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Trump Avoids Answering Whether He Will Lift Sanctions on Russia - The New York Times | ■ President Trump would not say whether he favors lifting sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and meddling in the election, as his British counterpart rejected such a move. ■ Battle lines are forming within the Republican Party ahead of Mr. Trump’s phone call Saturday with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. ■ The commander in chief said his defense secretary will “override” his views in favor of torture. President Trump said on Friday that it was “very early” to be talking about lifting sanctions on Russia, deflecting a question about whether he would raise the issue with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin on Saturday morning even as his British counterpart flatly rejected such a move. Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Theresa May, the British prime minister, Mr. Trump did not say whether he supports keeping sanctions that were put in place following Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine and its interference in the 2016 election. But he said he hoped to have a good relationship with Mr. Putin. “If we could have a great relationship with Russia and with China and with all countries, I’m all for that,” Mr. Trump said in a brief answer to the question. Ms. May was more direct in her answer to the question about sanctions on Russia. She said the United Kingdom “believes that the sanctions should continue. ” The answers highlight what could be one of the differences between the two leaders, even as both of them insisted Friday that they plan to continue the close working relationship that has long existed between the two nations. President Trump’s phone call scheduled on Saturday with Russia’s president — their first conversation since Mr. Trump took office — has Republicans on edge. As one of his last acts as president, Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for interfering in the election to help install Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned Mr. Trump on Friday against lifting the sanctions. What came next was a list of Russian abuses: its invasion of Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea and its support of “the murderous Assad regime as it has waged war on the Syrian people and killed more than 400, 000 civilians. ” Then came this: “And in the most flagrant demonstration of Putin’s disdain and disrespect for our nation, Russia deliberately interfered in our recent election with cyberattacks and a disinformation campaign designed to weaken America and discredit Western values. ” UPDATE: Another Republican senator, Rob Portman of Ohio, joins in: President Trump said Friday that he will let his secretary of defense “override” him by banning torture even though he believes the tactics do work in getting information out of terror suspects. In a remarkable show of deference to his own subordinate, Mr. Trump noted that Jim Mattis, the Pentagon chief, does not believe torture is effective. The president, who serves as the commander in chief and usually makes the final call on military action, said he will let Mr. Mattis decide. “I don’t necessarily agree, but I will tell you that he will override because I’m giving him that power,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m going to rely on him. I happen to feel that it does work. ” Mr. Trump appeared to be struggling about the issue even as he spoke, returning several times to his own belief in torture’s effectiveness even as he stated several times that he would let Mr. Mattis would decide. “But I’m going with our leaders,” he said. “We are going to win, with or without. ” Then he added: “But I do disagree. ” President Trump spoke by phone on Friday with Enrique Peña Nieto, the president of Mexico, White House officials said, less than 24 hours after the Mexican president canceled a White House meeting over anger about Mr. Trump’s intentions to build a border wall. A senior White House official confirmed Friday that the call had taken place and said that an official description of what the two leaders said will be released soon. In the wake of the deepening diplomatic tensions on Thurdsday, aides to Mr. Trump had said they still intended to keep lines of communications between the two governments open. The call suggests that the two leaders may be attempting to reschedule the planned meeting. That could begin to repair the relationship in the short term, though differences will likely remain about construction of the border wall and who will finance it. Then again, Mr. Trump tweeted another salvo on Friday morning. Mr. Mattis on Friday ordered the review of the controversial fighter jet program, which has been criticized by President Trump for its cost overruns. Mr. Mattis also ordered that plans for a new Air Force One — which has also come under fire from Mr. Trump — should be reviewed, “with the specific objective of identifying means to substantially reduce the programs costs while delivering needed capabilities. ” The review, Mr. Mattis said in a memo, will also look at how to reduce costs while still meeting requirements set out for the fighter jet program. During his confirmation hearings earlier this month, Mr. Mattis defended tweets from Mr. Trump criticizing the program. Mr. Mattis said at the time that Mr. Trump had “in no way shown a lack of support for the program. He just wants more bang for the buck. ” The cost of building the fighter jet, the Joint Strike Fighter, has been an issue at the Pentagon for several years. At an estimated $400 billion over 15 years for 2, 443 planes, the fighter jet is the military largest weapons project. Mr. Trump is just not going to give up his claim that 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton, but he’s grasping for evidence. On Friday morning, he looked to VoteStand, which calls itself “America’s first online fraud reporting app” for the smartphone but does not appear to actually exist beyond the Twitter account of its founder, Gregg Phillips. The president seemed to be responding to an interview with Mr. Phillips on CNN Friday morning that was, shall we say, inconclusive. Mr. Phillips at once said 3 million illegal immigrants voted and said he is still working to prove that. “You can reach a conclusion and still verify it,” he maintained. Mr. Phillips began pressing his case that 3 million illegal votes were cast shortly after Election Day in November, but pressed repeatedly, Mr. Phillips has never produced any evidence. As the debunking site Snopes. com wrote: Mr. Phillips has been adamant on Twitter of course. But as PolitiFact wrote, “There is no report. ” And that is not all Mr. Phillips has asserted. He now has an endorsement from the president of the United States. Mr. Trump’s fallacious argument that he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million because of illegal immigrant ballots started as the stuff of wonderment and ridicule. Now that the Trump administration has shifted to an investigation of the voter rolls, things have gotten serious. Democrats appear to be girding for battle, but if, as is likely, Senator Jeff Sessions, a conservative from Alabama, becomes the attorney general, it does not appear to be a fight that the minority can win. The Democrats fear the hunt for illegal voters will become a pretext to tighten voting requirements nationwide and bar many minority voters who tend to side with the Democrats. Even moderate Democrats are alarmed. Word from Politico is that President Trump will not be attending the fancy, Alfalfa Club dinner Saturday night, a chummy gathering with many of Washington’s politicians, journalists and every president since Ronald Reagan. Lest we get too excited — could the White House Correspondents Association dinner be next? Please? — we should wait and see. It is true that every president since Mr. Reagan has attended the annual roast and silly cabaret dinner of the Alfalfa Club, a Washington clique that seems like it was hatched from a bygone era. But not many of those presidents have attended each year. Mr. Trump may yet keep the soiree alive. Mr. Trump traveled to the City of Brotherly Love on Thursday to decry Philadelphia’s rising murder rate — “I mean, just terribly increasing. ” But it isn’t. Last year’s 277 homicides was down from 280 in 2015. That is up from 2014, when 248 were murdered, and in 2013, when 246 were killed. But recent years are markedly down from 2007 to 2012 when Philadelphia had more than 300 killings, 391 in 2007 alone. “President Trump’s false statements today were an insult to the men and women of the Philadelphia police force — the very same men and women who are working long hours today to ensure his safety,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement Thursday. Of course, in the era of alternative facts, Mayor Kenney may be spitting in the wind. The Trump administration’s decision to drop advertisements encouraging people to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act was greeted with anger and alarm by supporters of the law — and a recognition that Mr. Trump wants the law crippled. “This is sabotage, pure and simple,” fumed Leslie Dach, a senior official in President Barack Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services who now heads a coalition to save the law. “This proves that this administration doesn’t care about people who need health coverage. And it clearly shows that they now own the consequences of their efforts to undermine the health care system. ” The ads were to have run only for a few more days, until the annual open enrollment period ends on Tuesday. In the last few years, large numbers of consumers signed up just before the deadline. But Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress are determined to repeal Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement. Since Nov. 1, more than 11. 5 million people have signed up for insurance or had their coverage automatically renewed. And when the enrollment period ends, it’s anyone’s guess who will announce the total number of people who would lose their insurance if the law is repealed. The leading candidate to be the Pentagon’s new spokesman is John Ullyot, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and veteran of Capitol Hill. Mr. Ullyot served as spokesman and deputy chief of staff for two Republican senators, John W. Warner of Virginia and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and as spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee from 2003 to 2007. | 0fake |
Under Armour-sponsored athletes oppose CEO's pro-Trump comments | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Professional ballet dancer Misty Copeland and wrestler turned-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson joined National Basketball Association star Stephen Curry in opposing comments made by the chief executive of their sponsor Under Armour supporting U.S. President Donald Trump. On Tuesday, Plank expressed support for Trump on CNBC, saying: “To have such a pro-business president is something that is a real asset for the country.” On Thursday, Copeland wrote on her Instagram page (@mistyonpointe) that she strongly disagrees with Plank’s recent comments in support of Trump. Johnson on Twitter (@TheRock) also posted that Plank’s words on CNBC were neither his words or his beliefs. But he added that his disagreement does not mean he will be abandoning Under Armour, with which he currently has a shoe line. Copeland and Johnson join a number of athletes including Curry to speak out against Trump. In an interview with The San Jose Mercury News on Wednesday, Curry, one of Under Armour’s most-visible athletes, said, “I agree with that description (of asset made by Plank), if you remove the ‘et’.” A number of NBA players including Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James, who is endorsed by Nike Inc, have recently expressed concerns over Trump’s policies. But Curry is the first player to directly oppose comments made by their sponsor. Plank’s comments immediately drew backlash on social media with many using hashtags #boycottUnderArmour and #Grabyourwallet to promote a campaign against pro-Trump companies. Under Armour has since released a statement saying Plank’s comments were in regard to Trump’s business policies, not his social viewpoints. “We believe in advocating for fair trade, an inclusive immigration policy that welcomes the best and the brightest and those seeking opportunity in the great tradition of our country, and tax reform that drives hiring to help create new jobs globally, across America and in Baltimore,” the company said. Under Armour is based in Baltimore. Under Armour was not immediately available for comment on Thursday. Curry, who has a multimillion-dollar contract that includes an equity stake in Under Armour that runs through 2024, said in the interview that Plank working with Trump is not a deal-breaker, but he is more concerned about Under Armour adopting Trump’s values. Curry endorsed Hilary Clinton, Trump’s Democrat opponent, in the Nov. 8 election. Shares of Under Armour closed up nearly 3 percent at $21.71 on Thursday. | 0fake |
Far-right party likened to Nazis to shake up German parliament | FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany (Reuters) - The first far-right party set to enter Germany s parliament for more than a half a century says it will press for Chancellor Angela Merkel to be severely punished for opening the door to refugees and migrants. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has also called for Germany s immigration minister to be disposed of in Turkey where her parents come from, could become the third largest party with up to 12 percent of the vote on Sept. 24, polls show. That is far less than similar movements in other European countries - in France far-right leader Marine Le Pen won 34 percent of the vote in May and in the Netherlands far-rightist Geert Wilders scored 13 percent in a March election. But the prospect of a party that the foreign minister has compared with the Nazis entering the heart of German democracy is unnerving the other parties. They all refuse to work with the AfD and no one wants to sit next to them in parliament. Leading AfD candidate Alexander Gauland denies they are Nazis, saying others only use the term because of the party s popularity. It has won support with calls for Germany to shut its borders immediately, introduce a minimum quota for deportations and stop refugees bringing their families here. We re gradually becoming foreigners in our own country, Gauland told an election rally in the Polish border city of Frankfurt an der Oder. A song with the lyrics we ll bring happiness back to your homeland blared out of a blue campaign bus and the 76-year-old lawyer said Germany belonged to the Germans, Islam had no place here and the migrant influx would make everyone worse off. Gauland provoked outrage for saying at another event that Germans should no longer be reproached with the Nazi past and they should take pride in what their soldiers achieved during World War One and Two. The Nazis ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945, during which time they killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and invaded countries across Europe. The AfD could end up as the biggest opposition force in the national assembly if there is a re-run of the current coalition of Merkel s conservatives and Social Democrats (SPD) one of the most likely scenarios. That would mean it would chair the powerful budget committee and open the general debate during budget consultations, giving prominence to its alternatives to government policies. Georg Pazderski, a member of the AfD s executive board, told Reuters his party would use parliamentary speeches to draw attention to the cost of the migrant crisis, troubles in the euro zone - which the AfD wants Germany to leave - and problems related to the European Union. We ll have a voice when we re in parliament, he said. We won t be an easy opposition. He expects other parties will shun the AfD for a year or two but ultimately work with it, pointing to the regional assembly in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD and Merkel s Christian Democrats voted to set up a committee to investigate left-wing extremism. Gauland told Reuters the AfD would call for a committee to investigate the chancellor after entering parliament: We want Ms Merkel s policy of bringing 1 million people into this country to be investigated and we want her to be severely punished for that. (For an interactive graphic on German elections, click tmsnrt.rs/2h0NqCT) MPs have already changed the qualification for the ceremonial post of doyen of parliament to the longest-serving MP rather than the oldest, likely to have been an AfD member. Sahra Wagenknecht, top candidate of the radical Left party, told Reuters it was important to look at individuals for committees but added: I won t elect any AfD member who belongs to Bjoern Hoecke s wing and who really represents Nazi views into any position of responsibility. Hoecke has denied that Adolf Hitler was absolutely evil , described Berlin s Holocaust Memorial as a monument of shame and demanded a 180 degree turnaround in the way Germany seeks to atone for Nazi crimes. The justice minister said some of the AfD s program like its demand to ban minarets is unconstitutional. Alexander Hensel, who studied the AfD s role in regional parliaments for the Otto Brenner Foundation, said debates in state assemblies had become more polarized since the AfD arrived and some other MPs would not shake hands with the newcomers. The AfD s aggressive right-wing positions have intensified the debates while the tone and way people deal with each other in parliament has become noticeably rougher due to the AfD s tough rhetoric and targeted provocations, he said. Unlike previous right-wing movements in Germany the AfD - founded in 2013 by an anti-euro group of academics - has become socially acceptable so radicalized people from the middle class feel able to vote for it alongside classic radical right-wing voters, said Manfred Guellner, head of Forsa polling institute. You don t vote for skinheads but you can vote for professors in suits, said Guellner, referring to the likes of Gauland, who tends to wear tweed jackets. The AfD is unlikely to gain much more support though, said Jackson Janes, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, predicting worsening infighting over whether to aim for government or stay in opposition. They ll add to the yelling and screaming in the Bundestag, he said, but added: I don t see them spreading like a cancer through society. | 0fake |
Trump did not ask former FBI Director Comey to pledge loyalty: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump did not ask former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey to pledge loyalty to him when the two had dinner in January, the White House said on Friday, disputing media reports. Asked whether the accounts were true, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters, “No.” “I think the president wants loyalty to this country and to the rule of law,” he said. Asked whether anyone in the White House had an audio recording of the dinner, as Trump suggested in a tweet earlier on Friday, Spicer said: “I’m not aware of that.” | 0fake |
Kentucky Republican To Rape Victim: Getting DNA From Rapist Worse Intrusion Than Being Raped | Republicans care more about protecting rapists than they do about the women they raped.Kentucky GOP Senator Dan Seum made that clear during a committee hearing for a bill that would require people arrested for committing felonies to provide their DNA to law enforcement.Rape survivor Michelle Kuiper courageously testified as a witness in favor of Senate Bill 150 along with a mother whose daughter had been raped and brutally murdered and a man who spent 18 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of rape before DNA found the real rapist.But during Kuiper s testimony, Seum became the latest Republican to deliver offensive and insensitive remarks about rape, only this time the remarks were made directly in the face of a rape victim. I understand your pain, Seum claimed before telling Kuiper that her rape is not as important as protecting her rapist from government intrusion. But I can tell you I have eight children and 21 grandkids, that over the years this government through its intrusion has done more damage to me than all those criminals out there ever did, he callously continued.You read that right. A Republican literally told a rape victim that the unwanted intrusion of her body by her rapist is less important than making sure the rapist is shielded from the government.According to the Courier-Journal:Seum did not elaborate on what type of government intrusion he experienced. But at a Judiciary Committee meeting last month, he said that he had been called as a witness several years ago in a child abuse case in family court where the father was accused of spanking his child. He didn t provide any further details.Kuiper, however, was severely shaken by the ordeal. I was shaken and felt sick after his comments, Kuiper said. Basically, he had told us he had suffered worse crimes than us. Democratic state Rep. Sannie Overly blasted Seum for his remarks and called for her colleague to apologize to every woman in Kentucky for brushing off their safety in favor of defending rapists. A rape victim brave enough to step forward and share her personal story of a heinous crime should not get a lecture. He should apologize to these people and all Kentucky women who have experienced this horrific crime. The bill eventually passed 6-4 despite Seum voting against it, but once again, a Republican lawmaker demonstrates that the GOP still doesn t care about women who are raped.Earlier this year, a Republican in Idaho with five daughters of his own made incredibly creepy claims about rape. Now, I m of the understanding that in many cases of rape it does not involve any pregnancy because of the trauma of the incident, GOP state Rep. Nielsen said during a hearing on an abortion bill. That may be true with incest a little bit I read a lot of information. I have read it several times. Being a father of five girls, I ve explored this a lot. And these latest Republican remarks about rape and rape victims are now part of an ever growing list of quotes that Republicans have made over the years demonstrating their callous disregard of women and their ignorance of the female reproductive process. You can read a comprehensive list of such quotes here.Seriously, if there were ever a more important time for women to flock to the voting booth against Republicans, this November would be the time. Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
Mississippi governor to join suit against Obama transgender policy | (Reuters) - Mississippi’s Republican governor said on Thursday he planned to join a lawsuit by officials from 11 states to overturn an Obama administration directive that tells schools to let transgender students use bathrooms matching their gender identity. The lawsuit led by Texas, the most significant legal challenge to this month’s directive, said the federal government and Obama administration officials overreached their authority by taking actions that should be left to Congress or individual states. “Our office has talked to the Texas attorney general’s office and I intend, as soon as possible, to join the lawsuit against this latest example of federal overreach,” Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant said in a statement. As with some of the other states, Mississippi’s governor and attorney general disagree on the suit, which challenges the administration’s interpretation that federal civil rights laws against sex discrimination should apply to transgender people. Mississippi’s attorney general, Democrat Jim Hood, declined to participate in the lawsuit, according to Clay Chandler, a spokesman for the governor. Chandler said Bryant will work with an attorney in the governor’s office in joining the lawsuit. Hood’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Amid a national debate on transgender rights, President Barack Obama’s administration on May 13 told U.S. public schools that transgender students should be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice, upsetting Republicans and paving the way for fights over federal funding and legal authority. Texas was joined by Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin, plus Arizona’s Department of Education and Maine’s governor. The lawsuit said the administration “conspired to turn workplace and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.” Transgender rights advocates criticized the suit as a malicious attack, saying there have never been public safety incidents or invasions of privacy related to protections for transgender people. “While the department will review the complaint, the federal government has strong legal foundations to uphold the civil rights of transgender Americans,” the Justice Department said in a statement on Wednesday. | 0fake |
Here's how moms get pushed out of the workforce | This week, Katharine Zaleski confessed her sins against motherhood on Fortune, and it went viral.
