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What Donald Trump Needs To Do | Dispatches from Wolf Country –Sitting in my cave, watching the spider spin ‹ › Professor and Attorney Rahul Manchanda worked for one of the largest law firms in Manhattan where he focused on asbestos litigation. At the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”) in Vienna, Austria, Mr. Manchanda was exposed to international trade law, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution, and comparisons of the American common law with European civil law. He later worked for one of the largest multi-national law firms in Paris France, Coudert Frères, where he focused primarily on international arbitration, arbitration agreements, the enforcement of foreign arbitration awards against multinational parent corporations, piercing the corporate veil, arbitration venue choice, and foreign policy. In Paris, Mr. Manchanda analyzed and compared the American legal system with its British, French, Russian, German, and Chinese counterparts. Mr. Manchanda also has extensive technical experience in Federal Patent Prosecution and Intellectual Property issues working for Milde Hoffberg & Macklin LLP and Moses & Singer LLP, and has contributed to the issuing of patents in the areas of biotechnology, organic chemistry, biopharmaceuticals, electrical and mechanical engineering, computer software and technology, and internet business methods. He was recently the Keynote Address Speaker for Hamline University School of International Law on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a Chief Speaker for the Civil Rights Litigation Update Seminar on Balancing Inalienable Civil Rights and National Security in the Post-911 Era. Professor Manchanda is also a Faculty Member for LawLine.com, an online Continuing Legal Education (“CLE”) program designed to educate Attorneys all across the country on cutting edge issues of Immigration Law and Deportation and Removal Defense Litigation as well as a second CLE on the Foundations of International Law, as well as 5 different Immigration Law/Deportation Defense Seminars for Rossdale CLE. Click here to watch a portion of his 2 hour lecture on Immigration and Deportation and Removal Defense Litigation or The Foundations of International Law. You can also watch some of his many appearances on FoxNews, CNN, CourtTV, NBC, and other major media networks on some of the most notable cases in global history, here. He has also given multiple lectures as one of the first pioneering immigration law practitioners who merged Criminal Defense Law and Immigration/Deportation Defense Law in such lectures with other immigration law luminaries in LexisNexis Presents a Complimentary Webinar: Criminal Law and Immigration Intersection 101 and Immigration Reform and the Workplace: An Overview of Legal and Legislative Developments. At Boston University, Mr. Manchanda received a Bachelors degree in Biology, where he distinguished himself in the chemical and biological sciences, doing extensive research in organic chemistry, in both field and laboratory work relating to organic synthesis and isolation, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, structure determination, and production of synthetic bio-active natural products. At BU, Mr. Manchanda also was on the BU Shotokan Karate Team as well as a Lead Tenor with the Marsh Chapel Choir, also finding time to be a Teaching Fellow in Molecular Cell Biology, Organic Chemistry, and a private tutor in Calculus based Physics and Organic Chemistry. He also attended Yale University where he studied Molecular Cell and Evolutionary Biology. He served on the Pace University School of Law’s Mentor Program where he received his Juris Doctor degree. Attorney Manchanda graduated from the Wooster Prep School in Danbury Connecticut where he was a Varsity Letterman in Soccer, Wrestling, Tennis, and Lacrosse, as well as Lead in the Drama Program. For more than 14 years, his internationally recognized law firm has a formidable presence in Federal and State Criminal, Civil, International, and Immigration Courts throughout the United States pertaining to Master, Individual, and Final Hearings, Naturalization Interviews, Writs of Habeas Corpus, Writs of Corum Nobis, Marriage Cases, U.S. Embassy and Consular Processing, American Citizen Services, United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of State liaison, 440 Motions to Vacate, Amend, or Expunge Criminal Convictions, Aggravated Felonies, Drug Smuggling Cases, Stokes Hearings, Political Asylum, Taxation, Hardship, Removal of Condition Hearings, National Security, and Adjustment of Status Interviews. He served as an American Immigration Lawyer Association (“AILA“) Committee Member for the Congressional/Advocacy Committee, the Department of Labor (“DOL“) Committee, and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR“)/District Counsel/Political Asylum Committee. Attorney Manchanda also proudly served on the New York State Bar Association Empire State Counsel Program, which is a small group of Attorneys who serve the poor without charge, helping people who otherwise could not afford legal counsel to achieve justice. Attorney Manchanda also proudly serves as a Member of the American Bar Association Advisory Panel, a group of Attorneys that informs the ABA’s priorities and decisions by providing opinions about the direction of the ABA and issues facing the profession. Attorney Rahul Manchanda of Manchanda Law Office PLLC has also traveled extensively throughout the world where he has fought for peace and mutual understanding by and between the United States and different countries overseas. His work, observations, and travels have been published and been received to make foreign policy decisions by the International Atomic Energy Agency (“IAEA”), the US RAHUL MANCHANDA IN TEHRAN IRANCongress, US Senate, US Executive Branch, as well as countless other think-tanks, foreign and domestic governmental agencies, NGOs, foreign and domestic policy institutions, such as can be found here. Attorney Rahul Manchanda’s ceaseless and tireless work advocating peace, universal human and civil rights, and the avoidance of war and conflict has truly transformed the world, perhaps even helping to stop World War 3, for which he has been viciously attacked online and personally by warmongers, enemies of global peace, and religious extremists. In addition to Mr. Manchanda’s extensive international litigation practice in Federal and State Criminal Defense Law, Immigration Law, Deportation and Removal Defense Litigation, Family Law, International Law, and Civil Litigation, he has advised on, been consulted on, prepared, and filed tens of thousands of Arraignments, Trials, Hearings, Non-Immigrant and Immigrant Visa Petitions including, but not limited to: H-1B1, B, C, D, E, L, O, P, H-3, J, K, M, R, S, T, and U Visas, as well as I-130 and I-140 Immigrant Petitions with accompanying Adjustment of Status (I-485), Extraordinary Ability Petitions, EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, EB-5, Investment Based Visas, PERM, RIR, and Regular Labor Certification Applications with the Department of Labor, Political Asylum, Marriage Cases, Stokes Interviews, Naturalization/Citizenship, Agricultural, 245(I), CSS/Lulac/Zambrano, LIFE Act, Removal of Conditions, Criminal and Overstay Waivers, and Aggravated Felony and CMT Defense. Attorney Manchanda has succeeded for his Clients in Deportation and Removal Proceedings, Asylum, Employment Based Visa Petitions including PERM/Labor Certification, Business Immigration Visas, and Family Based Immigration Petitions, for tens of thousands of people, for more than 14 years. He taught Immigration Law at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the City University of New York located in Manhattan New York. He has also successfully advised on and appeared in Criminal Court throughout New York for many different types of State and Federal Criminal Defense Matters. He was sworn in and admitted to practice in the highest courts in New York State as well as in the Federal United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the Federal United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, the United States District Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the United States District Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the United States District Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He has been an active member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the New York County Lawyers Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Phi Alpha Delta International, the Global Interdependence Center (“GIC”), the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, Network 20/20, and the Asia Society. He regularly participated in conferences with the House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, Capitol Hill, the Center For Strategic and International Studies (“CSIS”), and the Council on Foreign Relations (“CFR”) in Washington, D.C. pertaining to counter-terrorism and foreign policy in South Asia, as well as completing counter-terrorism training with Security Solutions International (“SSI”). He served on a New York Committee on State Regulation of Immigration Law in front of the New York State Senate. He served on the Board of Directors and Sponsor of the US-India Institute (“USINI”), a non-partisan foreign policy advisory board and think tank located in Washington, D.C. focusing on critical geo-strategic issues of national security, defense and economic relations between the U.S. and India, informing and educating key policy makers in the U.S. and India on issues of common interest, and advocating the importance of achieving and maintaining peace through Rahul Manchanda Attorneystrength and economic freedom. He served as the U.S.-India Political Action Committee (“USINPAC“) Co-Chairman for New York where he impacted U.S. Foreign Policy on issues of concern to the Indian American community in the United States, providing bipartisan support to candidates for Federal, State and Local office who supported the issues that were important to the Indian American community, including research, support, and advocacy towards the successful passage of the United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Non-Proliferation Enhancement Act, signed into law on October 8, 2008 after more than three years of contentious bi-partisan and bi-lateral negotiations. Recently Attorney Manchanda was awarded the prestigious Hind Rattan Award for his outstanding services, achievements, and contributions in his field for “keeping the flag of India high” as an NRI/PIO by the NRI Welfare Society of India, an award bestowed on only 30 “eminent” NRIs/PIOs around the globe every year, and for making contributions in strengthening India’s economy. Attorney Manchanda was also Knighted by the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Justice of London England, given the appellation and nobility of Sir Rahul Manchanda. Attorney Manchanda also served on the Paris Conference Presidential Desk of the European Association of Lawyers (“AEA“), a highly selective network of international law firms with a presence in most of the world’s countries. He is also a member of the Indian American Lawyers Association of Manhattan New York as well as the Manhattan Committee on Foreign Relations, which is a private organization that promotes foreign policy and international affairs dialogue between policy makers, researchers, and other high level analysts and the Committee’s membership. Attorney Manchanda is also on the Advisory Council for the Republican National Lawyers Association. Attorney Rahul Manchanda is also a Member of the Queens District Attorney’s Office Defense Attorney Database for new cases assigned to Assistant District Attorneys and a Member of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce. Additionally Rahul Manchanda is the founder of the India Anti-Defamation Committee Ltd which is a premier civil rights organization dedicated to fighting and eradicating racism, discrimination, and hatred directed towards people from the Indian subcontinent. Rahul Manchanda is also a Freemason. Mr. Manchanda has appeared as International Law Expert regularly on major media television program channels such as Fox News, CNN, Court TV, and NBC on such television programs as Dayside, Studio B with Shephard Smith, Fox and Friends, Heartland with John Kasich, Live from CNN with Kyra Phillips, the Live Desk with Martha McCallum, Anderson Cooper 360°, the O’Reilly Factor, Nancy Grace, Banfield & Ford Courtside, Best Defense with Jami Floyd, Justice with Jeanine Pirro, and the Catherine Crier Show on the most publicized and globally newsworthy of international legal issues and cases. You can watch many of these appearances here. He is also featured in Newsweek Magazine‘s Top Attorneys in the United States of America in 2013, and Top Immigration Lawyers in the United States of America in 2012 Showcases. His in depth expertise in International Affairs, State and Federal Criminal Defense Litigation, Consular Processing Issues, Immigration Law, Foreign Affairs, Customs Law, and High-Level Scientific Training has enabled Attorney Manchanda to secure solutions for his Clients in a quick, efficient, and accurate manner for more than 13 years. Mr. Manchanda is fluent in French, English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi. He has also studied Russian, Latin, and Hebrew. His hobbies include Politics, International Affairs, and Soccer. In his spare time, he enjoys Chess and Classical Music. | 1real |
Self-Driving Truck’s First Mission: A 120-Mile Beer Run | New York Times – by Mike Isaac SAN FRANCISCO — The futurists of Silicon Valley may not have seen this one coming: The first commercial delivery made by a self-driving truck was 2,000 cases of Budweiser beer. On Tuesday, Otto , the Uber-owned self-driving vehicle operation, announced the completion of its first commercial delivery, having delivered its beer load from Fort Collins, Colo., to Colorado Springs, a roughly 120-mile trip on Interstate 25. In recent years, Uber has predicted a future in which you can ride in a self-driving car that will take you where you want to go, no driver necessary. But the idea that commercial trucking could be done by robot is a relatively new idea — and a potentially controversial one, given the possibility that robots could one day replace human drivers. “We think this technology is inching closer to commercial availability,” Lior Ron, co-founder of Otto, said in an interview. In August, Uber acquired Otto, a San Francisco start-up run by a number of veterans of Google’s long-running autonomous vehicle research. Though largely symbolic, the beer delivery marks the first commercial partnership for Otto, which was founded less than a year ago. Terms of the deal between Otto and Anheuser-Busch InBev , which owns the Budweiser brand, were not disclosed. “We’ve tested with trailers, of course, but there’s nothing like actually doing the real thing, end to end,” Mr. Ron said. The delivery was indicative of Uber’s larger ambitions to become an enormous transportation network, one in which the company is responsible for moving anything, like people, hot meals or cases of beer, around the globe, at all hours and as efficiently as possible. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, has said he envisions a future in which transportation will occur in different ways, using both manned and unmanned vehicles. Otto is a particularly large bet for Uber, which paid nearly $700 million for the start-up only a few months after the company started publicly discussing its self-driving-truck ambitions. Since backing down from its money-burning effort to dominate the Chinese ride-hailing market in August, Uber has invested more time and resources to focus on breaking into the trucking market. Annual trucking industry revenue topped $720 billion in 2015, according to American Trucking Association estimates. A good part of that total came from top brands that rely heavily on the trucking industry to transport their goods. Anheuser-Busch, for example, delivers more than a million truckloads of beer domestically every year. “We view self-driving trucks as the future, and we want to be a part of that,” said James Sembrot, senior director of logistics strategy at Anheuser-Busch. Though the delivery went smoothly, the two companies did not indicate whether there would be any further deals. For this initial delivery, Otto’s truck departed Anheuser-Busch’s facility in Loveland, Colo., in the early morning before reaching the interstate in Fort Collins. The truck drove through Denver — alongside regular passenger car traffic — and navigated to its destination in Colorado Springs without incident. Otto said a trained driver was in the cabin of the truck at all times to monitor the vehicle’s progress and take over if necessary. At no point was the driver required to intervene, the company said. Future expansion of the pilot program will allow Otto to test for more types of road and weather conditions, a major factor in autonomous vehicle route plotting. | 1real |
Harvard Law, Moving to Diversify Applicant Pool, Will Accept GRE Scores - The New York Times | Harvard Law School, moving to open its doors to a larger, more diverse pool of applicants, said on Wednesday that it would accept the graduate record examination, known as the GRE, for the admission of students entering its fall 2018 class. The law school, whose alumni include senators, chief executives, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and President Barack Obama, is the second accredited law school in the United States to accept the GRE for admission. It follows the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, which made the change a year ago. At the time, Arizona’s decision provoked a heated debate in the legal profession, which has long supported the Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT, over whether that test should be relied on as a single valid predictor of law school success. Since Arizona’s move, around 150 law school deans, including Martha Minow of Harvard Law, have expressed support for the change. Now Harvard Law is taking the same step. The school said it would start a pilot program in the fall, when students begin submitting applications for the juris doctor program that begins in 2018. The change “will encourage more students in the United States and internationally from a greater degree of disciplines to apply,” said Jessica Soban, assistant dean and chief admissions officer. Applicants who want to can still submit LSAT scores. The GRE test is offered many times each year and in numerous locations around the world, Ms. Soban said in an interview. In addition, she said, “many prospective law school applicants take the GRE as they consider graduate school options. ” The decision to make the change came after a recently completed Harvard Law study that examined GRE scores of current and former students who had taken both the GRE and the LSAT. The study concluded that “the GRE is an equally valid predictor of grades,” Ms. Soban said. It remains to be seen whether other schools follow Harvard. The law school, which admits about 560 students to each class, has seen its applications increase in recent years, unlike many other law schools in the United States. A survey of 125 law schools last year by Kaplan Test Prep found that 56 percent had no plans to allow applicants to submit GRE scores instead of LSAT scores. Only 14 percent said they planned to amend their policies, but more than half also said they did not want the American Bar Association to explicitly require that law schools accept only LSAT scores. The bar association’s accrediting body will soon consider changes to the rules governing law school admissions. Barry Currier, managing director of the group’s section on legal education and admissions to the bar, said on Wednesday that “at this point we will defer for now any comment on any individual law school’s proposal or pilot program on testing of prospective students. ” When Arizona’s law school chose to accept GRE scores, it risked being expelled from the Law School Admission Council, which oversees LSAT administration and the common application process used by thousands of law school students. But after law school deans rallied around Arizona, the council backed off on quashing such experimentation. This year, the council’s spokeswoman, Wendy Margolis said, “schools have that right under the current A. B. A. standards. ” Ms. Minow said in a statement that Harvard Law School was “continually working to eliminate barriers as we search for the most talented candidates for law and leadership. ” Harvard benefited, she added, when “we can diversify our community in terms of academic background, country of origin, and financial circumstances. “Also, given the promise of the revolutions in biology, computer science, and engineering, law needs students with science, technology, engineering and math backgrounds,” she continued. Harvard Law School has also taken other steps, including conducting admissions interviews via Skype, to diversify its student body about 17 percent of its students are from outside the United States. | 0fake |
Trump administration releases rules on disclosing cyber flaws | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration publicly released on Wednesday its rules for deciding whether to disclose cyber security flaws or keep them secret, in an effort to bring more transparency to a process that has long been cloaked in mystery. The move is an attempt by the U.S. government to address criticism that it too often jeopardizes internet security by stockpiling the cyber vulnerabilities it detects in order to preserve its ability to launch its own attacks on computer systems. The revised rules, published on whitehouse.gov, are intended to shed light on the process for how various federal agencies weigh the costs of keeping a flaw secret, said Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator. Speaking at an Aspen Institute event in Washington, Joyce said the rules were the “most sophisticated” in the world and that they set the United States apart from most other nations. Private companies, he said, “are not getting tips from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran” about flaws in their technology. Under former President Barack Obama, the U.S. government created an inter-agency review, known as the Vulnerabilities Equities Process, to determine what to do with flaws unearthed primarily by intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA). The process is designed to balance law enforcement and U.S. intelligence desires to hack into devices with the need to warn manufacturers so that they can patch holes before criminals and other hackers take advantage of them. The new Trump administration charter on the process explains how it functions and names the agencies involved in the vulnerability reviews. They include intelligence agencies in addition to several civilian departments, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Energy and State. The NSA is listed as the “executive secretariat” of the inter-agency group, tasked with coordinating debate over flaws submitted by the various agencies if there is disagreement about whether to disclose them. If disagreements are not reconciled the group will vote on whether to disclose or retain the flaw. The rules also require an annual report, portions of which will be made public, that provides metrics about the amount of flaws discovered, retained and disclosed. Decisions to retain vulnerabilities must be reconsidered every year, according to the charter. The publication of the charter is “a major improvement,” said Ari Scwhartz, coordinator of the Coalition for Cybersecurity Policy and Law and a former Obama administration cyber official. The Obama administration sought to release a similar document before the end of last year but ran out of time, Schwartz said. Some security experts have long criticized the process as overly secretive and too often erring against disclosure. Joyce said on Wednesday more than 90 percent of flaws are ultimately disclosed, though some critics say they are not shared quickly enough and that the most severe flaws are too often stockpiled. The criticism grew earlier this year when a global ransomware attack known as WannaCry infected computers in at least 150 countries, knocking hospitals offline and disrupting services at factories. The attack was made possible because of a flaw in Microsoft’s Windows software that the NSA had used to build a hacking tool for its own use. But in a breach U.S. investigators are still working to understand, that tool and others ended up in the hands of a mysterious group called the Shadow Brokers, which then published them online. Suspected North Korean hackers spotted the Windows flaw and repurposed it to unleash the WannaCry attack, according to cyber experts. North Korea has routinely denied involvement in cyber attacks against other countries. Asked about the WannaCry attack, Joyce declined to say whether the Windows flaw detected by the NSA went through the vulnerability review process. | 0fake |
Tillerson says would support maintaining Russia sanctions for now | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, said on Wednesday he would support maintaining U.S. sanctions on Russia until the United States further develops its approach to the country. “I would leave things in the status quo so we are able to convey this can go either way,” Tillerson said during his confirmation hearing, in response to a question on whether he thought right now is the right time to lift sanctions on Russia. | 0fake |
SUNDAY WIRE REPLAY: LIVE Show Off-Air for Maintenance | ATTENTION: Episode #157 of SUNDAY WIRE SHOW is postponed until next Sunday Oct. 23, 2016 in the meantime, ACR will be re-streaming last week s power-packed episode here LISTEN LIVE ON THIS PAGE AT THE FOLLOWING SCHEDULED SHOW TIMES:SUNDAYS 5pm-8pm UK Time | 12pm-3pm ET (US) | 9am-12pm PT (US)With great regret, we are informing our listeners that due to essential network maintenance, this week s show has been rescheduled for next Sunday. This week we ll re-play last week s popular Episode #156 with guests Pierre Le Corf, Tom Duggan and Vanessa Beeley ACR LIVE STREAM broadstreet.zone(46707); | 1real |
To Bolster KLM’s Identity, a ‘Charmingly Clueless Approach’ to Humor - The New York Times | QUICK, IS KLM a brand of milk, the call letters for a radio station or a Dutch airline? Frequent fliers probably know the correct answer, but market research shows that many Americans often think KLM means either milk or music. So the airline, which is formally known as Royal Dutch Airlines, is embarking on an advertising campaign that is heavy on humor to explain what the letters mean. “The brand has not been so visible, but we want people to know it’s an airline, and that it’s Dutch,” said Christophe Attard, the vice president of marketing for Air . The carrier, whose name in Dutch is Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij, merged with Air France in 2004, but the branding for the two airlines is separate. “We wanted KLM to reflect the nationality of the country,” Mr. Attard said. “It’s friendly and innovative. ” And the humor is . Ken Marino, an American actor who starred in the NBC sitcom “Marry Me,” wryly comments on questions such as “What is an airline?” and “What is a flight attendant?” He delivers his remarks with an exaggerated sincerity intended to provoke a smile or a chuckle from social media viewers, who are the target audience of the video. The humor makes a product or service more approachable, said John Limotte, chief executive of Mustache, a video production company based in Brooklyn that worked with KLM on the campaign. “It’s not a or broadly comedic humor, but more of a charmingly clueless approach where stating the obvious is likable,” he said. The approach underscores KLM’s effort to solidify its American market, where it currently has eight gateways for passengers to fly directly to Amsterdam. The Dutch carrier is striving to keep its footing against competition from rivals, as well as carriers based in the Middle East that are trying to expand their service networks. And, like other airlines, KLM must contend with the impact of terrorist attacks on its leisure travel business. KLM said traffic is 15 percent of its business, and it has experienced a 7 percent increase in traffic between the United States and Europe since 2014. “The United States, for decades and in the future, serves as the backbone of our worldwide operations outside of Europe,” said Pieter Elbers, KLM’s president and chief executive. “It is an incredibly important market to the company. ” Last year, KLM expanded its business between Amsterdam, Atlanta and Los Angeles, and began direct service between Salt Lake City and Amsterdam this year. In November, the carrier plans to introduce direct service between Amsterdam and Miami. The airline must first ensure that American travelers know what it is. The company commissioned a consumer awareness survey two years ago to gauge familiarity with its brand. The survey, conducted by phone and in person at airports, found that potential customers did not have a clear idea that KLM was an airline, Mr. Attard said. One reason could be that KLM and Air France partner with Delta Air Lines on flights, so tickets show Delta’s name first. The Dutch carrier’s name was little seen in the United States for years because of a joint venture from 1997 to 2009 with Northwest Airlines, which handled sales in North America. That ended after Northwest’s merger with Delta. Currently, KLM and Air France — members of the SkyTeam global airline alliance — offer a points program called Flying Blue but market their brands individually. To distinguish KLM’s separate identity, the carrier decided to refresh its brand: It retained its blue letters on a white background and longstanding logo, a crown, but enlarged it. Mustache developed four brand identity videos with the droll humor KLM was seeking. The creative agency drew attention to its understated humor with its 2014 travel video series on the Netherlands, called “Holland. The Original Cool. ” The first video in the series received more than a million views on YouTube. Humor in advertising is appealing “because the entertainment aspect is the hook to get people to watch,” said Michael Lewis, an associate professor of marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. “It gives legitimacy to a brand that’s less familiar,” he said. “That is more important for KLM than for carriers like Air France or British Airways, which have the country in their name. ” Mr. Lewis added: “But while differentiating brands has been a holy grail for airlines, more consumers are viewing the airline trip as a commodity product. It’s the ability to go to point A, then to point B, except, perhaps, for frequent fliers who still want to have access to upgrades and airport lounges. ” Mr. Attard, however, said market research showed a perceptional difference between KLM and Air France, which he said was viewed as snobbish and expensive. KLM wanted to underscore its innovation, which the airline had demonstrated through a partnership with Facebook that enabled booking flights via the Messenger app, he said. KLM’s new campaign will appear on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, as well as on a site, ItsAnAirline. com. It will feature interactive elements, including letting visitors earn loyalty points by finding hidden objects. | 0fake |
Turkey's Erdogan says he will discuss Gulf crisis in Kuwait | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday he will discuss a solution to the five-month dispute between Qatar and its Gulf Arab neighbors during a visit to Kuwait. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and transport ties with Doha on June 5, saying Qatar supports regional foe Iran and Islamists, a charge Qatar denies. Erdogan is scheduled on Tuesday to visit Kuwait, which has tried to mediate in the Gulf dispute. On Wednesday he will visit Qatar, which Ankara has supported and where Turkey has a military base. | 0fake |
Demonizing Russian Media | Demonizing Russian Media November 23, 2016
The West is escalating its demonization of Russian media as weapons of “information warfare” that need neutralizing, but Gilbert Doctorow finds that accusation just another part of the West’s own propaganda war.
By Gilbert Doctorow
One of the West’s top points in condemning Vladimir Putin’s “regime” since 2007 has been his alleged suppression of democratic institutions, including an assault on media freedom and imposition of government-directed propaganda. This week, the accusation was repeated in a resolution of the European Parliament calling for stronger counter-measures in defense of European values against “information warfare” from Moscow.
The charges — that Russian media are only an instrument of state propaganda directed at the domestic population to keep Russian citizens in line and at foreign audiences to sow dissent among Russia’s neighbors and within the European Union — are taken as a matter of faith with almost no proofs adduced. Anyone who questions this “group think” is immediately labeled a “tool of Putin” or worse. Russian President Vladimir Putin answering questions from Russian citizens at his annual Q&A event on April 14, 2016. (Russian government photo)
I experienced this firsthand in March 2015 when, as one of three debaters on “The Network,” a Euronews public affairs program, I objected to remarks by a fellow panelist, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee Elmar Brok, who maintained that Putin crushed all liberties and his country has no free press.
Based on my familiarity with the many different political lines of the Russian print media and of the patently unintimidated Kremlin-critics behind the national radio station Ekho Moskvy and television station Dozhd’, I countered that, for example, Russian coverage of events in the Donbass was more multi-sided and free than coverage in the U.S.
Brok lashed out with the slanderous question: “And how much did the Kremlin pay you to say that?” The broadcaster then allowed this video-taped exchange to air freely.
I have ruminated on this exchange ever since and sought incontrovertible proof of the relative freedom of expression on Russian broadcast media. My close examination of the wildly popular political talk shows on Russian television first as a spectator and then as a participant has provided just that.
I have written previously about my initial experience going back six months to when I first took part in a program on the Rossiya 1/Vesti 24 state channel, Yevgeni Popov’s “Special Correspondent.” I mentioned at the time the nearly permanent presence on these programs of domestic opposition figures as well as of foreigners from the U.S., Ukraine, Poland and Israel, in particular, who could be counted on to present views on the political topic of the day’s discussion at sharp variance with the Kremlin line.
Assessing the Talk Shows
In early autumn I appeared on the same presenter’s new show “Sixty Minutes,” as well on what is probably the most respected show of this genre, “Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev,” another Rossiya 1 production. Soloviev has done feature-length television interviews with Vladimir Putin and may be considered to be as close to power as people in this medium get. His personal views are probably more nationalist than the ruling United Russia party, but on his shows he, too, gives time on air to very diverse Russian and foreign views. Some of the estimated 12 million Russians who took part in Immortal Regiment parades across the country over three days in May 2016. (RT photo)
In the past month, I broadened my experience with the Russian talk show format by participating in shows on the other major state channel, Pervy Kanal (“Time Will Tell”) and on the country’s largest commercial television channel, NTV (“The Meeting Place”). This accelerated learning was facilitated by the U.S. presidential elections, which made Russian-speaking talking heads from America like myself a rather hot commodity on Russian television at least briefly.
In speaking to fellow panelists during break time, in interviews with presenters, I gathered some inside information about the production side of the talk shows, including their target audiences, their technical aspects and their substantive positioning.
Anyone looking over Russian television programming in general quickly finds that talk shows as a format take up a very large part of broadcast time. Of course, the focus of talk shows may be highly diverse, and political talk shows were traditionally an evening phenomenon, as is the case with the Rossiya 1 shows cited above, while daytime programming more typically focuses on housewives’ concerns, daydreams of romance or tips for cooking, and the like.
In this sense, it was a bold move when two years ago Pervy Kanal decided to launch a daily two-hour political talk show (“Time Will Tell”) in mid-afternoon. As expected, the target audience proved to be stay-at-home women and viewers aged 50 and above, although it appears there are also a fair number of viewers watching the program in the work place.
Going Daytime
The ratings captured by this show typically are in the 20s, meaning that 20 or so percent of all television viewers in Russia at the given time are tuned to the given program, yielding an audience numbering in the millions. On Nov. 9, when I appeared on the show dedicated to analysis of the U.S. election results, the numbers spiked to 30 percent, as one might well understand given the very great interest among ordinary Russians in the outcome of the race for the U.S. presidency and the outlook for war or peace. A Russian orchestra performing at Palmyra’s Roman theater on May 5, 2016, after Syrian troops, backed by Russian air power, reclaimed the ancient city from the Islamic State. (Image from RT’s live-streaming of the event.)
As “Time Will Tell” presenter Artyom Sheinin explained to me, the decision to appear on daytime television called for certain production decisions differentiating the programs from the evening talk shows. Firstly, the expectation of a less sophisticated audience meant that the language of panelists should be free of political science jargon and allusion to little known names or philosophies.
