Jew, left her country and eventually settled in Paris, where she helped Jewish refugees. Once the Vichy regime took over, she herself was interned as an “enemy alien,” but managed to emigrate and settle in New York in 1941. Like Adorno and the other German Jewish emigrants of her generation, Arendt was fixated on the question of why democratic institutions collapse and authoritarianism rises. In her major political work, she dissected both Nazism and Stalinism as instantiations of a new type of politics, one that utilized terror and fear to subjugate populations and gain their acquiescence. Leo Strauss, “Natural Right and History” (1953) Country of origin: GermanyReasons for leaving: Already teaching in England when the Nazis came to power, Strauss was prevented from returning and moved to the United States in 1937. In six lectures given from his perch at the University of Chicago, Strauss laid out his argument about what he saw as modernity’s nihilistic rejection of classical philosophy. The immutable truths of Plato and Aristotle needed to be appreciated again. Once we follow the thought of these ancient philosophers we will see more clearly what should distinguish right and wrong in ethics and politics. Vladimir Nabokov, “Lolita” (1955) Country of origin: RussiaReasons for leaving: Born to Russian nobility, Nabokov and his family fled the Bolshevik Revolution, living in a succession of European countries. He eventually moved to America in 1940, where he took up work as an entomologist at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, among other jobs. In his most famous and controversial novel, Nabokov took up the story of Humbert Humbert, a man obsessed with a young girl, his nymphet, Lolita. In what is essentially the tale of a sordid road trip, Nabokov has Humbert traveling the country in possession of his illicit love interest. The book is filled with Nabokov’s own observations about an America that still felt foreign and exciting to him. Isabel Allende, “The House of the Spirits” (1982) Country of origin: ChileReasons for leaving: Allende fled to Venezuela in 1973 after the coup that brought down Salvador Allende, the socialist leader and her father’s cousin. She moved to California in the late 1980s. Drawing on the circumstances of her own exile, Allende used her debut novel to tell a multigenerational saga that takes place in an unnamed country very much like Chile. We see the destruction of democracy and the rise of a cruel dictator who tries to eliminate all opposition. “I wanted to show that life goes in a circle, events are intertwined, and that history repeats itself, there is no beginning and no end,” Allende said about her sprawling, narrative. Czeslaw Milosz, “Bells in Winter” (1985) Country of origin: PolandReason for leaving: After surviving World War II in Poland and initially joining the postwar Communist government, Milosz defected in 1951, eventually emigrating to the United States in 1960. The Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner produced a quietly meditative work in 1985 that pointed toward the mysterious quality of existence, the inability to fully understand our own natures. “Life was impossible, but was endured,” he writes in “Recess,” capturing the exile’s lament, the alienation of deracination, of living an arm’s length away from oneself. Joseph Brodsky, “Less Than One” (1986) Country of origin: Soviet UnionReason for leaving: Put on trial and into psychiatric institutions for his dissident beliefs, Brodsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972. Brodsky was interested in the poet’s role in society, and these essays, which deal with politics, literature and his own personal experience of exile, all get at this question. For him, poetry was “the most democratic art,” as he says in an essay about the West Indian poet Derek Walcott. It’s the poet’s embrace of individuality that makes him a necessary counterpoint — an important thorn — to the state. Nuruddin Farah, “Maps” (1986) Country of origin: SomaliaReasons for leaving: Exiled from Somalia in the for writing about life under the harsh rule of the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. In the first novel of his trilogy, “Blood in the Sun,” Farrah writes about a young man, an orphan, obsessed with his own origins. Growing up dislocated in the big city of Mogadishu and tormented by the need to avenge his father’s death, the boy reflects all the struggles of national identity in a country torn from the traditional past and thrust into a violent future. Ariel Dorfman, “Death and the Maiden” (1990) Country of origin: ChileReasons for leaving: A cultural adviser to the deposed socialist leader Salvador Allende, Dorfman was forced to flee the country in 1973. In his revenge fantasy of a play, Dorfman dramatized the confrontation between a woman who was tortured by a Latin American regime and the thug who supposedly did the torturing. She puts him on trial through a long night. Is this really the man who tortured her with electricity to the strains of Schubert, or is she making a paranoid mistake? In this confusion lies Dorfman’s own feelings about the evasive quality of redemption. Reinaldo Arenas, “Before Night Falls” (1992) Country of origin: CubaReasons for leaving: Imprisoned for his writing, he was able to emigrate to America as part of the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. Published after his suicide in 1990, Arenas’s memoir tell his whole life story, from his impoverished youth all the way to his decision to kill himself. It’s also a tale of political disillusion and the pain of exile. Arenas was a true believer in Castro, but after being locked up for being gay he begins a process of losing more of himself, until he is left without a homeland. Cristina Garcia, “Dreaming in Cuban” (1992) Country of origin: CubaReasons for leaving: Her family was among the first wave of people to escape from Cuba in 1961 shortly after Fidel Castro took power. Garcia’s first novel looked at three generations of women exiled from Cuba, all with complex feelings about the country, from love and nostalgia to revulsion. For the daughter of a revolutionary, now living in New York, her memories are of being raped by one of Castro’s young followers. “She wants no part of Cuba,” Garcia writes of this young woman, “no part of its wretched carnival floats creaking with lies, no