Zaleski is now the cofounder and president of PowerToFly, a firm that works to match women with flexible jobs. But before that, she was working in media, at the Washington Post and Huffington Post.
Her column no doubt did well for the sheer shock value. (She recounts how she said nothing when an editor proposed firing someone "before she 'got pregnant.'") But another reason it resonates so strongly could be that the worst of Zaleski's actions line up with emerging research around the ways women — especially moms — are discriminated against in the workplace. Women have felt this for years. But the research, and now the confessions, are catching up.
Zaleski recounts a few of her worst transgressions:
1. I secretly rolled my eyes at a mother who couldn’t make it to last minute drinks with me and my team. I questioned her "commitment" even though she arrived two hours earlier to work than me and my hungover colleagues the next day. 2. I didn’t disagree when another female editor said we should hurry up and fire another woman before she "got pregnant." 3. I sat in a job interview where a male boss grilled a mother of three and asked her, "How in the world are you going to be able to commit to this job and all your kids at the same time?" I didn’t give her any visual encouragement when the mother – who was a top cable news producer at the time – looked at him and said, "Believe it or not, I like being away from my kids during the workday… just like you." 4. I scheduled last minute meetings at 4:30 pm all of the time. It didn’t dawn on me that parents might need to pick up their kids at daycare. I was obsessed with the idea of showing my commitment to the job by staying in the office "late" even though I wouldn’t start working until 10:30 am while parents would come in at 8:30 am.
It's easy to see why the column went viral: it's not only enraging, but it's also a conversion story — once Zaleski had a baby herself, the scales fell from her eyes and she realized the error of her ways.
we're very good at honoring motherhood. but we seem to have trouble when moms need a paycheck or have career aspirations.
She also gets into some of the very issues researchers have begun uncovering.
For example, many working moms know that "opting out" isn't always opting out. Zaleski's story echoes an eye-opening December study of Harvard Business School alums. Many of those high-achieving women had stopped working, not because they wanted to be stay-at-home moms but because the working world had started to shun them.
Some women get subtle messages, as Harvard's researchers write...and as Zaleski shows, some women get interviewers asking them how they'll commit to a job and kids at the same time.
A lack of flexibility for parents can also show up in women's paychecks. For example, Zaleski expected parents to conform to a non-parent schedule, coming to 4:30 pm meetings. That kind of rigidity can prevent women from keeping up with men. Harvard economist Claudia Goldin found in a 2014 study that flexibility in hours plays a huge part in creating more pay equality between men and women. As she wrote, "The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours."
It's true that Zaleski and Harvard Business School alums are breathing some rarefied air. But even the most basic kind of flexibility is unavailable to many American workers. According to the White House, only 39 percent of US workers report having access to paid family leave for the birth of a child. Even more shockingly, employers say only 11 percent of workers are covered, meaning some employers may be offering informal arrangements.
It's true that not all bias in the workplace is as deliberate as that in Zaleski's former world — indeed, a lot of it may be subconscious. But it reflects a twisted attitude — that our society values motherhood but not the mothers themselves. In cards, poems, songs, movies, books, even commercials, we are very good at honoring mothers for being moms. What we seem to have trouble with is when those moms need to earn money or want to advance their careers. | 0fake |
Trump Has Meltdown Over Kasich And Cruz Joining Forces To Destroy Him (TWEETS) | The Republican Party is filled with even more drama over their primary today as Cruz and Kasich have apparently teamed up to destroy frontrunner Donald Trump and the billionaire is having a meltdown.On Sunday, the Ted Cruz Campaign and John Kasich Campaign both released statements declaring they are joining forces and will be dividing their attention in the remaining primaries to keep Trump from winning. Cruz for President Campaign Manager Jeff Roe said: Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead. Kasich s campaign manager, John Weaver, said that the Ohio governor s campaign was going to shift their resources to the West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana. NEWS: Kasich campaign will marshal campaign resources to New Mexico and Oregon, allow Cruz to focus on Indiana. pic.twitter.com/auUIUX961O Team Kasich (@TeamJohnKasich) April 25, 2016According to CNN, this is a campaign strategy the two Republicans have been working on for weeks. They hope that they will be able to keep Trump from obtaining the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination this summer. If they can do that, the Republican s will have a contested convention over the summer and that will leave the door open for one of them to swoop in and win the nomination. Ted Cruz has already been trying to woo Trump s pledged delegates into voting for him on a second ballot at the convention.When the news broke that Cruz and Kasich were doing this, Donald Trump (of course) took to Twitter and slammed the campaigns:Wow, just announced that Lyin Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016 Lyin Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016After those two tweets, Trump apparently went to bed but was back at it again first thing Monday morning: Lyin Ted Cruz and 1 for 38 Kasich are unable to beat me on their own so they have to team up (collusion) in a two on one. Shows weakness! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016Shows how weak and desperate Lyin Ted is when he has to team up with a guy who openly can t stand him and is only 1 win and 38 losses. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016Over the last week or so, Trump has been trying really hard to seem presidential. But his facade is going to be really hard to maintain after this announcement. I am sure we are going to hear a lot more in the coming days.Featured image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images | 1real |
Kremlin says unaware of U.S. Attorney General's meetings with Russian envoy | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday he was unaware that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but said such meetings were routine. Peskov was speaking after the Washington Post reported that Sessions had failed to disclose two meetings with Kislyak. “I don’t know the details of any meetings,” said Peskov. “(But) the ambassador’s job is to hold as many meetings as possible.” Peskov said talk of possible Russian involvement in the U.S. presidential campaign, something Moscow categorically denies, was an internal matter for the United States. But he said it served to create an atmosphere in which the idea of repairing U.S.-Russia ties was harder to sell. | 0fake |
Exclusive: Pyongyang university to start fall classes without American staff after travel ban | SEOUL (Reuters) - Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), North Korea s only western-funded university, will start the fall semester without its dozens of American staff after failing to secure exemptions to a U.S. travel ban that starts on Friday. PUST - home to the largest concentration of foreigners in the reclusive state - plans to revise courses and teaching schedules but its largely English-based curriculum will be heavily impacted, two sources familiar with PUST s operations said. PUST was founded in 2010 by a Korean American evangelical Christian with the goal of helping North Korea's future elite learn the skills to modernize the isolated country and engage with the outside world. (Graphic: Americans detained in North Korea - tmsnrt.rs/2pmE3ks) In mid-July, however, the U.S. State Department announced a ban on Americans traveling to North Korea following the death earlier this year of an American student who had been detained by the state while on a tour. It advised U.S. citizens living there to leave. Since then, tensions on the Korean peninsula have escalated significantly. Nuclear-armed North Korea has undertaken a number of provocative missile tests, including two intercontinental ballistic missile launches and one medium-range missile test this week that flew over Japan. Of the roughly 130 foreigners at PUST including faculty members, staffers and family members, about 60 were U.S. citizens, one of the sources said, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation. None had received special permission to stay and all have now left Pyongyang. The teaching activities and the unique international English-based character of the school are severely impacted by the U.S. travel ban and the decision of some other personnel not to return, the source said. The school, which is open about its Christian affiliation, has already been rocked by the detention of two of its staff members by the North Korean regime this year. The two were accused of acting against the interests of the state. U.S. officials announced the ban six weeks ago due to the risk Americans will be held for long-term detention in the country. The ban was imposed after U.S. student Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years hard labor for allegedly trying to steal a propaganda poster while on a tour last year. Warmbier fell into a coma in custody and died soon after he was released to U.S. officials. The circumstances surrounding his death are not clear. The last major tour involving U.S. tourists flew out of North Korea on Thursday. The ban, similar to previous U.S. restrictions on travel to Iraq and Libya, makes North Korea the only country in the world Americans are currently banned by the State Department from visiting. Journalists and humanitarian workers can apply for special permission. But the U.S. government has yet to issue guidelines on how to obtain waivers, leaving PUST and educators uncertain how or when it might be possible to apply for exemptions, according to the people familiar with PUST s operations. The State Department said it was unable to comment on specific requests for exemptions. Over the past several weeks, PUST leaders have tried to lobby for exemptions so that their work can continue, the sources said. The school is involved in ongoing discussions with U.S. officials, they added. The university was seen as a rare experiment in academic diplomacy with a country increasingly entirely isolated from the rest of the world due to tightening sanctions over its defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons programs. U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to stop Pyongyang achieving its goal of being able to fire a nuclear warhead to the United States and has warned the U.S. military is locked and loaded in case of North Korean provocation. Since PUST took in its first 50 students in 2010, the school has grown to about 500 undergraduate and 60 graduate students studying in mostly three departments - electronic and computer engineering, international finance and management and agriculture and life sciences. A lot of effort has been spent over the past seven years that PUST has been operating. The prospect of this progress being undermined - even totally thwarted - as a consequence of the U.S. government action, is deeply worrying to everyone involved, one of the sources said. | 0fake |
White House says government shutdown always a possibility | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the U.S. Congress worked to reach agreement on a short-term spending measure to keep the federal government open, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Tuesday a shutdown could still happen. “It is always a possibility but it’s certainly not what we hope for,” she said at a media briefing, adding that the top Democrats in Congress, Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, would meet with Trump this week. | 0fake |
LOL! LIBERAL HACK JOY REID Tries To Turn Death of 4 U.S. Soldiers In Niger Into Trump’s Benghazi…Gets HUMILIATED When She Finds Out Who Sent Troops There | Two days ago, the former MSNBC host Joy Reid suggested that reporters should humiliate President Trump and ask him if he knows the names of the 4 U.S. soldiers who were killed by Islamic extremists in Niger?The next time Donald Trump holds a press briefing, I hope a reporter will ask him to simply name the four soldiers killed in Niger. Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) October 18, 2017Reid was quickly slammed by Benghazi survivor Kris Paronto who asked Joy if she knew his name, or any of his teammates that were left to die along with my by your messiahs @BarackObama and @Hillary Clinton? Do you know my name Joy? how about my teammates that were left to die along with me by your messiahs @BarackObama & @HillaryClinton https://t.co/FQpu6yp1Vu Kris Paronto (@KrisParonto) October 18, 2017The very next day, Reid again stuck her foot in her mouth regarding the Niger attack on our U.S. troops. With no knowledge or understanding of the reason our troops were stationed in Niger, the former MSNBC host tried to attack President Trump, as she suggested that it was Trump s fault that 4 of our brave US troops were killed there by Islamic extremists.Again: why are US troops in Niger? And why haven t the relevant Republican committee chairs scheduled hearings? https://t.co/bvEwDcKLWE Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) October 19, 2017Joy was quickly and justifiably destroyed by Stephen Miller, a writer for National Review who clearly has a better grasp on history than loudmouth liberal Joy Reid. Miller s response to Reid was hilarious and humiliating all at once Hi Joy. Troops were sent to Niger by Barack Obama. Hope this helpshttps://t.co/QDfYg8gtQu https://t.co/9wMOqaWp6Z Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) October 19, 2017That wasn t the end of the criticisms for the uninformed former host of the propaganda network MSNBC. Joy s tweet continued to take more hits from people who are sick and tired of watching the media (or former media in Reid s case) make up lies about our President without being challenged.Via CBS NEWS. Which is obviously an alt right news outlet now. Braindead liberals. pic.twitter.com/heZ8WGxljB Jeremiah Schultz (@ResistFromDay1) October 19, 2017And, oh yeah, do you remember this little hashtag campaign by the former First Lady that preceded Barack Obama s decision to send our troops to Niger?Joy probably doesn't remember this pic.twitter.com/fuH3573H1s Problematic AF (@EF517_V2) October 19, 2017Reid got slammed so hard for her ignorance, that one guy tweeted We need a cleanup on aisle 7 after Reid was destroyed for her partisan attack:We need a cleanup on aisle 7 Daniel (@ddwalk34) October 19, 2017 | 1real |
WATCH: MUSLIM WOMAN ADMITS OBAMA CAME TO MOSQUE TO GET VOTES…Human Rights Attorney Destroys Obama’s Decision | WOW! There aren t too many non-political people willing to stand up to the lies of Obama and his ties to radical Islam. Human rights attorney, Brooke Goldstein tears Muslim woman who attended the radical DC mosque with Barack Obama yesterday apart with facts: | 1real |
15 Foods That Contain the Most Vitamin E | Alternative | (Before It's News)
What is Vitamin E? Vitamin E is an important fat-soluble antioxidant compound that aids the body in neutralizing the harmful after-effects of oxidation of fats. Current research is even looking into the important role that this vitamin plays in stopping free-radical production, a key method of preventing the development of chronic diseases and aging. It is also a vital element in the overall maintenance of a healthy immune system.