Said Artyom, panelists are asked to pitch their arguments as they would “talking to their kids, their mom or their lover.’’ On the other hand, overly calm discussion is not seen as a benefit. The presenter explains that his audience sitting at home at mid-day is in need of “an adrenaline shot,” and the normal penchant of Russian panelists to shout down one another in a free-for-all is not discouraged in the way it is on evening programming. The evening viewer is assumed to have come home from work and is seated in his armchair before the television, wants his nerves soothed more than excited.
All Russian political talk shows on the main channels are produced in the afternoon, Moscow time, and all feature on screen the caption “Live On Air.” However, where and when these shows are broadcast live versus rebroadcast from video tapes is another matter.
For example, the Rossiya 1/Vesti programs are broadcast live to the Russian Far East, where they appear at the end of prime-time evening broadcasts. Then they are re-broadcast at local evening prime time in each of the eight other time zones of the Russian Federation lying to the west, showing last in Moscow.
In this regard, two years ago when it launched “Time Will Tell,” Pervy Kanal took a second unparalleled risk by broadcasting live to Moscow in the afternoon. From a political standpoint, this was like a high-flying trapeze act without the benefit of a safety net.
In fact all of these programs are also video-taped, and all the major channels make the tapes available for internet viewing on their websites in full or shortened versions.
Similar Formats
Just as Russian television has often copied studio design and presentation formats from American television (I think in particular of the way the “Tonight Show” has been replicated on major Russian channels), so they copy from one another. In fact, if you turn on any of the political talk shows I cited above, you will find rather similar studios with live audiences. A military parade on Red Square. May 9, 2016 Moscow. (Photo from: http://en.kremlin.ru)
Indeed, at Pervy Kanal, the producers remark jokingly that when NTV decided to launch its own afternoon talk show, “The Meeting Place,” that network picked up not only the production format and studio design but also some of the production staff. The format of having male-female pairs of talk show hosts also has spread widely in the industry.
But there appears to be a significant difference between these shows on the degree to which they are “scripted” by management upstairs, the degree to which they are free discussion. Perhaps the most scripted is this season’s new entry at Rossiya 1, “Sixty Minutes,” in which presenters Yevgeni Popov and Olga Skabeyeva are reading off teleprompters and the audience applause is aggressively prompted. On the other hand, the lead presenter on Pervy Kanal’s “Time Will Tell,” Artyom Sheinin proudly says that he has no script handed to him, that what he says on air is what he himself prepared or is thinking at the time.
One ubiquitous fact is that the panelists are not scripted and if anyone is cut off in mid-sentence it is by other panelists vying for the microphone, not by the presenter keeping the political line of discourse in check. Except in the case of senior politicians, who are given the respect their rank demands, no panelist is safe from interruptions and the audience encourages a culture of gladiators in the arena, with applause punctuating the debates.
On NTV there is the additional expression of audience disapproval, but that is rare. The benefits of these ground rules go to the quick-witted as well as to the loudest voices, whatever their political complexion.
The culture of these talk shows is permeated by a newsroom mentality. Some of the presenters, especially on Rossiya 1/Vesti 24, come from television journalism and have gotten their appointments as a reward for successful work in the field, especially in hazardous areas. Such was the background of talk show host Yevgeni Popov, who for years reported from Ukraine, initially during the Orange Revolution days and later during the Maidan protests.
The content of each program on all channels is subject to change at the last minute as are the list of invited panelists in case of breaking news. This favors inviting panelists who are living in the Moscow area. They can be invited and disinvited at short notice. In fact, all the major political shows on the three channels I observed from inside use many of the same Russian and foreign panelists chosen from among political scientists at universities or think tanks, journalists and Duma or Federation Council members.
Western Voices
To be sure, not all panelists come down to the studio. A very few lucky experts are given air time from remote locations, their close-up image projected onto a wall-sized screen.
One such “regular” on the Rossiya 1/Vesti 24 channel is Dimitri Simes, president of The Center for the National Interest in Washington, D.C. These vignette appearances get special treatment, without any interruption from other panelists and only respectful questioning from the host.
Panelists in greatest demand can be seen leaving one show early so as to be able to get over to another studio on a different channel when there is the rotation of panelists between advertising breaks. None is in greater demand than the American Michael Bohm, who in the dark days of worsening relations with the West provided all channels with highly fluent statements in Russian of the latest policy position of the Washington Consensus, often accompanied by Russian folk expressions.
This has been especially appreciated by television producers representing the more hardline supporters of the Kremlin for whom Bohm is the kind of American the audience loves to hate, his every remark justifying demands for greater military expenditures by the Kremlin. Nonetheless, it remains true that through Bohm and a few other Westerners on these shows, the full blast of Western critiques of Kremlin policy gets prime broadcasting time in Russia.
The senior politicians brought in as panelists come from all the Duma parties, not just the ruling United Russia. In the past half year, I noted in particular the frequent presence of the leader of the nationalist LDPR party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, while Gennady Zyuganov of the Communists or Sergey Mironov, leader of Just Russia, have been rare birds.
On the other hand, there have been frequent appearances by the Liberals of the Yabloko party, which never made it past 1 percent of votes cast in the latest parliamentary elections, not to mention the minimum 5 percent threshold for Duma representation.
The talk show programs are prepared with great professionalism. Behind each there is extensive research to find appropriate archival and/or latest visuals. The administrative chores involved in arranging logistics for the panelists chosen are also considerable. The team members I have encountered were uniformly dedicated, working crazy hours to get their job done.
Encouraging Strong Opinions
I also noted a peculiar complicity between the staff “handlers” and us panelists. Clearly, production staff is rewarded for finding “fresh blood” panelists who play out well, and they make sure that their dogs in the race are well tended with coffee, tea, and, if needed, a shot of brandy during breaks to keep their spirits high.
On the Rossiya 1/Vesti 24 talk shows presenters and the panelists all are wired with headset microphones. However, on both Pervy Kanal and NTV, only the presenters are wired, while panelists are seated next to production assistants holding microphones, which they make available upon request. Indeed, the assistants act as coaches to newcomers like myself, whom they urge to speak louder, speak faster, etc. to get the greatest debate effect out of us.
In conclusion, my firsthand experience with the Russian political talk show phenomenon left me with no doubt that this is bona fide journalism serving the public interest, exposing the broad Russian television audience, from everyone’s parents and grandparents to business leaders and university dons, to a great many different competing and well-presented views on the major issues of the day, both domestic and international.
This reality is sharply at variance with what U.S. and Western European mainstream media would have us believe about Putin’s Russia.
Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd. His most recent book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015. | 1real |
Icelandic voters give center-left opposition narrow win in parliament | (Reuters) - Icelanders voted in favor of a left-leaning four-party coalition in parliamentary elections, a final vote count showed Sunday, although it remained unclear who would get a mandate to form the next government. The left-leaning coalition of the Left-Green Movement, the Social Democrats, the Progressive Party and the Pirate Party won 32 seats in the 63-member parliament, the narrowest possible majority, polls published by state broadcaster RUV showed. The Independence Party, led by incumbent Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson, remained the biggest party with 25 percent of the votes but suffered a setback. It was clear that the vote meant the ousting of his center-right government after a scandal involving the prime minister s father. President Gudni Johannesson has yet to hand the mandate to the party that will be tasked with forming the next government. The president normally gives the mandate to the head of the biggest party. | 0fake |
U.S., Afghan forces strike opium factories to curb Taliban funds | KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. and Afghan forces have launched joint attacks on Taliban opium factories to try to curb the insurgent group s economic lifeline, officials from both countries said on Monday. U.S. Army General John Nicholson showed videos at a press conference of targeted aerial strikes against what he described as Taliban drug factories. Last night we conducted strikes in northern Helmand to hit the Taliban where it hurts, in their narcotics financing, said Nicholson, flanked by Afghan Army Lieutenant General Mohammad Sharif Yaftali. The southern province of Helmand suffers heavy fighting and is the single-largest producer of opium. Opium production in Afghanistan reached record highs this year, up 87 percent on last year, the United Nations said last week. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said output of opium made from poppy seeds in Afghanistan, the world s main source of heroin, stands at around 9,000 metric tons this year. UNODC has warned in the past that Kabul s weakening grip on security was contributing to a collapse in eradication efforts. Nearly half of Afghan opium is processed, or refined into morphine or heroin, before it is trafficked out of the country, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. We re determined to tackle criminal economy and narcotics trafficking with full force, said Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Twitter. Nicholson said the attacks were part of U.S. President Donald Trump s new policy toward Afghanistan as he boosts troop numbers. The four-star general showed one video of an F-22 fighter jet dropping 250-pound bombs on two buildings, emphasizing that a nearby third building was left unscathed. U.S. troops have long been accused of causing unnecessary collateral damage and civilian deaths. The United States says it takes every precaution to avoid civilian casualties. The United Nations said at least 10 civilians may have been killed by a strike in Kunduz earlier this month, contradicting a U.S. investigation that found no civilian deaths. | 0fake |
Review: ‘Groundhog Day,’ All Over Again, Now With Song and Dance - The New York Times | LONDON — Who knew that déjà vu could smell this fresh all over again? On paper, the happy new musical “Groundhog Day,” which opened on Tuesday night at the Old Vic Theater here, seemed like one of those shows that elicit instant groans of “been there, done that” among jaded theatergoers. For starters, “Groundhog Day” is based on a film about someone (a jaded someone, just like you, groaners of little faith) becoming caught in time and being forced to relive the same day over and over and over again. Which feels like dangerous ground for a musical that is the latest in a long, sporadically successful line of musicals based on popular movies that hardly seemed to require song sheets to fulfill their inner nature. In other words, would audiences for “Groundhog Day” feel they were reliving their traumatic memories of recent clunkers like “Rocky,” based on Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 flick about an underdog boxer, or “Ghost,” a reworking of the 1990 flick about an underdog dead man? More scary portents: “Groundhog Day” stars Andy Karl (who played the title role in the musical “Rocky”) and is directed by Matthew Warchus (who did the same, er, honors, on “Ghost”). Yet much in the manner of its improbable romantic “Twilight Zone” style plot, “Groundhog Day” seems guaranteed to have the skeptics waving (and using) white handkerchiefs long before its final curtain, while transforming Mr. Karl into the musical star he has long deserved to be. Featuring a creative team that includes the book writer Danny Rubin (who wrote the “Groundhog Day” screenplay with Harold Ramis) and the songwriter Tim Minchin (the fabulous “Matilda the Musical”) this bright whirligig of a show is a shrewd juggler of contradictions. It is cool (as in hip) and warm (as in cuddly) it is spiky and sentimental. And it transforms its perceived weaknesses into strengths in ways that should disarm even veteran . You know that whole element of the plot, wherein everything is repeated ad infinitum? Isn’t that what often drives you crazy about musicals, having to listen to the same damn melodies and watch the same dance steps over and over? Well, Mr. Warchus and company know all about those fears and make cunningly sadistic use of them. As we watch our hero, the professionally snarky weather reporter Phil Connors (Mr. Karl) having to the same events, the claustrophobia is heightened by his being surrounded by a chorus forever moving and musicalizing in the same monotonously, relentlessly peppy styles. “Aargh!” you think. “Somebody please get me out of this musical, stat!” Except only a part of you feels that way, because Mr. Karl is doing the suffering for you, in a manner that makes you both root for his deliverance and hope he’s stuck forever in purgatory (partly because he deserves to be, but partly because he’s so entertaining in limbo). About Phil’s special quandary: It’s the same as it was in the 1993 movie, one of the most unlikely to become a popular hit, which was directed by Mr. Ramis and starred Bill Murray as Phil. As in the film, Phil, a weatherman, is sent on assignment to Punxsutawney, Pa. on Feb. 2 to witness the annual appearance of the town’s resident groundhog. Phil feels nothing but contempt for the ritual, the town and everyone who celebrates it. He is to Groundhog Day what Scrooge is to Christmas but with a greater appetite for partying. Anyway, after a of reliving and rearranging that single day, and behaving as badly (and as hilariously) as eternity allows, Phil starts to wax philosophical and stop and smell the snowflakes and — could it be? — even be ready to take a chance on love with one Rita Hansen (Carlyss Peer in the part created by Andie MacDowell) the producer he initially dismissed as boring. “Aargh!” you think. “Somebody please get me out of this Hallmark card!” But for the most part, this production manages to balance the sweet and the sour to charming, effect, starting with Rob Howell’s slightly askew Americana set and costumes. As he demonstrated in his score (with Dennis Kelly) for “Matilda,” Mr. Minchin is an inspired mixmaster of darkness and brightness. Even this show’s early numbers, extolling the homespun virtues of life with harmonic “aahs” and folksy bluegrass chords, have a depressive undertow. And when Mr. Minchin feels like signaling angst, he brings on the electric guitars and vocals for Mr. Karl that bring to mind Michael Stipe losing his religion. Mr. Karl imbues Phil with all shades of sarcasm and kindness and what falls in between with equal conviction. If in “Rocky,” he seemed to be channeling Sylvester Stallone (and what choice did he have?) here he is by no means merely imitating Mr. Murray, which would have been a disaster. Instead, he’s translating the essence of Mr. Murray’s lazy dryness into the energy of musicals. He makes that transition so joyously and persuasively I did wonder what the show might be like without Mr. Karl. His supporting cast is all more than adequate, and they all sound convincingly American. But they lack the sort of vibrant individuality that Mr. Karl could use to make sparks with. This includes the attractive, willfully bland Ms. Peer as the producer, who essentially functions as straight woman to Mr. Karl’s antic joker. Her character, Rita, has been given some emotionally expansive solos (and duets) that hint at a quirkier soul within, and I kept thinking about what a more idiosyncratic actress could have done with the part. (Remember what Annaleigh Ashford made of the patient factory girl in “Kinky Boots”?) More could be made, too, of the solos of other Punxsutawney citizens, who express their own fears of treadmill lives. As it is, their numbers seem to float in at random (though I loved Phil’s trio with two moronic barflies). Peter Darling’s choreography still feels oddly unfinished, and the big sequence in the second act could definitely use sharpening and clarification. But even given those caveats, I grinned pretty much all the way through “Groundhog Day,” unexpectedly happy to be stuck with Phil in Punxsutawney (and please never make me spell that again). | 0fake |
FAKE NEWS: Media Lying to Public on ICE Arrests | Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are continuing to defend themselves against the national media which continues to mischaracterize the role and intent of the of criminal aliens. [Media reports have called the Operation Cross Check arrests of criminal aliens a effort by ICE officials and the Trump Administration, despite the fact that this operation has been carried out in the past. More than 2, 000 criminal aliens were rounded up in March 2015, Breitbart Texas reported at the time. The nearly 700 arrests in last week’s operation pales in comparison, yet the mainstream media appears to have lost total perspective in its attacks on the men and women tasked to protect our nation from these criminals. When ICE agents arrested Daniel Ramirez Medina, a Mexican national, media outlets quickly jumped on his DACA status granted by the Obama Administration. Outlets failed to report Medina was targeted because of his alleged “gang member” status, Breitbart Texas reported. “Daniel must be given his freedom, now,” said United We Dream Advocacy Director Greisa Martinez in the Washington Times. “Under Trump’s America, no one is safe. Donald Trump and Republicans must say in no uncertain terms that DACA recipients are safe. ” Being a gang member is a activity. ICE officials tweeted a reference to an April 2012 Operation Cross Check where more than 3, 100 criminal aliens were arrested. “As part of U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ongoing commitment to prioritizing the removal of criminal aliens and egregious immigration law violators, the agency announced today the results of a national ‘Cross Check’ enforcement led to the arrest of more than 3, 100 convicted criminal aliens, immigration fugitives and immigration violators,” ICE officials wrote in a press 2012 press release. #TBT April 2012: ICE arrests more than 3, 100 convicted criminal aliens immigration fugitives in nationwide ophttps: . pic. twitter. — ICE (@ICEgov) February 16, 2017, ICE immigration officers carried out a routine, targeted operation aimed at taking dangerous criminal aliens off the streets. The operation resulted in the arrest of nearly 700 criminal aliens. “ICE conducts these kind of targeted enforcement operations regularly and has for many years,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said in a written statement obtained by Breitbart Texas. “The focus of these enforcement operations is consistent with the routine, targeted arrests carried out by ICE’s Fugitive Operations teams on a daily basis. ” This operation was planned well in advance of the Trump Administration taking office. It is a regularly scheduled targeted operation. Despite this, media outlets have questioned the intent of the operation and even gone as far as calling it retaliation for immigration protests. U. S. Representative Joaquin Castro ( ) questioned ICE’s intent stating, “I am asking ICE to clarify whether these individuals are in fact dangerous, violent threats to our communities, and not people who are here peacefully raising families and contributing to our state. I will continue to monitor this situation. ” The Austin added fuel to the fires of speculation when it reported a fake news Facebook post by Austin City Councilman Greg Casar. “I believe ICE is out in public arresting people in order to retaliate against our community for standing up for our values against people like Abbott and Trump,” Councilman Casar posted on Facebook. “Trump and his allies will do everything they can to divide Americans, invoke fear in vulnerable neighborhoods, and demonize an entire community of people. ” ICE firmly responded to these types of statements by officials and media, calling them “false, Dangerous, and irresponsible. ” #TBT April 2012: ICE arrests more than 3, 100 convicted criminal aliens immigration fugitives in nationwide ophttps: . pic. twitter. — ICE (@ICEgov) February 16, 2017, The agency following that up with two additional tweets saying, “These reports create mass panic and put communities and law enforcement personnel in unnecessary danger,” and “Any groups falsely reporting such activities are doing a disservice to those they claim to support. ” These reports create mass panic and put communities and law enforcement personnel in unnecessary danger. — ICE (@ICEgov) February 16, 2017, Any groups falsely reporting such activities are doing a disservice to those they claim to support. — ICE (@ICEgov) February 16, 2017, 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. | 0fake |
Bill Maher In Hot Water Over Sick Sex Joke About Ivanka Trump [Video] | Bill Maher has been criticized for making an incest joke about Ivanka Trump and her father on his show.While on his HBO program Real Time with New York magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman on Friday night, the 61-year-old made the incest joke about first daughter Ivanka Trump s relationship with her father President Donald Trump.He said: What do you make of Ivanka and her efforts to sort of humanize her father? We see all this misogyny at Fox News, we see it in Donald Trump himself. A lot of us thought, Ivanka is gonna be our saving grace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmOGuHzXu9gStephen Colbert is in hot water with the FCC over his disgusting rant on CBS in which he joked about President Trump performing a sex act on Vladimir Putin:COLBERT LANGUAGE WARNING! This late night host is one angry dude! He does everything he can to try and rip on President Trump but it comes off as cold and just mean spirited.The disgusting rant at the end of his monologue has backfired on him .his homophobic slur was in poor taste and very offensive to just about everyone within earshot. You can even tell the audience was shocked when he said it. If this was said about anyone else, Colbert would be in hot water but this is against Trump so it s ok. Isn t that pitiful How low can Colbert go? Not much lower Stephen Colbert unleashed a torrent of anti-Trump jokes on his show Monday night, ending with a c*ck-in-Trump s-mouth jab. The 12-minute tirade was dedicated to the 100-day mark in Trump s presidency, and Colbert went after Trump with a vengeance. The jokes included, The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin s c*ck holster. Go to the 11:13 mark for the rant language warning:A new low for these political satirists or just another day at the office?READ MORE: TMZ | 1real |
Guess how leftists, millennials and ‘Black Lives Matter’ morons decided to celebrate the 4th of July? | Guess how leftists, millennials and Black Lives Matter morons decided to celebrate the 4th of July? Do they even know our history? Do they care? The video below is one of the best ever from Paul Joseph Watson 2016: LANGUAGE ALERT!Paul Joseph Watson does a great job of explaining why America is great and how wrong so many leftists are on our history. From racism to genocide, Watson walks us through the misconceptions about America. Great stuff! You re carrying Mexican flags while chanting, Trump is not my President. You know that this is America right? ***Language warning***It s funny that a Brit can know more about how great America is than any American citizen | 1real |
WOW! HILLARY PRETENDED To Be Relaxing…But She’s Been Scheming To Steal Presidency From Trump Since Morning After Election | Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton may have publicly conceded the presidency to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump the morning after the November 8 election but behind the scenes she was scheming with an army of operatives to find ways to steal the presidency from Trump.Hillary Supporter Bumps Into the Clintons Walking in the Woods https://t.co/DY8gVMs5jQ #westchesterCounty pic.twitter.com/OyU5cL79Bn Westchester Roundup (@WestchesterRU) November 16, 2016I am thankful for Hillary sightings!! At a grocery store in Chappaqua pic.twitter.com/FkrBWxROnN All Things Hillary (@AllThingsHill) November 24, 2016Clinton campaign lawyer Marc E. Elias gave the scheme away in an article published Saturday morning at Medium announcing Clinton would join the recount effort in Wisconsin by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and that Clinton would join Stein should she also file for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.Elias wrote that starting the day after the election the Clinton campaign worked to find ways to reverse Trump s election.Those efforts continue through the present, Elias wrote, and now include joining the recount efforts by Stein.Elias statement about Clinton s behind the scenes scheming excerpted from Medium:https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/802327573690744832 Gateway Pundit | 1real |
ALERT: FLOOD OF CUBANS Breeze Across Texas Border As Tensions Rise | STOP the invasion of Cubans! The invasion of Central Americans continues but now we have the addition of Cubans. We cannot afford to support these people! IT S A FREE FOR ALL:They walk out to a Laredo street and are greeted by volunteers from Cubanos en Libertad, or Cubans in Freedom, a nonprofit. The volunteers help them arrange travel to their U.S. destination often Miami and start applying for work permits and such federal benefits as food stamps and Medicaid, available by law to Cubans immediately after their arrival. Cuban immigrants are crossing from Mexico into Texas by the hundreds each day. Some in Laredo question why Cubans get special treatment denied to Mexican and Central American migrants.LAREDO A fast-rising influx of Cubans are crossing the border into Texas by the hundreds each day, approved to enter the United States in a matter of hours.They walk out to a Laredo street and are greeted by volunteers from Cubanos en Libertad, or Cubans in Freedom, a nonprofit. The volunteers help them arrange travel to their U.S. destination often Miami and start applying for work permits and such federal benefits as food stamps and Medicaid, available by law to Cubans immediately after their arrival. Right now I feel like the freest Cuban in the whole world, said Rodny N poles, 39, a coach of the Cuban national women s water polo team who crossed into Laredo this week.Cubans wait on the steps of Cubanos en Libertad for family members to pass through the port of entry in Laredo on Tuesday. More Cubans are entering the U.S. through Texas under a law passed in 1966, fueling tensions at the border, where comparable Mexican and Central American immigrants are detained and sent to immigration court. (Ilana Panich-Linsman/The New York Times) The friendly reception given the Cubans, an artifact of hostile relations with the Castro government, is a stark contrast with the treatment of Central American families fleeing violence in their countries. And it is creating tensions in this predominantly Mexican-American city, where residents saw how Central American migrants, who came in an influx in 2014, were detained by the Border Patrol and ordered to appear in immigration courts. The people here are starting to feel resentment, said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo. They are asking, is it fair that the Cubans get to stay and the Central Americans are being deported? Town officials have warned Cubans not to loiter in the streets. Local bus companies complain that Cubans are chartering special vans to travel. A group of veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq held two protests by the border bridge in recent weeks, saying the federal government was spending money on Cubans when it was not meeting the needs of people here. We make everyone from Central America wait in line, while the Cubans walk in even though they are not refugees, said Gabriel Lopez, a Mexican-American Navy veteran who is president of the group of veterans. We are saying, don t open the borders to Cubans and give them instant benefits while we have American veterans living on the streets. In coming weeks the number of Cubans is expected to spike, as more than 5,000 who have been stalled in Costa Rica since late last year will leave there on regular plane flights agreed to by governments in Central America and Mexico. Already about 12,100 Cubans entered through Laredo and other Texas border stations in the last three months of 2015, according to official figures. Border officials say as many as 48,000 Cubans could cross here this year, more than all those who came in the last two years combined.Milton Borges Gonzalez, a Cuban currently living in Houston, greets his pregnant wife, Lisbeth Torres, who is holding a Cuban passport, after waiting for her all day for her to get through the port of entry in Laredo on Tuesday. More Cubans are entering the country under a 1966 law that is an artifact of hostile relations with the Castro government. It is creating a disparity at the border where Central Americans are detained and sent to immigration court.Under the Cuban Adjustment Act, a law Congress passed in 1966, any Cuban who sets foot on U.S. soil is given permission to enter. Cubans are also eligible for federal welfare benefits, including financial assistance for nine months under separate polices from the 1980s. After a year, they can apply for permanent residency, a gateway to citizenship.READ MORE: THE STATESMAN | 1real |
Senate investigations panel to probe Mylan's EpiPen pricing | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations will probe Mylan Pharmaceuticals’ pricing of the allergy auto-injector EpiPen, according to a press release issued on Wednesday. The release described the probe as a “preliminary inquiry.” Mylan has been criticized - including by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton - for sharply raising the price of EpiPens, which are carried by people with life-threatening allergies. Mylan raised the price from about $100 in 2008 to about $600 currently. It has offered some discounts but this has done little to allay concerns. “Our review of this matter will be robust, thorough, and bipartisan. Parents and school districts in Ohio, Missouri and across the country need affordable access to this life-saving drug, and we share their concern over Mylan’s sustained price increases,” Senators Rob Portman, the Republican chair of the subcommittee, and Claire McCaskill, the top Democrat, said in a statement. Mylan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | 0fake |
U.S. health official: Widespread Zika vaccine not likely to be available for years | (Reuters) - U.S. health officials said on Monday that a widespread vaccine to combat the Zika virus will likely not be available for years. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters during a briefing at the White House that initial steps are under way but health officials believe it is “unlikely to have vaccine that’s widely available for a few years.” | 0fake |
OOPS! LIST OF TOP 10 CORPORATE TAX DODGERS Are All Hillary Donors…Compliments Of Bernie Sanders | The hypocrisy of our media is astounding! What about Hillary s major corporate donors like GE for example, that have been working the loopholes in our tax system for decades? Does anyone care that Hillary has been taking money from some of America s biggest corporate tax dodgers for several years? Bernie Sanders recently outed the 10 biggest multinational corporations that paid no federal taxes for at least one year between 2008 and 2012. Sanders has made reining in corporate tax dodgers a key point of his presidential platform. In a recent press release, the Sanders campaign laid out the Vermont senator s plans to force multinational corporations to pay their fair share in taxes:As it turns out, all ten of those same companies are some of Hillary Clinton s biggest donors, whether to her campaign or to her family foundation.1. GENERAL ELECTRIC According to data from the nonpartisan group Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), GE posted $33.9 billion in U.S. profits, yet somehow got $2.9 billion in refunds in that same time period. According to the book Clinton Cash, then-Secretary of State Clinton lobbied the Algerian government for a GE power plant contract. After Algeria awarded the contract to GE, Jeffrey Immelt CEO of GE gave a donation to the Clinton Foundation. Sanders also pointed out that while Immelt sat on the board of the New York Federal Reserve, the Fed gave GE $16 billion in financial assistance.2. BOEING Boeing is one of the nation s biggest corporate tax dodgers, making over $20 billion in profits between 2008 and 2012 and paying an overall income tax rate of negative one percent during those years. Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer noted that after Secretary Clinton successfully lobbied the Russian government to enter into a $3.7 billion contract to buy Boeing s aircraft, the aerospace company gave the Clinton Foundation a hefty donation of $900,000.3. VERIZON In the four years between 2008 and 2012, Verizon pocketed over $30 billion in profits and paid a tax rate of -1.8 percent, according to CTJ. The Sanders campaign s research claims that in 2012 alone, Verizon would have paid $630 million in income taxes had they been unable to stash U.S. profits in offshore tax havens.Verizon has given between $118,000 and $300,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent years. And as Zaid Jilani reported in Alternet last year, Hillary Clinton is the favored candidate of numerous Verizon executives, many of whom have given the maximum donation to her 2016 effort:Verizon vice-presidents Lydia Pulley, Kathleen Grillo, and Donna Epps each gave $2,700 to Hillary for America. Verizon senior vice-president Thomas Edwards and vice-president Chris Debosier pitched in $1,000. Leecia Eve, a former Hillary staffer who today is a lobbyist for Verizon gave $2,700. Another Verizon lobbyist, David Lamendola, gave Hillary $1,000.To contrast, Sanders appeared at a rally for striking Verizon workers in New York City last year, demanding the company meet the workers demands and admonishing its executives for the company s greedy practices.4. BANK OF AMERICA In 2010, Bank of America got a whopping $1.9 billion refund from the IRS despite making $4.4 billion in profit. And the Institute for Policy Studies reported that Bank of America has over 300 foreign subsidiaries in countries and territories universally known as tax havens, like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.In his recent groundbreaking report for The Intercept, Jilani reported that Bank of America paid Hillary Clinton $225,000 in speaking fees after her tenure as Secretary of State.5. CITIGROUP Citigroup was the largest recipient of federal bailout money, getting an astonishing $2.5 trillion after the financial crisis even though they played a major role in the financial meltdown. Citi also paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2010 despite making profits in excess of $4 billion. Had the bank been unable to utilize offshore tax havens, it would have paid $11.5 billion in federal taxes in 2012.According to campaign finance database OpenSecrets.org, Citigroup is Hillary Clinton s top donor, having given over $824,000 in campaign contributions throughout her political career.6. PFIZER The Connecticut-based pharmaceutical giant is notorious for its tax avoidance strategies, paying $0 in federal income tax between 2010 and 2012 and getting a $2.2 billion tax refund despite posting $43 billion in global profits.Pfizer executives gave nearly $40,000 to Clinton s presidential campaign between April and September 2015. And Pfizer itself has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to donor records obtained by the Washington Times.7. FEDEX In 2011, FedEx made $2.7 billion in profit, yet they were given a $135 million tax refund from the IRS that same year. FedEx also receives $1 billion a year in corporate welfare from the U.S. Post Office its chief competitor to use its aircraft to transport U.S. mail.FedEx has given anywhere between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The company was also one of four corporations to bundle a $2.5 million donation to Clinton s new diplomacy center (Boeing was another).8. HONEYWELL Despite making over $3 billion in combined profits between 2009 and 2010, Honeywell paid $0 in federal income taxes and got roughly $510 million in refunds. Honeywell CEO David Cote was also one of the loudest voices on the Fix The Debt campaign, calling for the Social Security and Medicare age to be raised to 70.Honeywell, a prominent weapons manufacturer, also gave $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. At the same time, Honeywell and others had their weapons shipped to countries blasted by international watchdogs for their deplorable records on human rights.9. MERCK Merck is one of the nation s largest pharmaceutical companies and biggest tax dodgers in 2009, Merck pocketed $5.7 billion in profits, yet paid $0 in federal taxes. Merck successfully got out of paying $18.69 billion in federal taxes in 2012 by stashing $53.4 billion of its U.S. profits in overseas tax havens.The Center for Responsive Politics reports that Merck donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation after becoming a member of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006. It also spent millions on lobbying the U.S. State Department during Hillary Clinton s tenure as Secretary of State.10. CORNING CTJ reports that between 2008 and 2012, Corning made over $3.4 billion in profits and got a $10 million tax refund, paying a 0.1 percent federal tax rate. The Sanders campaign pointed out that Corning CEO Wendell Weeks has called for the retirement age to be raised to 70, while he himself has a $22.8 million retirement account.While Clinton headed up the State Department, Corning lobbied heavily for multiple policies on which it stood to reap financial gains, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Clinton, in turn, lobbied China to lower tariffs on the type of goods manufactured by Corning. The company has also donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation and paid the former Secretary of State $225,000 in speaking fees after she announced her presidential campaign. Via: U.S.Uncut | 1real |
WIKILEAKS EMAIL: CLINTON FAN BOY Says He “Knows” Trump-Hater Megyn Kelly…Offers To Arrange Softball Interview For Hillary | For all the hate Democrats openly express for FOX News, it s good to know that Hillary surrogates like Lanny Davis can rely on good Trump-hater Megyn Kelly to prop up Crooked Hillary The latest Wikileaks dump includes an email from Lanny Davis tries to convince Catholic hater Jennifer Palmeiri that it would be a good idea for Megyn Kelly to interview Hillary, giving her a chance to explain the mistake she made withe her private email server. He even offers to arrange a friendly interview for Hillary with Megyn. Here is the text from the email:Dear Jen,I know what I m about to propose is very risky and will be instinctively viewed negatively on the first reaction. But because of the high advantages that I see, perfectly aware of the risks, I think this proposal should be considered.I propose that the Secretary be on the Megyn Kelly File show for at least 30 minutes. I believe I can reduce the risks, since I know Megyn and Roger Ailes very well, by ensuring that the Secretary will have an opportunity to answer tough questions on emails and other issues without interruption. In fact, I believe it is in the interest of Secretary Clinton as well as Fox for the questions to be tough, something we should not fear as long as she has an opportunity to answer. I know she will do well with adequate preparation, and especially after yesterday s excellent statement taking full responsibility for mixing personal an official business on a single email device.I still believe the issue of the wiping out of the private server still needs to be dealt with e.g., simply stating that was done primarily to protect personal privacy on personal emails but she made the mistake of mixing personal with official on the server because she was using a single device, and she should have been more transparent shortly after she left office. This interview has the potential to be a ratings and media bonanza. I have confidence she would hit a political home run and have a massive audience to deliver her message without a filter. Of course there is a risk that Megan will try to show how tough she can be, even tougher than on Trump. I am assuming the worst case on that risk. But if we have a guarantee, which I believe We will get, that she will have an uninterrupted chance to respond to every question, and we have time to prepare, I think this could be a major plus and even a game changer in the various negative narratives about the Secretary being largely inaccessible and sometimes testy with the media.Here is a screen shot of the original email: | 1real |
VIDEO: Police Shootout Kills Murder Suspect in Chicago ’War Zone’ - Breitbart | During a recent ABC News interview, President Donald Trump described Chicago as a “war zone” and warned that Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) and city officials must stop the “carnage” or get out of the way so the feds can do it. [Democrats like Representative Luis Gutierrez ( ) mocked Trump’s assessment, but a video published by the Independent Police Review Authority shows that the moniker “war zone” is àpropos. The video is a compilation of dash and body cam videos that were made while officers pursued and ultimately “shot and killed Richard Grimes, who was suspected of shooting a pregnant woman in the abdomen in the 4600 block of West Adams. ” The caption from the video sets the scene: The incident started about 11:30 p. m. on Nov. 27, [2016] as officers responded to a call of the domestic battery. After the initial shooting, Grimes left the scene but ran into officers in the first block of North Kenton, where he fired a handgun at the officers before running away, police said at the time. The officers chased Grimes and a perimeter of the area was established. Dashboard camera video appears to show Grimes shooting at one officer as he exited his police car. The officer immediately dropped to the ground as others arrived and looked to be checking to see if he was shot. Grimes was spotted again in a gangway in the 4500 block of West Washington, where he again shot at the officers, authorities said. The officers returned fire, striking him. Dozens of gunshots can be heard in the videos, with police dispatchers warning officers to “Watch the crossfire. ” A short time later, an officer yells “He’s down! He’s down! He’s down!” WARNING — SITUATIONS, President Trump’s ABC News interview aired on January 25, and the Wall Street Journal quoted Trump comparing Chicago to a “war zone. ” In fact, the president suggested Chicago is worse that some of the areas where our troops are currently deployed, saying, “Afghanistan is not like what’s happening in Chicago. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
The Hodges & Hagmann Hour- America’s Last Chance to Survive | The Hodges & Hagmann Hour- America’s Last Chance to Survive Doug Hagmann
The recent show in which Doug Hagmann and myself discussed all election scenarios was one of the liveliest hours in the history of The Common Sense Show.