part of Cuba at all. ” Henry Kissinger, “Diplomacy” (1994) Country of origin: GermanyReasons for leaving: A German Jew, he fled with his family in 1938. The former secretary of state tried to sum up in this book his realist foreign policy approach, taking a historical tour from Europe in the 17th century all the way up to his years working for Presidents Nixon and Ford. Realpolitik here is the attempt to achieve stability through a careful balancing of world powers. Scarred by his own experience growing up in Nazi Germany, Kissinger has always been alive to the fragility of democracy, a feeling that has guided his approach, one that abhors idealism. Loung Ung, “First They Killed My Father” (2001) Country of origin: CambodiaReasons for leaving: Escaped from Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, ending up in Vermont. Ung’s memoir of life near the edge of the “killing fields” is a harrowing attempt at a collective document. “If you had been living in Cambodia during this period, this would be your story too,” she writes. Her father was killed, and she was starved and near death by the time she managed to enter a Vietnamese refugee camp. It’s a story that is told straightforwardly. When Ung asks her father why the Khmer Rouge are acting so violently, he answers simply, “Because they are destroyers of things. ” Madeleine Albright, “Madam Secretary” (2003) Country of origin: CzechoslovakiaReasons for leaving: Hitler’s takeover of parts of Czechoslovakia forced her family, supporters of the early Czech democrat Edvard Benes, to go into exile and finally emigrate to the United States in 1948. Albright recounts her years as secretary of state during the Clinton presidency and the unlikely path she took as a Czech refugee, whose family fled both Hitler and later Communism. She also grapples with an unexpected twist in her family story. Late in life, Albright discovered that her parents were Jewish. They had converted to Catholicism and never revealed this secret to her, or that her grandparents had perished as Jews in a Nazi concentration camp. Dinaw Mengestu, “The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears” (2007) Country of origin: EthiopiaReasons for leaving: His family fled Ethiopia’s Communist revolution in 1980, when he was 2, and they found their way to Peoria, Ill. In his first novel, Mengestu captured the world of immigrants and refugees in Washington, D. C. as they gather at a Logan Circle grocery store and reminisce about homes they can’t go back to. “How was I supposed to live in America,” says Sepha Stephanos, the book’s protagonist and the store’s owner, “when I had never really left Ethiopia?” Ishmael Beah, “A Long Way Gone” (2007) Country of origin: Sierra LeoneReasons for leaving: Forced to become a child soldier at the age of 12, Beah eventually escaped Freetown in 1997 with the help of Unicef and ended up in New York City. Beah’s memoir offers a rare chance to see war from the eyes of a child soldier, brainwashed and kept obedient with drugs and guns. But the bleakness of this account is also tempered with the redemption that comes at the end. He gets out. And the very act of reading as he tells the story of his past is indication that a nightmare like this can end. Masha Gessen, “The Man Without a Face” (2012) Country of origin: Soviet UnionReasons for leaving: Gessen’s family was Jewish and denied religious freedom in the Soviet Union (or the right to freely emigrate). In 1981 her family was granted permission to leave. Gessen, a child of the Soviet Union, offers up a portrait of Vladimir Putin as a man formed by his many years in the K. G. B. She finds the roots of his illiberalism, his secrecy, his disregard for democratic norms. It’s an authoritarianism she fears others have been blind to, projecting onto him the leader they hope he will be. Vaddey Ratner, “In the Shadow of the Banyan” (2012) Country of origin: CambodiaReasons for leaving: Ratner and her mother escaped the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979 after enduring four years of forced labor, starvation and near execution. They immigrated to rural Missouri. Ratner’s first novel hews closely to her own traumatic biography. A child of only 5 when Pol Pot’s army began terrorizing the country, she tells the story from that perspective, focusing on both the beauty and the horror as it appears to innocent eyes hardly able to comprehend beyond the everyday sensations of panic and wonder. Gary Shteyngart, “Little Failure” (2014) Country of origin: Soviet UnionReasons for leaving: Like other Soviet Jews, Shteyngart and his family felt discriminated against in the Soviet Union and were allowed to emigrate in 1979. Shteyngart’s mother must have meant it in an endearing way when she called her son “Little Failure. ” He certainly embraced the moniker. Here the hilarious writer turns to memoir to tell his own story of arriving in America as an awkward young boy. Through the trials and tribulations of Hebrew school and the thick pot smoke of Oberlin, Shteyngart survived and has become our chronicler of absurdity as only an immigrant with a funny name can see it. Viet Thanh Nguyen, “The Sympathizer” (2015) Country of origin: VietnamReasons for leaving: Nguyen’s family escaped Vietnam in 1975 and lived in a Pennsylvania refugee camp before settling in Harrisburg. The great contribution of Nguyen’s Pulitzer first novel is that it introduces a Vietnamese voice into a conversation that has been . As the narrator, annoyed that American soldiers and politicians have monopolized the story of the Vietnam War, explains, “this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors. ” This novel, applying fresh eyes to a war now known only through clichés, offers that corrective. Vu Tran, “Dragonfish” (2015) Country of origin: VietnamReasons for leaving: Born in Saigon in 1975, five months after the city fell to the North Vietnamese, Tran left by boat in 1980 with his mother and sister, spending five days at sea. Tran’s novel, his first, does not engage in any nostalgia about the lost home. That place carries only memories of trauma and war. He forces his characters, including a Vietnamese woman in California who mysteriously disappears, to grapple with that past. It’s the only way to get anywhere near embracing their new American realities. | 0fake |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.