Some studies are even looking into its role in preventing degenerative mental imbalances such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. And while many of us may do well in taking extra vitamin E supplements, we can use an organic diet to get a large amount of the daily requirements for this powerful antioxidant lipid. In fact, there are many common foods with vitamin E. You probably have a few in your house right now.
Foods With Vitamin E
Here are fifteen foods with vitamin E that you should strongly consider adding to your diet.
1. Almonds
Almonds are one the best vitamin E foods. Just an ounce of almonds offers a whopping 7.4 milligrams of vitamin E. You can also get your vitamin E needs in the form of almond milk and almond oils. We would recommend eating raw almonds, if possible.
2. Raw Seeds
Select raw seeds , such as sunflower, pumpkin and sesame, are another common food with vitamin E. In fact, eating just ¼ of a cup of sunflower seeds gives you 90.5% of your recommended daily value, making them one of the best vitamin E foods you can eat daily.
3. Swiss Chard
Swiss chard is easily one of the healthiest vegetables you can eat on a daily basis. Commonly known to be high in vitamin K, vitamin A and vitamin C, Swiss chard is another food high in vitamin E. Just one cup of boiled swiss chard greens will provide you with almost 17% of your daily recommended values.
4. Mustard Greens
Similar to swiss chard, mustard greens are very nutrient dense and will provide a variety of health benefits. Not only are they one of the best vitamin E foods, but mustard greens are also high in vitamin K, vitamin A, folate , and vitamin c. Eating just one cup of boiled mustard greens contains about 14% of your daily dietary requirements. We would recommend eating organic mustard greens, if possible.
5. Spinach
Spinach may not be your favorite veggie, but it is one of the best leafy greens you can add to your diet. Not only is it one of the best calcium foods and naturally high in folate, it’s also one of the best vitamin E foods as well. Just one cup of boiled spinach will provide you with approximately 20% of your daily needs. Try adding fresh spinach to your sandwiches to make them extra healthy.
6. Turnip Greens
While turnip greens may have a slightly bitter taste, they are very high in many essential nutrients. Like the rest of the leafy greens on this list, just one cup will provide you with plenty of vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C and folate. Not to mention approximately 12% of your daily requirements of vitamin E.
7. Kale
Kale is another great cruciferous vegetable you should eat as often as possible. Kale is very high in many nutrients, in fact, just one cup of boiled kale can give you almost 6% of your daily vitamin E requirements. We would recommend eating organic kale, if possible.
8. Plant oils
Most plant seed oils are very good sources for Vitamin E as well. The best oil with vitamin E is Wheat germ oil. In fact, one tablespoon of this oil holds 100% of your daily Vitamin E requirements. Sunflower oil is another excellent option, as it provides over 5 mg of the vitamin, and can easily be be used for cooking. Other great Vitamin-E-rich oils include hempseed oil, coconut oil, cottonseed oil (with almost 5 mg of vitamin E), olive oil and safflower oil. We would recommend only buying oils that are cold pressed unrefined and organic.
9. Hazelnuts
A perfect snack during a long workday, eating just one ounce of hazelnuts can provide you with approximately 20% of our daily requirements of vitamin E. For an alternative to eating nuts, try drinking hazelnut milk in your morning coffee instead of milk or flavored creamer.
10. Pine Nuts
Add an ounce of these nuts to anything you please! One serving contains 2.6 mg of vitamin E. You can also use pine nut oil for added health benefits.
11. Avocado
Perhaps one of the tastiest foods with Vitamin E, avocados represent natures creamiest, oil-rich food. Just half of an avocado holds more than 2 mg of vitamin E. Avocados are very easy to incorporate into your diet. We would recommend adding sliced avocados to your salad, a sandwich, or mashed up as guacamole!
12. Broccoli
For generations now, broccoli has been considered one of the best detox foods , but it’s also one of the healthiest foods high in Vitamin E. Just one cup of steamed broccoli will provide you with 4% of your daily requirements. Broccoli may not be as nutrient dense as other Vitamin E foods on this list, but it is definitely one of the healthiest foods you can eat daily.
13. Parsley
An excellent spice, parsley is another great Vitamin E food. Try adding fresh parsley to salads and dishes for an extra Vitamin-E kick. Dried parsley will also provide you with this important vitamin, but the fresher the better.
14. Papaya
This popular fruit is most commonly known as one of the best vitamin C foods , but it’s also high in Vitamin E. Just one papaya will give you approximately 17% of your daily needs. Try adding fresh or frozen papaya to fruit smoothies, along with other fruity vitamin E foods on this list for an extra healthy snack!
15. Olives
From the oil to the fruit, eating olives is an excellent way of getting your daily needs for vitamin E. Just one cup of olives can give you approximately 20% of your daily recommended amount.
These are just a few examples of foods with vitamin E. There are plenty more that aren’t listed here. Which vitamin E food is your favorite? Let’s hear your thoughts below.
The post 15 Foods That Contain The Most Vitamin E appeared first on The Sleuth Journal . | 1real |
Protesters Angry Sen. Dianne Feinstein Isn’t Holding Town Halls | Demonstrators protested Sen. Dianne Feinstein ( ) Friday outside of her appearance at the Public Policy Institute of California Friday in San Francisco, to complain about her decision not to hold town hall meetings during the week’s congressional recess. [Protesters outside of the Public Policy Institute of California, where U. S. Senator Dianne Feinstein will soon speak @KQEDnews pic. twitter. — Cesar James Saldana (@cesarjsaldana) February 24, 2017, According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Feinstein, who has not debated her Republican opponent in her last two U. S. Senate campaigns — state Sen. Dick Mountjoy in 2006 and Republican Elizabeth Emken in 2012 — has no plans for any town halls during Congress’ current recess. ” People attending Feinstein’s ticketed event were reportedly invited to send questions via email to the event moderator in advance. Tickets were free. There were reportedly only 240 chairs in the room, although many more were standing. The Sacramento Bee reported that during the event, Feinstein said she somewhat enjoyed the outbursts. The moderator reportedly “asked the audience to settle down so that he could continue asking questions” when “Feinstein admitted, ‘I kind of enjoy it. ’” The protesters were from the San Francisco chapter of Indivisible, a liberal group that has crashed talks in recent weeks to push their “ Trump” agenda. The Bee notes that they held up signs reading, “Hold a real town hall. ” Others held up a green “agree” and a red “disagree” sign. At another point during the event, Feinstein reportedly said there was not much she could do to remove Stephen K. Bannon from his position as President Trump’s chief White House strategist, which prompted the activists to hold up a red “disagree” sign. ” “Wait a minute, all the geniuses,” Feinstein reportedly objected, before noticing a sign that said, “Ban Bannon to Russia. ” The Bee notes that she then said, “Well, it’s a nice thought. ” Friday was not the first time Feinstein’s constituents have confronted her. In January, approximately 200 radical leftists protested and picketed outside of her Pacific Heights mansion in San Francisco to oppose what they have labeled as her “ voting record” because she voted for confirming several of the president’s Cabinet picks. Protesters outside of the Public Policy Institute of California, where U. S. Senator Dianne Feinstein will soon speak @KQEDnews pic. twitter. — Cesar James Saldana (@cesarjsaldana) February 24, 2017, Also on Friday night, Rep. Adam Schiff ( ) held a town hall in Glendale, California where he discussed President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban and the refugee crisis. Amazing turnout tonight for our town hall on the President’s travel ban. It’s fantastic to see so many engaged. pic. twitter. — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 25, 2017, So many showed up to our town hall, we filled the overflow room too. Important to hear from everyone here tonight. pic. twitter. — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 25, 2017, The Chronicle notes that on Sunday, at 10 a. m. several hundred activists will also hold an “empty chair” town hall despite the fact that Feinstein will not attend in person. She reportedly declined their invitation. However, a spokeswoman for Indivisible East Bay told the Chronicle that Sunday “is not really a protest” of the senator. “It’s a demonstration of our request that she meet with us. ” Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNaz | 0fake |
America Is Better Without Borders | America Is Better Without Borders Steven Hahn, TIME, November 1, 2016
“A nation without borders,” Donald Trump has warned us , “is not a nation at all.” Trump was explaining the logic of the multi-billion dollar wall he promises to build along the U.S.-Mexican border, but he was hardly the first to make the case. Years ago, Ronald Reagan said much the same about the threat of illegal immigration, and others urging border vigilance have wrapped themselves in the high-flown rhetoric. Tee-shirts and coffee mugs have turned the idea into a saleable slogan.
{snip}
{snip} For much of its early history, the United States had hazy borders in good part because through war, conquest and diplomacy the country was constantly expanding and the shifting boundaries were not clearly marked. There was no agreement about how far west the Louisiana Territory reached or how far south the state of Texas stretched or how far north the Oregon Territory extended. Highly charged political words and brutal conflict followed (like the U.S.-Mexican War), while the imperial eyes of many leaders fell on Cuba, Central America and Hawaii.
What’s more, the borders that were agreed upon were remarkably porous. Until well into the nineteenth century, immigrants could come and go at will and even participate in electoral politics if they simply declared an intention to become citizens; indeed, for decades it was not at all clear what a citizen of the United States was. The only international migration policed was the African slave trade, which Congress outlawed in 1808 after nearly half a million captives had been forcibly deposited on North American shores.
{snip}
It is easy, when politics and ethnocentrism serve, to proclaim the principle of the nation with borders as the nation itself, while the borders are, in fact, regularly traversed by policy makers, investors and moneyed interests pursuing the main chance and wielding the big stick. Trump himself regularly touts, though refuses to reveal, his international dealings, many of which confound his goal of keeping jobs within American borders if they don’t outright violate American laws.
Truth is that the nation’s prosperity has long rested on the labor and resourcefulness of immigrants–voluntary and involuntary, free and slave–and that those who most loudly denounce a “nation without borders” are likely descendants of immigrants who were themselves harassed for their origins, faith and lifeways at some point in the past. We would do well to recognize that in a global economy such as ours, where the movement of people and goods are the lifeblood of our sustenance, a nation’s security is best maintained not by walling itself off but by lifting the prospects–and thereby creating political allies–of working people around the world. | 1real |
Stepping Out on Faith, a Blind Man Counts His Blessings - The New York Times | His routine is the same every day. Before going outside, Leroy Bracey recites Psalms 121, a daily reassurance that God is protecting him wherever he goes. Mr. Bracey has myopic degeneration, a congenital retinal condition that has worsened his vision with age, especially in recent years. Navigating New York City’s streets has become increasingly treacherous. “People and locations are like a fog, a blur,” Mr. Bracey, 49, said. “I don’t see faces, unless I’m really close and I can smell your breath. ” He has had close calls with cars, even more with bicycles, only to be saved by the blaring of horns or screeching of tires. A few times, he said, a sixth sense has halted him. As a way to preserve his freedom, Mr. Bracey carries around three tools: a small telescope worn around his neck, used to spot street signs and locate bus stops a magnifying glass kept in his pocket for reading and in his hand, a folding cane. “These three things I carry with me just like my wallet,” he said. “I want to sustain as much independence as I can. ” Blindness is not his only limitation. Mr. Bracey has been homeless since March. He has a temporary home at the St. Anthony Shelter for Renewal in the Bronx, an affiliate of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, one of the eight agencies supported by The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund. Before that, he lived with his mother. But their relationship grew too turbulent for Mr. Bracey to stay with her. His steadfast companion is his Bible, a edition he keeps in his knapsack. The Gospel is his source of boundless solace and solutions. It reminds him that God will always make a way, and, he says, he is a recipient of God’s grace. After arriving at St. Anthony, Mr. Bracey was connected with multiple social services, including programs for the blind and the homeless. Catholic Charities Guild for the Blind has provided him with a caseworker and enrolled him in employment training classes. Mr. Bracey has worked several jobs, including in telemarketing and sales, but he has been out of work for several years. Of adults who are blind, only 40 percent are employed, according to the National Federation for the Blind. The Bible tells him he deserves the chance to contribute in some way, recalling 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. ” “I would love to work,” Mr. Bracey said. Unable to find employment, Mr. Bracey’s monthly income comes in the form of assistance: $235 from Supplemental Security Income, $518 from Social Security, $87 from New York State disability and $189 in food stamps. His top priority is to secure permanent public housing for people with disabilities. His name is on waiting lists. In August, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York used $324 in Neediest Cases funds to pay for a MetroCard and three months of phone and laundry bills. Not one to sit idle, Mr. Bracey takes to the streets daily, though he tends to stay in areas he knows, usually around 14th Street near his eye doctor, whom he takes the bus to visit every other month. “I never liked to be told I couldn’t do certain things,” he said. “I know my heart, I know my mind and I know my faith. ” During the past few months, his vision has continued to deteriorate as objects now appear even more blurry, but Mr. Bracey said he had never felt safer about town, thanks to a cane the Guild for the Blind gave him a few months ago. “I thought it might slow me down or make me feel, in my mind, less than what I am,” he said. “But it’s given me more confidence. ” It also serves as a warning to drivers and bicyclists who he may not notice. The change in seasons brings new constraints. As the days get shorter during fall and winter, the lack of sunlight limits his independence. He does not stay out after dark and avoids the dimly lit subway system, venturing underground only to refill his MetroCard to use on the bus. “I prefer having stronger faith than stronger vision,” Mr. Bracey said. The Bible reminds him to remain hopeful, despite his setbacks. He often turns to the plight of Job, who suffered greatly only to be blessed by God in the end. “I know God has something great in store for me,” Mr. Bracey said. | 0fake |
SHOCK VIDEO : Hillary Needs Help Climbing ONE SINGLE STEP in Florida – TruthFeed | SHOCK VIDEO : Hillary Needs Help Climbing ONE SINGLE STEP in Florida SHOCK VIDEO : Hillary Needs Help Climbing ONE SINGLE STEP in Florida Videos By TruthFeedNews October 27, 2016
Hillary Clinton needed a helping hand to trek up a single step during a visit in Florida today.
Clinton was outside to greet supporters in Lake Worth when she attempted to stand on a small riser. With help from her Secret Service agents, she finally conquered the single step.