The topic centered around the Constitutional crisis that Clinton is creating by refusing to withdraw from the race. Who will ultimately decide the race. Will it be George Soros’ voting machines? Will it be Obama? Will it be the Supreme Court? Most importantly, we discussed the real possibility of martial law and war. Please note, there was insider testimony from a Postal worker from the Phoenix area who discusses ballot stuffing in Arizona.
The details are included in the following video. | 1real |
South Africa's opposition asks court to force disclosure of Zuma's legal costs | JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s main opposition party said on Sunday it had asked the High Court to force President Jacob Zuma to disclose how much the state has spent on legal fees to fight corruption allegations against him. Democratic Alliance (DA) Federal Council Chairperson James Selfe said in a statement the opposition party had asked the court to direct the President to write to parliament within five days confirming the total amount spent. The DA walked out of a parliamentary session addressed by Zuma on Nov. 2 in protest over the potential cost to the public purse of his legal fees. Zuma had failed to answer a question about how much had been spent since May 1, 2009 to defend 783 corruption charges against him that were dropped by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) before he ran for the presidency. By avoiding the question, the DA believes that both the President, and the Deputy Speaker, Lechesa Tsenoli, presiding at the time who allowed President Zuma to avoid the question, acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally, Selfe said. Given that the taxpayer has most likely footed the bill for the President s legal costs, the full amount spent should be revealed, in the public interest. South Africa s High Court reinstated the 783 charges last year and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in October, rejecting an appeal by Zuma. The 75-year-old president is still trying to prevent the NPA from filing the charges. | 0fake |
Nigel Farage held at Heathrow on return from Trump visit due to ‘mysterious brown substance’ on nose | Monday 14 November 2016 by Benedict Farkerhausen Nigel Farage held at Heathrow on return from Trump visit due to ‘mysterious brown substance’ on nose
Nigel Farage has spent the day in the Heathrow Airport holding cells as officials quiz him on a mysterious, smelly brown substance found on his nose.
The UKIP interim leader had flown back into the country after spending much of the weekend cosying up to fellow man of the people, President-elect Donald Trump, in a Manhattan penthouse apartment painted gold.
Simon Williams, Home Office spokesman, said, “Our sniffer dogs are trained to smell even the tiniest remnants of illicit substances on clothing and suitcases.
“However, they were not needed this time as fellow passengers and staff were all able to notice this foul stench wafting through the cabin since the flight took off in New York.
“On inspection, Mr Farage’s nose was found to be thickly cased in a brown substance, which we are treating as a biological hazard.
Further traces were found on his tongue, and we’ve sent it off for further testing.”
A UKIP spokesman said, “In the human centipede that is diplomatic relations with the US, Nigel has valiantly shown his willingness to get on all fours and bury his face deep inside Mr Trump’s rectum for the good of Queen and country.
“The country needs the intimate knowledge Nigel possesses of this man, and we await a call from Number 10 wanting his expertise. Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 1real |
VIDEO: Top 10 Most Embarrassing Presidential Family Members | 21st Century Wire says These family members made the president s life miserable, and a few just might continue for years to come Three members of our Top 10 actually managed to get stage time for the balloon drop at the closing of this week s Democratic National Convention.Notably, #3 on our list, Roger Headache Clinton moshed to the DNC s new pop anthem Stronger Together but it appears this has already been cut out of most mainstream video footage.As #8 on our list, Jeb would say, Please clap Not to be outdone: BROTHERLY LOVE: Hillary Clinton s brother, Hugh Rodham (center), seen lurking about the convention stage. THE BROTHERS RODHAM: Tony (left) and Hugh Rodham make #6 on our list of most embarrassing presidential family members as brothers-in-law of ex-President Bill Clinton.Certainly, these men may have just edged Billy Carter right off all master lists.WATCH THIS VIDEO AND MORE HEREREAD MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 1real |
Mattis on Tillerson departure: 'There's nothing to it' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis dismissed reports on Thursday that President Donald Trump was considering a plan to oust Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Asked what he made of Tillerson’s reported pending departure, Mattis said: “I make nothing of it. There’s nothing to it.” He was responding to a shouted question at the beginning of a meeting with the Libyan prime minister at the Pentagon. | 0fake |
WHOA! 3 WELL-KNOWN Democrats Go NUCLEAR On Hillary Clinton And Her Supporters [VIDEO] | Wow! Thrill up his leg for Obama, Chris Matthews does a stunning 180 on his support for Hillary and boldly calls out any person who is still planning to support her. He accuses her supporters of being too dainty to stand up for America. Watch him tell his liberal viewers that the only chance we have to turn this nation around is to vote for Trump. If you like the way things are the way they are headed in this country. If you d like to continue the destruction of our manufacturing base, and the jobs that went with it. If you like the uncontrollable immigration, if you like the string of stupid wars from Iraq to Libya to Syria. If you want to say yes to all of that, if you want to keep this all the way it is, fine then vote for Hillary Clinton. If you don t like the way things are headed, you ve got a chance to really shake the system at its roots. If you wake up on Election Day and it s the same as it is today, if it s the same 4 or 5 or 8 years from now, remember you had a chance really change it up but you were too dainty to do it. https://twitter.com/WDFx2EU7/status/793323182262358017Liberal champion of union members Michael Moore stunned liberals and union bosses everywhere when he came out with this passionate support for Donald Trump:***Language warning***Former Democratic pollster for Hillary makes a stunning admission to Fox News host Harris Faulkner that he won t support Hillary: I still share her worldview and am much closer to her approach to policies than I am to Donald Trump. That said, with America facing a potential constitutional crisis after her election, I am not able, under the circumstances we are now facing, to vote for Secretary Clinton. | 1real |
’Trans-Racial’ Rachel Dolezal Disinvited from MLK Event After Backlash - Breitbart | Rachel Dolezal, a former NAACP leader and professor who received national media attention after it was revealed that she was a white woman posing as has been disinvited from a speaking event at a Martin Luther King Jr. festival in North Carolina after a community backlash about her scheduled appearance. [Dolezal, who was formerly an adjunct professor at Eastern Washington University, was disinvited from her scheduled appearance at Cary, North Carolina’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Dreamfest in January. She was scheduled to participate in a panel discussion about racial identity and race relations with representatives from the NAACP. Dolezal is the former president of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP, a position that she was forced to resign from after she was accused of portraying herself as despite being born and raised by white parents. Doug McRainey, Cary’s director of parks, recreation, and cultural resources, claims that the decision to remove Dolezal from the program was made after backlash erupted in the community. “They made the decision about two weeks ago to remove her from the diversity summit, which we support,” McRainey said. “We had two focus group meetings with citizens and pastors, and I think the feeling was that her presence would take away from the goals of the Dreamfest. ” | 0fake |
At least three dead, scores rescued off Greek islands as arrivals rise | ATHENS (Reuters) - Three people drowned, at least six were missing and scores of others were rescued in three separate incidents of migrants trying to reach Greece across the Aegean Sea early Friday. Greek authorities recovered the body of a woman and searched for more people missing after a wooden boat carrying migrants sank off Kalymnos island, close to the Turkish coast. Fifteen people, 10 men, four women and a child, were rescued, and Greek coastguard vessels were searching for another six to eight people missing, a Greek coastguard official said. The Turkish coastguard said it recovered another two bodies on its side of the maritime border, and that the boat was carrying 27 people. Rescue operations in Turkish waters were ongoing, it said. The departure point of the boat and the nationality of those on board was not immediately clear. Separately, Greece rescued 127 migrants and refugees off Chios island on board two boats in distress earlier on Friday, the coastguard said. Arrivals of refugees and migrants to Greece, which shares a long sea border with Turkey, have increased in recent months, but not on the scale of mass arrivals in 2015. Nearly 148,100 refugees and migrants have crossed to Greece from Turkey this year - a fraction of the nearly 1 million arrivals in 2015 - but arrivals have increased in recent months. An average 214 people arrived daily in September, compared with 156 in August and 87 in July, Greece s migration minister, Yannis Mouzalas, said on Wednesday. About 60,000 refugees and migrants, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, have been stranded in Greece after border closures in the Balkans halted the onward journey many planned to take to central and western Europe. | 0fake |
6 Questions Ahead Of The Trump-Fox Split-Screen 'Squirmish' | Donald Trump said this week if he went out on Fifth Avenue in New York and shot someone, he probably wouldn't lose any votes.
He chose a pretty big someone — Fox News (whose offices are one block over from Fifth).
Tune in to Thursday night's Republican debate on Fox (9 p.m. EST) in Iowa, the last one before Monday's caucuses, and you'll notice one very big elephant not in the room — Trump. The man who helped Fox to a record 24 million viewers in the first primary debate of this campaign season won't be there.
He pulled out of the debate after getting into (what Trump-endorser Sarah Palin might call) a "squirmish" with Fox over its insistence on keeping anchor Megyn Kelly as a moderator. Trump thought Kelly treated him "unfairly" in the first debate. Fox didn't budge, and then mocked Trump, saying in a statement the network had "learned from a back channel" that Iran's and Russia's leaders were intent on treating Trump "unfairly" if he became president, and that Trump was planning on using "his Twitter followers to see if he should" go to Cabinet meetings.
That was enough for Trump. He bailed, but upped the showmanship. He's holding his own alternative event — at the same time and just 3 miles away — a benefit for veterans. So, while Fox News hosts its debate, every other cable news network — which won't have broadcasting rights to the debate — will probably be airing the Trump event.
No, this is not an "Ambien Dream," as Karl Zahn, a New Hampshire stand-up comic (and Trump supporter) wondered aloud to New Hampshire Public Radio's Josh Rogers this week of Trump's campaign.
This is very much real life. Here are some questions ahead of tonight's Split-Screen "Squirmish":
1. How much does Trump talk about the debate, Fox News and the GOP?
This isn't what the Republican Party wanted when it began sanctioning and limiting debates following the 2012 presidential election. And it certainly didn't expect a blow-up like this with Fox News, of all the networks. The Republican National Committee wanted to control the message and protect its candidates (and brand), but that hasn't worked out so well. Trump, as it turns out, has been a bigger force and commands a louder megaphone than anyone else in the party. Just how much will he use it Thursday night at his veterans event?
2. Who exactly will Trump's event benefit — and how much will be raised?
Charity events like this aren't exactly things that can be slapped together in 24 to 48 hours very efficiently. What will the energy be like? And who exactly will the money be going to? Trump has said maybe it should go to "Wounded Warriors" (the Wounded Warrior Project — the subject of controversy over its spending habits), but the press release just said a "Special Event to Benefit Veterans Organizations."
3. What about the debate — how much will Trump come up?
Trump won't even be at the debate, but he's already the dominant topic. There are two sides to this — the moderators and the candidates. You'd have to guess the moderators would have to say something about Trump's absence. (And no, there won't be an empty lectern, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said on CNN Wednesday).
And certainly a few candidates would like a free shot at Trump, especially his closest rival, Ted Cruz. The Texas senator even challenged Trump to a debate at a college in western Iowa on Saturday evening. And you know what they say about candidates who are asking for debates. (Hint: It comes as Cruz's poll numbers are slipping in the Hawkeye State.)
4. Who grabs the spotlight instead?
There are still lots of storylines to play out at this debate. Cruz will now be in the center of the stage, and that means he might be the one everyone winds up going after. In earlier debates, Cruz held back. In the last debate, he showed why he was a champion college debater. But who's his foil without Trump on the stage?
Others need to break through, too. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has quietly remained in third in Iowa and in the top three in New Hampshire, but his path is still hard to see. Rubio has had plenty of differences on these stages with other candidates (Cruz, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for example). Can he show why Democrats seem to fear a Rubio nomination more than any other candidate?
This has been an election dominated by the outsiders, thanks to more hard-line conservatives fed up with the system. In years past, the party has gotten that out of its system in Iowa and establishment picks have eventually emerged. This year is pointing in a different direction, but there are still others trying to be viable in that "establishment" lane:
— Ohio Gov. John Kasich is the latest to have some momentum in New Hampshire. This debate may be in Iowa, but it's being broadcast to a national audience. And you can bet Kasich's target will be some 1,300 miles east. On caucus night, he'll already be in the Granite State, not Iowa.
— Bush has been on his last legs for a while, but he was more relaxed in the last debate. He has certainly taken on Trump, and he'll likely do so again, even if Trump's not on the stage.
— Christie had a solid performance in his last debate. He'll probably mix it up again.
6. Is Trump really the "Teflon Don" of this race?
There's some risk for Trump in not going to the debate. He can look presumptuous, entitled and untouchable. Maybe he really is the "Teflon Don" of this race. It's certainly not what a typical front-runner would do. That candidate would play it safe, have a good debate and position himself to win the first two contests.
But that's not Trump's style. He doesn't just play it big. He plays it HUGE. And that's what he's doing again. So, will Iowans feel snubbed? Or more precisely, will Iowans who have been supporting him to big numbers suddenly start to peel off? That's pretty unlikely. He can argue he's not snubbing Iowa; he's snubbing Fox, which in and of itself is pretty remarkable considering the role Fox plays in Republican politics and conservative circles.
Some candidate might figure out a way to use Trump's absence as an opportunity. But the likelihood, again, is Trump will spin this into a win, as the other candidates are forced to participate in a game without the star player whom everyone came to see. | 0fake |
‘Kaep– Kaep– Kaepernick’…Pelosi Fumbles While Defending NFL Kneelers [Video] | A fumbling Nancy Pelosi tried to defend former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick s First Amendment right to kneel during the national anthem. She couldn t quite get the name out and stuttered to say it. If you ve been following pelosi, you know this is a common occurrence. Pelosi is a great example of why we desperately need term limits. During an appearance on Meet The Press, Pelosi sided with the former 49ers quarterback, and other players refusing to stand for our country It was a hot pink mess SHE JUST DOESN T GET IT OUT -OF-TOUCH LIBERALS HAVE NO CLUE! Colin Kaep Kaep Kaepernick, uh, doing what he did, says this flag enables me to do this. This national anthem enables me to do this, she said, initially struggling to speak. This is about freedom of expression, Pelosi said.NO NANCY, THIS IS ABOUT SHOWING RESPECT FOR WHAT OUR FLAG AND NATIONAL ANTHEM REPRESENT. THIS IS WHAT PRESIDENT TRUMP SAID: We re proud of our country. We respect our flag, Wouldn t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag to say, Get that son of a bitch off the field! He s fired. He s fired! MAGA! | 1real |
Zakharova: Kiev's talk of an armed OSCE mission is disinformation | October 27, 2016 - Fort Russ News - Novorossiya - translated by J. Arnoldski -
During a press conference in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told journalists that Ukraine is purposefully disinforming the public on the question of providing weapons to OSCE observers in Donbass.
“Kiev’s statement that some kind of agreement on deploying an OSCE police mission in Donbass has been achieved does not match reality. The mission will have a purely civil character,” Zakharova explained.
According to her, Russia supported the possibility of providing observers with service weapons during discussions , but the issue did not go forward due to a lack of consensus.
Zakharova added that the deployment of a police mission is possible only on the contact line.
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| 1real |
NOT KIDDING: Colleges Give Students “Safe Spaces” To Cry Over Trump Win…Threaten Students Over Pro-Trump “Chalkings” | Students expressed their “fear” over a Trump presidency in messages to each other that were being shared on Twitter today: “Literally scared for their lives” is the new “literally Hitler”. #NotMyPresident pic.twitter.com/8cKfQdF2Ce
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 9, 2016
And finally, this ridiculous and totally biased email was sent from University of Michigan President to the students offering them assistance to help them through the results of our Presidential election last night. The President wants to ensure the students that the university remains committed to their “most important responsibility” at their school which is apparently, “to remain committed to education, discovery and intellectual honesty – and to diversity, equity and inclusion.”:
To All Members of the University Community:
As I’m sure many of you did, I watched the election coverage late into the night, and had the opportunity to visit with students and staff at a results-watching event sponsored by the Ginsberg Center at the Michigan Union. It will take quite some time to completely absorb the results from yesterday’s election, understand the full implications, and discern the long-term impact on our university and our nation . More immediately, in the aftermath of a close and highly contentious election we continue to embrace our most important responsibility as a university community. Our responsibility is to remain committed to education, discovery and intellectual honesty – and to diversity, equity and inclusion. We are at our best when we come together to engage respectfully across our ideological differences; to support ALL who feel marginalized, threatened or unwelcome; and to pursue knowledge and understanding, as we always have, as the students, faculty and staff of the University of Michigan. There are reports of members of our community offering support to one another. Students are planning a vigil tonight on the Diag at 6 p.m. Our Center for Research on Teaching and Learning also has numerous resources available for faculty seeking help in cultivating classroom environments that are responsive to national issues. I also want to make everyone aware of some of the plans and events we have had in place for today and beyond. · Our Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy is holding a Post-Election Analysis from 4 to 5:30 p.m. today in the Weill Hall’s Annenberg Auditorium. Speakers include former U.S. Congressman John Dingell, former Ambassador Ron Weiser, and faculty members Mara Ostfeld, Betsey Stevenson and Marina Whitman. · Our History Department has organized a community discussion led by faculty and students to include historical perspectives at 6 p.m. tonight in 1014 Tisch Hall. · The Office of Student Life will provide resources and referrals for support on campus to students, faculty and staff at a location in the Michigan Union’s Willis Ward Lounge. It will be open today from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. · Our Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs is offering an open space of support to help members of our community connect during open hours today. MESA’s office is in the Michigan Union, Room 2202. · Tomorrow, our Ginsberg Center and Counseling and Psychological Services office is facilitating a Post-election Dialogue: Impact, Perspective-taking, and Moving Forward. This event is part of the Student Life Professional Development Conference at 1 – 2 p.m. in the Michigan League’s Henderson Room. I know that other schools, colleges and offices across our campus are planning events as well. I thank everyone who is helping us come together and ask anyone scheduling a post election event post it on the University of Michigan Events Calendar. I hope all of us will continue to proudly embrace the opportunities before us as the students, faculty and staff of a great public research university governed by the people. Elections are often times of great change, but the values we stand for at U-M have been shaped over the course of nearly 200 years. Our mission remains as essential for society as ever: “…to serve the people of Michigan and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.” I look forward to working together with all of you to advance the work we do in service of the public – and to ensure that the University of Michigan will always be a welcoming place for all members of society. Sincerely,
Mark Schlissel President | 1real |
Kremlin says prospects for Putin-Trump meeting at APEC are unclear | DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - The prospects for a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump at this week s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam are unclear, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. We don t fully understand yet. But we are patiently continuing to work in order to come to an understanding. Both presidents are in town. One way or another they will cross paths, Peskov told reporters on the sidelines of the summit. | 0fake |
OMG! The ULTIMATE BENGHAZI BOMBSHELL! Leaked Emails Show Hillary Ordered The Rescue Team To.. • USA Newsflash |
Everyday, more and more information surfaces about Benghazi.
A critical email that just surfaced shows that the Pentagon offered to act immediately in Benghazi.
Here are the details:
VIA Allen B West
The ugly truth about Benghazi continues to trickle out. Like this critical email that shows the Pentagon urgently offering help to the unfolding attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. And although it came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty.
As Judicial Watch notes, the email ‘leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go, and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come.”
In other words, the Pentagon was offering military assets that potentially could have saved the lives of American citizens — if only the State Department had signed off.
Of course, we all remember who was leading the State Department at that time. Everyone’s favorite leading Democrat candidate for president, Hillary Clinton.
Via The Right Scoop :
An email recently obtained by Judicial Watch shows that the Pentagon was demanding Hillary allow them to send help to Benghazi during the 2012 attack. This would completely contradict the claim from Hillary and Leon Panetta that no forces were available and within reach to provide help to the compound that was under siege.
From Fox News:
As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch.
The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave lawmakers in 2013, when he said there was no time to get forces to the scene in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.
“I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads the email, from Panetta’s chief of staff Jeremy Bash. “After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”
Ironically, Hillary Clinton and her minions were concerned with spinning the story instead of gearing up the military forces.
Here’s the email: More:
The email was sent out at 7:19 p.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2012, in the early stages of the eight-hour siege that also claimed the lives of Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, private CIA contractors who raced to the aid of embattled State Department workers.
Although the email came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Woods and Doherty.
“This leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go, and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come,” Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog said in a statement.
Parts of the email from Bash were redacted before release, including details on what military forces were available.
So there it is. Panetta and Hillary LIED to the American public over and over, and the media never pressed them enough to demand answers.
The clincher? This information has been available since a month after the attack. But as Judicial Watch notes:
The Obama administration and Clinton officials hid this compelling Benghazi email for years,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The email makes readily apparent that the military was prepared to launch immediate assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA Annex. The fact that the Obama Administration withheld this email for so long only worsens the scandal of Benghazi. | 1real |
Vietnam arrests dissident for attempt to overthrow government | HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnamese police have arrested a dissident accused of attempting to overthrow the government, the communist state s official website said on Wednesday, bringing to at least 17 the number of dissidents arrested this year. Tran Thi Xuan, 41, was arrested in the northern province of Ha Tinh on Tuesday. The website did not give details of the alleged crime. Reuters was unable to contact her and it was not clear whether she had a lawyer. Despite sweeping economic reforms and growing openness to social change, the Communist Party tolerates little criticism. The crackdown on dissent follows changes in the ruling party hierarchy early last year which gave greater influence to the security establishment. | 0fake |
Trump says he is working on plan to bring down drug prices | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he is developing a plan that will encourage competition in the drug industry and bring down prices for medicines, as the House of Representatives leadership unveiled a new health care plan. “I am working on a new system where there will be competition in the Drug Industry. Pricing for the American people will come way down!” Trump said in a Twitter post. | 0fake |
’Destiny 2’ – ’Rally the Troops’ Worldwide Reveal Trailer - Breitbart | The Last City has fallen before the Cabal Empire. Gather the surviving Guardians and fight back to retake Earth in Destiny 2. [Destiny 2’s reveal trailer doesn’t tell players much more than yesterday’s teaser trailer did, but it does confirm theories that the sequel will focus on an invasion of Earth by the Cabal Empire and reveal the identity of the game’s antagonist. It also explicitly explains why Destiny players won’t be able to carry over the weapons, armor, and other items they’ve been collecting for the past three years to the next installment: it was all destroyed when the city fell. Developer Bungie promises that a first look at Destiny 2’s actual gameplay will be revealed during a livestream on May 18. the game will also allow players access to a beta test “this summer. ” While this may not mean much to gamers who have grown wary of the page to do so reveals one more crucial bit of information: Destiny 2 will be coming to PC, not just Xbox One and Playstation 4. Activision confirmed the news of the franchise finally coming to PC in a statement accompanying the game’s announcement: “Destiny was the biggest launch of a new console video game franchise ever. Along with our incredibly talented partners at Bungie, we are focusing on making Destiny 2 even better, with state of the art action, an awesome new story, great characters, and thoughtful innovations that make the game more accessible to all different kinds of players,” said Activision CEO, Eric Hirshberg. “We’re also bringing Destiny 2 to the PC platform for the first time. Destiny 2 will make an already great game franchise better than ever. ” Destiny 2 launches September 8 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. | 0fake |
WATCH: Bill Maher Hilariously Explains Why Trump Ditched McConnell And Ryan For Chuck And Nancy | Republicans have been furious with Donald Trump lately. He blindsided them by ditching House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-NY), now dubbed his new friends, Chuck and Nancy. However, Bill Maher, host of HBO s Real Time, seems to think that there is a very simple answer to this: Trump relates to Chuck and Nancy because he has the big city life in common with them. Using the children s book The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse to illustrate his point, Maher says: Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, they re city mice, and that s who a consummate New Yorker like Donald Trump relates to. Maher then goes on to say that, prior to running for the presidency as a Republican, Trump would never be caught dead hanging around with a traveling Bible salesman like Paul Ryan, or a corny, countrified goober like Mitch McConnell. For Christ s sakes the man is from Kentucky. Jeff Sessions is from Alabama. When he talks, all Trump hears is a tiny little Earnest movie. Maher then takes on Vice President Mike Pence, saying: And Mike Pence? It must be torture for Trump to be in the White House every day with that homespun, Christian, tightly wound human hard on. He literally won t dine with an unchaperoned woman. Meanwhile, Trump has spent his entire life posing with a shit-eating grin that says look at all the pussy I m getting. At the end of the monologue, Maher gives a brutal message to so-called Real Americans: I hate to break it to you, but what Trump likes about Chuck and Nancy, is that they re not you. This is absolutely true. Before running for president, Donald Trump was a typical New York Democrat. He doesn t give a shit about social issues or religion, and he sure as hell doesn t give a shit about the fools who put him in office. His own kids couldn t vote for him in New York s GOP primary because they were registered as Democrats. He s given bunches of money to Democratic politicians for years. Trump is no Republican. He just knew he could play that side of the aisle for fools, when he d never have had a chance running as a Democrat.Furthermore, Trump would never be caught dead hanging with any of the people who voted for him. And all those countrified middle American women who say that he can grab their pussies any time? Yeah, he wouldn t touch you with someone else s dick.Too bad those voters would vote for this guy again in a heartbeat.Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Elaine Chao Confirmed as Secretary of Transportation - Breitbart | The U. S. Senate approved Elaine Chao’s nomination to serve as the new secretary of transportation in Donald Trump’s administration by a vote of on Tuesday. [Chao, who served in the cabinet of George W. Bush as secretary of labor in two successive administrations, will oversee important changes in transportation over coming years, such as the development of cars, as well as Donald Trump’s $1 trillion plan to comprehensively upgrade the country’s transportation infrastructure. In her hearing, Chao said that excessive regulation “dampens the basic creativity and innovation of our country,” and promised to avoid a “patchwork” of regulation in the rollout of cars. “The Department of Transportation has a key role to play in modernizing our transportation systems, strengthening our country’s competitiveness, and improving our quality of life. I look forward to working with you to rebuild, refurbish and revitalize America’s infrastructure, so our economy can continue to grow, create good paying jobs for America’s working families and enhance our quality of life,” Chao said at her first confirmation hearing last week. However, financial disclosure forms released last week showed Chao could collect up to $5 million in Wells Fargo preferred stock after assuming her new role in the Trump administration. Chao, who was born in Taiwan, is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. She becomes the fifth member of Donald Trump’s cabinet to be confirmed. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 0fake |
Third-party presidential candidates fight for 15% in polls – and a spot in debates | The former Republican, marijuana-smoking, Everest mountaineering ex-governor of New Mexico and presidential nominee of the Libertarian party has a problem: he’s barred from the presidential debates. To appear on stage with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump this autumn, Gary Johnson needs to boost his national polling numbers to 15% from around 8% now.