Watch the video:
Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 1real |
Dylann Roof Himself Rejects Best Defense Against Execution - The New York Times | pages into the journal found in Dylann S. Roof’s car — after the assertions of black inferiority, the lamentations over white powerlessness, the longing for a race war — comes an incongruous declaration. “I want state that I am morally opposed to psychology,” wrote the young white supremacist who would murder nine black worshipers at Emanuel A. M. E. Church in Charleston, S. C. in June 2015. “It is a Jewish invention, and does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they dont. ” Mr. Roof, who plans to represent himself when the penalty phase of his federal capital trial begins on Tuesday, apparently is devoted enough to that proposition (or delusion, as some maintain) to stake his life on it. Although a defense based on his psychological capacity might be his best opportunity to avoid execution, he seems steadfastly committed to preventing any public examination of his mental state or background. “I will not be calling mental health experts or presenting mental health evidence,” he wrote to Judge Richard M. Gergel of Federal District Court on Dec. 16, a day after a jury took only two hours to find him guilty of 33 counts, including hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of religion and firearms violations. At a hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Roof told the judge that he planned to make an opening statement but not call witnesses or present evidence on his behalf. The testimony presented by prosecutors during the guilt phase of Mr. Roof’s trial detailed with gruesome precision how he had plotted and executed the massacre during a Wednesday night Bible study in the church’s fellowship hall. It was less satisfying in revealing why he had done it. With his choice to sideline his legal team and represent himself, the second phase — when the same jury of nine whites and three blacks will decide whether to sentence him to death or to life in prison — may prove little different. Death penalty experts said it was exceedingly rare for capital defendants to represent themselves after allowing lawyers to handle the initial part of a case. Mr. Roof, who also faces a death penalty trial in state court, has not publicly explained his reasoning. But legal filings strongly suggest a split with his defenders about whether to argue that his rampage resulted from mental illness. Mr. Roof’s lead lawyer, David I. Bruck, tried repeatedly to plant that notion during the guilt phase, knowing it might be his only chance. Because evidence of mitigating factors is supposed to be reserved for the penalty phase, Judge Gergel allowed him little leeway. In his closing argument, while acknowledging Mr. Roof’s guilt, Mr. Bruck managed to tell the jury that Mr. Roof subscribed to “the mad idea that he can make things better by massacring the most virtuous, kind and gentle people he could ever have found. ” Mr. Bruck seeded his speech with words like “abnormal,” “irrationality,” “senselessness,” “delusional,” “obsession” and “perseveration,” a psychiatric term referring to the uncontrollable repetition of a particular response. Mr. Bruck, one of the country’s most experienced death penalty litigators, portrayed his client as a loner whose most meaningful relationship seemed to be with his cat who staged hundreds of photographs of himself with no sign of friends whose racial hatred was ignited by internet searches and not personal experience who could not pinpoint during his confession to the F. B. I. how many he had killed, how long he had spent at the church or even what month it was who had no escape plan and left suicide notes to his parents. “There was something in him that made him feel that he had to do it,” Mr. Bruck said, “and that is as much as he knows. ” After receiving the results of a psychiatric examination in November, Judge Gergel found Mr. Roof competent to stand trial — meaning that he was capable of understanding the proceedings and assisting in his defense. At Mr. Bruck’s request, the judge scheduled a second competency hearing for Monday, but he signaled last week that he saw no reason to delay the penalty phase. The judge has repeatedly warned Mr. Roof against representing himself, including immediately after the verdicts, when he called it “a bad decision” and urged him to “fully appreciate the implications. ” The warnings have had no discernible effect on Mr. Roof, who has until Tuesday to reverse his decision to relegate his lawyers to standby counsel. That status allows Mr. Bruck and his team to offer guidance, but not to question witnesses or make objections. Prosecutors plan a procession of grief, perhaps calling dozens of members of victims’ families to testify about the impact of the killings. The prosecutors are also likely to the considerable evidence of Mr. Roof’s premeditation and clearly articulated racial intent. Death penalty experts said the absence of mental health evidence to mitigate those aggravating factors could be decisive. “If the jury views Roof as evil and having made a knowing, intelligent choice to kill these innocent, churchgoing people in order to foment racial hatred, they are much more likely to impose the death penalty than if they believe him to be a young and severely mentally ill person who acted under delusional racist beliefs,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group. It would take only one holdout on the jury, which consists of 10 women and two men, to spare Mr. Roof from lethal injection. Judge Gergel has ruled that the jurors can be told that prosecutors had rejected Mr. Roof’s offer, through Mr. Bruck, to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Many in Charleston were relieved by Mr. Roof’s conviction in light of the mistrial that had been declared 10 days earlier in the state murder prosecution of Michael T. Slager, the white North Charleston policeman whose fatal shooting of a black motorist in 2015 was captured on video. Even those who oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, like the Rev. Joseph A. Darby, a presiding elder for the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, said it would seem bewildering for Mr. Roof to escape capital punishment. “That could very well be the end of the death penalty in America, because if there was ever justification for killing anybody, this is the case,” Mr. Darby said. There is no consensus among members of the victims’ families about Mr. Roof’s fate. When the Justice Department elected in May to seek the death penalty, it acted against the wishes of many and of the two women he had spared. Five relatives offered Mr. Roof a measure of forgiveness at a remarkable bond hearing two days after the shootings. But by law, those who testify now are prohibited from telling the jury what penalty they think he should receive. “It’s going to be extremely emotional, powerful testimony,” said John H. Blume, a death penalty expert who teaches at Cornell Law School, “and that emotion could implicitly and misleadingly indicate to the jury that some of these people want the death penalty when it’s not the case. ” If Mr. Roof is sentenced to death, it will be the first time a jury has done so in a prosecution involving the federal hate crimes law, according to experts on capital cases. That statute, which was broadened in 2009, does not carry a potential death sentence, but Mr. Roof was also convicted of other crimes that do. A death sentence most likely would give way to a yearslong series of appeals (in which Mr. Roof could not represent himself). Among the issues could be the composition of the jury, given that Mr. Roof acted rather passively as his own lawyer when it was selected the withholding of evidence on mental health and other mitigating factors and Mr. Roof’s competence to stand trial and to represent himself. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in Indiana v. Edwards that trial judges could insist on legal representation for defendants who are “competent enough to stand trial but who suffer from severe mental illness to the point where they are not competent to conduct trial proceedings by themselves. ” Mr. Bruck and his team have argued in court filings that Mr. Roof, a dropout, “has no right to represent himself in a capital trial, and even less so at the penalty phase. ” But in the 41 years since the Supreme Court recognized a Sixth Amendment right of for criminal defendants, in Faretta v. California, the court has never specifically narrowed that holding for death penalty trials, despite their complexity. Some death penalty opponents hope that Mr. Roof’s defiance will prompt the appellate courts to adopt a more rigorous standard for capital defendants. “Whether or not they’re legally insane, there’s certainly something mentally wrong with them,” said Peter D. Greenspun, a lawyer who was ousted by a defendant, John A. Muhammad, for part of a capital murder trial for the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington area. He added, “To have a person like that make this kind of decision, it really calls into question, from a philosophical point of view, whether that person is in a position to understand their civil liberties. ” Mr. Muhammad, who ultimately reinstated Mr. Greenspun, was sentenced to death in 2003 and executed six years later. “It’s something that Roof will likely regret,” Mr. Greenspun predicted of his choice to represent himself. “At some point down the road, he’s going to say, ‘What did I do?’ And there’s no going back. ” | 0fake |
Seizure Victim 2nd Amendmented A Fireman Who Responded To Wife’s 911 Call To Help Him | Greg Pruitt s wife was awoken at approximately 5 a.m. when she noticed her husband was having a seizure. Quickly, she called 911. As help was on its way, Greg s seizure started to subside a bit, and he was coming out of it when help arrived.Twenty-nine-year-old Jason Adams, a volunteer fireman, was the first responder on the scene. When Adams was standing in the doorway of the room where Pruitt was, attempting to evaluate the situation, Pruitt promptly shot and killed Adams, thinking he was an intruder.Adams was a nearby neighbor who lived approximately a half-mile from the residence. A witness who entered the home after the shooting gave the same account of what happened. Adams was rushed to a local medical center in North Little Rock but was pronounced dead.Not very surprisingly, authorities do not know if there will be any charges filed in this accidental shooting.Please, can we admit yet that we have a problem with guns in America? This is a perfect example of why we do. I know when people are in an emergency situation, possibly panicking, they don t think about the gun that is in arm s reach of a seizure victim, or about what will happen because of it when a stranger suddenly enters their home. But, is that really an acceptable way to write off this sort of thing?The idea of responsible gun ownership is exactly what s in question here. Why are we living in such paranoia, in the home of the brave, to where we are shooting at every shadow we see? It s incredibly wrong for a first responder to have to second-guess rendering aid because they re afraid they will get shot just by showing up. The concept of always shoot first because it s just an accident if you do, that has been cultivated by the NRA and Republicans in America needs to come to an end.Watch news coverage of the incident below:featured image via twitter | 1real |
HERE’S WHY AMERICA IS $19 Trillion Dollars In Debt…Two Cities Have Received $572.5 Million For “Mortgage Assistance”… | Detroit and Flint, Michigan are getting yet another boondoggle that if you read between the lines is a giveaway of federal dollars that s happened over and over with next to no results. This is how Detroit does things. They go to the feds with their hand out and get money over and over. Remember Quid Pro Quo : Detroit Council Member Joann Watson: Obama Should Bail Out Detroit in Quid Pro Quo for Votes: The problem is that many times the money doesn t get to the right people. Here are just a few examples:Report: Detroit s Human Services Dept. wrongfully spent $210,000 grant on really stupid furnitureThe blight removal has been controversial because of the inflated cost:Despite Detroit s Controversial #BlightScandal, Liberals Demand Billions More In Taxpayer AidThe Detroit Public Schools just had a scandal where a school principal was scamming millions out of the budget:Detroit Public Schools principals, officials face bribery chargesIf you think the millions just given to these two cities will go to what it s meant for, I ve got some swampland in Florida to sell you. The taxpayers need to know about this and call out the elected officials who re doing this either to line their pockets or to win votes. Do we REALLY need millions upon millions for mortgage assistance ? This is wrong and needs to stop. Michigan originally received $498 million from the Hardest Hit Fund when the program was announced in 2010 in response to the housing crisis that led to unprecedented home price declines and high unemployment. The $74.5 million brings Michigan s total to $572.5 million in federal funding for blight removal and mortgage assistance.The government awarded an additional $74.5 million in Hardest Hit funds to Michigan to help stabilize the housing market in the state. Detroit will get $41.9 million for for demolition purposes.Flint will get $13.9 million for demolition purposes, and the remaining $18.6 million will go to help homeowners struggling under the weight of expensive or underwater mortgages. These funds have been critical in helping people stay in their homes and avoid foreclosure while helping Detroit, Flint and other cities across our state eliminate blight and revitalize neighborhoods, Gov. Rick Snyder said in a statement Monday.Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said the announcement of the state s share of the $2 billion in additional Hardest Hit funds a $7.6-billion program which was set to expire at the end of 2017 will help the city continue tearing down blighted structures. The program has already devoted $130 million to Detroit for blight removal. This is more great news for the city of Detroit s blight removal efforts. Thanks to this new round of funding, we will be able continue our efforts to take down vacant buildings at a rate faster than anywhere in the country, Duggan said in a statement. In just the past two years, we ve demolished more than 8,000 dangerous structures. The city also has applied for another expansion of its federal Hardest Hit Fund zones and If this expansion is approved, more than 90 percent of Detroiters will live in neighborhoods that are eligible for demolition using these funds, Duggan added.In February, the federal government announced an additional $2 billion investment in the Hardest Hit Fund program. Funding is being allocated among participating states in two phases of $1 billion each. Today s funding is from the first of those two phases.Michigan originally received $498 million from the Hardest Hit Fund when the program was announced in 2010 in response to the housing crisis that led to unprecedented home price declines and high unemployment. The $74.5 million brings Michigan s total to $572.5 million in federal funding for blight removal and mortgage assistance.The new mortgage assistance dollars will aid homeowners who may be struggling with a hardship. The Step Forward Michigan online application portal, which closed on Dec. 31, 2015, is expected to reopen next month with the infusion of $18.6 million.Via: DFP | 1real |
Zimbabwe opposition leader 'baffled' by Mugabe decision to stay | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he was baffled by President Robert Mugabe s address to the nation on Sunday when the veteran leader defied widespread expectations that he would resign. I am baffled. It s not just me, it s the whole nation. He s playing a game. He has let the whole nation down, Tsvangirai told Reuters. | 0fake |
Carson calls slaves 'immigrants' in speech, drawing criticism | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ben Carson, the new secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), on Monday referred to slaves brought to the United States against their will as “immigrants,” drawing quick condemnation from civil rights groups who cast his remarks as offensive. It was Carson’s first address to the staff at HUD. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last week. By way of introduction, Carson shared anecdotes from his past career as a neurosurgeon and praised immigrants who worked long hours to build a better life for their children. “There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less,” said Carson, who is African-American. “But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land,” he said. Enslaved Africans did not voluntarily come to the United States and were denied freedom for hundreds of years. “This is as offensive a remark as it gets,” said Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. The remarks sparked outrage on Twitter, including from the actor Samuel L. Jackson. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also criticized Carson. A HUD spokesman later called the tempest “the most cynical interpretation of the secretary’s remarks to an army of welcoming HUD employees. No one honestly believes he equates voluntary immigration with involuntary servitude.” Carson was well received by the hundreds of HUD employees in the room and got a standing ovation at the close of his remarks. As housing secretary, Carson is in a position to play a leading role in reviving poor neighborhoods, as Republican President Donald Trump has promised. Carson occasionally stumbled as a Republican presidential candidate, such as when he said he did not believe a Muslim should be president. After dropping out of the race, Carson threw his support to Trump, who named him housing secretary after winning the November election. | 0fake |
Donald Trump Gets A Big Endorsement From A Former Candidate And It Makes So Much Sense | Donald Trump is currently steamrolling his way to victory and Republicans seem to finally be waking up to the nightmare that he s going to win the nomination whether they want him to or not.One man who clearly has no problem with swallowing his pride and giving into Trump mania is current New Jersey governor and former Republican candidate for president, Chris Christie. On Friday, he announced that of all the candidates left, Trump is the one who most represents his values. Which actually makes a lot of sense, right? Donald and I have been friends for over a decade, Christie said. The Republican governor, who dropped out from the race himself after the New Hampshire primary, called Trump a clear standout who can provide strong, unequivocal leadership. What exactly does Christie mean by strong, unequivocal leadership ? Bullying.It s a strange, twisted irony that Chris Christie saw his election chances dwindle to zero because the brash, quick-to-anger, petty governor was outdone by Trump, a man who could do all of those things, only infinitely better than Christie himself. Christie was planning on running on his record of bullying teachers and union employees, screaming at constituents and attacking political rivals with underhanded tactics. That was supposed to, in Republican terms, make him look tough and capable. But then Trump came along a guy who had no problem telling his fans to physically beat up protesters. Who bragged about being able to kill a person in broad daylight. Who used any slight real or imagined to viciously go after his opponents in ways that were ugly, even for Washington. Trump is the man Christie wishes he could be.But it s a two-way street. No doubt, Christie s endorsement will help Trump solidify his place as the real front-runner in the race. Christie is considered an establishment Republican and his support of Trump legitimizes the former reality television star. It also helps that Christie, before he bowed out, single-handedly destroyed Marco Rubio during a debate. Now that Rubio is running at a distance second place to Trump, Christie can serve as an ever-present reminder of that surreal Robot Rubio software glitch moment.Notice in the wake of the endorsement, nothing is being said of Christie s integrity -that s simply because Christie has none. The man will gladly bash Obama to earn votes then give him a hug when he comes to save his state from a natural disaster. Then he ll go right back to bashing him. Likewise, for months, Christie told voters that Trump was a dangerous and unserious candidate. Now, he throws his reputation behind him, happy to ride his coattails all the way to a cabinet position in a Trump White House.Opportunistic, self-serving and two-faced, it s like Christie was born to endorse Trump. They have so much in common.Featured image via YouTube screenshot | 1real |