Without that national exposure, and the blockbuster ratings the three scheduled Clinton-Trump dust-ups are likely to produce, it’s hard for anyone to see how Johnson, 63, or either of two other minor-party candidates, the Green party’s Jill Stein or even Evan McMullin, a 40-year-old former CIA counterterrorism officer, could ever become more than mere electoral curiosities.
But the emergence of three independent candidates, during a year of record dissatisfaction with the major party candidates, may still make for an unpredictable twist to the story. Polling data suggests libertarians on both sides of the political divide are giving independent candidates a second look, and in Las Vegas on Friday, Johnson and Stein spoke before a gathering of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters to press their cases.
Soft-spoken and wearing Nikes, Johnson presented a platform of social libertarianism, fiscal conservatism and non-interventionism in foreign affairs. He argued at the gathering that in this, “the craziest election of all time”, he had a chance: “I might be the next president of the United States.”
A just-released WSJ-NBC poll gave Johnson 15% in the crucial swing state of Colorado, and Stein 6%. In Las Vegas, he was asked repeatedly if a vote for him or any third-party candidate was somehow wasted.
“A wasted vote is voting for somebody you don’t believe in. That’s a wasted vote,” Johnson said. “Vote for the person you believe in – that’s how you bring about change. I hope after having made my pitch today that you’ll realize, if you want to waste your vote on Clinton or Trump, have at it.”
Stein, who spoke separately at the event, similarly argued that many Americans were looking for an alternative to Trump and Hillary Clinton, whom she dubbed as “the most disliked and untrusted” major-party nominees in US history.
“Democracy needs a moral compass,” she told a gathering of Asian American and Pacific Island groups. “It’s not just about who you don’t like the most or who you are most afraid of.”
Stein, who like Johnson represented her party in 2012, has outlined policy positions that include a “Green New Deal”, focused on renewable energy jobs and aimed at making the United States transition to 100% renewable energy complete by 2030. Stein has also proposed a reduction in the military budget by a third and the creation of a regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture.
On the Republican side, Evan McMullin, a beneficiary of the grounded “Never Trump” movement, failed to get on the ballot in 26 states before he’d even sent out his first campaign release. McMullin nonetheless tried to give disaffected conservatives an alternative to the Republican nominee who, he says, has tapped into “people’s darkest prejudices and deepest fears”.
McMullin’s best hope – and likely his only one – to make an electoral dent would require Trump’s departure from the race, though the nominee has made no overt sign that he wants to quit. “Like millions of Americans, I had hoped this year would bring us better nominees who, despite party differences, could offer compelling visions of a better future,” McMullin said in his announcement.
“Instead, we have been left with two candidates who are fundamentally unfit for the profound responsibilities they seek.”
But can they begin to make a difference? Only once in recent election cycles have third party candidates had any significant influence, when in 1992, Texan businessman Ross Perot took 18% of the vote, carving into the support for incumbent Republican George HW Bush and helping Arkansas governor Bill Clinton to victory. Some Democrats blamed third-party candidate Ralph Nader for delivering George W Bush the election in 2000, but the third-party candidate won a paltry 2.74% of the vote, and his supporters were split between Republicans and Democrats.
Johnson’s running mate, former Massachusetts governor William Weld, said he’d seen interest and fundraising pick up as Trump’s campaign has floundered. Their campaign recently reported a $1m one-week fundraising haul and has reported that more than 40,000 people have pledged to donate at least $15 to his campaign on 15 August.
But that was in a relatively tight race. With Clinton now leading Trump by double digits in some key battleground states, the impact of any third-party candidate could be limited.
“At the moment it doesn’t look like they can have much impact at all,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic adviser. “But if the race gets closer, they could throw it either way.”
Sheinkopf reasoned that this election has become more about personalities and less about what party leaders want. The long-term impact may be a significant shift in how people view Democrats and Republicans, he said. As it now stands, Stein, Johnson and McMullin could act as a convenient parking spot for voters disgusted with both candidates.
Earlier this month, a federal judge rejected a challenge brought by Johnson and Stein arguing that the bar for inclusion is set artificially high. Yet there are signs the ground could be shifting. Mike McCurry, now co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates and a former press secretary for Bill Clinton, hinted that a third podium might be needed.
“Some of our production people may have said, ‘Just in case, you need to plan out what that might look like,’’ McCurry told Politico. “We won’t know the number of invitations we extend until mid-September.”
Ron Faucheux, president of Clarus Research Group, a nonpartisan polling company, said there was broad support for including even minor candidates. “Polls show that voters think third party candidates should be included,” he said, “and in an election like this, where polls show a majority of voters dislike both main party candidates, there is a good reason to give them the opportunity to at least look at other options.”
But even Johnson and Stein were somewhat wistful about their prospects, casting themselves as agents of change who, at best, could represent the beginning of a break with the current two-party system.
“The biggest message is ‘consider us’ as a very, very viable alternative to this two-party system that has become so polarized that they’re not able to do anything,” Johnson has said.
Stein advanced a similar argument. “We’re having a political reorganization in this election because the Republicans are kind of falling apart,” she said, “and the Democrats have kind of split with a lot of the Bernie Sanders supporters just not happy with the alternative.”
She argued that it was by elections about “the lesser of two evils” that the country inherited many of its problems.
But first, the two have to get on TV.
“There’s no way I’m going to win the presidency if I’m not in the presidential debates,” Johnson said. “I do believe anything is possible given that right now, arguably the two most polarizing figures in American politics today are running for office.” | 0fake |
Netanyahu muzzles Israeli officials on Kurdish referendum | JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu barred Israeli government comment on Monday s Kurdish independence referendum in Iraq, two officials said, after his Sept. 13 endorsement of Kurdish statehood irked Turkey. The plebiscite was held despite objections from the United States and Turkey, a regional power whose ties with Israel have long been troubled. The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has also voiced misgivings about overt Israeli backing. Asked to comment on the referendum, one Israeli cabinet minister declined, telling Reuters on condition of anonymity: Bibi (Netanyahu) asked us not to. A second Israeli official confirmed the order, saying the subject was too sensitive . Netanyahu s office did not respond to a request for comment. Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with Kurds since the 1960s, viewing the minority ethnic group - whose indigenous population is split among Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran - as a buffer against shared adversaries. Israel also has a sizeable Kurdish Jewish immigrant community. Israel has backed Kurdish independence in the past - most recently in the Sept. 13 statement by Netanyahu. Centrist Israeli lawmaker Yair Lapid, a former minister in Netanyahu s conservative coalition, tweeted on Monday: The Jewish people know what it is to struggle for a homeland. The Kurds have a moral right to a state of their own. I wish them luck today. But Kurdish officials said such rhetoric is unsolicited and damaging. Our adversaries attack us as a second Israel in the region and this kind of Israeli talk contributes to that, one Kurdish official told Reuters. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday Netanyahu s position on the Kurds affected Ankara s relations with Israel. Speaking in Istanbul, Erdogan said that while visiting New York for the U.N. General Assembly he met U.S. Jewish leaders who had quoted Netanyahu as describing Israeli-Turkish ties as not going well . How could that be? There is no one recognizing the KRG (referendum decision) except him. We are in a different position, Erdogan said. | 0fake |
(VIDEO) EPA CHIEF’S DESPERATION SHOWING ON CLIMATE CHANGE SCAM: Unless you want to debate cigarettes and cancer, ‘don’t debate about climate change’ | We are way past any further discussion or debate. Scientists are as sure that humans are causing climate change as they are that cigarette smoke causes lung cancer. So unless you want to debate that point, don t debate about climate change any longer because it is our moral responsibility to act. That responsibility right now is crystal clear and that is why we have taken action. | 1real |
Anxiety and Worry Increase Risk of Heart Disease | You Are Here: Home » Latest Posts » Anxiety and Worry Increase Risk of Heart Disease Anxiety and Worry Increase Risk of Heart Disease Prev post Next post
by Ana Sandoiu – MNT
Anxiety is a serious health concern affecting a large part of the American population. Now, new research indicates that health anxiety might increase the risk of heart disease.
Health anxiety might increase the risk of heart disease, research finds. In the United States, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness, affecting 40 million adults, or 18 percent of the population.
Anxiety is a known risk factor for heart disease . Previous research indicates a connection between depression and anxiety and the risk of coronary heart disease .
A meta-analysis found that anxious people have a 48 percent higher risk of dying from a heart problem.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death among Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), killing 365,000 people in 2014. New research suggests that the consequences of health anxiety are also serious and the condition should be treated properly.
Health anxiety describes a patient’s excessive worrying over having a serious illness, and seeking medical advice in the absence of a physical disease.
Patients with health anxiety misread physical symptoms as serious illnesses, and they often seek repeated medical help for the same issues. In its most intense form, health anxiety becomes hypochondria . Health anxiety and heart disease
Researchers led by Line Iden Berge, from the Helse Bergen hospital in Bergen, Norway, examined the link between health anxiety and heart disease. The results were published in the online journal BMJ Open .
Berge and team worked with participants in the Norwegian Hordaland Health Study (HUSK). This long-term study followed participants over a period of 12 years, and it was a collaboration between the National Health Screening Service, the University of Bergen, and local health services.
The 7,052 participants were born between 1953-1957. For the study, they had to answer questions about their health, lifestyle, and educational achievement.
Between 1997-1999, they underwent blood tests, weight, height, and blood pressure measurements. Participants were also asked to report their anxiety levels using the Whiteley Index. Scores above 90 percent were considered to be anxiety cases.
Over the entire study period, 234 participants, or 3.2 percent of the entire cohort, had an ischemic incident – either a heart attack or acute angina . Health anxiety raised heart disease risk by 73 percent
During follow-up, twice as many participants with health anxiety developed heart disease, compared with those who did not report any anxiety. Around 6.1 percent of health anxiety cases developed ischemic heart disease (IHD), compared with 3 percent of non-cases.
Because participants had been enrolled in a nationwide research project monitoring heart disease, their heart health was monitored extensively. The national program, entitled “Cardiovascular diseases in Norway,” was carried out between 1994-2009, so the study could track participants using national hospital data and death certificates up to 2009.
After adjustments for established cardiovascular risk factors, researchers found a 73 percent increased risk of developing IHD among cases with health anxiety.
Even considering established risk factors for IHD, such as smoking, high cholesterol , and education, health anxiety was a high risk factor for IHD. The risk of IHD also increased proportionally with the level of reported anxiety; the stronger the symptoms of health anxiety, the higher the risk of IHD.
Regarding gender, a very slight increase in IHD risk was noticed in women with health anxiety over their male counterparts. Trust your heart
Caveats to the results of the study include the fact that this is an observational study, telling us little about the cause-and-effect relation between anxiety and IHD.
Also, health anxiety is often associated with other mental health issues, such as general anxiety and depression, so the different types of anxiety and ways in which they increase the risk of heart disease can be difficult to differentiate. “[Our study] further indicates that characteristic behavior among persons with health anxiety, such as monitoring and frequent check-ups of symptoms, does not reduce the risk of [coronary heart disease] events,” the researchers write.
On the contrary, keeping the body in a constant state of alert might further increase the risk of heart-related incidents.
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THE JACK BLOOD SHOW: ‘From May Day Riots to Globalism’ with 21WIRE guest Shawn Helton | 21st Century Wire says .From May Day riots to designer technocracy (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)21WIRE s Shawn Helton joins well-known Talk Radio host Jack Blood on The Jack Blood Show, to discuss the socially engineered May Day protests and riots, the fake news peddled by mainstream media, chemical false flags in Syria, North Korea and the machinations of globalism. Listen as we breakdown today s hyper-real media propaganda READ MORE GLOBALIZATION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Globalization FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
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Ex-Connecticut Governor Rowland appeals conviction | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Connecticut Governor John Rowland on Friday urged a federal appeals court to overturn his conviction on charges that the Republican tried to use sham contracts to hide his political work in two U.S. congressional campaigns, saying prosecutors went too far in applying the law. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York heard arguments over whether Rowland used illegal consulting contracts for candidates who in 2010 and 2012 ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives. Rowland, who was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison in March 2015, is free on bail during his appeal. He had previously spent 10 months in prison following his 2004 guilty plea to separate charges arising from his acceptance of illegal gifts while he was governor. Rowland resigned from office that year. Andrew Fish, Rowland’s lawyer, told the appeals court on Friday that a draft contract rejected by one of the candidates, Mark Greenberg, did not constitute a falsified document. “Frankly, the government saying that a contract proposal is a falsified document makes little sense,” Fish said. He said prosecutors went too far in trying to criminalize Rowland’s conduct under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a governance law passed after Enron Corp’s collapse, that prohibits falsifying documents to hide financial wrongdoing. Assistant U.S. Attorney Liam Brennan countered that the case was in the “heartland” of the statute. “This is creating a fake record to have in the file in case there is an investigation,” he said. A federal jury in New Haven found Rowland guilty in March 2015 on charges of conspiracy, falsifying records in a federal investigation, causing false statements to be made to the Federal Election Commission, and causing illegal campaign contributions. Prosecutors said Rowland, 58, sought to advise Greenberg, who testified that in 2010 he rejected Rowland’s offer and a contract to conceal the ex-governor’s role. Rowland was also accused of negotiating a deal to work for a nursing home company owned by Brian Foley, the husband of 2012 congressional candidate, Lisa Wilson-Foley, and receive $35,000 intended to compensate him for advising her campaign. Wilson-Foley and Foley pleaded guilty to conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions. Wilson-Foley received a five-month prison term, while Foley was sentenced to three months in a halfway house. | 0fake |
NIKE DROPS CONSERVATIVE BOXER Manny Pacquiao After Condemning Gay Relationships Based On His Religious Beliefs [VIDEO] | God forbid an athlete bases their opinions on the Bible You ll be hit with the full force of the leftist machine Nike announced it has dropped Manny Pacquiao in the wake of the boxer s controversial remarks where he said those in gay relationships are worse than animals. We find Manny Pacquiao s comments abhorrent, Nike said Wednesday in a statement. Nike strongly opposes discrimination of any kind and has a long history of supporting and standing up for the rights of the LGBT community. Pacquiao, 37, made the incendiary comments in a television interview that ran Monday in his native Philippines. He s currently a member of the House of Representatives and is running for the country s senate.Pacquiao didn t immediately back down hours after the interview aired. Pacquiao said on his Facebook page he was just telling the truth of what the Bible says. But as the furor grew, Pacquiao posted an apology of sorts on Facebook on Tuesday. I m sorry for hurting people by comparing homosexuals to animals, Pacquiao wrote. Please forgive me for those I ve hurt. I still stand on my belief that I m against same sex marriage because of what the Bible says, but I m not condemning LGBT. I love you all with the love of the Lord. God Bless you all and I m praying for you. Pacquiao also served as a pitchman for Wonderful Pistachios and Nestle, although representatives for both companies said they don t have him under contract currently. Wonderful Pistachios is not currently affiliated with Manny Pacquiao nor do his views align with ours, Wonderful Pistachios spokesperson Jennifer George told USA TODAY Sports. Wonderful Pistachios stands firmly for diversity and equality and we proudly support marriage equality and inclusion around the world. | 1real |
CONFIRMED: High-Level Trump Campaign Staff Was In ‘Constant Touch’ With The Russian Government (VIDEO) | Donald Trump may want to rethink his wall idea because his entire presidency is crumbling down around him. With Kellyanne Conway on her way out the door because she advertised his daughter s goods during a Fox News interview and Michael Flynn getting caught secretly talking sanctions with the Russian ambassador and Sean Spicer just being Sean Spicer, The Donald is already dealing with a lot but now CNN reports that his campaign staff was in constant touch with high-level government officials in Russia.According to multiple current and former intelligence, law enforcement and administration officials, high-level advisers to candidate Trump raised red flags with U.S. intelligence because they were apparently calling each other more often than a middle school couple who has been dating for three days (that s a lot):Intelligence officials say they are still determining the intent of the frequent communications, but they are concerned that Trump associates were coordinating with Russian intelligence to release information that would damage Hillary Clinton. If that were the case, then that would escalate things, one official briefed on the investigation told CNN.More than a baker s dozen intelligence agencies have previously confirmed that Vladimir Putin personally spearheaded a massive hacking and propaganda/ fake news campaign targeting Clinton in an effort to get Donald Trump elected.Since assuming office, Easy D has been nothing but friendly to Russia, even easing sanctions that targeted the very intelligence agencies that hacked our election and constantly praising Putin (including on the same day that Flynn spoke to his ambassador friend). Trump also may have disabled the recording during his first phone call as President with Putin.Things are not looking good for President Asterisk, and they seem to get worse by the day. It s time for Republicans to put country before party and get this lunatic out of office before he gets us all killed.Watch CNN s report on this new development below:Featured image via Getty Images | 1real |
For Republican Rubio, a moment of truth in race to lead U.S. | CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - Long viewed by the Republican establishment and many donors as one of their rising stars, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio has been struggling to make his mark in the race for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination in a field led by mavericks Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Regarded as well-spoken and telegenic, Rubio began facing criticism a few months ago when he was perceived as campaigning too little in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states where next month party members will cast their first ballots. Rubio, 44, may still have a breakthrough, but with 20 days to go until Iowa’s Feb. 1 nominating caucuses, the first-term Florida lawmaker faces questions about his campaign strategy in a race for the Nov. 8 election made up of 11 candidates dominated by the billionaire Trump and U.S. Senator Cruz of Texas. His prospects reach a critical moment at a Thursday night debate in South Carolina when he tries to position himself as the consensus alternative to Trump and Cruz and distance himself from such establishment candidates as former Florida governor Jeb Bush and governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio. Republican experts say he seems to be straddling two political lanes, trying to win over establishment Republicans as well as anti-establishment conservatives who favor Cruz. The debate, on the Fox Business Network, is due to begin at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday (0200 GMT on Friday). The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio has drawn support by stressing his working-class upbringing in Las Vegas and Miami as the child of a bartender father and a mother who was both a maid and a cashier. But voters and party operatives suggest he has until recently failed to commit to the intimate face-to-face politicking considered mandatory by voters in either Iowa or New Hampshire, which has a Feb. 9 primary. Rubio aides acknowledge the high stakes of the coming weeks. “I feel good but we’ve got to close strong,” said Rubio’s New Hampshire state director, Jim Merrill. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll showed Rubio on Wednesday at 6.7 percent, compared to 15.2 percent little more than a month ago, falling from second place to fifth among Republicans after Trump, Cruz, Bush and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Some voters have cited a tendency by Rubio in past months to stick to well-honed talking points on the stump instead of mixing it up at town-hall meetings where people can ask questions. This has raised concerns he might lack necessary experience. “There’s a lot of people who were very interested in him and continue to be, but in Iowa it just seems like he hasn’t fully committed himself to aggressively campaign in the state and that’s causing some pause,” Iowa Republican strategist Doug Gross said. Dennis Thorell of New Durham, New Hampshire, said Rubio needed a longer resume of accomplishments than U.S. senator and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. Thorell said Rubio might be better suited for the vice presidency or another top job in a Republican administration. “He hasn’t had any experience running anything,” Thorell said while listening to Rubio in Concord, New Hampshire, last week. “He did very well in the legislature down in Florida and was mentored by Jeb (Bush) but he hasn’t run anything.” Rival candidates for the Republican nomination have assailed Rubio also for his absences from the U.S. Senate during hearings and floor votes, raising further questions about how he spends his time. Defending his record of missed votes, Rubio has said the majority of his time is spent in service to his constituents and his Senate committee work, both of which he says continue unabated. Rubio aides told Reuters they plan a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign for New Hampshire and expect to outspend all rivals on the TV airwaves in the state. The aides said Rubio has plans to be a major presence in both Iowa and New Hampshire in the final stretch, with a schedule that will include plenty of give-and-take with voters in informal settings such as town halls. They said Rubio’s schedule is as heavy as any of his rivals, but that much of it has been at behind-the-scenes fund-raising events that have been essential to get him the resources needed for the final push. Republican strategists say Rubio’s path to the nomination would have to start with at least a third-place finish in Iowa presumably behind poll leaders Cruz and Trump, which would deliver him some momentum going into New Hampshire. If Rubio goes on to place high in Iowa and do well in New Hampshire, he and his aides will see it as the realization of a strategy of going for broke at the right moment in the states that render the first judgments in the presidential race. “From the get-go we said we didn’t want to peak in September, we wanted to peak in February. It’s starting to grow. It feels like it’s starting to happen for us,” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said. Republican analysts say Rubio appears to be as well-placed as any of his rivals in the drive to become the establishment Republican favorite. He is drawing increasingly larger crowds in New Hampshire and has a solid organization in the state. “I think he suffered from the perception that he hasn’t been here as much and worked it as hard as some of his competitors,” Republican strategist Steve Duprey said. “If he puts the pedal to the metal, he could do very well.” For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog, “Tales from the Trail” (here). | 0fake |
Nonduality and the Consciousness of 'Things' - Thich Nhat Hanh | Nonduality and the Consciousness of 'Things' - Thich Nhat Hanh Share on Facebook Tweet
Do animals and plants have consciousness? Are electrons alive? Thich Nhat Hanh in dialogue with University of Virginia Astrophysicist Dr. Trinh Xuan Thuan. [watch video below] Caitlin Moran's Posthumous Advice for Her Daughter Caitlin Moran · 19,039 views today · My daughter is about to turn 13 and I’ve been smoking a lot recently, and so – in the wee small hours, when my lungs feel like there’s a small mouse inside them, scratching to... | 1real |
6 Natural Herbs To Prevent Mental Disorders | 6 Natural Herbs To Prevent Mental Disorders Antioxidants are found to play an important part in this regard. Herbs having antioxidant properties cancel the effects of oxidative compounds that are already present in the body. Since our body is incapable of producing antioxidants that can cancel the effects of all the oxidative free radicals, these have to be taken in the form of dietary supplements. Many herbs have been used since ancient times, for the prevention and treatment of almost every disease known to man. They can either be encapsulated or taken in form of herbal teas. The good thing about herbal treatments is that they do not pose any serious threats to one’s health as they have minimal side effects. MULUNGU BARK Mulungu bark is used in Central and South America for calming the nerves, improving the mood and aiding sleep. Mulungu contains erythravine, an active alkaloid which helps in anxiety reduction and protecting brain function. The flavanoids found in Mulungu are one of the best antioxidants and help in having a healthier brain. They are found to inhibit anxiety without any side effects and do not affect basic motor skills. Another effect of Mulungu is the strong physical sensation of well being. It elevates the mood as well. It is known to be helpful with brain diseases like epilepsy, insomnia and anxiety. Studies have shown that all these diseases lead to major brain disorders and other brain degenerative diseases. Mulungu can be taken on its own or with a stimulant like green tea to amplify its effects. It gives mental clarity and improves brain function. MUCUNA PRURIENS Mucuna has been used in ayurvedic medicine since 1500 B.C and is also known as the velvet bean. Mucuna contains L.dopa which is a biochemical precursor to several neurotransmitters. Dopamine happens to be one of these neurotransmitters in addition to adrenaline and noradrenalin, and it supports improved brain function and increased memory. It also regulates the mood and cognition. Mucuna is widely known as an anti aging herb. The antioxidant properties make it anti inflammatory and effective towards the protection of neurons. It protects brain function by keeping a check over cognitive and neural functions. Mucuna’s secret benefit is that it fights redness in brain, which is one of the symptoms of brain degradation. PASSIFLORA INCARNATA (PASSION FLOWER) Passion flower, also called apricot vine, was found in 1956 in Peru. Passion flower is used in herbal medicines to promote calmness and relaxation. It is also found to be very helpful in reducing anxiety. In synergy with other forms of treatment, it is found to be effective in reducing anxiety, irritability, insomnia and agitation. It also helps with psychiatric disorder called adjustment disorder with anxious mood. Passion flower also helps with sleep disorders and seizures. The best way to take passion flower is, as an herbal tea. According to the NYU Langone Medical Center, you should drink one cup of passion flower tea, three times a day. SCUTELLARIA LATERIFLORA (SKULLCAP) A natural tranquilizer, Skullcap is an American perennial herb found from New York to Virginia and southwards to South Carolina, Alabama and Missouri. Skullcap is a very powerful medicinal herb. It is used in treatments of many nervous related disorders like epilepsy, hysteria, insomnia and anxiety. It is also used in the treatment of ADD and a number of other nervous disorders. It is anti inflammatory, antispasmodic, febrifuge, sedative and tonic in nature. It contains volatile oils, tannins and scutellarins that are very helpful in mental disorders. Research suggests it possesses mood enhancing properties and protects brain against damaging effects caused by inflammation. According to HerbsList , Skullcap eases muscle spasms, muscle twitching and may help in ailments that involve involuntary limb movement, such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. PIPER METHYSTICUM KAVA From the roots and stem of the piper methysticum plant, a non-alcoholic beverage is made. This herb is found in the islands of South Pacific. It is being used since the early 90’s as the herbal medicine for stress and anxiety. It contains kava lactones which are responsible for its psychoactive qualities. They work in the brain to produce non narcotic action against anxiety. Kava is beneficial for anxiety and doesn’t affect heart rate or blood pressure. Other disorders where Kava has been found beneficial are migraines, ADHD, psychosis, depression and chronic fatigue syndrome. GINSENG Ginseng, also called Panax ginseng, and is a widely used herbal remedy, all over the world. Its health benefits have been known for over thousands of years. It is used as a tonic to balance, stimulate and relax the nervous system. It brings strength and wisdom. Ginseng is an adaptogen. Adaptogens are known to make us more resilient to mental and physical stress. They reduce the stress hormone cortisol and increase the adrenal gland. Adaptogens can calm you down and boost your energy without over stimulation. It has the same relaxing effect and increased alertness as experiences after green tea. It helps in getting better sleep, increased energy levels and greater personal satisfaction. It is also helpful with the treatment of depression by regulating serotonin, dopamine and noreprinephrine. It works as brain booster and protector. It improves brain function and concentration. It helps with memory issues and protects against age related mental issues. Ginseng also works as an antioxidant and helps in protecting the brain cells against free radical damage. Increasingly large numbers of people are suffering from brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Dementia . A number of medicines are also available to help with the symptoms, but they are heavy on the pocket and come with many side effects. These herbs have been in use since hundreds of years and do not pose any health threats. Continuous use of these herbs will ensure a healthy brain, strong enough to fight away any disease. By Alma Causey http://mobile.dudamobile.com/site/preventdisease/default?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpreventdisease.com%2Fnews%2F16%2F102516_6-Natural-Herbs-To-Prevent-Mental-Disorders.shtml#3037 | 1real |
Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors - Dennis Kucinich | Citizen journalism with a punch Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors
War is first and foremost a profitable racket The Nation
Washington, DC, may be the only place in the world where people openly flaunt their pseudo-intellectuality by banding together, declaring themselves “think tanks,” and raising money from external interests, including foreign governments, to compile reports that advance policies inimical to the real-life concerns of the American people.