How Moscow Uses Interpol to Pursue Its Enemies - The New York Times | VILNIUS, Lithuania — Facing trial in Russia over the theft of a drawing valued by its creator at $1. 55, Nikita Kulachenkov, a Russian forensic accountant involved in anticorruption work, fled to Lithuania to avoid what he decided was a doomed battle against charges. What he did not realize was that Russia’s reach these days extends far beyond its borders. Arriving in Cyprus from Lithuania in January to join his mother for a holiday, Mr. Kulachenkov was stopped at airport passport control, questioned for hours by immigration officials and then taken in handcuffs to a police detention center. “They told me there was a problem with Russia and kept asking me what crime I had committed,” Mr. Kulachenkov recalled. Cypriot immigration and police officers seemed as mystified as he was, he said, by a note in their computer systems that described him as a wanted criminal requiring immediate arrest. The wanted notice had been put there in August last year by Russia, where the theft of millions and even billions of dollars by the politically connected goes mostly unpunished but where the alleged theft of a street sweeper’s drawing has been the focus of a lengthy investigation involving some of the country’s most senior law enforcement officials. The arrest demand, known as a “diffusion,” had gone out to Cyprus and 50 other countries through the international police organization, Interpol. It had not been endorsed by Interpol, which is “strictly forbidden” by its Constitution from any action of a “political character,” but nonetheless labeled the anticorruption activist as a criminal in databases around the world. Determined to punish domestic opponents who flee abroad, as well as whose lives and finances it wants to disrupt, Moscow has developed an elaborate and strategy in recent years of using — critics say abusing — foreign courts and law enforcement systems to go after its enemies. Some countries, including Russia, “work really hard to get Interpol alerts” against political enemies, said Jago Russell, the chief executive of Fair Trials International, a human rights group in London, because “this helps give credibility to their own prosecution and undermines the reputation of the accused. ” “It is also potentially a good threat to use against people still in the country: ‘You may be able to leave, but don’t assume you will be safe,’” he added. The efforts have often fallen flat in the end, but have succeeded in tying up their targets in legal knots for months and years. Acting on a Russian request, a British court, for example, froze the worldwide assets of Sergei Pugachev, a former close friend of President Vladimir V. Putin’s who fell out with the Kremlin in a squabble over property and fled to Britain, then France. Russia has also used British courts and Interpol to pursue what many Western governments view as a vendetta against William F. Browder, an British citizen. Mr. Browder was convicted in absentia in Russia of tax fraud after he fled to London and mounted an international campaign against Russia over the killing of his jailed Moscow lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. Mr. Browder defeated a libel case in 2013 brought in London by a Moscow police officer whom the financier had accused of involvement in a fraud uncovered by Mr. Magnitsky. But he faces a new fight as Russia seeks to get British courts to find and freeze his assets and enforce a civil judgment against him in Russia. The only winners in most such cases are expensive lawyers, for whom pursuing Russia’s foes in foreign courts has become a highly lucrative business. Russia pushed three times between 2012 and 2015 to get Interpol to issue arrest orders against Mr. Browder. Having failed each time to convince the police organization that it did not have political motives, it announced this summer that it would try yet again. “The Russians try stuff a hundred times, and sometimes it works,” Mr. Browder said. “They can fail 99 times, but the 100th time it could work. For them, that makes it all worthwhile. ” He described the practice as “lawfare. ” Based in Lyon, France, and comprising 190 countries, Interpol defines its role as enabling “police around the world to work together to make the world a safer place. ” It has often done this, allowing police forces to share information about the whereabouts of mafia bosses, murderers and other criminals, and to secure their arrest. But the Interpol membership of nations — like Russia, Iran and Zimbabwe — that routinely use their justice systems to persecute political foes has stirred worries that wanted notices can be easily misused. In September, the congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission heard a litany of complaints about abuse from experts and victims of Interpol notices during a discussion of how to reform the police organization’s system of red notices. Interpol issues such notices, which amount to an international arrest warrant, at the request of a member country seeking help in catching a fugitive who has fled abroad. Interpol’s computer system also circulates diffusions like the one against Mr. Kulachenkov. These are less formal than red notices, but are also used to request the arrest or location of an individual, or information, in relation to a police investigation. Interpol does not release figures for how many red notices or other arrest alerts are issued through its computer system by each member country, but the number of people identified in Interpol’s databases as wanted criminal suspects has risen sharply in recent years. In 2004, Interpol issued just 1, 924 red notices at the request of member countries. Last year, it issued 11, 492, as well as 22, 753 diffusions. As a result of one of those, Mr. Kulachenkov spent nearly three weeks in a Cypriot jail while the authorities in Cyprus reviewed a request from Moscow that he be sent to Russia to stand trial in a case that even Russia’s prosecutor general had initially ruled was not worth pursuing. The drawing he is accused of stealing was done by Sergei Sotov, a street sweeper and artist who had left it and other examples of his work hanging on railings around Vladimir, a city east of Moscow. The street sweeper made no complaint to the police when the drawing disappeared, and said he was glad that someone liked his work. In the end, Cyprus decided not to extradite Mr. Kulachenkov after Lithuania advised it that he had no criminal record and had been granted political asylum because of his work in Russia with Alexei Navalny. A prominent anticorruption campaigner and Kremlin opponent, Mr. Navalny himself has been ensnared in a tangle of apparently criminal cases in Moscow, including the supposed art theft. The Russian authorities, said Mr. Kulachenkov, whose name has been purged from Interpol’s databases, “don’t really care about me, but they wanted to send a message that if you get involved with Navalny, we will make problems for you, even if you leave Russia. ” Stung by criticism that its role fighting real crime is being hijacked by repressive regimes, Interpol has moved to strengthen safeguards against abuse, particularly since the naming of a new secretary general, Jürgen Stock, in late 2014. Mr. Russell, of Fair Trials International, acknowledged that the group “is trying to make it more difficult to game the system. ” Interpol said last year that it would not issue arrest notices against people who had been granted political asylum or other forms of refugee status, though this did not help Mr. Kulachenkov when he traveled to Cyprus in January. Asked about that, a spokeswoman for the Interpol General Secretariat in Lyon said that she could not comment on individual cases, but that the policy of not targeting recipients of political asylum for arrest would work only if countries passed on information about who had been granted such a status. In most cases, she added, “this information is not available to the General Secretariat” when red notices or diffusions are issued. Whatever Interpol finally does to stop the gaming of the system, it is too late for Petr Silaev, a Russian editor. Mr. Silaev took part in demonstrations against the destruction of a forest in Khimki near Moscow in 2010 and fled to Brussels seeking refuge after several protesters were badly beaten and the authorities branded the protests an armed riot. He was later given political asylum in Finland and felt safe, until he took a trip to Spain to visit friends. Two days after his arrival, Spanish antiterrorism police officers stormed a hostel where he was staying and arrested him on the basis of a red notice issued against him by Interpol at Moscow’s request. Held for nearly two weeks in a Spanish prison while a Madrid court approved his extradition to Moscow, he finally managed to phone a lawyer in Finland and contact Fair Trials International, which has campaigned against abuses of Interpol by repressive governments. After appeals from a German member of the European Parliament and a storm of protest in the European news media, the authorities released Mr. Silaev from prison but ordered that he report to the Spanish police once a week. Six months later, in early 2013, a Madrid court canceled Mr. Silaev’s extradition order and allowed him to return to Finland, where he spent another year pleading with Interpol to purge his name from its database. “Interpol is a very organization,” Mr. Silaev said, describing it as “absolutely nontransparent” and easily manipulated by governments that regard protesters as no different from “rapists and murderers. ” Interpol says it cannot publicly share information that belongs not to itself but to the member countries that provide it. “It is a nightmare that keeps coming back if you don’t know how to fight it,” said Kross, a member of Parliament in Estonia and former coordinator of the country’s intelligence services who has been targeted for arrest at least twice by Russia through Interpol. Pilloried on Russian state television as a dangerous criminal, Mr. Kross has battled for years to purge international arrest orders issued against him. He and Estonian government officials say the orders are based entirely on fabricated claims by Russia that he was involved in hijacking a cargo ship off the coast of Sweden in 2009. Mr. Kross, who is the son of a prominent Estonian writer arrested by the Soviet authorities and a frequent critic of Russia’s direction under Mr. Putin, believes the Russian accusations are payback for his work helping Georgia during its 2008 war with Russia. “All Western institutions, particularly those in law enforcement, are based on good faith in government,” Mr. Kross said. “It is not foreseen that governments themselves are criminal. They can cook up anything they want and put it in the system, and the whole system starts to work against its purpose. ” Invented criminal cases, he said, “work like a computer virus: You put it in the system, and it starts to create havoc. ” Mr. Kulachenkov, the accused Russian art thief, said friends had warned him that Russia might try to get at him through Interpol. After his flight from Moscow to Lithuania in 2014, he wrote a lengthy letter to the police organization, pleading that it not list him as a criminal. “It has become evident that Russian authorities use local investigation bodies and criminal justice systems to pursue their own political objectives,” he wrote. He detailed the Russian case against him for the supposed theft of the crude drawing that even Russian investigators, after inflating the artist’s initial evaluation of less than $2, valued at just $75. He said he wished he had never taken the drawing, which he and a colleague gave to Mr. Navalny as a birthday gift. Taking the art “was a bad idea, but it was not a criminal offense,” Mr. Kulachenkov said. “This whole thing is not about the drawing or me, but about Alexei,” he said of Mr. Navalny. “They are making him toxic. Anybody involved with Alexei gets a criminal case. ” | 0fake |
Sandra Bland’s Mother Not Only Stands With Hillary Clinton, But Wrote This Inspiring Poem | They say there s nothing worse than burying your child, which is exactly what Geneva Reed-Veal had to do after her daughter Sandra Bland died in police custody. Bland was pulled over by a police officer for failing to signal as she changed lanes. Hardly a crime worthy of an arrest, and most certainly not a crime worthy of a death sentence. In most circumstances, an officer would likely give a warning, but in Bland s case she was torn from her car and placed under arrest. Bland was later found dead in her jail cell.Looking at the broader picture of what happened when lined up next to a constant string of story after story of police brutality against people of color, Bland s mother Geneva wants change, and she feels the person to deliver that change is Hillary Clinton.In a verbal endorsement of the former Secretary of State, Geneva read aloud a poem she wrote about and for Clinton that states her many reasons why she is backing Clinton s run for the White House.Here is her poem:Now is the time, this is the place, Now we are ready. Hillary is the face. Why am I endorsing this woman to my right? Because she has for years continuously put up the fight.She seeks to make equal pay for equal work a priority. I don t know about you, but that sure works for me! Here s a woman who has shown time and time again, She has the skill, experience and staying power more than 20 years in.Yes, there was Benghazi and the infamous email situation. While both were stressful, she maintained her poise and dedication. Dedicated to seeing mothers who singlehandedly raise babies Finally get compensated equal pay in this world that has gone crazy.Selfless in sitting down with a room of mourning mothers, Who have violently lost their children both sons and daughters. Now this I know to be absolutely true; I am one of those who met with her and was able to make it through.She has a plan on gun laws that s like none other. Unapologetically she speaks out about the NRA and issues of color. Her plan for immigration is to keep families together. She ll end family detention and close private immigration shelters.She supports the bipartisan U.S.A. Freedom Act. President Obama signed it into law, and she has his back! She has fought for quality affordable health care her entire career. So she ll defend the Affordable Care Act and build on the successes of it here.She ll cut taxes for the middle class, raise the minimum wage, and ensure the wealthiest pay their fair share. She ll invest in infrastructure and education. This woman really cares. I ve watched and followed her career, and saw her take hits. Yet she still manages to stand here decades later as if it didn t bother her one bit!As Sandra Bland s mother, I know a little about frustration. You have to stand and push through it, even when you want a vacation. Like me, she misses the counsel of her late father, who told her always carry a shovel, So at any given time she could dig herself out of trouble.Like me, she lost her dad in 1993. His wisdom played a big part in the strength she shows you and me. I ve shared with you just some of Hillary s views, Now it s up to you to do your research and vote when you re through.People, we are expecting a new president in nine months. Hillary is that new baby. From now until November let s fiercely support this lady!I present to you, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.There s no denying Hillary s long career of hard work and dedication to those who have been oppressed by a system that seems to be working against rather than for them. It s clear the Sandra Bland s mother Geneva feels in her heart of hearts that the person to move the country forward is the former Secretary of State.No matter who we choose on election day, we must make sure it s for someone who truly embodies a path forward for everyone. A nation of the many, not just the few who were fortunate enough to be born into privilege.Featured image from HillaryClinton.com | 1real |
Trump chooses Gottlieb to run FDA; Pharma breathes sigh of relief | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a conservative health policy expert with deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry, to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the White House said on Friday. If confirmed by the Senate, Gottlieb would be in charge of implementing Trump’s plan to dramatically cut regulations governing food, drugs, cosmetics, dietary supplements and tobacco. Gottlieb is well known on Capitol Hill, where he has testified multiple times on hot-button health issues, including complex drug pricing matters, and is viewed favorably by drug companies and pharmaceutical investors. He sits on the boards of several small drug and biotech companies and is an adviser to GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L). “Thank God it’s Gottlieb,” Brian Skorney, an investment analyst at Robert W. Baird, wrote in a research note. “We view this as a favorable development for the sector.” Gottlieb was chosen over Jim O’Neill, a libertarian investor close to Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder who now advises Trump on technology and science matters. O’Neill’s stated view that drugs should be approved before being proven effective generated widespread alarm. Gottlieb, 44, is a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank and a partner at a large venture capital fund. He is a former FDA deputy commissioner who has advocated a loosening of requirements needed for approval of new medical products. “Scott knows how the agency works and he will move it forwards, though maybe not always in ways the agency is comfortable with,” said John Taylor, a lawyer and president of compliance and regulatory affairs with the consulting firm Greenleaf Health and a former acting FDA deputy commissioner. In addition to his public health and health policy roles, Gottlieb has for the past decade been a partner at New Enterprise Associates, a large venture fund with investments in the life sciences, medical technology and healthcare services. Critics of the nomination say Gottlieb’s financial background present an array of potential conflicts of interest. Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, said Gottlieb “has spent most of his career dedicated to promoting the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry.” If confirmed, he added, “he will have to be recused from key decisions time and time again.” Stephen Ubl, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said it “looks forward to working with Dr. Gottlieb in his new role and engaging with him and the Agency as they seek to modernize the drug discovery and review process.” Gottlieb, who declined to comment on the nomination, is unlikely to up-end the FDA in the way O’Neill might have, but he is nonetheless expected to bring significant change, including moving the agency to increase flexibility in the clinical trial development process. In this he will be supported by the recently passed 21st Century Cures Act which instructs the FDA among other things to consider the use of “real world evidence” to support new drug applications. This could include anecdotal data, observational studies and patient reports “People don’t want to take chances with safety, but there’s increasingly some clamor to be more flexible on the efficacy side,” said Kathleen Sanzo, who leads the FDA practice at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. “You need to have some signal of efficacy. The question is, how much?” The FDA has attempted to push back against moves to sideline randomized clinical trials, long considered the gold standard. In January it issued a report documenting 22 cases in which drugs that appeared to show promise in early trials turned out to be either ineffective or unsafe or both in larger trials. One of Gottlieb’s priorities will likely be to streamline the process for approving generic versions of complex, difficult-to-copy therapeutics. He has stated publicly that he does not believe the FDA has good tools or policies to move such products and has advocated the creation of different approval standards. “He’s a thoughtful and nuanced kind of guy, and not solely an industry shill,” said Jim Shehan, head of Lowenstein Sandler’s FDA regulatory practice. A survey conducted by Mizuho Securities USA Inc of 53 pharmaceutical executives found that 72 percent favored Gottlieb over other potential candidates. Many described him as knowledgeable, experienced and balanced. “Gottlieb is someone who the industry and investors view as an incremental positive,” said RBC Capital Markets analyst Michael Yee. “The industry and investors need rational scientific logic and an understanding of risks and benefits.” Patient advocates welcomed the news. Gottlieb “has firsthand experience at the FDA and as a physician that has treated patients understands the breadth of work that needs to be achieved on their behalf,” said Ellen Sigal, founder of Friends of Cancer Research. | 0fake |
DAPL Protesters Proven Right as Largest Gas Pipeline in U.S. Experiences Massive and Deadly Explosion | Home / BREAKING NEWS / DAPL Protesters Proven Right as Largest Gas Pipeline in U.S. Experiences Massive and Deadly Explosion DAPL Protesters Proven Right as Largest Gas Pipeline in U.S. Experiences Massive and Deadly Explosion Claire Bernish November 1, 2016 Leave a comment
A massive explosion of a gas pipeline in Shelby County, Alabama — near the site where the same pipeline leaked some 336,000 gallons of gasoline just last month — evidences the exact reason activists and Native American water protectors oppose the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline over 1,400 miles to the northwest.