As a former member of the House of Representatives, I remember 16 years of congressional hearings where pedigreed experts came to advocate wars in testimony based on circular, rococo thinking devoid of depth, reality, and truth. I remember other hearings where the Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $1 trillion in accounts, lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq, and rigged a missile-defense test so that an interceptor could easily home in on a target. War is first and foremost a profitable racket.
How else to explain that in the past 15 years this city’s so called bipartisan foreign policy elite has promoted wars in Iraq and Libya, and interventions in Syria and Yemen, which have opened Pandora’s box to a trusting world, to the tune of trillions of dollars, a windfall for military contractors. DC’s think “tanks” should rightly be included in the taxonomy of armored war vehicles and not as gathering places for refugees from academia.
According to the front page of this past Friday’s Washington Post, the bipartisan foreign-policy elite recommends the next president show less restraint than President Obama. Acting at the urging of “liberal” hawks brandishing humanitarian intervention, read war, the Obama administration attacked Libya along with allied powers working through NATO.
The think tankers fell in line with the Iraq invasion. Not being in the tank, I did my own analysis of the call for war in October of 2002, based on readily accessible information, and easily concluded that there was no justification for war. I distributed it widely in Congress and led 125 Democrats in voting against the Iraq war resolution. There was no money to be made from a conclusion that war was uncalled for, so, against millions protesting in the United States and worldwide, our government launched into an abyss, with a lot of armchair generals waving combat pennants. The marching band and chowder society of DC think tanks learned nothing from the Iraq and Libya experience.
The only winners were arms dealers, oil companies, and jihadists. Immediately after the fall of Libya, the black flag of Al Qaeda was raised over a municipal building in Benghazi, Gadhafi’s murder was soon to follow, with Secretary Clinton quipping with a laugh, “We came, we saw, he died.” President Obama apparently learned from this misadventure, but not the Washington policy establishment, which is spoiling for more war.
The self-identified liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America’s current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on “mission accomplished.” CAP, according to a report in The Nation, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who make the bombers that CAP wants to rain hellfire on Syria.
The Brookings Institute has taken tens of millions from foreign governments , notably Qatar, a key player in the military campaign to oust Assad. Retired four-star Marine general John Allen is now a Brookings senior fellow . Charles Lister is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute , which has received funding from Saudi Arabia , the major financial force providing billions in arms to upend Assad and install a Sunni caliphate stretching across Iraq and Syria. Foreign-government money is driving our foreign policy.
As the drumbeat for an expanded war gets louder, Allen and Lister jointly signed an op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post, calling for an attack on Syria. The Brookings Institute, in a report to Congress , admitted it received $250,000 from the US Central Command, Centcom, where General Allen shared leadership duties with General David Petraeus.Pentagon money to think tanks that endorse war? This is academic integrity, DC-style.
And why is Central Command, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of transportation, and the US Department of Health and Human Services giving money to Brookings?
Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who famously told Colin Powell , “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it,” predictably says of this current moment , “We do think there needs to be more American action.” A former Bush administration top adviser is also calling for the United States to launch a cruise missile attack on Syria.
The American people are fed up with war, but a concerted effort is being made through fearmongering, propaganda, and lies to prepare our country for a dangerous confrontation, with Russia in Syria.
The demonization of Russia is a calculated plan to resurrect a raison d’être for stone-cold warriors trying to escape from the dustbin of history by evoking the specter of Russian world domination.
It’s infectious. Earlier this year the BBC broadcast a fictional show that contemplated WWIII, beginning with a Russian invasion of Latvia (where 26 percent of the population is ethnic Russian and 34 percent of Latvians speak Russian at home).
The imaginary WWIII scenario conjures Russia’s targeting London for a nuclear strike. No wonder that by the summer of 2016 a poll showed two-thirds of UK citizens approved the new British PM’s launching a nuclear strike in retaliation. So much for learning the lessons detailed in the Chilcot report.
As this year’s presidential election comes to a conclusion, the Washington ideologues are regurgitating the same bipartisan consensus that has kept America at war since 9/11 and made the world a decidedly more dangerous place.
The DC think tanks provide cover for the political establishment, a political safety net, with a fictive analytical framework providing a moral rationale for intervention, capitol casuistry. I’m fed up with the DC policy elite who cash in on war while presenting themselves as experts, at the cost of other people’s lives, our national fortune, and the sacred honor of our country.
Any report advocating war that comes from any alleged think tank ought to be accompanied by a list of the think tank’s sponsors and donors and a statement of the lobbying connections of the report’s authors.
It is our patriotic duty to expose why the DC foreign-policy establishment and its sponsors have not learned from their failures and instead are repeating them, with the acquiescence of the political class and sleepwalkers with press passes.
It is also time for a new peace movement in America, one that includes progressives and libertarians alike, both in and out of Congress, to organize on campuses, in cities, and towns across America, to serve as an effective counterbalance to the Demuplican war party, its think tanks, and its media cheerleaders. The work begins now, not after the Inauguration. We must not accept war as inevitable, and those leaders who would lead us in that direction, whether in Congress or the White House, must face visible opposition. | 1real |
Edward Snowden: Journalists Are Endangered Species In America | Posted on October 28, 2016 by Baxter Dmitry in News , US // 0 Comments
Whistleblower Edward Snowden warned reporters that in this era of mass surveillance and mainstream media collusion with the state, journalists are an endangered species facing extinction.
“ Journalists are increasingly a threatened class when we think about the right to privacy, ” Snowden said. “ Yes, I can give you tips on how to protect your communications, but you are going to be engaging in an arms race that you simply cannot win .”
Snowden, speaking via video feed at a German conference, urged journalists to be brave and fight the system by exposing privacy violations and government intrusions to the masses.
“You must fight this on the front pages and you must win, if you want to be able to report in the same way that you’ve been able to do in the previous centuries.”
Snowden went on to bemoan the fact mainstream media is not taking the government to task and provoking public debate about short-sighted and secret government policy.
“ Policy is only short-sighted here because it is not being publicly debated. It is not being openly scrutinized outside of this audience of a few special interests .”
By failing to live up to their duties in a functioning democracy, the mainstream media have played their part in granting the government a previously unthinkable amount of power. The Clinton presidential campaign is a case in point. Unencumbered by the law and unscrutinized by the media, Clinton as president will wield a dictator’s authority.
Snowden believes journalists simply must resume criticizing the powers that be, and provoking public debate – and the topic of spying and hacking should be top of the agenda.
“ We have technologies that can protect communications in an unbreakable format when they’re in transit. Governments have reacted to this as if we’ve thrown them in a pool of acid, saying you know, “you’re shutting us out, you’re going dark.” This is false.
Any government official who claims we’re going dark is lying. We know this because we have classified documents from inside governments and we have reportage from journalists who have been in private sessions with these officials. Things are pretty bad for our side. For the government’s side, it’s never been easier. How do we reconcile this with this idea that these are theoretically, as far as our understanding of mathematics goes, unbreakable communications?
It’s because what we’re doing is we’re thwarting mass surveillance when we use encryption. We’re not stopping targeted surveillance. Because even, again, if you have the most well-encrypted device in the world, if the government spends a million dollars to pay a hacker to exploit your phone personally, they will very likely succeed.
In our current state of the art, offense is easier than defense. This is an unfortunate artifact of the fact that governments around the world have prioritized offensive capabilities for the benefit of spying on people so much more strongly than they have defensive capabilities, preventing our countries from being hacked. And this is what’s leading to the kind of dynamics we see today.
Whether it’s the Office of Personnel Management; whether it’s this recent Democratic National Committee hack; whether it’s all of these other things about infrastructural attacks; fear of the power grid being attacked—these were preventable problems.
But unfortunately we don’t have this pressure—that should be simply blistering—coming from newspapers, going, “We are the most advanced societies in the world, we are the most connected societies in the world, and in some sort of computer-based conflict. We have more to lose.”
We can hack Russia ten times; it will cause less damage to them than one hack to us will cause. We can hack North Korea 1,000 times, and they will suffer less damage than if they hacked us a single time. This is not a game that we want to get into, so why are we doing so? It’s because policy is short-sighted.”
The whole interview is available here: | 1real |
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Expresses Regret for Criticizing Donald Trump - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s indignant dissents from the bench have turned her into a heroine of the left, beloved for methodically skewering her conservative colleagues. On the internet, she has become the Notorious R. B. G. But after being roundly criticized for a remarkable series of interviews in which she mocked Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Justice Ginsburg on Thursday did something highly unusual for a member of the nation’s highest court: She admitted making a mistake. “Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office,” she wrote in a brief statement issued by the court, admitting her remarks were “ill advised” and expressing regret. “In the future I will be more circumspect. ” A revered figure at some of the nation’s most elite law schools since her appointment to the court in 1993, Justice Ginsburg, 83, flabbergasted many in the legal community when she called Mr. Trump a “faker,” and said she could not really imagine what it would be like if he became president. Barry Friedman, a professor of law at New York University who describes himself as a friend of Justice Ginsburg’s, said her comments were a stark example of a breach in the neutrality that justices must adhere to. “The price you pay for being on the bench is that you withdraw from politics,” Mr. Friedman said. “You need to be extremely circumspect. ” Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard, said Justice Ginsburg’s comments reflected the divisive nature of today’s politics, which had already affected the legislative and executive branches of government. “Maybe this is an example of how hyperpolarization affects the court,” he said. In expressing her disdain for Mr. Trump, Justice Ginsburg was anything but circumspect, leading some to wonder whether, after 23 years at the court, she is looking toward a possible retirement after the presidential election. Shana Knizhnik, the of a biography titled “Notorious R. B. G.: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” said the justice was well aware that her time on the bench would not last forever. But Ms. Knizhnik said she was still surprised by Justice Ginsburg’s comments. “She has always said she is going to do this job as long as she can do it full steam,” Ms. Knizhnik said on Thursday. “But from an actuarial standpoint, she sees that there aren’t going to be too many more elections during her tenure. ” A legal advocate for most of her life, Justice Ginsburg made a name for herself when she represented the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union in several landmark cases before the court on issues including gender discrimination, equal protection and due process. After serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for more than a dozen years, Justice Ginsburg was elevated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, becoming the second woman to serve there. Though a stalwart of the court’s liberal bloc, she was hardly a household name. But that started to change in the last decade, as conservatives on the court more aggressively asserted their philosophy and Justice Ginsburg began reading fiery dissents. In a 2007 case about discrimination in the workplace, she said the court “does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination. ” In 2013, she said that “only an ostrich” would believe that race would not continue to be a factor in university admissions despite the court’s ruling in an affirmative action case. In a religious liberty case the next year, Justice Ginsburg said the majority on the court had endorsed a radical overhaul of corporate rights. Her dissent in that case, involving whether Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts store chain, must provide insurance coverage for contraception to its employees, went viral on the internet, spawning Facebook memes and even a tribute song on YouTube. Ms. Knizhnik’s Tumblr site, Notorious R. B. G. sells coffee mugs, iPhone cases and tote bags with Justice Ginsburg’s face on them. Ms. Knizhnik said the internet offered a caricature that exaggerated the liberal philosophy of Justice Ginsburg, who had formed a close personal bond with Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s most outspoken conservative before his death this year. “The idea that she is this hyperpartisan is not true, even though certain people in political life paint her that way,” Ms. Knizhnik said. “She is very much about disagreeing agreeably. ” That may have been why her comments about Mr. Trump took her allies and critics by surprise. Mr. Trump lashed out at Justice Ginsburg after her comments, and she was criticized in editorials and by legal ethics experts. “I think it’s highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday. “I think it’s a disgrace to the court, and I think she should apologize to the court. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. ” He later called on Justice Ginsburg to resign, something she did not respond to in her statement. Legal scholars said they could not remember a time that a sitting justice expressed regret publicly for something he or she said, though many justices have been known to socialize with political figures or to privately express their political preferences, only to have them reported in the media. Justice Scalia went hunting with Dick Cheney, the former vice president, even as he participated in cases involving Mr. Cheney’s activities in government. On the night in 2000 when news networks initially reported that Al Gore had won the presidential election, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was said to have told friends at a dinner party that it was terrible news. Mr. Tushnet said the idea of what was acceptable political activity for a Supreme Court justice had evolved over time. In the early 1900s, it was not uncommon, he said, for justices to openly express their desire to run for president. Charles Evans Hughes resigned his seat on the court in 1916 to run for the White House. But norms have changed, Mr. Tushnet said. Now, Americans expect the justices to keep their opinions largely to themselves. “My guess is that similar things occur today, but they are behind the scenes,” Mr. Tushnet said. “What’s different about this was that it was in front, on the record. ” Mr. Friedman said Americans should not be naïve by thinking that the justices do not have opinions. But he also criticized the current members of the court for being too willing to attend conferences with partisan leanings or too eager to grant interviews when they have a book to sell. “This comment comes as a part of the culture of the justices being public figures instead of paying greater attention to the black robes they wear,” he said. “It is still their job to operate from a position of neutrality. ” | 0fake |
New French Law Makes It Illegal To Contact Employees After Work Hours | By Amanda Froelich at trueactivist.com
The new “right to disconnect” law mandates that a company with 50 employees or more cannot email an employee after typical work hours.
If you’ve ever been with friends or family members over the weekend then received an urgent email from work, you’re aware of the dread that fills your stomach and causes your mood to dip. Being unable to fully disconnect from work can have mental and physical health implications, which is why unwarranted contact by the workplace is soon to become illegal in France.
Credit: Wall Street Journal
Already, the country gives its employees 30 days off a year and 16 weeks of full-paid family leave; this latest initiative is only making France more popular. According to BBC News , the new “right to disconnect” law will mandate that a company with 50 employees or more cannot email an employee after typical work hours. The amendment is largely a result of studies showing that people have an increasingly difficult time distancing themselves from the workplace.
Good relays that the law seeks to make sure the French citizens are able to fully enjoy their time off. Said Benoit Hamon of the French National Assembly: | 1real |
SARA CARTER Uncovers Explosive Evidence Of Violations Of American Civil Liberties By Obama [Video] | OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THIS: How scary is this to anyone who thinks the government can t spy on them: The justification for requesting unmasking (revealing your identity) can be as simple as claiming the identity of the United States person (you) is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance . It does sound far-fetched but just ask FOX News reporter James Rosen who was spied on by Obama. Yes, Barack Obama spied on Americans by using the excuse that it was necessary to expose the name of the person the NSA was spying on. In other words, the use of intelligence information was mishandled for political purposes by a dirt bag president who only knows Chicago politics So Obama spied on Trump, right? Well, if he spied on James Rosen then you know damn well he spied on Trump. Yes, this backdoor form of political espionage by an outgoing administration trying to monitor its successor on the world stage is as bad as it gets IT S BANANA REPUBLIC BAD As his presidency drew to a close, Barack Obama s top aides routinely reviewed intelligence reports gleaned from the National Security Agency s incidental intercepts of Americans abroad, taking advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats, Circa has learned.Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures. Sometimes the Americans names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Obama s national security adviser Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.Some intercepted communications from November to January involved Trump transition figures or foreign figures perceptions of the incoming president and his administration. Intercepts involving congressional figures also have been unmasked occasionally for some time.The NSA is expected to turn over logs as early as this week to congressional committees detailing who consumed reports with unmasked Americans identities from their intercepts since the summer of 2016.Read more: Circa News | 1real |
Georgia Judge Suspended for Comparing Attack on US Monuments to ISIS Actions | 21st Century Wire says In the wake of the Charlottesville m l e, reactionary social justice flash mobs and assorted vigilantes have begun a campaign of attacking and destroying statues and monuments all over the country. The irrational rationale of these activists is that these historic monuments represent oppression and slavery, and therefore they must marked for ceremonial destruction. Watch this scene in Durham, North Carolina this week where, bizarrely, the hysterical mob of liberal progressive protesters lines up to take turns kicking the inanimate bronze statue on the ground, after it was pulled down in an impromptu ceremony. This is an emotive crowd, clearly carried away by the political hysteria: Question: Should a small violent, reactionary mob be allowed bypass any sensible public discussion or forum thereby litigating and dictating history for the rest of the community and country?So this is really happening. George Orwell was a prophet. #Durham #Confederate #Monuments #WrongThink pic.twitter.com/7seUcanqyD Mark (@markantro) August 17, 2017In many ways, are rapidly heading towards a 1984-style thought police environment now. Viewed from a police state perspective, this contrived disorder is designed to further breakdown social cohesion in American in effect, finishing the job which Barack Obama started in 2008. This is an invitation for the federal state to then move in with more emergency powers to restore order . For the populace at large, less rights of expression will be the outcome. While the New Left in American appoints itself as policeman of history, its ranks seem to be more ignorant than ever of it. They fail to note Mao s purge, and other such examples in history. After Charlottesville the Culture Wars have begun.What happened to this judge in Georgia may be a taste of things to come. The culture war has arrived RT International news reports The nut cases tearing down monuments are equivalent to ISIS destroying history, Judge Jim Hinkle wrote on Facebook Tuesday, the same day protesters in Durham, North Carolina toppled a statue honoring Confederate soldiers.Judge Jim Hinkle suspended: The nut cases tearing down monuments are equivalent to ISIS destroying history." https://t.co/xVPslLurWJ pic.twitter.com/BIQcy5bnZ8 Jeffrey Guterman (@JeffreyGuterman) August 16, 2017On Saturday, Hinkle had written that protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia were snowflakes with no concept of history, as they came to counter a rally of white nationalists who gathered to oppose the planned relocation of a statue to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In Charlottesville everyone is upset over Robert E. Lee statue, Hinkle s post said. It looks like all of the snowflakes have no concept of history. It is what it is. Get over it and move on. Leave history alone those who ignore history are deemed (sic) to repeat the mistake of the past. That post was written approximately an hour before a car crashed into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, killing a woman and injuring 19 other people. Police have charged the driver, who reportedly took part in the white nationalist rally, with second-degree murder. I have suspended Judge Hinkle effective immediately while I consider the appropriate final action, Gwinnett County Chief Magistrate Judge Kristina Hammer Blum told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) Tuesday.Hinkle told the AJC he didn t see anything controversial about the posts. But you know, with the way things are going in the world today, I guess everything s controversial, he told the outlet Full text of Chief Judge s statement about suspending Judge James Hinkle: pic.twitter.com/WcSe2wQhFg Tony Thomas (@TonyThomasWSB) August 15, 2017Continue this report at RTREAD MORE CULTURAL MARXISM NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Cultural Marxism FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
TRUMP’S LAWYER DESTROYS #ChrisWallace In Heated Exchange: “No Chris, I deal with fact and law” [Video] | Let s just get this out of the way Chris Wallace is a flaming liberal and a total a**! He blatantly goes after conservatives with a vengeance but gives liberals a pass. Today was no exception with Wallace trying to grill Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow. Sekulow hammered Wallace in a heated exchange over whether President Trump is being investigated:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_g__BK9Jx0TRANSCRIPT OF THE HEATED EXCHANGE: WALLACE: A look outside the beltway at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, where the world s top golfers are competing in today s final round of the U.S. Open.The investigation into possible links between Russia and Trump associates and whether the president has tried to shut down that probe took some dramatic new turns this week.Joining me now is Jay Sekulow, a member of the president s legal team.Jay, I want to start with the president s tweet Friday that I discussed with Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. Here it is again: I am being investigated for firing the FBI director by the man who told me to fire the FBI director. Witch hunt.Has the special counsel, Robert Mueller, formally notified the president that he is under investigation?JAY SEKULOW, TRUMP LEGAL TEAM: The president has not been notified by anyone that he s under investigation. That tweet, Chris, was in response to The Washington Post story that alleged that five unnamed sources, anonymous sources, leaked to The Washington Post that the president was, in fact, under investigation. So that tweet was in response to that. There s been no notification of an investigation. Nothing s changed since James Comey said the president was not a target or subject of investigation. Nothing s changed.WALLACE: Well, but you don t know that he isn t under investigation now, do you?SEKULOW: Well, no one s notified us that he is. So I I can t read people s minds, but I can tell you this, we have not been notified that there s an investigation to the president of the United States. So that nothing has changed in that regard since James Comey s testimony.WALLACE: I I want to go after another part of this tweet. Why is he going after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. First of all, he seems to imply that Rosenstein is investigating, and that s not true. It Mueller. And, secondly, he made it clear in an interview with NBC that that he decided to fire Comey well before he ever met with Rod Rosenstein. Take a look.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP[)TRUMP: I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.TRUMP: He made a recommendation. He s highly respected. A very good guy. Avery smart guy. The Democrats like him. The Republicans like him. he made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.(END VIDEO CLIP)WALLACE: I want to ask you a direct question, does the president think that Rod Rosenstein has done anything wrong?SEKULOW: The president has never said anything about Rod Rosenstein doing anything wrong. Here s what what is the legal situation here. There is a constitutional issue when you have this scenario. The president made a determination based on consult of advice. He decided ultimately. He s the commander in chief. He gets to make that decision that James Comey had a go. That was coming, by the way, from groups right, left, and center over the last year. You you and I know that. So there had been concern about James Comey.It was put forward in a memorandum that s what the president s referencing from the deputy attorney general and the attorney general requesting the removal of James Comey as the FBI director. And, ultimately, that s the president s determination.So here s the constitutional threshold question, Chris. The president takes action based on numerous events, including recommendations from his attorney general and the deputy attorney general s office. He takes the action that they also, by the way, recommended. And now he s being investigated by the Department of Justice because the special counsel under the special counsel relations reports still to the Department of Justice. Not an independent counsel. So he s being investigated for taking the action that the attorney general and deputy attorney general recommended him to take by the agency who recommended the termination. So that s the constitutional threshold question here. That s why, as I said, no investigation WALLACE: Well, I what what what s the question (INAUDIBLE). I mean you you stated you stated some facts. First of all, you ve now said that he is getting investigated after saying that you didn t.SEKULOW: No.WALLACE: You you just, sir, that he s being SEKULOW: No, he s not being investigated!WALLACE: You just said that he s being investigated.SEKULOW: No, Chris, I said that the any let me be crystal clear so you you completely understand. We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States, period.WALLACE: Sir, you just said two times that he s being investigated.SEKULOW: No. The context of the tweet, I just gave you the legal theory, Chris, of how the Constitution works. If, in fact, it was correct that the president was being investigated, he would be investigating for taking action that an agency told him to take. So that is protected under the Constitution as his article one power. That s all I said. So I appreciate you trying to rephrase it, but I m just being really direct with you, Chris. This is let me be WALLACE: No, I I sir, I didn t rephrase it. The tape will speak Jay, the tape will speak for itself. You said he is being investigated. And it s not that big SEKULOW: Chris, he is just no, Chris that s (INAUDIBLE) unfair, Chris.WALLACE: Wait a minute wait a minute. Jay, and it s not Jay, it s not just being investigated for firing Comey. There s also the question of what he said to Comey when Comey was still the FBI director. So there s more than just the fact that he fired Comey.SEKULOW: He Chirrs, let me be clear, you asked me a question about what the president s tweet was regarding the deputy attorney general of the United States. That s what you asked me. And I responded to what that legal theory would be. So I do not appreciate you putting words in my mouth when I ve been crystal clear that the president is not and has not been under investigation. I don t think I can be any clearer than that.WALLACE: Well, you don t know that he s not under investigation again, sir. I mean you might SEKULOW: You know, I can t read the mind you re right, Chris, I can t read the minds of the special prosecutor.WALLACE: Well, then, good, OK, so we re in agreement, you don t know whether he s under you don t know whether he s under investigation.SEKULOW: But I have not been notified. No one has been notified that he is.WALLACE: You don t know whether he s under investigation or not.SEKULOW: Chris, I WALLACE: The question I m asking you is, does he think that Rod Rosenstein it s a very simple question does he think that Rod Rosenstein did anything wrong?SEKULOW: The president has not expressed any opinion about Rod Rosenstein.WALLACE: Does he think that Robert Mueller has done anything wrong?SEKULOW: First of all, he has not said anything about Robert Mueller. And, Chris, let me say something here. You re asking me if I had a conversation, which I have not had, about Robert Mueller with the president of the United States on or anyone else for that matter. I can t discuss that and would that with you. Unlike James Comey, who leaks information to the press, I actually respect the attorney-client privilege. Apparently he did not.WALLACE: Does the president believe well, you re speaking for his legal team, so you re out here to represent him and tell us what the president s belief is, is that correct?SEKULOW: No, I m out here to tell you what the facts are and the legal issues are. I m not to tell you what the beliefs are. I m not the client s conscience, I m his lawyer.WALLACE: I understand that and the and the client have you spoken the have you spoken to the president at all?SEKULOW: Yes, but I m not going to discuss those conversations with you. Those are privileged under the attorney-client privilege.WALLACE: Well, I assume that if he asked you to say something, for instance, Marc Kasowitz said all kinds of things about after Comey s testimony. I assumed he was speaking for the presidentSEKULOW: Marc Kasowitz made a general statement to the press after the testimony of James Comey. That s what that was about. This you re asking me now questions about what people are thinking in their minds, which I don t read minds, and you re asking me also what I may or may not have had a conversation with the president about and you understand this. I respect the attorney-client privilege, unlike James Comey.WALLACE: Does SEKULOW: I want to be real clear on that too. I m not going to give you conversations I ve had with have or have not had with the president of the United States. So when I ve had conversations with the president of the United States WALLACE: Well, I your SEKULOW: As his lawyer, it s privileged, period.WALLACE: Does the president think that Rosenstein, because you talked about this constitutional theory that he took action, that s on the advice SEKULOW: Yes.WALLACE: Although he says he didn t take it on the advice of Rosenstein, does he think that Rosenstein should recuse himself, and is healing the groundwork to fire Rosenstein and Mueller?SEKULOW: I ve had no conversations and I ve heard nothing without that at all. Nothing. I think this Chris, this points out let me tell you one thing quickly about the constitutional theory, as you called it. It s actually called the Constitution. You know, the president has certain (INAUDIBLE) authority under the Constitution. It s WALLACE: Well, you called it the constitutional theory, sir.SEKULOW: Yes, it is a constitutional theory based on the Constitution.WALLACE: I understand that.SEKULOW: Not so-called. It s the constitutional theory. It s part of the Constitution. The president has inherent authority.Here s what you re trying to here s what you re trying to do, Chris, and I appreciate that you re you re trying to push back.WALLACE: Well, now you re reading minds again. Now you re reading minds again.SEKULOW: No, Chris, I deal with fact and law. You were asking me to read people s minds. That I don t do.WALLACE: Well, don t tell me what I m trying to well, don t tell me what I m trying to do because you don t know what I m trying to do. Actually, what I m trying to get is a straight answer out of you. Let me ask you this SEKULOW: Yes, well sure.WALLACE: As a matter of law, does the president think that he can be indicted under the Constitution?SEKULOW: The president I haven t had that conversation with the president, but the president can t be indicted under the Constitution of the activity alleged in something like this. Of course not.WALLACE: Why is that?SEKULOW: Because there s not an investigation. And there s there s no (INAUDIBLE) against the president.WALLACE: Well, you don t know whether there s an investigation. Oh, boy, this is weird. You you don t know that there s whether there s an investigation. You just told us that.SEKULOW: Chris, you re asking me to speculate so then what you re asking me to do is to speculate on WALLACE: And it would matter. I m asking you as a matter of law, not whether there s an investigation. Does the president think he can be indicted as president?SEKULOW: For for WALLACE: That s a constitutional issue, isn t it?SEKULOW: For obstruction of justice? No, the Constitution s WALLACE: No, for any of it.SEKULOW: Now, Chris, you know, let s let s be realistic here. You know what the the answer is. Can president be indicted for obstruction? You know what the position has been at the Department of Justice since the 1970s and again stated in 2000. That s not what president that s now how you engage a president. There s a political process if somebody did something wrong. You re talking about you re conflating a constitutional process, criminal law, with an issue of political consequence. So I am his lawyer. I m not his political advisor.WALLACE: Senator Dianne Feinstein, a top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, responded to the president s tweet this week with this statement. The message the president is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn t apply to him and that anyone who thinks otherwise will be fired. Is she wrong, sir?SEKULOW: Yes, she s wrong. First of all, Dianne Feinstein also called for an investigation of James Comey and Loretta Lynch for that whole episode regarding her engagement and calling it a, quote, matter, not an investigation. But with regard to this particular issue, I mean the tweet there s nothing illegal or inappropriate about the tweet. If the tweet came on the heels of a Washington Post story that had five anonymous sources and didn t even identify the agency from which those sources came from, and that s what he tweet in response to. It s that simple, period.WALLACE: Final question, the president just just added John Dowd, a high-powered Washington lawyer, to his legal team. Should we expect him to hire other criminal lawyers? And, in a sense, is he preparing for a potential legal battle here?SEKULOW: Look, I mean John Dowd is is a legal legend, you know that, in in in the in Washington, D.C., and the president is doing the appropriate thing by hiring lawyers necessary, if there was to be an investigation, if there were to be an investigation, you have the lawyers in place. We ve got a great legal team led by Marc Kasowitz. We ve got John Dowd on the team. This is a solid team. Contrary to some of the press reports, a deep team, if necessary.WALLACE: Do you think I I I misspoke. I m going to ask one more question. Because I m not allowed to ask you what the president thinks, do you think that he should stop SEKULOW: Of course.WALLACE: Do you think he should stop tweeting about this case?SEKULOW: Look, I here s the thing on that. You know, people have been asking me that. Look, the president has changed the way in which engagement goes in I mean you ve got great ratings, no doubt about it, Chris. But let s face it, the president speaks to 107 million people through his social media platforms. He revolutionized the election process by utilizing media in a different way. So I I think, look, the president knows the effectiveness of social media. He s been very effective at it. Again, I m his lawyer, I deal with the issues. Nothing that he s tweeted is causing me any issues whatsoever at this point. Nothing.WALLACE: Jay, thank you. Thanks for coming in.SEKULOW: Thanks, Chris.WALLACE: It s always it s always interesting to talk to you. Please, come back, and we ll SEKULOW: Thanks, Chris.WALLACE: We ll continue it and maybe this time we ll get on this you know what, be here in studio and we can stay on the same wavelength.SEKULOW: There we go.WALLACE: All right, sir SEKULOW: Happy Father s Day.WALLACE: Happy Father s Day to you too, sir. | 1real |
Calexit Leader Moves to Russia Permanently - or Until California Secedes - Breitbart | The leader of a California movement to secede from the United States of America, or “CalExit,” does not want to live under the American flag — and is now settling in Russia. [In a statement issued this week, Louis Marinelli announced that he is moving to his wife’s native Russia permanently, or at least until California secedes, calling himself the “representative of the Republic of California to Russia”. Marinelli posted a long message on yescalifornia. org about his decision to seek permanent residence in Russia, and to abandon the effort he started in 2014 to see California secede from the union. Marinelli states that he led the group in the absence of a native Californian to lead it, adding, “From the beginning, I have pointed out the trouble I bring to the table with my political background and my history in Russia, a country I have grown to love. ” As I have stated in the past, I do not wish to live under the American flag. I do not wish to live under the American political system or within the American economic system. Regardless, I had long planned to eventually return to occupied California and struggle for her independence from the United States so we could build the kind of country that reflects our progressive values. However, while my frustration, disappointment and disillusionment with the United States remains, these feelings now point me in a different direction. I have found in Russia a new happiness, a life without the albatross of frustration and resentment towards ones’ homeland, and a future detached from the partisan divisions and animosity that has thus far engulfed my entire adult life. Consequently, if the people of Russia would be so kind as to welcome me here on a permanent basis, I intend to make Russia my new home. Accordingly, as the author and architect of the Calexit ballot initiative petition which is currently circulating in California, it is only proper, given my intention to seek permanent residence in Russia and not return to California in the foreseeable future, to withdraw that petition from circulation, and to allow a new petition, free from ties to me and drafted by others, to be resubmitted at future date of their choosing. In Marinelli’s lengthy address, he attempts to explain some of his disdain for the U. S. and the motivation for his “CalExit” campaign as he writes that he brought his foreign wife to America, but says there were issues with the process of her immigration status. He says his allegiance to the United States shifted to allegiance to California. In a prior interview with Breitbart California, Marinelli had indicated that his wife is a citizen of Russia and her family still resides there. He continued, in his address: And so, months ago, I started the Calexit campaign in order to establish a country where my wife would not need to live in the shadows and where my family would feel welcome. And I wanted a country to be proud of again … and California, unlike the United States, is a great source of pride for me. But three weeks ago, my wife finally received her green card and now my personal struggle against the United States government has ended. He called himself a Californian “first and foremost, and that my claim to being an American is the same claim that could be made by the other inhabitants of North and South America because we are all Americans. ” Marinelli boasted that Yes California has compiled a mailing list of 110, 489, with 97, 463 of those as registered supporters and 8, 510 designated volunteers, but just 1, 201 actual financial contributors. The CalExit leader concluded by stating that he would return to California once the state secedes from the union. “Until then I will continue to serve as the representative of the Republic of California to Russia,” he wrote. Yes California filed papers last November to begin collecting signatures in an effort to put a California secession measure on the 2018 ballot. The group needed to collect 585, 407 valid signatures to qualify. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana | 0fake |
Senators reach deal to help state water programs after Flint | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senators unveiled legislation on Wednesday providing federal aid to help states fix water infrastructure in the wake of Flint, Michigan’s crisis over lead-tainted drinking water. Senators James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, and Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, and others introduced the measure providing $100 million to a revolving fund states can tap if they have drinking water problems. The funding in the agreement is paid for by cuts from the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loans for auto companies, aimed to speed development of electric cars and other technologies. Inhofe called it a “failed program” that hasn’t been used in more than a year and has only issued five loans since 2008. It was unclear whether the measure would be attached to a wide-ranging energy bill that failed to advance early this month or whether the senators would try to pass it as a separate bill. Under the plan, states must first explain how the money would be spent, according to details of the agreement. If they do not use the aid in 18 months, it would return to the federal government. “This is not a blank check,” according to a document explaining the deal. Thousands of children in Flint, a predominantly African-American city of 100,000, are believed to have consumed dangerous amounts of lead in drinking water after a state-appointed emergency manager directed the city to switch from Detroit’s drinking water supply to the Flint River. Lead is a neurotoxin that can harm brain development in children. Under the deal, Flint and the states would also have access to $70 million in a credit subsidy under a federal program called the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Authority, or WIFIA. Congress conceived the WIFIA to help lower borrowing costs for municipal water projects. The federal program acts as a loan guarantee, rather than a grant, and is aimed at bringing borrowing costs in line with U.S. government bond rates. Some critics say local governments need direct federal aid, not borrowing support, to improve infrastructure. There would also be $50 million in aid available for national use for a childhood lead poisoning prevention program, a health registry and other items. Earlier this month, Michigan lawmakers had at first opposed getting funding from the advanced vehicles program, saying it would hurt auto workers. | 0fake |
Five Illegal Aliens Arrested After Shooting Woman 13 Times, Say Police | Police in George, Washington State, have arrested five illegal aliens wanted in connection with the murder of a woman allegedly shot 13 times. [Investigators with the Grant County Sheriff’s Office working in connection with deputy U. S. Marshalls and the Interagency Narcotics Enforcement (INET) task force arrested five illegal aliens who allegedly murdered Jill Sundberg. The woman had been in an argument with one of the alleged shooters shortly before she was killed, KNDO NBC23 reported. Sheriff’s officials reported the following arrests: • Gustavo Tapia Rodriguez, and alleged shooter, age 39, charged with murder in the first degree and kidnapping in the first degree• Ambrosio Mendez Villanueva, age 25, charged with murder in the first degree and kidnapping in the first degree• Julio Mendez Villanueva, age 25, charged with murder in the first degree and kidnapping in the first degree• Fernando Marcos Gutierrez, age 33, been charged with being a material witness along with immigration charges• Salvador Espinoz a Gomez, age 24, charged with being a material witness, and possession of a firearm, drug charges, as well as immigration charges. The Grant County Sheriff confirmed that all five were in the U. S. illegally, KHQ’s Patrick Erickson Tweeted. Witnesses told police Sundberg was arguing with Rodriguez on the evening of December 21. The report does not disclose what the argument was about. Shortly after the argument, Sundberg was kidnapped and taken to the location where her body was eventually discovered. “This was an immense collaborative effort between responding agencies,” Sheriff Tom Jones told reporters. “Our sincerest thanks to all and continued prayers to the Sundberg family for their senseless loss. ” The five arrested were seen leaving the RV park where the argument took place. Sundberg’s hands were allegedly being held behind her back by Varona, FiberOne reported. The suspects and the material witnesses drove her to a rest area alongside a highway, according to the police report. Varona was seen kicking the back of one of her legs, forcing her to the ground. Rodriguez then allegedly shot her at least 13 times in the head. After shooting the woman, Mendez Villenueva reportedly wrote a note in Spanish on a piece of carboard and placed it on her back. He secured the message in place by stabbing it into her back with a knife, the report obtained by FiberOne revealed. The group then fled the scene, traveling to a convenience store where they purchased some beer. The Pacific Northwest has experienced crime from foreign nationals in the past. Back in 2015, Breitbart Texas’ Brandon Darby reported how a massive methamphetamine drug operation was being run by a Mexican cartel throughout Oregon, California, and Texas. At the time, some 24 suspects were charged with their involvement in the cartel, and many were illegal immigrants. Sundberg’s body was found on December 22. 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. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
U.S. Wrestles With How to Fight Back Against Cyberattacks - The New York Times | ASPEN, Colo. — It has been an open secret throughout the Obama presidency that world powers have escalated their use of cyberpower. But the recent revelations of hacking into Democratic campaign computer systems in an apparent attempt to manipulate the 2016 election is forcing the White House to confront a new question: whether, and if so how, to retaliate. So far, the administration has stopped short of publicly accusing the Russian government of President Vladimir V. Putin of engineering the theft of research and emails from the Democratic National Committee and hacking into other campaign computer systems. However, private investigators have identified the suspects, and American intelligence agencies have told the White House that they have “high confidence” that the Russian government was responsible. Less certain is who is behind the selective leaks of the material, and whether they have a clear political objective. Suspecting such meddling is different from proving it with a certainty sufficient for any American president to order a response. Even if officials gather the proof, they may not be able to make their evidence public without tipping off Russia, or its proxies in cyberspace, about how deeply the National Security Agency has penetrated that country’s networks. And designing a response that will send a clear message, without prompting escalation or undermining efforts to work with Russia in places like Syria, where Russia is simultaneously an adversary and a partner, is even harder. The Russians tried to make it tougher still on Saturday when they declared that they had found evidence of American activity in their government systems. It was hardly a shocking revelation anyone who leafed through Edward J. Snowden’s revelations saw evidence of daily efforts to break into Russian spy agencies, nuclear installations and leadership compounds. But in a talk on Friday evening at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual gathering that draws many of the nation’s top intelligence and military officials, John O. Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, made clear that while spying on each other’s political institutions is fair game, making data public — in true or altered form — to influence an election is a new level of malicious activity, far different from ordinary spy vs. spy maneuvers. “When it is determined who is responsible for this,” Mr. Brennan said, choosing his words carefully to avoid any direct implication of Russia, there “will be discussions at the highest levels of government about what the right course of action will be. Obviously interference in the U. S. election process is a very, very serious matter. ” The Russia problem is thorny, and persistent. Just four months into his presidency in 2009, President Obama and his top national security advisers received a warning from American intelligence agencies: Of all the nations targeting America’s computer networks, a National Intelligence Estimate warned, Russia had the most “robust, longstanding program that combines a patient, multidisciplinary approach to computer network operations with proven access and tradecraft. ” Mr. Obama might have been a bit distracted at the time. While setting up his new administration, he was also learning the dark arts of cyberwar, descending into the Situation Room to oversee a complex offensive operation to disable Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. He expressed concern to his aides that the operation would help fuel the escalation of cyberattacks and counterattacks. The concern was justified. Since then, Iran has attacked Saudi Arabia, Russia has brought down a power grid in Ukraine, the North Koreans have attacked the South. The list gets longer every month. But deterrence has been spotty. In the Democratic National Committee case, two senior administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the options, ranging from countercyberattacks on the F. S. B. and the G. R. U. two competing Russian spy agencies at the center of the current hacking, to economic, travel and other sanctions aimed at suspected perpetrators. At the event in Aspen on Saturday afternoon, Lisa O. Monaco, Mr. Obama’s homeland security adviser, sidestepped specific discussion of the D. N. C. hacking but acknowledged that the administration might soon have to consider whether the United States’ electoral system constitutes “critical infrastructure,” like the power grid or the cellphone network. “I think it’s a serious question,” she said, especially if there is “coercion, destruction, manipulation of data. ” Ms. Monaco noted that whenever the United States thinks about retaliation, “the danger of escalation and misinterpretation is such that we have to be responsible about it. ” But she also said that if an event were serious enough, “we have to be very clear we will respond. ” The cost of doing nothing could be high. As the United States and other nations move to more electronic voting systems, the opportunities for mischief rise. Imagine, for example, a vote as close as the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, but with accusations about foreign manipulation of the ballots or the vote count, leaving Americans wondering about the validity of the outcome. For Mr. Obama, the president who has done the most to raise alarms about the risks of cyberattacks and the most to build up the United States Cyber Command, this territory is fraught with politics, intelligence and questions of American values. “I think that the administration needs to be ironclad on the evidence here to convince the American people that this is about policy, not politics,” said Jason Healey, a scholar at Columbia University who specializes in cyberconflict between nations. “This has got to be about defending a constitutional process, not a party. ” Last week, two California Democrats who specialize in intelligence issues, Representative Adam B. Schiff and Senator Dianne Feinstein, sent Mr. Obama a letter urging him to make public the intelligence assessments on the Democratic National Committee hacking. Mr. Obama often says the world of cyberconflict is still “the Wild West. ” There are no treaties, no international laws, just a patchwork set of emerging “norms” of what constitutes acceptable behavior. For example, Mr. Obama has pressed President Xi Jinping of China to work with the United States and other nations to develop rules about the theft of intellectual property, and about not interfering with a nation’s efforts to bring attacked systems back online. Attacking another nation’s power grid in peacetime is considered out of bounds. But every new case brings a new and imaginative way to weaponize cyberpower. Until November 2014, when North Korea hacked into the computers at Sony Pictures Entertainment in retaliation for a comedy that portrayed a C. I. A. plot to assassinate Kim the country’s leader, no one seriously considered a movie studio to be “critical infrastructure. ” Yet the attack on Sony — which melted down 70 percent of its computing power — was the only case that brought the president to the White House press room to accuse another nation of launching a deliberate cyberattack, and to promise retaliation. Mr. Obama said he was driven to go public by the fact that North Korea was trying to suppress free speech and intimidate Americans with threats if they went to the theater. It is unclear how the United States may have retaliated against the North in secret, if it even did so. But the public punishment, the announcement of some mild economic sanctions, seemed highly ineffective. They were lost in the sea of other sanctions imposed on the North since the signing of the armistice that halted, but did not end, the Korean War 63 years ago. Yet the decision to name North Korea — a country with which the United States does no other real business — was an outlier. China was never formally named in the theft of the security clearance files on more than 21 million Americans, revealing fingerprints, personal financial details and the personal data about family, friends and former lovers. To James R. Clapper Jr. the director of national intelligence, that was not an “attack,” it was just very good espionage. Given the chance, he said last year, “we would have done the same thing. ” Similarly, the administration decided not to call out Russia when the same intelligence agencies implicated in the D. N. C. attack were believed to be behind the siphoning of tens of thousands of unclassified emails from the systems of the State Department and the White House. There was also a more targeted cyberespionage operation, which investigators attributed to the same actors, aimed at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But again, it was considered within the bounds of spy vs. spy. Speaking at the Aspen forum on Thursday, Mr. Clapper, while stepping around who had conducted the hacking, said that in Mr. Putin’s mind, the United States had meddled in Russian politics, in Ukraine and Georgia — all part of former Soviet territory. (Mr. Putin complained that Hillary Clinton, in 2011, helped spark protests over a Russian parliamentary election that the United States considered riddled with voter fraud.) “Of course they see a U. S. conspiracy behind every bush and ascribe far more impact than we’re actually guilty of, but that’s their ” Mr. Clapper said. “And so I think their approach is they believe we are trying to influence political developments in Russia, trying to effect change, and so their natural response is to retaliate and do unto us as they think we’ve done unto them. ” He later described Mr. Putin as “paranoid” and said “he is less of a throwback to the Communist era, than to the czars. ” He added later: “He wants to be seen as the leader of a great power, coequal with the United States. ” | 0fake |
UPDATE: STILL NO MEDIA COVERAGE AFTER THOUSANDS TOOK TO STREETS IN NYC TO PROTEST OBAMA’S DANGEROUS IRAN DEAL | Does anyone actually believe it s possible that Barack Hussein Obama is the only person in America (with maybe the exception of Valerie Jarrett) who doesn t see this is a horrible, lopsided and dangerous deal for America?Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Times Square Wednesday evening in protest over the recent landmark nuclear deal with Iran.As CBS2 s Jessica Schneider reported, some 10 thousand are rallying in solidarity with signs and voices raised against the nuclear deal.Protest organizers proclaim: Washington is prepared to give Iran virtually all that it needs to get to the bomb. To release $150 billion to Iran will result in the expansion of worldwide terror. Former New York Governor, and Presidential contender, George Pataki joined the chorus of voices urging lawmakers to block the deal. Reject this deal. Protect America. Protect Israel and protect the world from freedom, Pataki said.The Stop Iran Rally Coalition which claims to be a bi-partisan group is also calling out Sen. Charles Schumer, saying he has the votes as presumptive leader to override this deal .If this deal is not stopped, New York voters will know whom to blame. Sen. Schumer said in a statement Wednesday that he wasn t ready to make a decision on the deal yet. I ve read the agreement and I m seeking answers to the many questions I have. Before I make a decision, I m going to speak at length with experts on both sides, the lawmaker said.In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry led back-to-back, closed-door briefings, trying to sway lawmakers to approve the deal to curb Iran s nuclear program. We are convinced that the agreement that we have arrived at with world powers is an agreement that will prevent Iran from the potential of securing a nuclear weapon. It will make the region, our friends and allies safer, it will make the world safer, Kerry said. And we are convinced that the absence of any viable alternative absolutely underscores that fact. Meanwhile, Israel s ambassador to the U.S. is fiercely lobbying lawmakers to reject the deal. And Republicans are pledging to do just that. Because a bad deal threatens the security of the American people, and we re going to do everything possible to stop it, said Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner. And many at the rally said more people in the country need to start listening and speaking out as well. I m very concerned about what our situation is here. Nobody wants this deal to go through and we re hoping that Obama will hear the voice of the American people and we re hoping that Congress will listen to what we have say. And hopefully we can do something about that, said one protester. I feel people really don t understand the main issue. To me the main issue is not what happens 10 years from now, but what happens as soon as the sanctions are removed from Iran, another protester told Schneider. Which is the main terrorist regime in the world, which spreads terrorism all around the world, which is responsible for the deaths of Americans as well as Israelis. Several academic, military, and political leaders will speak to the crowd Wednesday night. All of them urge that this is an issue that transcends politics and they re urging Congress to keep sanctions against Iran, even if it means overriding President Barack Obama s likely veto on any legislation against the deal, Schneider reported. Congress has 60 days to approve or reject the deal. The Senate will hold a hearing on the deal Thursday.Via: New York CBS Local | 1real |
Lawyer for Melania Trump Threatens Defamation Suits Against News Outlets - The New York Times | A lawyer for Melania Trump said Monday that he had informed several news organizations, including The Daily Mail, that they could face legal action for publishing articles that Ms. Trump contended were defamatory. In an email, the lawyer, Charles J. Harder, said Ms. Trump, the wife of Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, “has placed several news organizations on notice of her legal claims against them, including Daily Mail among others, for making false and defamatory statements about her supposedly having been an ‘escort’ in the 1990s. ” “All such statements are 100 percent false, highly damaging to her reputation, and personally hurtful,” Mr. Harder added. “She understands that news media have certain leeway in a presidential campaign, but outright lying about her in this way exceeds all bounds of appropriate news reporting and human decency. ” He said no suit had been filed, but added, “That may change. ” The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Harder represented the former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan in the lawsuit against Gawker Media that ultimately resulted in Gawker’s filing for bankruptcy. Peter Thiel, the billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur who spoke in July at the Republican National Convention, acknowledged in May that he had secretly funded the Hogan case and others against Gawker. Among the news outlets that Mr. Harder said had been sent notices were Inquisitr (which apologized to Ms. Trump and retracted an article about her that was published within the last week) Politico and Liberal America. Politico declined to comment. Reached by telephone, Tiffany Willis, the founder and editor in chief of Liberal America, said her publication received an emailed letter from Mr. Harder. In the email, a copy of which is posted on the publication’s website, Mr. Harder listed several statements he claimed were defamatory and demanded that the publication “immediately and permanently remove each of these statements from the story, and print a full and complete retraction and apology, with as prominent placement as the original story. ” “Failure to do so,” Mr. Harder added, “will leave my client with no alternative but to institute immediate legal proceedings against you and, should that occur, she would pursue all available causes of action and seek all available legal remedies to the maximum extent permitted by law. ” | 0fake |
CNN’S FAREED ZARAKIA: Trump Won Because His Supporters are Stupid Racists [Video] | CNN host Fareed Zakaria explained how he thought President Donald Trump rose to power: The election of Donald Trump is really a kind of class rebellion against people like us, educated professionals who live in cities, who have cosmopolitan views about things. WTH??? But that wasn t it Zakaria decided to further offend just about every Trump supporter out there: There s a part of America that is sick and tired of being told what to do by this overeducated population that Hillary Clinton perfectly represented. That s why they re sticking with him, he continued.Zakaria also blamed racism and diversity on Trump s rise. He knew that the election of a black president had stirred a kind of ugly racial animus. A small subset but he knew how to get them Zakaria said. A real sense of cultural alienation, older, white, noncollege education Americans have, a sense that their country is changing because of immigrants. Because maybe blacks are rising up to a central place in society, because gays being afforded equal rights. Because of, frankly, working women. Everybody is muscling in on the territory that the white working man had, Zakaria said.THIS GUY HAS NO IDEA OF WHO MAKES UP AMERICA HE SHOULD BE FIRED FOR SUCH A DISGUSTING RANT!Via: WFB | 1real |
Hackers targeted Trump campaign, Republican Party groups: sources | (Reuters) - Hackers targeted the computer systems of presidential candidate Donald Trump and Republican Party organizations as well as Democratic Party networks, sources familiar with investigations into the attacks said. At least one Trump staff member’s email account was infected with malware in 2015 and sent malicious emails to colleagues, according to one insider for the Republican candidate’s campaign and an outside security expert. It was unclear whether or not the hackers actually gained access to campaign computers. In the past month, U.S. security officials have said that starting last year, hackers infiltrated computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and her party’s congressional fundraising committee. U.S. officials said they have concluded that Russia or its proxies were responsible, leading to calls by some Democrats and cyber security officials for the Obama administration to blame Russia publicly. Kremlin officials have dismissed the allegations as absurd, but there is anxiety in Washington over the possibility that a foreign power might be using hacked information to meddle in the Nov. 8 U.S. election. The Trump campaign has hired security firm CrowdStrike, which also is assisting the Democratic National Committee, according to one person briefed on the matter. The company declined to comment.A different outside security firm was hired to examine software the Trump and Clinton campaigns use to manage mailings, electronic outreach and other campaign efforts, another person who was briefed on the issue said.A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign declined to comment. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee could not immediately be reached for comment. The tools and techniques used to hack Republican targets resemble those employed in attacks on Democratic Party organizations, including the DNC and Clinton’s campaign organization, two sources said. That has led U.S. officials to reach a preliminary assessment that Russia’s military and civilian intelligence agencies or their proxies have targeted both political parties. Attempts to hack into Republican political organizations over an extended period were reported in intelligence bulletins circulated by U.S. agencies, four sources said. They did not disclose the identities of the organizations. Two U.S. security officials said the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have offered assistance to both political parties in identifying possible intrusions and upgrading their defenses against what one of the officials called “constantly evolving threats.” | 0fake |
‘The Daily’: Trump Trumps the Super Bowl - The New York Times | When Patriots quarterback Tom Brady can’t make it through a pregame news conference without talking about our president, it’s official: Donald Trump overshadows everything. Even the Super Bowl. On today’s episode of “The Daily,” we discuss what happens when the biggest story in sports meets the biggest story in politics. And a bloody mission in Yemen reminds us that a new administration doesn’t always mean a new start. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes. com. Tweet me at @mikiebarb. And if that isn’t enough, we can even text. If you are on your phone and don’t see an audio player on this page, follow the instructions below. On your iPhone or iPad: Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. If you’re reading this from your phone, tap this link, which will take you straight there. (You can also use the magnifying glass icon to search just type “The Daily. ”) Once on the series page, you can tap on the episode title to play the episode (make sure you have an internet connection) and tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. Or if you have another preferred podcast player, you can find “The Daily” there. (Here’s the RSS feed.) On your Android phone or tablet: Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. If you’re reading this from your phone, tap this link, which will take you straight there. (You can also use the magnifying glass icon to search just type “The Daily. ”) Once on the series page, you can tap on the episode title to play the episode (make sure you have an internet connection) and tap on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone free. Or if you have another preferred podcast player, you can find “The Daily” there. (Here’s the RSS feed.) From a desktop or laptop: Click the “play” button above to start the show. Make sure to keep that window open on your browser if you’re doing other things, or else the audio will stop. You can always find the latest episode at nytimes. . On Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Tap: Open your Alexa app. From the navigation panel on the left, select “Settings,” then select “Flash Briefing,” then select “Get more Flash Briefing Content. ” Look for “The New York Times” and select “Enable Skill. ” Now you can say, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?” and you will hear “The Daily. ” On Google Home: You can say “Okay, Google, play New York Times news” to listen to that day’s audio report. | 0fake |
What Trump Promised Carson For An Endorsement Could Very Well Land Him In Jail (VIDEO) | Watching people line up behind Donald Trump is concerning in and of itself, but we may finally have an explanation as to why certain people have been so quick to endorse the Republican presidential frontrunner after dropping out of the race themselves.First, it was New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who had been slamming Trump his whole campaign, but then turned around to endorse him. And now, Dr. Ben Carson has backed the real estate mogul. However, Carson may have just revealed why he actually threw his support behind Trump and the reason may actually be illegal.While being interviewed on Newsmax, Carson seemed to imply that he was offered an advisory position in Trump s potential administration in return for an endorsement. One big problem with that, though. Offering a role in exchange for an endorsement is against federal law.Carson said: I didn t see a path for Kasich, who I like, or for Rubio, who I like. As far as Cruz is concerned, I don t think that he s gonna be able to draw independents and Democrats unless he has some kind of miraculous change Is there another scenario that I would have preferred? Yes. But that scenario isn t available. However, expanding on what cemented his decision, Carson said: I will be doing things as well Certainly in an advisory capacity [in Trump s administration] We haven t handled out all the details but it is very important that we work together in this country Again, I m not going to reveal any details about it right now because all of this is still very liquid. Which leads any person with common sense to realize Trump clearly offered Carson a role in exchange for his support. However, according to the federal legal code: Whoever, being a candidate, directly or indirectly promises or pledges the appointment, or the use of his influence or support for the appointment of any person to any public or private position or employment, for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. Carson very may well have led to the chance of federal charges being filed against Trump. Will that happen? Likely not. Should it? Most definitely. Trump is gaming the system and seems to be promising favors. It s scandalous at best, and most definitely illegal.Here s the video via Think Progress:Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
Exclusive: In call with Putin, Trump denounced Obama-era nuclear arms treaty - sources | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the call. When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said. MORE TOP STORIES Japan's love of tiny cars a sore spot for Trump Trump changes tack, backs 'one China' policy Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. Trump also talked about his own popularity, the sources said. The White House declined to comment on the details of the call. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump knew what the New START treaty is but had turned to his aides for an opinion during the call with Putin. He said the notes from the call would not have conveyed that. “I would say they had a very productive call,” Spicer told reporters. He added, “It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was being said. He wanted an opinion on something.” It has not been previously reported that Trump had conveyed his doubt about New START to Putin in the hour-long call. New START gives both countries until February 2018 to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades. It also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers. During a debate in the 2016 presidential election, Trump said Russia had “outsmarted” the United States with the treaty, which he called “START-Up.” He asserted incorrectly then that it had allowed Russia to continue to produce nuclear warheads while the United States could not. DON’T MISS UAW confirms workers at Tesla have approached the union Trump's Mexican wall just got $9.6 billion more expensive Two Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senators Jeanne Shaheen and Edward J. Markey, criticized Trump for deriding what they called a key nuclear arms control accord. “It’s impossible to overstate the negligence of the president of the United States not knowing basic facts about nuclear policy and arms control,” Shaheen said in a statement. “New START has unquestionably made our country safer, an opinion widely shared by national security experts on both sides of the aisle.” Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said: “Unfortunately, Mr. Trump appears to be clueless about the value of this key nuclear risk reduction treaty and the unique dangers of nuclear weapons.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he supported the treaty during his Senate confirmation hearings. During the hearings Tillerson said it was important for the United States to “stay engaged with Russia, hold them accountable to commitments made under the New START and also ensure our accountability as well.” Two of the people who described the conversation were briefed by current administration officials who read detailed notes taken during the call. One of the two was shown portions of the notes. A third source was also briefed on the call. Reuters has not reviewed the notes taken of the call, which are classified. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The phone call with Putin has added to concerns that Trump is not adequately prepared for discussions with foreign leaders. Typically, before a telephone call with a foreign leader, a president receives a written in-depth briefing paper drafted by National Security Council staff after consultations with the relevant agencies, including the State Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies, two former senior officials said. Just before the call, the president also usually receives an oral “pre-briefing” from his national security adviser and top subject-matter aide, they said. Trump did not receive a briefing from Russia experts with the NSC and intelligence agencies before the Putin call, two of the sources said. Reuters was unable to determine if Trump received a briefing from his national security adviser Michael Flynn. In the phone call, the Russian leader raised the possibility of reviving talks on a range of disputes and suggested extending New START, the sources said. New START can be extended for another five years, beyond 2021, by mutual agreement. Unless they agree to do that or negotiate new cuts, the world’s two biggest nuclear powers would be freed from the treaty’s limits, potentially setting the stage for a new arms race. New START was ratified by the U.S. Senate in December 2010 by a vote of 71 to 26. Thirteen Republican senators joined all of the Senate’s Democrats in voting for the treaty, although Republican opponents derided it as naive. The call with Putin was one of several with foreign leaders where Trump has turned to denounce deals negotiated by previous administrations on trade, acceptance of refugees and arms control. In a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump questioned an agreement reached by the Obama administration to accept 1,250 refugees now being held by Australia in offshore detention centers. | 0fake |