One person was killed and at least five people were injured in the blast — tentatively described as an accident — as Colonial Pipeline shut down operations black smoke billowed, sending millions into a panic over the abrupt and unexpected coming gas shortage.
“Our deepest condolences go out tonight to the family and friends of the person who was lost today, and our thoughts and prayers are with those who were injured,” Colonial said in a statement, reported NBC News .
Cited by the Chicago Tribune , Alabama Governor Robert Bentley said the explosion occurred roughly a mile west of last month’s rupture, adding of the likely crippling shortage of fuel, “We’ll just hope and pray for the best.”
“It appears to have been an accident, and they’re allowing fuel to burn,” Bentley told WBRC . “It’s about one mile west of where the repair took place on the Colonial Pipeline just recently.” #LiveOn3340 : @BrianPia3340 reports on Colonial Pipeline company history after today's explosion in Shelby County https://t.co/6JjMNC6sce pic.twitter.com/Y8nT2Wo81s
— ABC 33/40 News (@abc3340) October 31, 2016
Refined gas poured from the pipeline as workers rushed to construct a 75-foot-long ‘earthen dam’ to contain the flaming spill, where fuel will then be allowed to burn itself out. Dry tinder from an ongoing drought in the area quickly ignited two wildfires after the explosion — which then charred 31 acres — and area residents were forced to evacuate without any indication when they would be permitted to return.
“There’s a large plume of smoke; there’s a large fire,” noted Shelby County Sheriff’s Captain Jeff Hartley, as quoted by the Chicago Tribune . “We’re not sure exactly how it started or what caused it,” he said, adding of the massive deployment of fire and emergency personnel, “We’ve got first responders entering the area, and a lot of them.”
Apart from the worker killed, subsequent reports downplayed the extent of injuries suffered by those at the blast site, AL.com reported seven of the “eight or nine” subcontractors working in the area had suffered severe burns from the explosion. According to Shelby County Sheriff John Samaniego, two of those workers — all of whom had begun digging in an effort to flush one of the lines as repairs continued on the original leak — may still be missing , though that information was both unconfirmed and unclear because extreme heat from flames emanating at the site of the explosion prevented further assessment.
Colonial noted in a brief statement cited by a local ABC affiliate that both pipelines — one transporting gasoline, the other distillates, had been shut down, and, further,
“Colonial’s top priorities are the health and safety of the work crew on site and protection of the public.”
According to a later report from Reuters , the fire had been ‘contained’ by around 9 pm local time — yet no further word about the possibly-missing subcontractors has been provided. Incredible video of the Colonial Pipeline leak from Ryan Burtis. Our thoughts & prayers to all pic.twitter.com/NUOdoaW7O5
— WBRC FOX6 News (@WBRCnews) October 31, 2016
Fears of yet another gas shortage akin to that from the September leak — as well as consequent soaring prices — spawned lengthy lines at gas stations as soon as news of the explosion hit headlines. Reuters explains:
“Colonial, the biggest refined products system in the United States, is responsible for supplying about one-third of the 3.2 million barrels per day of gasoline consumed on the East Coast, according to U.S. Energy Department data.”
Further, “It was not clear whether the explosion happened on the gasoline or the distillates pipeline, the governor said in the briefing.”
Although the aforementioned details handily summarize the facts of the explosion — occurring during active repairs of the previous, sizeable leak — the facts do little to quantify potential environmental and health impacts of an explosion and leak of this magnitude.
This explosion of a major pipeline supplying fuel to large portions of the Southeast and East coast serves an ominous portent for ongoing opposition to construction of the hotly contentious Dakota Access Pipeline slated to cross four states, traversing just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota.
Standing Rock Sioux water protectors and Native Americans and Indigenous peoples from over 200 nations and their supporters fear that pipeline’s route — undercutting the Missouri River in several places — threatens to poison the tribal water supply and that of no less than 18 million others living downstream. Indeed, the Colonial Pipeline’s tragic mishap — the second in essentially the same section of pipe in about one month — darkly parallels the hundreds of similar accidents such pipelines are prone to.
Residents of Bismarck, aware of Big Oil’s horrendous safety record, managed to thwart Energy Transfer Partners’ original plans for the pipeline to be routed near the city — so ETP, with assistance from the State, diverted Dakota Access to cross just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation on privately-owned land.
Rightly viewed by pipeline opponents as blatant exploitation of Native Americans — as well as a violation of an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government — Standing Rock Sioux water protectors and supporters have camped along the Missouri for months in an effort to halt construction as a lawsuit languishes in federal court.
Big Oil, Big Banks , and government backers obviously view future profiteering from the pipeline important enough to send in absurdly militarized police from at least five states to combat pipeline opponents — who have remained on the whole peaceful, prayerful, and unarmed.
ETP insists the opposition is misguided and Dakota Access offers a safe alternative to the ‘riskier’ oil transportation methods of railroad and tanker truck — but even the company’s own records listing thousands of spills in just the last six years flatly dispute such claims. Worse, although pipeline leaks and spills might technically be less frequent than those caused by railroad accidents, the International Energy Agency notes pipeline mishaps leaked three times more crude over an eight-year period.
In fact, Big Oil’s general safety record is nearly impossible to fully track, in part because such spills, leaks, explosions, and other accidents are startlingly common and no less perilous to workers, residents, the environment — and, yes, the rapidly dwindling water supply.
A report by the Center for Effective Government attempting to map and quantify crude and other industry spills found not only are “ruptures and leaks a daily occurrence,” but “Eighty people have died and 389 have been injured in such incidents in the last five years.
“Since 2010, over 3,300 incidents of crude oil and liquefied natural gas leaks or ruptures have occurred on U.S. pipelines. These incidents have killed 80 people, injured 389 more, and cost $2.8 billion in damages. They also released toxic, polluting chemicals in local soil, waterways, and air.”
According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, as noted in the report , those spills and ruptures sent 7 million gallons of crude into the environment. Further illustrating the imperative to oppose construction of Dakota Access, one of the worst spills occurred in North Dakota — not by human error or poor maintenance — but when lightning struck a crude oil pipeline, spilling 840,000 gallons of crude into a wheat field in 2013.
While the oil and gas industry and its wealthy proponents in government would attempt to pull the wool over the public’s eyes about pipeline safety, using crafty language and skewed statistics, the truth is, no safe manner for transporting oil and gas actually exists.
Opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline simply isn’t confined to a Native American issue, as exploitive as that facet is — but when pipelines traverse pristine lands, farm acreage, and the rivers and waterways we depend on to sustain us, we’re all at risk.
What scant corporate media coverage of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s stand against Big Oil does exist has painted the fight as limited in scope; but thousands encamped along the pipeline’s planned route — who face an unusually bitter winter , no less — are in fact taking a stand for every person and every creature who would be devastated in the event of a future oil spill. Share | 1real |
Trump Threatens Europe’s Stability, a Top Leader Warns - The New York Times | BRUSSELS — The president of the European Council warned Tuesday that President Trump was a potential threat to the European Union, including the American leader’s bellicose pronouncements with major geopolitical challenges like Russian aggression, China’s assertiveness and international terrorism. In a letter sent to European leaders, Donald Tusk, the council president, wrote that those factors and “worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable. ” He appeared to question whether the United States would maintain its commitment to European security under Mr. Trump’s leadership. “For the first time in our history, in an increasingly multipolar external world, so many are becoming openly or Eurosceptic at best,” Mr. Tusk wrote. The letter was released ahead of a European Union summit meeting in Malta on Friday Mr. Tusk is responsible for setting the agenda for the meetings. “Particularly the change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy,” he wrote. The European Union has been struggling to contend with fractious internal forces. Among them: the vote by Britain to leave the bloc, the organization’s failure to establish a unified response to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and the debt crisis that has driven many Greeks into poverty. And then there are external pressures like Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Before the election and since taking office, Mr. Trump has lauded the vote by Britain, known as Brexit, and said the country would thrive outside the European Union. He met with Nigel Farage, a populist leader of the campaign to leave the bloc, before seeing Prime Minister Theresa May. And at one point he went so far as to suggest that Mrs. May appoint Mr. Farage as Britain’s ambassador to the United States. Mr. Trump has also praised President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and indicated he would pursue friendlier relations with Moscow, even as Russia encourages chaos on the European Union’s eastern border. Mr. Tusk’s letter does not reflect a new policy for the European Union, and member states of the bloc are not required to act on Mr. Tusk’s advice when they meet on Friday. But many European leaders have made their differences with Mr. Trump known. After the United States said it was temporarily blocking refugees from entering the country, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany felt compelled to point out to Mr. Trump the obligations of nations under the Geneva Conventions to protect refugees of war on humanitarian grounds. And President François Hollande of France said he had reminded Mr. Trump that “the ongoing fight to defend our democracy will be effective only if we sign up to respect to the founding principles and, in particular, the welcoming of refugees. ” Mrs. May, of Britain, sought in a meeting with Mr. Trump last week to confirm his commitment to NATO he was dismissive of the alliance, the bedrock of European security, during his campaign. Now, the sentiments expressed in Mr. Tusk’s letter are pushing European leaders’ exasperation with the American president further into the public view. Mr. Tusk has sounded the alarm about the existential crises facing the bloc before, but never with the urgency he displayed in the letter. And he has never before included a longstanding ally like the United States in the list of challenges. “An increasingly, let us call it, assertive China, especially on the seas,” he wrote, “Russia’s aggressive policy toward Ukraine and its neighbors, wars, terror and anarchy in the Middle East and in Africa, with radical Islam playing a major role, as well as worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable. ” Much of the frustration Mr. Tusk displayed in his letter stemmed from what Guntram B. Wolff, director of Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels, said was Mr. Trump’s “de facto supporting” of populist forces that could further upend the European order. populist challengers in France, Germany and the Netherlands have adopted some of his rhetoric in their own campaigns. Still, Mr. Wolff said it was unwise to enter into a war of words with the Trump administration. “We need to uphold our values here, but does it mean that we need now a declaration where we put the United States on the same level as ISIS?” he said. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it that would be helpful in any way. ” The volley of opprobrium on Friday included an accusation by Peter Navarro, the director of Mr. Trump’s new National Trade Council, that Germany was manipulating its currency to gain a trade advantage. Mr. Navarro told The Financial Times that Germany was using a “grossly undervalued” euro to “exploit” the United States and its partners in Europe. That did not sit well with Ms. Merkel, who defended the European Central Bank’s independent role at a news conference on Friday: “Because of that we will not influence the behavior of the E. C. B. And as a result, I cannot and do not want to change the situation as it is. ” The value of the euro is near a low compared with the dollar, allowing German carmakers and other manufacturers to sell their goods more cheaply in the United States. But German firms also employ around 670, 000 people in the United States, including many in a BMW factory in Spartanburg, S. C. the carmaker’s largest in the world, and a Mercedes factory in Tuscaloosa, Ala. These are the sort of manufacturing jobs that Mr. Trump says he wants to keep in the United States. Jan Techau, director of the Richard C. Holbrooke Forum in Berlin, a research center dedicated to diplomacy, said Mr. Tusk’s letter was less a warning to the American president than it was a message to Europeans not to be lured away from union, or to be tempted away from the bloc by favorable bilateral ties offered by the Trump administration. “He is encouraging everyone to fall into that trap,” Mr. Techau said of the American president. Mr. Tusk, by contrast, is making the case for Europeans to stick together for their own survival. “He wants to remind them that there is something bigger at stake than just what they are going to be talking about in Malta,” Mr. Techau said. | 0fake |
BOMBSHELL: COMEY Wanted To Expose Russian Meddling Months Before Election…OBAMA Regime Barred Him From Telling Public [VIDEO] | FBI director James Comey wanted to go public with information about Russia s interference in the 2016 election as early as last summer but was reportedly barred from doing so by the Obama administration.According to Newsweek sources, Comey presented a draft op-ed to top administration officials during a White House meeting in June or July. He had a draft of it or an outline, the source said. He held up a piece of paper in a meeting and said, I want to go forward, what do people think of this? Former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and ex national security adviser Susan Rice were among those in the meeting.Comey s idea was rejected because White House officials thought the message would have more impact coming from multiple agencies and not just him. An op-ed doesn t have the same stature, it comes from one person, the source said.A second source told Newsweek the op-ed, which Comey would have likely sought to publish in the New York Times, contained the same information as the intelligence report made public on January 6 that said Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to influence the presidential election.Comey s op-ed was rejected around the same time he publicly revealed details about the investigation in Hillary Clinton s emails. The FBI director revealed before the House Intelligence Committee last week that the agency is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.He told the Intelligence Committee the Russians were very noisy and unusually loud in their hacking of US Democratic party computers. It was almost as if they didn t care if we found out, he added.Watch FBI Director Jame Comey confirm his investigation into alleged Russian interference in our elections: | 1real |
REPORT: ROBERT MUELLER Targets Trump Son With Grand Jury | Remember when Chelsea Clinton faced the same scrutiny as the Trump children by the media? Remember when the media scrutinized her involvement in the crooked Clinton Foundation, or when the media asked her why, after the email from her mother was exposed by Wikileaks that she knew the truth about the Benghazi attack having nothing to do with a video, but didn t tell anyone? Remember when the media asked her about her former Secretary of State mother and former President Barack Obama lying about the attack that left 4 Americans dead? Yeah neither do we. According to a Thursday Wall Street Journal report, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been using a federal grand jury to assist his investigation into alleged Russian election interference. The report claims the grand jury has been in operation in Washington, DC for several weeks, although it does not provide a source for this information. As the article acknowledges, grand jury proceedings are typically sealed and participation is kept secret.The grand jury discussed is a different one from the Alexandria, Virginia one impaneled to investigate former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn earlier this year.The exact targets of Mueller s Russia grand jury were not clear from the Journal s report but Reuters followed up the report with an afternoon tweet claiming subpoenas were issued relating to Donald Trump Jr. s meetings with a Russian attorney last year. That meeting and the emails relating to it were the topic of wide media focus last month.In an accompanying report, Reuters specified two sources for their claims, indicating those close to the grand jury are breaking the confidence of that body. Leaking information from a grand jury investigation is often a federal crime. Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)(2)(B), the following people, and more, are sworn to secrecy under threat of criminal contempt of court:(i) a grand juror;(ii) an interpreter;(iii) a court reporter;(iv) an operator of a recording device;(v) a person who transcribes recorded testimony;(vi) an attorney for the governmentThe impaneling of a grand jury alone does not indicate any burden of proof has been met or evidence uncovered regarding collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government or any other matter under Special Counsel Mueller s purview. Grand juries can be convened effectively at will by an official, like Mueller, with federal prosecutorial power.Grand juries are the means by which federal criminal indictments are issued, but also serve an investigative purpose that is likely an important aim in this case. Once impaneled, the grand jurors can, typically at the express urging of the prosecutor, issue wide-reaching subpoenas and call before them witnesses. In turn, the prosecutor can use this testimony and evidence to assemble a case for probable cause and ask the jury to issue an indictment, all without the defense counsel and other protections with which Americans are familiar from a trial setting. Breitbart | 1real |
Ukraine rebel region's security minister says he is new leader | MOSCOW (Reuters) - The security minister of Ukraine s pro-Russian rebel region of Luhansk said on Friday he was taking over power from regional chief Igor Plotnitsky, who days earlier had said he was facing an attempted armed coup to force him out. In a video posted on a rebel news portal in Luhansk, the security minister, Leonid Pasechnik, said he was taking over after Plotnitsky resigned for health reasons. But there was no immediate word from Plotnitsky itself. Luhansk region, along with the neighboring Donetsk region, rebelled against rule from Kiev in 2014 and declared themselves independent. But since then the regions, which are backed by Moscow, have been troubled by infighting that has at times turned violent. Today Igor Venediktovich Plotnitsky resigned for health reasons. Multiple war wounds, the effects of blast injuries, took their toll, Pasechnik said in the video. In accordance with his decision, I am taking on the duties of head of the republic until forthcoming elections. Earlier this week, armed men in camouflage uniforms blocked access to central streets in the city of Luhansk, capital of the self-proclaimed People s Republic of Luhansk. Plotnitsky said it was a coup attempt by supporters of Igor Kornet, the rebel region s interior minister whom he had sacked. But Plotnitsky said he had the situation under control and that the plotters would be dealt with. Moscow denies having any influence over the rebel regions but multiple separatist leaders have told Reuters Kremlin officials effectively select the rebel leaders. A Kremlin spokesman this week declined to comment on events in Luhansk. The two self-proclaimed republics are not recognized by Russia or any other nation. | 0fake |
Bill Maher Nails Republicans For Letting Their Party Get Hijacked By Racists (VIDEO) | Bill Maher laid into the GOP on Friday night for creating the racist mess that has taken over the party.During the program, the HBO host wasted no time summing up the Republican Party situation as he began the discussion with his panel of guests. The Republican Party is having an existential crisis. They are very upset that half their voters want to give nuclear weapons to a guy who gets into Twitter feuds with D-list celebrities. We understand that. I almost feel bad for them, except I really don t, because they brought this on themselves. They made a Faustian deal with the racist devil years ago and now those chickens are coming home to roost. He then read a statement made by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said that any person who wants to be the GOP nominee must reject bigotry because this party does not prey on people s prejudices. Maher immediately called bullshit, pointing out that if Republicans really believed that they wouldn t be pursuing voter ID laws that disenfranchise minority voters or jump to the defense of a police officer every time an unarmed black man is shot dead. Who are they kidding? Maher asked. This is the party they are and Trump is just the latest. Indeed, Donald Trump rallies have become nothing more than giant white supremacist rallies where Trump disparages people of color and orders his goons to beat up black protesters and remove them from the audience.Conservative author Matt Lewis admitted that the GOP has been dumbing down its voters but claimed that racism isn t as prevalent within the party as it seems. After claiming that the GOP presidential field is more diverse than the Democratic field, Maher noted that the two Hispanic candidates, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, want to put other Hispanics on cattle carts and throw them out of the country. Maryland Rep. Donna Edwards also chimed in by pointing out that Republicans are starting to line up behind Trump despite objections to his racism, so they can t really have much of a problem with it.Maher also reminded Lewis that what Republicans are doing now isn t new. It was called the Southern Strategy when Nixon did it. Reagan started his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. It s always been a winking campaign to get white poor people, mostly, who have a resentment to vote racially. Let s not pretend this is new. In the end, Maher said the GOP big tent is more like a house. The Republican establishment gave racists a room in their house and now the racists have taken over the house to the point where moderate Republicans are scared to go to the kitchen at night for a snack.Here s the video via YouTube. Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
Barron's endorses Kasich for president | (Reuters) - Calling him “the best hope for investors who want a Republican in the White House,” Barron’s announced its support for Ohio Governor John Kasich for president with a front-page editorial in its latest hard-copy edition. Barron’s had previously endorsed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as a preferred choice over the current front-runner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Donald Trump, but in its editorial the weekly newspaper said that Kasich, “outshines them both.” “Unlike Clinton, Kasich has a sensible across-the-board tax-cutting agenda for corporations, individuals, and investors,” the editorial written by Barron’s executive editor, John Kimelman, said. “And as a Republican president working with a presumably GOP-controlled Congress, he would be a more effective leader.” | 0fake |
A Tea Party Congressman Just Called For Armed Uprising If Trump Loses | Former Tea Party congressman and conservative radio host Joe Walsh (R-IL) recently took to Twitter to announce his plans for armed insurrection against the government when Republican loses the election in a few weeks. On November 8th, I’m voting for Trump.