Czech president appoints Andrej Babis as new prime minister | PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech billionaire businessman Andrej Babis was appointed prime minister on Wednesday after his ANO party came first in an October election, and he must now focus on securing parliamentary backing for a minority administration. Running on pledges to fight migration and make the state more efficient, ANO won 29.6 percent of the vote, nearly three times the support won by second-placed center-right Civic Democrats. Despite that strong showing, however, it is unclear whether Babis will be able to win a confidence vote for his government by mid-January as required by the constitution. He also faces the threat of prosecution in connection with his business interests. ANO holds 78 seats in the 200-seat lower house but has so far failed to win the backing of any of the other eight parties. Should he lose such a vote, Babis would stay in power until a new arrangement is found. But given his party s size, it would also most likely have to lead any other arrangement. In a televised ceremony on Wednesday, President Milos Zeman appointed Babis, 63, who set up ANO in 2011 as a protest movement when mainstream parties were embroiled in corruption scandals. Babis s new cabinet will take power on Dec. 13, allowing him to take part in a European Union leaders summit the following day. He has pledged to keep the budget in shape but also boost infrastructure investments and public sector wages, and play a more active role in the European Union, especially in securing the EU s external border to stop illegal migration. The Czechs are facing a possible EU suit over refusing to accept migrants under an EU quota system, which Babis said was his first European task. I will first have to negotiate and convince the European Commission not to sue us and to find a different solution, he told a news conference after his appointment. Quotas are not a solution, and the solution is outside Europe, and we have to win over other member states for this. The far-right, anti-EU and anti-NATO SPD party and the Communists have lent ANO support in several initial votes in return for committee posts for their members, raising the prospect that they may have some kind of agreement to back ANO. But Babis said on Wednesday he had no deal in place and would talk to all parties to either back the cabinet or abstain from the vote to help it win. In the week of Dec. 18, we will present the program manifesto and negotiate on whether someone will go into government with us or give us tolerance, Babis said. Rival parties have criticized Babis, the second-richest person in the country, worth $4 billion according to Forbes, for conflicts of interests. He owns a farming, chemicals, food and media group which has contracts with the state and receives European subsidies. The main sticking point is a police request that parliament strip Babis of his immunity so he can be prosecuted for suspected fraud in tapping European Union subsidies. He denies any wrongdoing. If police drop the case or parliament refuses to lift immunity, Babis may win some votes from other factions. Analysts say a second attempt to form a cabinet, with or without Babis, may have a greater chance of success because many parties suffered losses in the October vote and are keen to avoid an early election, which a prolonged crisis could eventually lead to. | 0fake |
The ‘Goddess’ Yi Wan Ka: Ivanka Trump Is a Hit in China - The New York Times | BEIJING — When Wang Ge, a business school student, wakes up, she often asks herself, “What would Ivanka do?” That would be Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of President Trump, a woman Ms. Wang has never met but worships. In the United States, Ms. Trump has become a controversial figure, battling persistent questions about business conflicts and criticism for not doing more to moderate her father’s policies toward women. But in China, Ms. Trump is widely adored. Her lavish lifestyle and business acumen resonate with many young professionals who are hungry for fame and fortune in a society that often equates material wealth with success. Ms. Wang keeps photos of Ms. Trump on her iPad. She counsels friends to read Ms. Trump’s tips (“Find strength in others” and “Be an optimist”). And she models her day on Ms. Trump’s, waking at 6 a. m. to increase productivity and setting aside at least a to read. “She’s pretty, she has her own career, she’s hardworking and she has a beautiful family,” said Ms. Wang, 26, a student at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. “She inspires me. ” While Mr. Trump, who meets President Xi Jinping of China in Florida on Thursday, has bluntly assailed China on issues like trade and North Korea, Ms. Trump has helped soften her father’s volcanic image. She is called a “goddess” on social media. A video of her daughter singing in Chinese went viral, attracting tens of millions of viewers. Working mothers have latched onto Ms. Trump’s brand of feminism, even if most lack her financial resources, and entrepreneurs have studied her speeches for clues on making successful pitches. Xinhua, the official news agency, weighed in last week, describing Ms. Trump as having an “elegant and poised style. ” “A lot of people think Ivanka is the real president,” said Li Moya, 31, who runs an app for renting venue space in Beijing. “We think she has the brains, not her father. ” Young Chinese women working in sectors like technology and finance have been especially taken by Ms. Trump, whom they see as an elegant symbol of power and ambition. They say they have sought to mimic her tenacity and confidence as they confront chauvinism and stereotypes in the workplace and in family life. Many are also impressed by Ms. Trump’s decision to start her own fashion brand rather than simply focus on the family real estate business. “She’s very independent,” said Wang Jiabao, 28, a reality television producer in Beijing. “She represents what we’re looking for — to marry into a decent family, to look good, and to also have your own career. ” Some also believe Ms. Trump embodies Confucian values, pointing to her decision to convert to Judaism for her husband and her steadfast defense of her father, both seen as illustrations of a devotion to family. In China’s urban centers, Ms. Trump’s tips on leading a balanced life (“Don’t sleep with your BlackBerry next to your bed,” says one) have found a large audience. On messaging apps, young professionals trade translations of her guides, while working mothers share her advice on carving out time for loved ones. Chinese companies have also tried to profit from Ms. Trump’s popularity, filing hundreds of trademark applications using her name — Yi Wan Ka in Chinese — on products and services such as shoes, spa treatments, plastic surgery and pottery. Still, Ms. Trump has her critics. Some are skeptical of her father’s policies and disturbed by her decision to join his administration, in which she serves as assistant to the president. Others believe that as a child of privilege she is a poor role model for everyday Chinese people. “She’s trying too hard and pretending too much,” said Shi Yixuan, 22, an administrative staff member at Peking University in Beijing. But many women see recognizable Chinese attributes. “Underneath her image are very traditional values,” said Dai Linjia, a communications consultant. “Her family is almost like a dynasty. ” While her father has threatened a trade war with China and criticized China’s efforts to build outposts in the South China Sea, Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have embarked on a charm offensive with the country. It helps that her daughter, Arabella, speaks Chinese, which she began learning from her Chinese nanny. Ms. Trump and Arabella attended a Lunar New Year festival at the Chinese Embassy in Washington in February, an event broadcast on China’s news. On Tuesday, two days before her father was to meet Mr. Xi, Ms. Trump posted a photo of her younger son, Theodore, playing with wooden blocks emblazoned with Chinese characters. Analysts said Ms. Trump’s popularity could help ease the relationship between China and the United States at a tense time. “Her father is a regular critic of China, so Ivanka’s moves sort of compensate for that,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “The Chinese government will see there are both ugly and positive messages coming out of the U. S. ” Many younger Chinese will be watching this week’s meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi for signs of Ms. Trump. Ms. Wang, the business school student, said she hoped that Ms. Trump could help improve China’s standing in the United States. “She’s a very good role model,” she said. “I think she can help the two countries grow closer. ” | 0fake |
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Syrian Troops Push Deep Into Rebel-Held Parts of Aleppo - The New York Times | BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian government troops pushed deeper into the section of Aleppo on Sunday, now controlling about half of what had been for years the rebels’ enclave in the divided northern city. Also on Sunday, airstrikes apparently carried out by the government or its ally Russia hit the towns of Maarat and Kafr Nabl in Idlib Province. The strikes killed at least 20 people in each location, according to residents and White Helmets rescue workers. Footage from Maarat showed destroyed buildings and market stalls, and the crushed body of a toddler. Airstrikes and shelling also continued in Aleppo, where there was no sign of a in a bloody battle that could prove a fulcrum in the war. If the government manages to seize all of Aleppo, it will control Syria’s five largest cities. Government troops, along with allied, militias from Iraq and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, appeared close on Sunday to seizing the only remaining bulge of rebel territory north of the medieval citadel at the heart of the city, leaving rebels with a shrinking enclave in the southeast. Residents contacted by phone and text message said conditions were dire. People fleeing from the recently retaken areas were looking for places to sleep, while some smashed wooden furniture from destroyed houses for cooking and heating. They also sent text messages with their last farewells, saying they expected to die. All of this unfolded under continuous government bombing and artillery shelling, which was worsening as ground troops edged closer. The advances did not halt the shelling of the western districts. Fares Shehabi, a Parliament member from Aleppo, said that nine people were killed on Saturday and that the military hospital and a hotel had been hit. Dozens of shells fell on Sunday, killing several people, other residents said. More than 31, 000 people have fled from the eastern districts, aid agencies say. Some are fleeing to territory some deeper into the besieged districts and others to areas controlled by Kurdish militias from which they can make their way along a risky route to areas in Idlib and northern Aleppo Province. On Sunday, Russian troops helped deliver aid to thousands of people crammed into what had been shops in a covered market in Jibreen, a town south of the city. Some people told reporters from The Associated Press and the BBC on the scene with government minders that they were happy to have food. Some said they had fled airstrikes, and others complained about treatment by the rebels. Of those remaining in the area, some said they were afraid to leave because they expected to be arrested or mistreated on the other side. Now, though, they were worried that the army might be coming to them. “It is very dangerous,” Yasser Hmeish, a resident, said via text message, showing a photo of himself making tea over a fire from scraps of wood from his destroyed house. “We are afraid for our families. ” A proposal by Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy, for a aid delivery and local autonomy for eastern Aleppo in exchange for the departure of several hundred fighters has gone nowhere. Russia is now offering to talk to the United States about the departure of all rebels — several thousand fighters, some of them backed by Washington and its allies. Tensions were rising between the group, the Levant Conquest Front, formerly known as the Nusra Front, and the other groups, according to fighters in the enclave. Some accused the Levant Conquest Front of raiding food and weapons storehouses that belonged to other groups, including Faylaq one of those receiving American aid. One fighter from a rival group said the looted goods had been left unguarded in the chaos. The airstrikes in Idlib Province killed 23 people in Maarat including seven members of one family, one of them a child. In Kafr Nabl, 26 people were killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group with an extensive network on the ground. Jihad, a telecommunications engineer in Kafranbel, said that the strike had hit a busy area, and that he knew 13 of the victims. “There is a well where people get water, and there is a bakery,” he said, asking to be identified by only his first name for safety. “There were only a few minutes between me and the strikes. ” | 0fake |
HUMA SPILLS THE BEANS On Hillary’s Efforts To Burn Public Records | Huma Abedin, Hillary s right hand woman, told in testimony that she burned Hillary s schedules in a burn bag during her tenure as Secretary of State. Even though the experts in this field are saying burning your schedule has never been done before, is their any doubt that this is just more underhanded secrecy from Hillary Clinton? Federal Records Act anyone? I ve never seen anyone put their schedule in the burn bag because every one of them had a state.gov email address and therefore their daily schedules became public records, as required by law. Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton s longtime aide, testified last week that her boss burned her schedules while serving as secretary of state. If there was a schedule that was created that was her Secretary of State daily schedule, and a copy of that was then put in the burn bag, that that certainly happened on on more than one occasion, Abedin told lawyers representing conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, according to the New York Post. While Clinton admitted to deleting personal emails from her homebrew server, this is the first time anyone in Clinton s State Department inner circle admitted to destroying public records while on the job.The burn bag is used to discard sensitive or classified documents. A former State Department employee told the New York Post it was unprecedented for a diplomat to handle schedules this way. I spend eight years at the State Department and watched as four U.S. ambassadors and two secretaries of state shared their daily schedules with a variety of State Department employees and U.S. officials, Richard Grenell, a former diploma and U.S. spokesman at the United Nations told the Post. I ve never seen anyone put their schedule in the burn bag because every one of them had a state.gov email address and therefore their daily schedules became public records, as required by law, Grenell added. Others who the newspaper talked to suggested the carefulness in how she discarded her schedule highlighted her carelessness when it came to using a private email server. The president s schedule was not classified but it was deemed highly sensitive, noted Brad Blakeman, a scheduler for President George W. Bush. Instructions were given at the White House and on the road that schedules would be disposed of through the use of burn bags and/or shredding, Blakeman told the Post. Read more: Daily Mail | 1real |
Quartz: What Steve Bannon Really Wants - Breitbart | Gwynn Guilford and Nikhil Sonnad of Quartz profile Stephen K. Bannon’s (or, to those who wish to maximize their SEO, Steve Bannon) beliefs based on his public statements — past interviews, speeches, and films. [From Quartz: The three tenets of Bannonism, Bannon’s political philosophy boils down to three things that a Western country, and America in particular, needs to be successful: Capitalism, nationalism, and “ values. ” These are all deeply related, and essential. America, says Bannon, is suffering a “crisis of capitalism. ” (He uses the word “crisis” a lot — more on that later.) Capitalism used to be all about moderation, an entrepreneurial American spirit, and respect for one’s fellow Christian man. In fact, in remarks delivered to the Vatican in 2014, Bannon says that this “enlightened capitalism” was the “underlying principle” that allowed the US to escape the “barbarism” of the 20th century. Since this enlightened era, things have gradually gotten worse. (Hence the “crisis. ”) The downward trend began with the 1960s and ’70s counterculture. “The baby boomers are the most spoiled, most most narcissistic generation the country’s ever produced,” says Bannon in a 2011 interview. He takes on this issue in more detail in Generation Zero, a 2010 documentary he wrote and directed. The film shows one interviewee after another laying out how the “capitalist system” was slowly undermined and destroyed by a generation of wealthy young kids who had their material needs taken care of by hardworking parents — whose values were shaped by the hardship of the Great Depression and World War II — only to cast off the American values that had created that wealth in the first place. This shift gave rise to socialist policies that encouraged dependency on the government, weakening capitalism. Eventually, this socialist vision succeeded in infiltrating the very highest levels of institutional power in America. “By the late 1990s, the left had taken over many of the institutions of power, meaning government, media, and academe,” says Peter Schweizer, a writer affiliated with Bannon’s Government Accountability Institute, a conservative think tank, in Generation Zero. “And it was from these places and positions of power that they were able to disrupt the system and implement a strategy that was designed to ultimately undermine the capitalist system. ” (As he says “undermine the capitalist system,” the film zooms in on the word “Lucifer” in that epigraph from Saul Alinsky.) Underlying all of this is the philosophy of Edmund Burke, an influential Irish political thinker whom Bannon occasionally references. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke presents his view that the basis of a successful society should not be abstract notions like human rights, social justice, or equality. Rather, societies work best when traditions that have been shown to work are passed from generation to generation. The baby boomers, Bannon says in a lecture given to the Liberty Restoration Foundation (LRF) failed to live up to that Burkean responsibility by abandoning the values of their parents (nationalism, modesty, patriarchy, religion) in favor of new abstractions (pluralism, sexuality, egalitarianism, secularism). For both Burke and Bannon, failure to pass the torch results in social chaos. Read the rest of the story here. | 0fake |
STUNNING: Hillary’s Own Numbers Show Her Tax Hike Proposals Will Cost American Workers Additional $1 TRILLION | Wow! If I were Hillary, I d stop sending people to her website during the debates as a way to deflect from actual issues. They may find out something pretty horrifying like maybe a TRILLION dollar tax hike! Trillion dollar tax hike Hillary s tax hike proposals will raise taxes on the American people by over $1,000,000,000,000 over the next ten years, based on her campaign s own numbers.Payroll Tax Hike Hillary said she would not veto a payroll tax increase on all Americans should such a bill reach her desk. She said she would set her middle class tax pledge aside. This took place Jan. 12 in Iowa, and it s on video:Moderator: Democrats have introduced a plan that Senator Sanders supports that you ve come out against because it is funded by a payroll tax. If that were to reach your desk as President, would you veto it in order to make good on your tax pledge? Hillary Clinton: No. No. Soda Tax Hike Hillary endorsed a steep new soda pop tax in Philadelphia. This will cost soda purchasers an extra $2.16 per 12-pack. Bernie Sanders called out Hillary s violation of her middle class tax pledge: Frankly, I am very surprised that Secretary Clinton would support this regressive tax after pledging not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. This proposal clearly violates her pledge, he said.Sanders also said: The mechanism here is fairly regressive. And that is, it will be increasing taxes on low-income and working people. 25% National Gun Tax Hillary endorsed a new national 25% retail sales tax on guns. I am all for that, she told the Senate in 1993. On June 5, 2016 she was asked about her gun tax endorsement by George Stephanopoulos on ABC s This Week. She acknowledged her gun tax endorsement and did not disavow it, saying she wanted the gun tax money to pay for Hillarycare. If you have any doubts about her strong desire to impose a new gun tax, watch her face in the video.Doubling of federal excise tax on guns Hillary also endorsed a doubling of the existing federal excise tax on guns.65% Death Tax Hillary is now pushing a 65% Death Tax. And her own finances are arranged to shield herself from death taxes.Capital Gains Tax Hike Hillary has proposed the most complex and Byzantine capital gains tax regime in American history, with ten different rates. She raises the top capital gains tax rate from 23.8% to 43.4%.No Corporate Income Tax Rate Relief for Anyone Hillary offers no income tax rate reduction for any business. The USA has the highest corporate income tax in the world, which kills jobs and makes us less competitive. Even Bill Clinton understands the need to cut the corporate rate.No Personal Income Tax Rate Relief for Anyone Hillary offers no income tax rate reduction for any American.Carbon Tax Hillary s campaign has opened the door to a carbon tax if she wins the White House. Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer is also fantasizing about a carbon tax under Hillary, and a carbon tax is part of the official 2016 Democrat party platform.To learn more about Hillary s tax hike plan, visit ATR s dedicated website: www.HighTaxHillary.com | 1real |
Obama says has 'great confidence' that Russia was behind hacks | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday he had “great confidence” that the hacking of Democratic Party officials and institutions were carried out by Russia and at the behest of high-level Russian officials. “The intelligence that I’ve seen gives me great confidence in their assessment that the Russians carried out this hack,” Obama said at a White House news conference. | 0fake |
PENTAGON OFFICIALS FURIOUS AFTER CLINTON ANNOUNCES US RESPONSE TIME FOR NUCLEAR LAUNCH DURING DEBATE
| Following Wednesdays presidential debate Pentagon officials found themselves completely dumbfounded as to why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would feel it appropriate to announce U.S. Special Access Program intel on national television.
According to sources within the Department of Defense speaking under anonymity, Clinton likely violated at least two Dept. of Defense SAP protocols during the debate by announcing on live television the United States Governments response time for a nuclear launch.To the dismay of intelligence officials, the fact that this top secret information is now publicly known not only proves that Clinton is unfit to be commander-in-chief, but it also poses a direct threat to national security.
One high ranking intelligence official explained that any time frame calculated pertaining to a US nuclear launch would have merely been an educated hypothesis, absent leaked documents and there have been no such breaches prior to Clintons admission Wednesday.
Via TruePundit
Secretary Clinton proved tonight she is unfit to be commander-in-chief, a top-ranking DOD intelligence source said. What she did compromises our national security. She is cavalier and reckless and in my opinion should be detained and questioned so we can unravel why she did what she did.
According to Pentagon sources, the information Clinton disseminated publicly is Top Secret intelligence governed under the U.S. Special Access Program (SAP) which dictates safeguards and protocols for accessing and discussing highly classified and Top Secret intelligence. The specific details of the countrys nuclear response time discussed by Clinton, sources said, are only known by a handful of individuals outside top military brass
Targeting options by ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles), air or sea, launch order, launch procedures and response are some of the most secretly guarded tenets of national security and nuclear war policy, a Pentagon source said. Its truly incredible that (nuclear) response time as part of an ERO (Emergency Response Option) is now out there in the public domain to our adversaries.
U.S. Defense sources said according to developed U.S. counterintelligence, military officials in China, North Korea, Syria, Russia, Iran and even actors like ISIS had no previous definitive intelligence to determine the U.S. nuclear response time, especially during an ERO, prior to Clintons admission Wednesday night. Sources reluctantly acknowledged her calculations were accurate. | 1real |
NBC Cites Fraudulent Holocaust Organization in Smear on Gorka - Breitbart | NBC News launched the latest in a series of failed attempts to link Dr. Sebastian Gorka — the philosemitic, deputy foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump — to the on Saturday. [As with all such previous attempts, NBC found nothing to prove any extremist ideas or views on the part of Dr. Gorka. And as with all such previous slanders, NBC relied on fraud — this time, in the form of the phony “Anne Frank Center. ” The full name of the bogus front organization is the “Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect” — an ironic title, given that it is a Democratic Party attack machine that shows no respect for anyone else whatsover. The “civil rights activist” who leads it, Steven Goldstein, is an LGBT activist who has beclowned himself on cable news over the past few months in his efforts to tarnish President Trump as the second coming of Adolf Hitler. Breitbart Jerusalem editor Aaron Klein exposed Goldstein and his organization in February. Goldstein is no Holocaust expert: he is merely an ardent Hillary Clinton supporter who found a ready audience for his political schtick among a gullible press corps eager for ammunition in their war against the White House. He has no qualms about exploiting the name and memory of Anne Frank for his purely partisan purposes. It is Holocaust desecration, if not outright denial. Among many embarrassing moments for Goldstein and the Anne Frank Center, none was worse than last month’s revelation that the barrage of antisemitic bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers had been carried out by a black liberal journalist and a Jewish teenager in Israel. Rather than apologize for vomiting forth false accusations of hatred against the White House, Goldstein, reacting to the news, still managed to blame the Trump administration. And yet it is the Anne Frank Center to which NBC News, lacking any other proof for its baseless claims, turned for help in condemning Gorka. Goldstein’s operation did not disappoint: “How many ducks in the Trump White House must walk, talk and quack before our country wakes up and sees the greater problem?” the Center said in a statement to NBC. Never mind that all such accusations are entirely without merit: Goldstein Co. repeat the lies. The rest of the NBC News report was devoted to collecting statements from Hungarian villagers who claim to recall Gorka’s father’s membership in, and Gorka’s sympathy for, a version of the Vitezi Rend order that was anticommunist and had nothing to do with the Second World War organization of the same name. NBC News was forced to admit that after sending investigative journalists halfway around the world, it was “unable to confirm” Gorka’s membership. Cue the Anne Frank Center, there to add its emotive name and bilious innuendo to the heap of false accusations. Yet as Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon noted at the Jerusalem Post last month, the Gorka family protected Jews during the Second World War. Gorka senior went on to fight Soviet communism — which, notably, suppressed the Jewish faith and encouraged fanaticism. For that, he was awarded, in exile, the Vitezi Rend medal his son wore in tribute. Dr. Gorka, a former Breitbart News editor, worked for this company for years — under the management of Jews, alongside many Jewish colleagues, and with favorable views toward the Jewish community and the Jewish state. It is clear that liberal media outlets like NBC and fronts like the bogus “Anne Frank Center” are just attacking him as a way to undermine Trump. Their partisanship is obvious they could, at least, make the fraud a little less obvious. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 0fake |
ISIS Killing Former Soldiers in Areas Around Mosul | At Least 40 Killed Over Weekend, UN Reports
ISIS has been reported to be using a fleet of trucks and minibuses to transport the civilian population of the area around Mosul into the city itself, which officials are saying they believe is a sign that ISIS intends to use them as human shields.
While the human shields thing is purely speculative, what appears to be more certain is that those former Iraqi military personnel that ISIS is coming across in their forced busing are being executed, with reports that some 40 were killed over the weekend and thrown into the Tigris River .
This has been a recurring concern for ISIS since the Mosul battle began. ISIS executed some of their own fighters in the lead-up when they were claimed to be working with the Iraqi government, and have been desperate to purge any other potentially disloyal elements around the city.
While the UN was harshly critical of ISIS for forcibly relocating people around Mosul, they have so far been mum on government warnings that civilians in Mosul not attempt to escape the city, warnings which came amid announcements that the US intends to launch airstrikes against “fleeing ISIS fighters.” | 1real |
Iran reportedly makes new push for uranium concessions in nuclear talks | Iranian negotiators reportedly have made a last-ditch push for more concessions from the U.S. and five other world powers as talks on the fate of Iran's nuclear program come down to the final days before a crucial deadline.
The New York Times reported late Sunday that Tehran had backed away from a tentative promise to ship a large portion of its uranium stockpile to Russia, where it could not be used as part of any future weapons program. Western officials insisted to the paper that the uranium did not have to be sent overseas, but could be disposed of in other ways.
The new twist in the talks comes just two days before the deadline for both sides to agree on a framework for a permanent deal. The final deadline for a permanent deal would not arrive until the end of June.
However, if Iran insists on keeping its uranium in the country, it would undermine a key argument made in favor of the deal by the Obama administration. The Times reports that if the uranium had gone to Russia, it would have been converted into fuel rods, which are difficult to use in nuclear weapons. It is not clear what would happen to the uranium if it remained in Iran.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that Iran's position had shifted from from demanding that it be allowed to keep nearly 10,000 centrifuges enriching uranium, to agreeing to keep 6,000. Western officials involved in the talks told the Associated Press that Tehran may be ready to accept an even lower number.
The United States and its allies want a deal that extends the time Iran would need to make a nuclear weapon from the present two months to three months to at least a year. However, The Times reported Sunday that a paper published by Olli Heinonen, former head of inspections for the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, estimated that Iran could still develop a nuclear weapon in seven or eight months with around 6,500 centrifuges.
Tehran says it wants to enrich uranium only for energy, science, industry and medicine. But many countries fear Iran could use the technology to make weapons-grade uranium.
Officials told the Associated Press that another main dispute involved the length of an agreement. Iran, they said, wants a total lifting of all caps on its activities after 10 years, while the U.S. and the five other nations at the talks — Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — insist on progressive removal after a decade.
A senior U.S. official characterized the issue as lack of agreement on what happens in years 11 to 15. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with State Department rules on briefing about the closed-door talks.
Limits on Iran's research and development of centrifuges also were unresolved, the Western officials said.
Tehran has created a prototype centrifuge that it says enriches uranium 16 times faster than its present mainstay model. The U.S. and its partners want to constrain research that would increase greatly the speed of making enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb, once limits on Iran's programs are lifted.
One official said Russia opposed the U.S. position that any U.N. penalties lifted in the course of a deal should be reimposed quickly if Tehran reneged on any commitments.
Both Western officials said Iran was resisting attempts to make inspections and other ways of verification as intrusive as possible.
There was tentative agreement on turning a nearly-finished reactor into a model that gives off less plutonium waste than originally envisaged. Plutonium, like enriched uranium, is a path to nuclear weapons.
Iran and the U.S. were discussing letting Iran run centrifuges at an underground bunker that has been used to enrich uranium. The machines would produce isotopes for peaceful applications, the officials said.
With the Tuesday deadline approaching and problems remaining, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry canceled plans Sunday to return to the United States for an event honoring the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, his German counterpart, scratched planned trips to Kazakhstan.
Kerry has been in discussions with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif since Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from The New York Times. | 0fake |
Clinton email server broke government rules, watchdog finds | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton broke government rules by using a private email server without approval for her work as U.S. secretary of state, an internal government watchdog said on Wednesday. The long-awaited report by the State Department inspector general was the first official audit of the controversial arrangement to be made public. It was highly critical of Clinton’s use of a server in her home, and immediately fueled Republican attacks on Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in an already acrimonious presidential race. The report, which also found problems in department record-keeping practices before Clinton’s tenure, undermined Clinton’s earlier defenses of her emails, likely adding to Democratic anxieties about public perceptions of the candidate. A majority of voters say Clinton is dishonest, according to multiple polls. The report concluded that Clinton would not have been allowed to use the server in her home had she asked the department officials in charge of information security. The report said that staff who later raised concerns were told to keep quiet. Several suspected hacking attempts in 2011 were never reported to department information security officials, in breach of department rules, it said. “She’s as crooked as they come,” Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, said of Clinton at a campaign rally in Anaheim, California, adding that the report’s findings were “not good” for her. Clinton’s campaign disagreed, saying the report rebutted Republican’s criticism. The inspector general’s office examined email record-keeping under five secretaries state, both Democratic and Republican. John Kerry, the current officeholder, and predecessors Madeline Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice all agreed to speak to the inspector general’s investigators. Clinton was the only one who declined to be interviewed, as did her aides. The report contradicted Clinton’s repeated assertion that her server was allowed and that no permission was needed. Several other inquiries continue, including a U.S. Justice Department investigation into whether the arrangement broke laws. The inspector general’s report cited “longstanding, systemic weaknesses” with State Department records that predated Clinton’s tenure, and found problems with the email record-keeping of some of her predecessors, particularly Powell, that failed to comply with the Federal Records Act. But it singled out Clinton for her decision to use a private server in her home in Chappaqua, New York, for government business. “OIG found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server,” the report said, using an abbreviation for the office of inspector general. The report said Clinton should have discussed the arrangement with the department’s security and technology officials. Officials told investigators that they “did not - and would not - approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business.” The reason, those officials said, is because it breached department rules and presented “security risks.” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he would not “challenge” those findings. He told reporters the department was aware of hacking attempts on Clinton’s server, but had no evidence that any were successful. When two lower-level information technology officials tried to raise concerns about Clinton’s email arrangement in late 2010, their supervisor in Clinton’s office instructed them “never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again,” the report said. Their supervisor told them that department lawyers had approved of the system, but the inspector general’s office said it found no evidence this was true. Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman, said the report rebutted criticisms of Clinton made by her political opponents. “The report shows that problems with the State Department’s electronic recordkeeping systems were longstanding and that there was no precedent of someone in her position having a State Department email account until after the arrival of her successor,” he said in a statement. He did not address the report’s criticism of Clinton’s use of a private server, something no other secretary of state has done. Democrats, including fundraisers for Clinton’s campaign, said the report revealed nothing new. “It’s digging and digging and digging,” Amy Rao, the chief executive of data company Integrated Archive Systems and a Clinton fundraiser, said in an interview, comparing the investigation to probes the Clintons faced in the 1990s. “Trust me: There’s no there there. It’s Whitewater.” Current Secretary of State Kerry asked Steve Linick, the State Department inspector general, to investigate after Clinton’s email arrangement came to light last year. President Barack Obama appointed Linick to the role in 2013. Republicans have used Clinton’s email practice to suggest she was trying to hide government records from scrutiny under public-access laws. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that the findings “are just the latest chapter in the long saga of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment that broke federal rules and endangered our national security.” | 0fake |
BREAKING: PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP Meets With President Obama [Video] | Obama: Time for us to come together, work together, and deal with challenges we face https://t.co/zI2jh3kD89 https://t.co/5kP3u7i4Js The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) November 10, 2016 | 1real |
Hilarion’s Message – October 30-November 5, 2016 | Leave a reply
Hilarion – As you endeavor to stay in equilibrium and balance during these days with all that is occurring within your sphere of resonance, you are finding that the intensified energies are having their effect, not only within your own system but in all those who are in your sphere of influence. The duality energies are rampant and it is important to remember your purpose for holding the Light during these times.
It is very easy for you who are sensitive to the energies around you to understand that the feelings that you have been experiencing are mainly those that are being experienced at the collective consciousness level. There is much fear and doubt that is rampant at these times – remember this – and re-center and refocus on that which you are and that which you stand for.
Stay true to yourself, so far you have not been led astray; you have maintained your position and stayed within your core center. As the energies ramp up to an even greater degree in the coming days, it is important to take time to experience that which brings you joy, laughter, peace, and inspiration personally.
It is important to focus on these things; to take time away from your Earthly duties and concerns often and take a break by going out in nature and doing things that you usually put off until another day, those things that nurture you and replenish your own energy. This is what is needed for you to be focusing on. Feel the joy, laugh often, laugh loudly, there is so much beauty around you – it fills every place and space in your environment – look for it and enjoy it!
Embody that energy within your being after this break, for it is then possible for you to make an informed and clear decision as to your next move. As this year draws to an end, it is the time for completion of all that you set out to do in previous years, the time of the completion of all goals, projects and intentions that you set out to accomplish. This is an alignment in preparation for the new cycle that begins in 2017 for it is a new nine year cycle. This is the time to finish up and complete all that needs completing so that you can start fresh.
It is within the realm of possibility to completely recreate yourself in the new cycle; how you present yourself to the world, how you speak, think and feel. It does not require the approval of others, it is something that is in your own interest – not selfish interest, but an acknowledging that there is a new cycle that is looming on the horizon so that you can be in a position to take advantage of all the energies of those times and this is very appropriate.
The energy of the world around you is changing moment by moment and it is hard to maintain your intentions and focus but it is possible to do it. You have all the tools and the knowledge that you need to stay true to yourself, to stay aligned with the higher aspects of yourself. No matter what occurs in the world around you, you know within yourself that all is well and always has been. The world goes round and round, much is the same as it was, that which has true meaning and value continues and opens up to you and this is the area where you should focus and concentrate.
Reconnect to the love that resides within your heart and open your heart as wide as you can possibly do so in each moment. The world needs your love, the world needs your calming and soothing presence and this is an important aspect of your work upon this planet. We are with you and abide beside each one of you as you go about your daily activities. We prompt you to take those breaks when necessary and during these tumultuous times it is important to take more breaks, they do not have to be of long duration, just so that you feel renewed and restored within the center of your being.
Send healing Light, love and energy to those areas of the world that are experiencing Earth changes that are not happy ones at the moment. These changes bring a gathering together of those peoples so that they work in concert and in harmony with each other as they realize the important values in their lives, that of cooperation, communication, and unity – these are the important values that will be retained as different areas of the worlds peoples experience coming happenings.
As all of humanity moves into the unknown, there is a gathering together of like minds and this brings harmonious and peaceful results throughout the world. Everyone gathers around those in need and gives of their help and assistance, their love and energies and this all is for the highest good of everyone upon the planet.
We counsel you that all the answers that you are seeking, the truth that you are seeking about any given subject, is always contained and available within yourselves. Know this and align with your higher aspects, with the purity that lies within the core of your Divine essence. There you will always be in harmony with All That Is. Know this and stay strong and focused, know that all is well, the universe turns, the Earth turns and all is as it should be.
All that needs to be changed is in the process of that change and therefore things can seem pretty intense. All these changes need to take place, we have known this for many, many decades and now, we are in the midst of that change. Have faith that all is as it should be and that you will come out at the end of all this change with joy, peace and happiness to a new way and a new beginning filled with all that is right and good and decent in your world and the world at large. You are loved, you have always been loved. It is now time to shine that love, to radiate it out to others who are so in need of it during these times.
Until next week… | 1real |
Democrats Hoped to Hurt Trump, but Raised Suspicions of Obama - Breitbart | The mainstream media have been doing a victory lap since the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) confirmed on Monday in testimony before the U. S. House Intelligence Committee that President Barack Obama did not wiretap Trump Tower. But that was already known. [There was only one new revelation at the hearing, and it was a bombshell: senior Obama administration officials could have known the identities of surveillance targets. One of those targets, retired General Michael Flynn, lost his job after it was revealed that his conversation with the Russian ambassador had been monitored, and that he had discussed sanctions relief, contrary to his early private and public claims. Yet Flynn’s identity was never supposed to have been revealed. The surveillance of the Russian ambassador, routine though it may have been, yielded classified information, and the identity of any U. S. citizen swept up in it should have been redacted. But Flynn’s name was unmasked and leaked to the media. Moreover, the New York Times reported on Jan. 19 — with a headline on Inauguration Day — that “intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House. ” And the Times also reported in February that surveillance of Trump aides suspected of ties with Russia had been disseminated widely throughout the government, without privacy protections, by order of the lame duck Obama administration under NSA rules, which the Times had already reported earlier in January. Monday’s hearing “debunked” Trump’s wiretapping tweets, but left his underlying claim intact: that there was surveillance of the Trump campaign that the results were shared throughout the government — even possibly reaching the Obama White House and that intelligence was leaked, illegally, to the mainstream media. In an extraordinary exchange with FBI Director James Comey on Monday, Rep. Trey Gowdy ( ) explored what that meant — that Obama aides could have broken the law: GOWDY: Do you know whether Director [of National Intelligence] James Clapper knew the name of the U. S. citizen that appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post? COMEY: I can’t say in this forum because again, I don’t wanna confirm that there was classified information in the newspaper. GOWDY: Would he have access to an unmasked name? COMEY: In — in some circumstances, sure, he was the director of national intelligence. But I’m not talking about the particular. GOWDY: Would Director [of the Central Intelligence Agency James] Brennan have access to an unmasked U. S. citizen’s name? COMEY: In some circumstances, yes. GOWDY: Would National Security Adviser Susan Rice have access to an unmasked U. S. citizen’s name? COMEY: I think any — yes, in general, and any other national security adviser would, I think, as a matter of their ordinary course of their business. GOWDY: Would former White House Advisor Ben Rhodes have access to an unmasked U. S. citizen’s name? COMEY: I don’t know the answer to that. GOWDY: Would former Attorney General Loretta Lynch have access to an unmasked U. S. citizen’s name? COMEY: In general, yes, as would any attorney general. GOWDY: So that would also include Acting AG Sally Yates? COMEY: Same answer. GOWDY: Did you brief President Obama on — well, I’ll just ask you. Did you brief President Obama on any calls involving Michael Flynn? COMEY: I’m not gonna get into either that particular case that matter, or any conversations I had with the president. So I can’t answer that. Gowdy’s questioning revealed an astonishing list of potential suspects. And given that the FBI and NSA testified that there was still no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, the fact remains that the only crime that is known to have occurred with absolute certainty was the leaking of Flynn’s name and the contents of his conversation with the Russian ambassador. Democrats hoped to hurt Trump. Instead, they raised more questions about Obama’s role. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 0fake |
Trump, Japan PM Abe to hold phone talks Wednesday: source | TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will hold phone talks with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday to convey his condolences after the mass shooting in Las Vegas and to discuss North Korea s weapons programs, a Japanese government source said. Tensions have grown on the Korean peninsula since reclusive North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3, leading to a new round of United Nations sanctions. | 0fake |
Lebanese president says PM Hariri has been 'kidnapped': official | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s president has told foreign ambassadors that the country s prime minister Saad al-Hariri, who resigned suddenly last week in Saudi Arabia, has been kidnapped and must have immunity, a senior Lebanese official told Reuters on Saturday. President Michel Aoun has been convening high-level meetings with Lebanese politicians and foreign diplomats since Hariri resigned in a surprise broadcast from Saudi Arabia last week. Aoun made the remark in a meeting on Friday, the official said. | 0fake |
UK's May to visit China around Jan. 31: Sky News | (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will visit China around the end of January to promote her vision of a global Britain whose economy is strongly placed to succeed after Brexit, Sky News reported on Wednesday. May s office has pencilled in a trip on or around Jan. 31. She will be accompanied by a delegation of business leaders drawn from across the UK economy, Sky reported, citing insiders. China is one of the countries with which Britain hopes to sign a free trade pact once it leaves the EU. Plans for the trip have not been finalised and remain subject to change, Sky added. | 0fake |
Not all the recent fires at black churches were arson. Here's what we know. | Since June 21, fires have been reported at six Southern churches that serve mostly African-American congregations. Investigators believe that two of these fires were intentionally set, and the cause of three others is unknown and under investigation.
These fires came to public attention a few days after the shooting that killed nine black members of Charleston's Emanuel AME Church on June 17 — which was itself a reminder of the long history of terrorism against black churches in America. Although church fires are not uncommon — and there is a lot we still don't know about the recent fires, some of which were accidental — many observers are fearful and anxious.
Since June 21st, there have been at least four mysterious fires at black churches in the South — three of which were likely deliberate. In three cases, law enforcement officers have said that there's evidence that the fire was deliberately set. In one other case, investigators have been unable to determine whether the fire was intentional or not.
Many media reports have referred to fires at "seven churches." But those include two churches that were struck by lightning (one of which was a white church), and another church where the cause of the fire was likely an electrical failure.
Here's what we know about the cases, based on reporting from the Los Angeles Times's Matt Pearce,CNN's Ben Brumfield and Sam Stringer, the Associated Press's Bruce Smith and Meg Kinnard, and local media:
How this compares to general arson rates for churches, including black churches. According to the National Fire Protection Association (via the Los Angeles Times's Matt Pearce), firefighters responded to an average of 1,600 fires at churches a year from 2007 to 2011. That comes out to an average of 31 fires a week.
Sixteen percent of fires at churches and funeral homes (the latter is much less common) were intentionally set. That's an average of five intentional fires a week, or 256 a year — causing an average of three civilian injuries annually.
Both intentional and accidental fires have been declining since the 1980s.
What the motive of any intentionally-set fire was. Deliberate fires are set for a variety of reasons. Investigators have not come up with suspects or a motive in any of the recent fires.
Whether any of the fires were connected to each other: Some past attacks on black churches, like the 1995 Ku Klux Klan attack on the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, were deliberately coordinated. But an attack can be racially motivated without being the work of a white supremacist organization. In some cases, racism combines with other factors — like alcohol and drugs — to inspire individuals to launch attacks on their own. As the Washington Post reported about three Tennessee arsonists in 1996:
When we'll have answers: Law enforcement officials are currently investigating four of the fires, often with assistance from the FBI. We don't know when these investigations will conclude, or whether they'll have enough evidence to determine whether a crime was committed.
In the past, arson cases have often rested on forensic evidence that purported to show a fire was deliberately set. But in recent years, the reliability of those findings has been questioned or discredited.
Attacks on black churches have been a frequent form of anti-black terrorism in America: The black church has been a symbol and a gathering place for black America, and that's made it an appealing target for white supremacist terrorists. The Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where the June massacre happened, was burned in the 19th century after one of its founders planned a slave revolt. In 1964, four young girls were killed when the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed. There was a wave of firebombings of black churches in the South in the 1990s, and a black church in Massachusetts was burned the day President Barack Obama was inaugurated.
Burnings of black churches by whites are not uncommon: The current data on church fires doesn't include data for black churches in particular. But we do have some data from the 1990s, when the rash of burnings of black churches prompted the creation of a federal task force. The task force investigated 945 church fires, including 310 black churches (213 of which were in the South).
Law enforcement ultimately arrested 136 people for arson against black churches, a little under two thirds of whom were white; 102 of the suspects — two-thirds white — were arrested for arson against black churches in the South. (Law enforcement agents arrested 431 suspected arsonists overall, including white and black church fires.)
Most of these cases were brought in state court. But sometimes the federal government did end up bringing charges — especially in cases of hate crimes. Fifty-eight percent of federal convictions for church arsons from 1995 to 2000 were for crimes "motivated by bias." | 0fake |
VIDEO: Sen. Kamala Harris Uses the F-Word at Public Event About Health Care - Breitbart | Sen. Kamala Harris ( ) dropped the “ ” at a public event about health care. [.@KamalaHarris apparently very comfortably dropping tonight re: healthcare at @PodSaveAmerica taping. This one via @mimofernandes pic. twitter. — Sarah Boxer (@Sarah_Boxer) May 7, 2017, “What the f*ck is that?” she said to an audience at a taping of the podcast “Pod Save America” in San Francisco while she was discussing health care, the Washington Free Beacon reports. “Pod Save America” is a podcast hosted by former Obama administration officials Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, which focuses primarily on liberal politics and discusses how Democrats can fight against the policies of the Trump administration and initiatives in Congress. Harris took aim at Rep. Raul Labrador ( ) who took a lot of heat for saying “nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care. ” “Like this guy, this congressman, you might as well say, ‘People don’t starve because they don’t have food.’ What the f*ck is that?” Harris said. Other Democrats have taken to cursing during public speeches. Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez told an audience in New Jersey in March that “Republicans don’t give a sh*t about people. ” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand ( ) also dropped an “ ” in an interview with New York Magazine in April. “Which is that we’re here to help people, and if we’re not helping people, we should go the f*ck home,” Gillibrand told New York Magazine. | 0fake |
'Glimmer of hope' as food and fuel arrives in Yemen ports: NRC | GENEVA (Reuters) - A blockade of Yemen s key ports appeared to have been broken on Wednesday as ships arrived with food and fuel for the desperate population, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an humanitarian aid agency, told Reuters. A Saudi-led military coalition fighting the armed Houthi movement in Yemen has blockaded Yemeni ports since Nov. 6, after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward its capital Riyadh. Although it later eased the restrictions by allowing U.N. flights and aid ships, that has not changed Yemen s dire situation much. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria. Today for the first time (there was) a little glimmer of hope... the first commercial goods have arrived in port, and the first ships that were let through this iron grip, NRC chief Jan Egeland said. Egeland said the first food and fuel had arrived in the key ports of Hodeidah and Saleef, but it remained a trickle compared to what was needed, since Yemen s population of 27 million is almost entirely reliant on imports for food, fuel and medicine. We need a lot of ships every single day and now we ve had months with no ships, so I still fear the famine, I still fear starvation, I still fear epidemic disease in new areas. Citing information from the U.N.-led logistics cluster of aid agencies, Egeland said three vessels had berthed at Hodeidah with 87,000 tonnes of food, and one with 38,000 of food had arrived at the anchorage area of Saleef port. There were seven other vessels with more than 177,000 tonnes of food waiting to enter Hodeidah anchorage area, as well as three vessels with 52,000 tonnes of fuel. | 0fake |
Head of G4S immigration unit at center of abuse scandal quits | (Reuters) - The head of a G4S-run immigration unit in Britain at the center of allegations of bullying and abuse, has resigned, the outsourcing company said on Friday. G4S said Ben Saunders, director of the immigration removal center near Gatwick Airport in southeast England, would be replaced on an interim basis by Lee Hanford from Monday, Sept. 25, pending the appointment of a permanent successor. British lawmakers accused G4S last week of repeated failures of detainee welfare safeguards and whistleblowing mechanisms at the immigration center, after physical and verbal abuse by guards was revealed in a BBC documentary. G4S, contracted by the British government to run the Brook House center, earlier this month suspended 10 members of staff, three of whom have now been sacked, for abusive behavior following the documentary. Police are also investigating. Earlier this year an investigation at the G4S-run Medway Secure Training Centre resulted in allegations of abuse and mistreatment of youngsters. The center is now run by the government s National Offender Management Service. | 0fake |
Angry and "invisible", expat Britons await PM May in Florence | FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) - Expatriate Britons gathered in Florence on Friday to voice their frustration at how Brexit will impact them, awaiting the British prime minister s arrival in the Italian city to set out her vision for future ties with the European Union. May will try to rescue the stalled talks over terms for Britain s exit from the EU in a speech that will be scrutinized to see if she can offer enough to EU negotiators to persuade them to move forward. Outside an imposing 14th century church in the center of the Tuscan city, protesters waved EU flags and posters showing May holding a burning passport. They called for the rights of British citizens living in other EU countries to be protected. Rachel Pugh, a 48-year-old from north Wales who has lived in Florence since 1991, said she was worried about losing her rights to a pension in the future and had been left uninformed by the British government. Who do we ask? The tooth fairy? Father Christmas? The Easter Bunny? Who can we trust? None of them, she said, sporting EU and Welsh flags on her lapel. We couldn t vote. We re invisible, in limbo. Negotiations, which began three months ago, have effectively reached an impasse over the divorce, including the issue of how much Britain will have to pay to unspool more than 40 years of economic and political integration in the EU. Immigration was a key issue ahead of the June 2016 EU referendum in Britain, and millions who have moved smoothly between Britain and the rest of Europe are waiting nervously to see how their lives may change. Civil rights campaigner and former British member of parliament Roger Casale said he had come to Florence to show solidarity with all those who would be affected. We think the EU should be setting an example and should give unilateral guarantees now to all Brits in Europe, he said. Citing media reports that British trade minister Liam Fox had described EU citizens living in Britain as possible bargaining chips , Casale said May had a hostile environment strategy vis a vis immigration, leaving people in a state of uncertainty . Britain is keen to start negotiating the terms of its new relationship with the bloc, and discontent over the slow progress and lack of clarity is also surfacing among voters. Visiting Florence on holiday, Malcolm Burley, a 70-year-old retired plumber from Leicestershire in central England, said he had voted to leave the EU and wanted a deal to be reached quickly. (May) needs to go and get it sorted as soon as possible. Time is running out, Burley said. We need to get it sorted and make sure we get the correct deal for England. | 0fake |
Trump administration, states headed for showdown over fuel rules | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration and major U.S. states appear to be headed for a showdown over landmark rules aimed at doubling the fuel efficiency of vehicles sold in the United States. At an Environmental Protection Agency public hearing on Wednesday on the fuel rules in Washington, California air resources board official Annette Hebert warned that the state could withdraw from a nationwide vehicle emissions program if the EPA weakens the regulations or ignores the technical record. New York state also urged the administration not to weaken the rules. “Science doesn’t change based on election results,” Hebert said, referring to the November election of Republican President Donald Trump. In March, Trump ordered a review of U.S. vehicle fuel-efficiency standards from model year 2022 through 2025 established under the Obama administration, and suggested he would reduce regulatory requirements. “The assault on the American auto industry is over,” he told automakers in Michigan. Automakers want the White House and California to reach agreement on revisions because a legal battle over the rules could result in lengthy uncertainly for the industry. They also want changes in the rules to address lower gas prices and a shift in U.S. consumer preferences to larger, less fuel-efficient vehicles. Federal law prohibits states from setting their own vehicle emissions rules, except for California, which can seek waivers to federal policy under the Clean Air Act. Other states can choose to adopt California’s rules. Julia Rege of Global Automakers, a group representing automakers including Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS), said at the hearing that automakers need national rules, and urged U.S. regulators and California to “be as actively involved in the process as before, and work to keep the national program intact.” With just over six months before the 2025 rules must be finalized, there have been no vehicle emission talks between California, automakers and U.S. officials. The White House has held talks with automakers about the review in recent months, Reuters reported last month. In June, New York state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, and 12 other top state law enforcement officials said they would mount a court challenge to any effort to roll back vehicle emission rules. United Auto Workers legislative director Josh Nassar said at the hearing that the national program should be continued to “prevent chaos, lawsuits, uncertainty.” The Obama administration’s rules, negotiated with automakers in 2011, were aimed at doubling average fleet-wide fuel efficiency to about 50 miles (80 km) per gallon by 2025. The Obama administration said the rules would save motorists $1.7 trillion in fuel costs over the life of the vehicles but cost the auto industry about $200 billion over 13 years. A number of environmental advocates and retired military leaders at the hearing urged U.S. regulators not to weaken the standards. Automakers want changes. “To keep costs reasonable for buyers and maximize future production levels and fleet turnover, it is vital to clearly focus on consumer preferences and market realities,” said Chris Nevers, an official with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing General Motors Co (GM.N), Toyota, Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and others. U.S. regulators disclosed earlier that they may revise fuel efficiency requirements starting with the 2021 model year, a year earlier than Trump announced in March. | 0fake |
It’s Official: The United States Government Is Censoring Climate Data | A disturbing new report reveals that the staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have officially been instructed to begin censoring information on climate data. In fact, they are no longer even supposed to use the words climate change at all.According to emails between staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the staff has been told to use the term weather extremes instead.The Guardian reports the following regarding an email dated February 16:A missive from Bianca Moebius-Clune, director of soil health, lists terms that should be avoided by staff and those that should replace them. Climate change is in the avoid category, to be replaced by weather extremes . Instead of climate change adaption , staff are asked to use resilience to weather extremes .The primary cause of human-driven climate change is also targeted, with the term reduce greenhouse gases blacklisted in favor of build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency . Meanwhile, sequester carbon is ruled out and replaced by build soil organic matter .Moebius-Clune explained that we won t change the modeling, just how we talk about it there are a lot of benefits to putting carbon back in the sail [sic], climate mitigation is just one of them. She claims a colleague from the USDA s public affairs team advised them to tamp down on discretionary messaging right now. Jimmy Bramblett, deputy chief for programs at the NRCS told senior employees that Trump was behind the decision to begin censoring important climate change data. It has become clear one of the previous administration s priority is not consistent with that of the incoming administration. Namely, that priority is climate change. Please visit with your staff and make them aware of this shift in perspective within the executive branch, Bramblett wrote on January 24.The USDA issued a statement on January 23 that said, interim operating procedures outlining procedures to ensure the new policy team has an opportunity to review policy-related statements, legislation, budgets, and regulations prior to issuance. This guidance, similar to procedures issued by previous administrations, was misinterpreted by some to cover data and scientific publications. This was never the case and USDA interim procedures will allow complete, objective information for the new policy staff reviewing policy decisions, the statement added.And it isn t just the USDA. Since Trump took office, all mention of climate change has been scrubbed from the websites for both the White House and the Department of the Interior. The EPA has also removed its sections on climate change while they are updating language to reflect the approach of new leadership. This is troubling, to say the least. These records reveal Trump s active censorship of science in the name of his political agenda, said Meg Townsend, open government attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. To think that federal agency staff who report about the air, water, and soil that sustains the health of our nation must conform their reporting with the Trump administration s anti-science rhetoric is appalling and dangerous for America and the greater global community. 2017-NRCS-00240-A-3 by The Guardian on ScribdFeatured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 1real |
Texas politician slammed for tweet sent after Florida shooting | AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The office of Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a Republican and evangelical Christian, on Sunday deleted a tweet many saw as offensive and insensitive that was sent out shortly after the deadly attack on a gay nightclub in Florida. “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows,” read the Bible verse Patrick sent out on his official Twitter account a few hours after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history that left at least 50 dead. His office was not immediately available for comment but has told local media, including the Dallas Morning News, that the tweet had been scheduled for release well before the shooting. The office, which regularly sends out a Bible verse on Sundays, has since deleted it and replaced with another passage, they said. But the deleted tweet from a politician who has condemned same-sex marriage and fought against LGBT rights still raised the ire of those who accused Patrick of blaming the victims. “You are a disgrace to your state in this time of national sorrow. You should resign,” prominent LGBT activist George Takei wrote on Twitter. The Texas Democratic Party called on Patrick to apologize immediately. “Make this right. We are better than this,” it said in a statement. Patrick is currently out of the country and has not yet made comment to media about the tweet. The new verse sent on his account reads: “The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord; He is their stronghold in time of trouble.” | 0fake |
Automakers, states urge White House to reject plan to open spectrum | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 50 automakers, state transportation agencies and other groups urged the White House and other federal policymakers on Thursday not to open a portion of the wireless spectrum reserved for connected vehicles in the near future. The letter was signed by major auto trade groups representing nearly the entire auto industry, including Toyota Motor Corp, Ford Motor Co, General Motors Co, Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and Honda Motor Co. It came a week after a cable industry trade group and some tech companies, including Qualcomm Inc, and public interest groups urged the White House to take quick action to open the spectrum to more wireless devices. Automakers and companies seeking to use the 5.9 GHz unlicensed spectrum band for wireless devices have been sparring for several years. In January, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx sent a proposed regulation to the White House that would require all new cars to be equipped with “vehicle-to-vehicle” technology that could eventually prevent up to 80 percent of crashes in which alcohol is not a factor. The proposal will not be final until approved by the White House and opened for public comment. The technology, which involves cars repeatedly sending wireless signals to each other, could help alert drivers if an oncoming vehicle may disregard a traffic light. It can detect threats from hundreds of yards away and indicate whether vehicles can, for example, pass safely or make a left turn. “One of the most – if not the most – significant advances in vehicle safety is now coming into existence. We urge you to stay the course and complete the action your administration has undertaken to improve the safety of drivers and passengers on America’s roadways,” said the letter, signed by the auto and auto parts trade groups as well as the Michigan, California and Arizona state transportation departments and the National Safety Council and National Sheriffs Association. Automakers say vehicle-to-vehicle technology could also help speed self-driving cars to the roads. Last week in a separate letter to the Obama administration, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and other groups said the president needs to act quickly because as connected device use “continues to skyrocket, the spectrum resources that power our devices are perilously insufficient.” The groups urged speedy action. “We must act now to find more unlicensed spectrum,” they wrote. Michael Calabrese, director for wireless policy at New America’s Open Technology Institute, said the “auto industry ignores the fact that their unused band has enough spectrum to deploy – and protect – both crash avoidance safety applications and next generation Wi-Fi.” Dave Sullivan, an analyst at AutoPacific, said automakers have a lot at stake and have made significant investments in the technology. “It’s imperative that this spectrum not be encroached on,” he said. In 1999, the Federal Communications Commission allocated 75 megahertz of spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band for highway safety. But critics say the technology has not progressed much beyond the testing phase. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Foxx agreed in January to conduct testing on whether the spectrum can be shared with wireless devices. The government officials said it is “imperative to ensure the future automotive safety and efficiency of the traveling public” that testing be completed before they make any decisions on sharing the spectrum. | 0fake |
Clinton, Trump escalate fight in dramatic week on national security | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed over national security again on Friday, with Trump calling his Democratic rival “trigger-happy” and Clinton arguing his proposals would make the world a more dangerous place. The two White House hopefuls have waged a running battle this week over who is best placed to command the world’s most powerful military, with both touting their support from retired military leaders and attacking their opponent’s temperament and judgment. Trump also injected drama into the national security debate this week by wholeheartedly endorsing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader who has fared better than U.S. President Barack Obama. Clinton, many Democrats and even some in his own Republican party balked. Trump, speaking on Friday at the conservative Value Voters summit in Washington, painted Clinton as a “massive failure” while she was America’s top diplomat from 2009 to early 2013, blaming her for the current turmoil in the Middle East. “The problem is, Hillary Clinton is trigger-happy. Her tenure has brought us only war, destruction and death. She’s just too quick to intervene, invade, or to push for regime change,” he said at the summit. Meanwhile in New York, Clinton met with national security and foreign policy experts who are supporting her campaign to discuss terrorism. She touted the bipartisan nature of the meeting and vowed to work across the aisle as president to tackle national security challenges. “The nominee on the other side promises to do things that will make us less safe,” Clinton told reporters at a news conference on Friday afternoon. “National security experts on both sides of the aisle are chilled by what they’re hearing from the Republican nominee.” Both candidates are hoping to capitalize on concerns about national security and paint their opponents as unqualified leading into the Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump’s speech on Friday comes after the candidate took the unusual step of criticizing U.S. policy in a program aired on Thursday night on Russian government-funded television network, RT, a 24-hour news channel that broadcasts in both English and Russian. He said he disagreed with the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and that Obama botched the withdrawal. “It’s a war we shouldn’t have been in, number one,” Trump said in the interview. “And it’s a war that, when we got out, we got out the wrong way. That’s Obama.” Critics of the network, which mostly targets audiences outside of Russia, have described it as a propaganda arm of Putin’s government. American presidential candidates are not prone to condemn their country before a foreign audience, even if they are fierce critics of the current administration while campaigning in the United States. Trump has said far worse about Obama in appearances on U.S. television networks. Clinton blasted Trump for appearing on the network and praising Putin, as he had done on Wednesday night during a televised national security forum. “Every day that goes by this just becomes more and more of a reality television show,” Clinton said. “It’s not a serious presidential campaign, and it is beyond one’s imagination to have a candidate for president praising a Russian autocrat like Vladimir Putin.” The White House said it had no comment on Trump’s remarks. The New York businessman also said on RT on Thursday he did not think Russia’s government was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee email servers, and doubted it was trying to interfere in the U.S. election. Experts inside and outside the government have pointed to Russian-backed actors as the source of the hack, which has been used to leak information in an attempt to embarrass Democrats. Trump, in his speech on Friday, stuck to his belief that the United States and Russia can work together to defeat Islamic State militants. He said any nation that wants to join the United States against ISIS is welcome. “That includes Russia,” he said. “If they want to join us in knocking out ISIS, that’s just fine as far as I’m concerned.” Trump also sought on Friday to blame Clinton after reports that North Korea had tested a nuclear weapon, arguing it was the fourth such test since the Democrat became secretary of state in 2009 and that she should have ended the nation’s nuclear program before her tenure ended. “It’s just one more massive failure from a failed secretary of state,” Trump said. Clinton called the North Korea test “outrageous and unacceptable,” saying she supports imposing additional U.S. and United Nations sanctions. “It will be on the top of my list in dealing with China on how we’re going to prevent what could very well be a serious conflict with North Korea,” she said. | 0fake |
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