On November 9th, if Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket.
You in?
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 26, 2016
This is not the first time the outspoken radical has made controversial remarks. He responded to the tragic shootings of police officers in Dallas by a lone wolf sniper by openly calling for a race war. Before that, Walsh called for the journalists at MSNBC and CNN to be beheaded for refusing to show the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that provided the justification for the terrorist attacks committed by a cell claiming allegiance to al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) against the publication’s offices in January 2015.
The denizens of Twitter quickly responded with vicious mockery of the outrageous Tea Party demagogue: Joe Walsh, charging the Capitol steps
flintlock musket in hand
barks his shin real bad
thus the revolution died
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) October 26, 2016 @WalshFreedom shouldn’t that musket be auctioned off to pay the child support you owe?
— jacqui rodham (@heyjdey) October 26, 2016 . @WalshFreedom I would highly encourage you to take your musket and point it at the nearest armed police officer
— evil roy slade (spoo (@EvilRoySladeDS) October 26, 2016 . @WalshFreedom Do you often invite people to joint musket-grabbing sessions? | 1real |
It’s Going to Change RADICALLY With Silver – HUGE Demand Coming | Cliff High | Tweet Home » Silver » Silver News » It’s Going to Change RADICALLY With Silver – HUGE Demand Coming | Cliff High
Data mining expert Cliff High says the economy is much worse than most people think, and that bubble is going to pop after Election Day. Inflation is also coming, and that will be very positive for precious metals . High contends, “ Gold and silver are going to rise relative to the falling currencies. Gold and silver in actual purchasing power will also rise. They won’t be saying an ounce of gold bought a good suit 100 years ago and an ounce of gold will buy a good suit now. That’s going to change, and it’s also going to change radically with silver . Also, in our data sets between 2019 and 2024 , silver becomes the metal to have… You need to have silver .
2017 Gold Pandas and 2017 Silver Pandas Are Now Available! Secure Your 2017 Panda Coins Today at SD Bullion! | 1real |
CLASSLESS KENNEDY FAMILY With History Of Philanders, Drunks, A Murderer And Rapist Celebrate Independence Day By Mocking Trump | How elite leftists celebrate America s Independence Day The Kennedy clan gathered at their Hyannis Port compound on Cape Cod over the weekend for their annual Fourth of July festivities, and took some time to attack Donald Trump.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. s daughter Kathleen, between known as Kick, posted a photos of a pinata of The Donald from a family party over the weekend. It s yuge party!, wrote Kick in the caption of the Instagram post, which also showed some of her family members milling about in the background.She later deleted the Instagram post just before 11am on Monday.Via: Daily Mail | 1real |
Democratic champion of 1986 tax reform says Trump plan may backfire | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, a Democrat who helped bring about former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s bipartisan tax reform more than 30 years ago, said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s tax plan could backfire on Republicans. Bradley said the lack of detail in the nine-page plan and the ambitious goal of passing legislation before January could give lawmakers little time to digest the implications of the tax overhaul. The details are expected to be unveiled next week when lawmakers introduce legislation. “That’s like handing somebody a Molotov cocktail with the fuse going,” he told Reuters in an interview. “Nobody will know what it is. You hand this to somebody. They’re supposed to vote. Then they vote and the whole thing explodes,” said Bradley who represented New Jersey and was a former professional basketball star and presidential candidate. As a senator, Bradley co-sponsored a bill in 1983 that moved Reagan and Congress toward tax reform. He worked with the Republican administration and a Republican-led Senate to get a final bill enacted. By contrast, Trump and senior Republicans plan to pass their bill over a span of several weeks with little support from Democrats. Earlier on Wednesday, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan lamented the absence of “Bill Bradley Democrats” in Congress, saying in a separate Reuters interview that the Republican plan would see significant bipartisan support if today’s Democrats were more like Bradley. But Bradley criticized Republicans for not providing details to Democrats and for pursuing a tax reform plan that he said lacks concrete principles and an effective strategy. “We haven’t seen anything specific. In the 1980s, you had three separate extremely detailed proposals,” Bradley said, referring to two in-depth Treasury Department reports on tax reform and his own legislation. The Senate Finance Committee also held more than 30 days of hearings. “You can’t work bipartisan unless you have something to work with,” Bradley added. “And the whole strategy is, ‘Do what I say or I’m going to come into your state and defeat you.’ That’s the whole strategy. That’s not a strategy. What about the country?” Bradley dismissed Trump’s four principles of tax reform: simplification; middle-class tax relief; international repatriation and competitive business tax rates. “Those aren’t principles. Those are objectives,” Bradley said. In the 1980s, lawmakers’ tax reform principles included equal incomes having equal taxes, those who earn more paying more in tax and the market as the best allocator of resources. Since Reagan, other presidents and Congresses have tried to thoroughly reform the tax code, but all have failed. Democrats and Republicans generally agree the code is too complex and inefficient. But each of its many tax breaks is zealously defended by lobbyists and lawmakers representing special interests, making comprehensive reform difficult. Bradley’s advice to Trump and Republicans? “Put something out and wait three months, four months, five months. See what the reaction is. And then you’re probably going to have to modify it because certain things are not going to work,” he said. | 0fake |
Trying to reset agenda, UK's May sets out to tackle social injustice | MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May set out her quest to tackle social and racial injustice on Tuesday, hoping to shift the focus of her Conservative party s annual conference away from rifts over Britain s exit from the European Union and her leadership. After a bruising start to the party s annual meeting in the city of Manchester, May will try to reset the agenda after remarks on Brexit policy by foreign minister Boris Johnson that deepened divisions in her top team of advisers. She said an audit will be published on Oct. 10 spelling out the uncomfortable truths of life in Britain, showing how people of different racial backgrounds are treated in the health, education, employment and the criminal justice system. Her ministers will also announce policies to try to prove critics wrong and show that her government is working, including measures to toughen sentences of people streaming or browsing extremist material, and to increase nurse training. In doing this ground-breaking work we are holding a mirror up to our society, May said in a statement. My most fundamental political belief is that how far you go in life should be based on your talent and how hard you work - and nothing else. But in early morning broadcast interviews, May was repeatedly asked about her relationship with Johnson after he set out four personal red lines for the Brexit negotiations to unravel more than 40 years of union. I don t set red lines, May told BBC television, describing her cabinet of top ministers as united over Brexit. Leadership is about ensuring that you have a team of people who aren t yes men, but a team of people of different voices around the table so that we can discuss matters, come to an agreement and then put that government view forward, and that is exactly what we ve done. May promised to build a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few when she became prime minister just over a year ago after Britons voted narrowly to leave the EU and her predecessor David Cameron stepped down. But she has had to shelve many of her domestic policies - such as social care and corporate reforms - since losing the Conservatives majority in parliament in a June election. That setback has undermined the party s confidence in her ability to lead it into the next election, due in 2022. The preliminary findings of the audit showed that the unemployment rate for black, Asian and minority ethnic people of working age is nearly double that for white groups, while more than nine in 10 headteachers are white, the government said. The findings, the government says, can help better target training and mentoring programs. The idea itself is not new, May said. Charles Booth s maps of rich and poor areas in Victorian London drew attention to hardship that was too often hidden but this focus on how ethnicity affects people s lives will present findings that are uncomfortable. | 0fake |
First take: A great jobs report for investors | The jobs report met expectations for once, and that's good news for stock and bond investors.
The U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists missed by just a whisker: The consensus from Action Economics was 225,000 new jobs. The unemployment rate, at 5.4%, would be the lowest since May 2008.
For once, there wasn't much to hate about the jobs report. Stock investors liked the signs of a growing economy. For example, construction added 45,000 jobs, and those are good jobs that pay well.
"That's a very good sign for things to come," says Joanie Courtney, senior vice president, market development at Monster.com.
And the bond market, which is usually only happy when it rains, rallied on the report as well. The bellwether 10-year Treasury note yield fell to 2.19% in early trading.
It wasn't all puppies and unicorns.The March report was revised down strongly, to 85,000 jobs from 126,000. Manufacturing added just 1,000 jobs, and the oil sector lost 3,000 jobs.
Because all investment questions these days seem to revolve around when the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates, the April report didn't add much pressure to the Fed to nudge its key fed funds rate higher. You need strong wage increases to create a wage/price spiral, and the 0.1% increase in hourly wages wasn't strong.
"I'm surprised we're not seeing more movement in wages," Courtney says. "Usually in a recovery, you start to see more movement." But the April report looks only at hourly wages, and not the wages of salaried workers.
For investors, then, the April jobs report was the best of all possible worlds. It showed decent hiring, but nothing so exuberant that would push the Fed to tap the brakes. | 0fake |
CIA Claims of Russian Intervention in US Election Fall Flat | 21st Century Wire says How seriously can we take a secret CIA assessment that Russian intervention in the U.S. Presidential election played a role in the victory of President Elect Donald J. Trump when it comes from an organization that has intervened extensively in so many countries sovereign governments?The Anti-Media The Daily SheepleAccording to a secret CIA assessment, Russia intervened in the U.S. election to undermine confidence in the electoral system and boost support for Donald Trump.The president-elect has already rejected this notion, though the implications of claims regarding Russian involvement are still unclear.Once again, this kind of pro-Clinton/anti-Russian-based narrative has already been completely debunked. For example, in his recent article, Anonymous Leaks to the WashPost About the CIA s Russia Beliefs Are No Substitute for Evidence, Glenn Greenwald brilliantly explains why this story does not merit our attention. He astutely notes: There is still no such evidence for any of these claims. What we have instead are assertions, disseminated by anonymous people, completely unaccompanied by any evidence, let alone proof. As a result, none of the purported evidence still can be publicly seen, reviewed, or discussed. Anonymous claims leaked to newspapers about what the CIA believes do not constitute proof, and certainly do not constitute reliable evidence that substitutes for actual evidence that can be reviewed. Continue This Story at The Daily SheepleREAD MORE RUSSIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russia Files | 1real |
Venezuelan Police Officer Fatally Shot in Anti-Government Protests | Get short URL 0 8 0 0 A police officer of the Venezuelan state of Miranda was fatally shot and another was wounded during an anti-government protest, local police said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – On Tuesday, the opposition-led National Assembly voted to initiate impeachment proceedings against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, claiming he had violated democracy, to which the president accused lawmakers of trying to stage a parliamentary coup.
"The deceased official got a gunshot wound in the abdomen. He died when he was being tended to in the Los Salias clinic. Another one is wounded in the arm," Miguel Mederico, the spokesman for the Miranda police, said on Twitter on Wednesday. Funcionario fallecido recibió impacto de bala en abdomen. Falleció cuando lo atendían en clínica de Los Salias. El otro está herido en brazo — Miguel Mederico (@MiguelMederico) October 27, 2016
Earlier on Wednesday, opposition leader Henrique Capriles initiated a large-scale peaceful protest across the country to defend the nation’s right to a referendum on Maduro's recall. According to media reports, police in some Venezuelan cities started to use tear gas against the opposition protesters. Este video muestra momentos cuando dispararon durante protestas en Los Salias. https://t.co/inB2fkITSO — Miguel Mederico (@MiguelMederico) October 27, 2016 ... | 1real |
World War 3 Alert PUTIN Exposed America’s SECRET PLANS for RUSSIA & Supports TRUMP | source Add To The Conversation Using Facebook Comments | 1real |
You Really Don’t Want To Miss Ana Navarro PUMMEL Trump’s Chief Racism Apologist (VIDEO) | When it comes to Donald Trump and his number of apologists sent out to every media outlet to justify his horrific behavior, the media has been less than extraordinary at calling out their utter bullsh*t.However, leave it to Ana Navarro, notably a conservative, to absolutely rip Trump s number one apologist apart during a recent segment on CNN.Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is now a regular commentator on CNN. Remember that the next time Trump wants to say the media has a liberal bias. Lewandowski decided he would defend Trump s racism and awful remarks, and Navarro clearly has had just about enough of his shenanigans.Navarro, laying it all out on the table, brilliantly came back at Lewandowski and said: I will tell you something. I will take credit for insulting him. Because he s been insulting communities since the first day he launched his campaign, when he started talking about Mexican rapists The reason I can call Donald Trump names and I can insult him back is because I am the sister of a disabled man and he mocked that disabled man, because I am the friend of a POW and he mocked that POW, because I m an immigrant and he has insulted immigrants, because I m a Hispanic and he has insulted Hispanics, because I am a woman and he has insulted women. So, yeah, we re at the point where there s insults and name-calling. But I would just say that he threw that rock first. He is the one who has lowered the debate to the level that it is at. However, honestly, my favorite part is when Lewandowski tried to go after Navarro personally trying to discredit her own experience, because this is what Trump and his lackeys do, and she swung back with: Oh, Corey, do me a favor, before you go attacking me oh, let me tell you something, let me play my little violin for you. Ha!As it s long been said, the moment you need to enter into personal attacks and not just attacks on policy, you have already lost. Both Trump and his lemmings, including Lewandowski, are nothing but losers who resort to just insulting people because that s honestly all they have. Sad!Watch some of the Navarro takedowns here:Then the absolute destruction of Trump apologist Corey Lewandowski here:BRAVA! That deserves a standing ovation! Brilliant.Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
These Products Make Men Grow Breasts, Get Cancers Of The Prostate And Liver | posted by Eddie Owned by Unilever, the Axe brand includes a range of men’s grooming products with many of the ingredients never even tested for safety according to the C.I.R. – Cosmetic Ingredient Review. Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals. Axe products are loaded with endocrine disrupting chemicals. Endocrine disruptorsare exogenous, synthetic chemicals that have hormone-like effects on both humans and wild-life and interfere with the endocrine system by either mimicking or blocking our natural hormones and disrupting their respective body functions. Member scientists of the Endocrine Society issued a report in which they claim: “We present the evidence that endocrine disruptors have effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostrate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology.” New studies are also revealing that these harmful chemicals may be causing physical feminization in males. A study published by the International Journal of Andrology found that feminization of boys can now be seen through their play habits. Medical experts are now wondering whether exposure to years of these toxic chemicals is part of the reason so many older men are low on testosterone and experiencing erectile dysfunction. So they take a little blue pill and get exposed to even more chemicals and the cycle continues. Aluminum Zirconium Tetrachlorohydrex Gly Aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex gly is the active ingredient in Axe deodorant products. One or more animal studies show kidney or renal system effects at very low doses, mammalian cells show positive mutation results, animal studies show reproductive effects at moderate doses. Aluminum was first recognized as a human neurotoxin in 1886, before being used as an antiperspirant. A neurotoxin is a substance that causes damage to nerves or nerve tissue. Cocamidopropyl Betaine Cocamidopropyl betaine is a very toxic ingredient which has been linked to cancer in animal tests. The biggest danger of using a product with cocamidopropyl betaine is its potential contamination with nitrosamines . Nitrosamines are created when nitrosating agents are combined with amines. Nitrosamines have been identified as one of the most potent classes of carcinogens, having caused cancer in more than 40 different animal species as well as in humans. PPG-14 Butyl Ether PPG stands for popypropylene glycol, which is made from a completely artificial petroleum product, methyl oxirane. Another name for that is propylene oxide (which is a probable human carcinogen). Propylene oxide is also an irritant and highly flammable. Butyl ethers are in the paraben family, and they are toluene derivatives (toxic petrochemical compounds). Toluene has proven to have a harmful affect on the reproductive system while parabens have been linked to cancer. PEG-8 Distearate According to a report in the International Journal of Toxicology by the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) committee, impurities found in various PEG compounds include ethylene oxide; 1,4-dioxane; polycyclic aromatic compounds; and heavy metals such as lead, iron, cobalt, nickel, cadmium, and arsenic. Many of these impurities are linked to cancer. A 1988 Swedish study by Thompson looked at both BHT and BHA. They found that both were toxic and tumour promoting. Both antioxidants were observed to be cytotoxic in a concentration-dependent manner at concentrations ranging from 100 to 750 microM. At equimolar concentrations BHT was more cytotoxic than BHA. source: | 1real |
Obama on future of terror after bin Laden raid | Washington (CNN) On the fifth anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death, President Barack Obama sharply defended his targeted approached to fighting terror -- and said the next president would most likely follow his lead rather than his predecessor's.
"The kinds of Special Forces and intelligence-gathering that we saw in the bin Laden raid is going to be, more often than not, the tool of choice for a president in dealing with that kind of threat," he said.
"The ideology has not been extinguished," Obama acknowledged in an exclusive interview with CNN's Peter Bergen on Monday night. "The world is still dangerous. In many ways, the Middle East is in a more chaotic situation."
But -- without directly referring to President George W. Bush's decisions to send U.S. troops into Afghanistan and then Iraq -- Obama said such large-scale operations, which continue to reverberate in the current presidential race, would only make the fight against extremism harder.
Obama said the idea of "sending 100,000 troops to invade every country where an organization like this appears going be counterproductive and, in some ways, feeds the kinds of ideology that we're fighting."
Obama offered the assessment as part of three hours of conversations Bergen had with the President and his top circle about details of the raid that killed bin Laden for the Anderson Cooper 360 special "'We Got Him,' Obama, Bin Laden and the War on Terror."
While Obama spoke with confidence of the decision to launch the raid despite the odds being "probably 50/50" that that the U.S. was correct that the target in the Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound it was tracking was bin Laden, he did speak about the difficulty in making wrenching decisions, especially with the expanded use of drones during his presidency.
Unmanned aircraft have become an invaluable tool in areas tough to reach with U.S. soldiers, Obama said. Within the first two years of his presidency, though, Obama said he felt the legal architecture and control systems in place to use them weren't enough.
"It became so easy to use them without thinking through all the ramifications," he said. "What we've tried to do is make sure that we are accountable at the highest levels for how we're using Predators."
The standard is of "near certainty" that the target is an active terrorist threat and that civilian casualties are being avoided, the President said.
"Having said that, you always lose sleep because you know there's always the possibility in a kinetic action that somebody who shouldn't be killed is killed," he said.
And he spoke of the risks of the bin Laden operation in the shadow of U.S. history.
Reminded that former President Jimmy Carter had lost a chance at a second term because he'd taken a similar risk in trying to free U.S. hostages from revolutionary Iran -- and failed -- Obama responded, "if I hadn't thought of it on my own, it was raised by a number of my advisors."
Still, Obama said that he didn't consider aborting the mission, even when it started with a downed helicopter.
"My initial concern there was extraction. That if something happened to the helicopter that we could make sure that we got our guys out," he said, pointing to the backup helicopters that had been prepared as part of their "plan B."
"Nevertheless, it gave you a little jolt," Obama said. "I think it reminded you that no matter how well you plan, there's always going to be something that comes up."
Obama said U.S. Special Forces had developed a deep capacity during years in Iraq and Afghanistan that meant this wasn't completely foreign terrain for them.
"It was uniquely complicated because the stakes were so high," Obama said, "and we were operating inside of Pakistan. But these guys had been through a lot of harrowing moments."
"One thing about having been through a lot of this previously, and everybody sitting around this table had been through the ups and downs of any wartime situation," the President said. "It's interesting the degree to which nobody cheered or nobody high fived, because we couldn't be sure at that point."
Obama said it wasn't until the helicopters had landed in Afghanistan with bin Laden's body "that all of us breathed ... a sigh of relief."
Obama and his team said that now, any future terror-fighting formula will have to include working with allies to address the political resentment and economic frustration that give extremist groups such fertile ground.
The case of Pakistan has proved particularly thorny. There has continued to be speculation that the government was aware of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad.
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN that she believes that senior Pakistanis knew bin Laden was there.
Clinton said it was "just too much of a coincidence ... that that house, that unusual-looking house would be built in that community near the military academy, surrounded by retired military professionals," even though "we couldn't prove it."
"There was never any evidence that we could uncover that led directly to the top of the Pakistani military and intelligence service," Clinton said. "I believe Pakistanis knew.
Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, will have to evaluate what's needed to continue the fight against al Qaeda should she take the White House. But Obama's aides stressed that the next commander in chief will for sure need a blend of the fine-grained intelligence work and surgical force that defined the lethal 2011 strike against al Qaeda's mastermind.
In the years since the raid on bin Laden's Abbottabad compound, the U.S. has worked systematically to degrade core al Qaeda and go after its leadership, Obama said. Meanwhile, the ability of organizations like ISIS or al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to carry out a catastrophic attack is much lower, he said.
But Obama and his advisors acknowledged that the fight against terrorism didn't end with bin Laden's death. If anything, they said that despite their efforts, that battle is now more complex with social media fueling the proliferation of groups and extending their reach.
The President praised the "incredible structure of cooperation" between intelligence, military and law enforcement "that has hardened the homeland," but he didn't directly mention the controversy surrounding measures such as National Security Agency surveillance and the use of drones, though both are central to Obama's terror-fighting approach.
John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said that "if counter-terrorism is going to be effective and you're going to take offensive action, you need to have the care and the precision of a surgeon's scalpel."
Obama said the scalpel has only gotten sharper and more precise since he took office. He said that U.S. intelligence gathering as well as the accuracy and lethality of Predator drone strikes have "increased significantly" in the past eight years.
The next president, whether Republican or Democrat, will have to think strategically about the battle against terrorism, Obama said, a long-term undertaking that doesn't involve just force, but ideas.
While he didn't address the current presidential race directly, Obama and his officials offered an indirect criticism of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's proposal that American Muslims be denied entry to the U.S. if they leave the country.
"We have to make sure that we're not engaging in the kind of knee-jerk anti-Muslim sentiment that we've heard from some politicians," Obama said. American Muslims' success and integration has insulated the U.S. from some of the terrorism Europe is seeing, he added. Broadly speaking, the U.S. should "not react in ways that make the problem worse rather than better," Obama said.
The current occupant of the Oval Office dismissed the possibility of Trump taking over from him, saying, "I don't expect that to happen."
Obama concluded with his belief that the American people can draw a reassuring lesson from the raid that will endure beyond his tenure.
"We've got really effective people and a government that knows how to do this," he said. "And as long as we operate from a position of confidence and strength and are true to who we are, groups like this or individuals like this can't defeat us." | 0fake |
Court Smacks Down Utah’s Attempt To Defund Planned Parenthood | An attempt by Utah s governor to defund Planned Parenthood has been smacked down by a federal appeals court who decided that the order was most likely a political move to punish the organization and ordered the state to continue funding the organization.The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver also decided on Tuesday that it is highly probable that the governor s order violated the constitutional rights of the group.Following the release of the now debunked baby parts video, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, stripping vital financial support away from sexually transmitted disease and sex education programs.The head of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah praised the ruling as a victory for the patients who depend on the services provided by the organization: Our doors are open today and they will be tomorrow no matter what, said CEO Karrie Galloway. A spokesman for the governor said he was disappointed by the ruling and believes that contract decisions should be left up to the state. Planned Parenthood s lawsuit challenging Herbert s defunding order will now go back to a lower court. The state has not decided what legal action they will take next, but one option would be to ask the full 10th Circuit to reconsider the panel s decision.Herbert had no comment on the finding by two appeals court judges that he most likely used the controversy as an opportunity to attack the group politically because they provide abortion services.Attorneys for the Utah branch of Planned parenthood argued that they have never participated in fetal donation programs. They also provided emails from state health officials expressing their concern that defunding the group would negatively impact the thousands of teenagers and low-income people who depend on the organization s services.Lawyers for the state argue that the governor legally has every right to right to end contracts and adds that Planned Parenthood was still embroiled in suspicion when Herbert issued his order blocking the organization s funding.Several states have tried to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of the fake baby parts videos. In states such as Arkansas, Alabama, and Louisiana, the organization has resorted to fighting these attempts to strip away their funding in court.Most states have sided with Planned Parenthood and ruled that the money must keep flowing, but U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups in Utah allowed Herbert to defund the group because he said the state has an interest in avoiding the perception of corruption. Waddoups conceded that the organization has not broken any laws, but said they had associated with other Planned Parenthood entities accused of selling baby parts. Utah s branch of Planned Parenthood has an $8 million budget and the contracts blocked by Governor Herbert were worth $275,000.Planned Parenthood has been cleared of any wrongdoing in multiple investigations by congress and several states. The organization was also cleared by a Texas grand jury who chose to indict two of the makers of the heavily doctored videos instead.Featured image via The Hill | 1real |
Green Berets Casualties in Jordan Story Disputed; Mosul Siege Completed; Zumwalt Broke Down Again | Next Cold War Roundup 11/23/16: The official story of how the 3 US Green Berets were killed in Jordan has been disputed. Iraqi militias completed the encirclement of Mosul. The USS Zumwalt broke down again in the Panama Canal. And more in our latest Next Cold War roundup…
3 Green Beret Soldiers Killed in Jordan _ By Jack Murphy, Army special operations veteran and editor of SOFREP: “Three Green Berets killed by ISIS infiltrator after CIA ignored warnings.” Green Berets Matthew Lewellen, Kevin McEnroe, and James Moriarty were on an inter-agency mission in Jordan, part of the CIA “Timber Sycamore” covert operation “to train and arm so-called moderate Syrian rebels.” Murphy’s Special Forces (SF) contacts said the official story is not true. It wasn’t an accident. It was a planned, deliberate attack by an ISIS sympathizer who was either a Jordanian military guard or one of the “moderate” rebels the SF are training.
_ Special Forces soldiers have complained “repeatedly” that the CIA vetting is “dubious at best” and the so called moderate rebels coming into the the training program “were actually ISIS and al-Nusra infiltrators.” The “CIA’s para-military component, called Ground Branch” have made the same complaints, all of which have been ignored. It’s illegal to provide support to terrorist organizations but there are some ways to override that law using loopholes that require very high level approval from the Secretary of State, Attorney General and the White House.
Syrian Rebels Have MANPADs in Southern Syria _ Syrian rebels from the “Ansar al-Islam Front and factions of the FSA” have published a video demonstrating SA-7 MANPADS shoulder-launch missiles. Middle East Eye speculates that the supply of MANPADS might indicate that the US has changed their policy of prohibiting distribution of these weapons because one of their high-level rebel sources said, in September, that this would happen if Syria and Russia increased their attacks on Aleppo. The source said: “Rebels are being told only to target Syrian helicopters, not Russian – but it’s not clear they will abide by this.”
_ Al Masdar News reports the Syrian army and local fighters have made gains in the province of Quneitra, near the Golan Heights.
Mosul _ Iraqi foreign minister al-Jaafari announced that one third of Mosul has been liberated from ISIS. 1000 ISIS fighters were killed and 650 captured.
_ The Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also known as Shiite militias though not all the soldiers are Shia, have completed the encirclement of Mosul . “The PMU reached Peshmerga positions in Sino and cut off the last ISIS-controlled road linking Mosul with the rest of Iraq.” They will now continue operations in Tal Afar, near the Syrian border.
Another Zumwalt Breakdown _ The Navy’s newest ship, the USS Zumwalt, broke down again , for the second time in 2 months, this time while passing through the Panama Canal.
Turkish Coup: NATO Officers Seeking Asylum _ NATO Secretary-General Jen Stoltenberg confirmed that some Turkish military officers within the NATO command structure are seeking asylum in the countries where they were stationed. He did not provide any specifics on the asylum requests. Turkish Pres. Erdogan said the number was not high.
_ Turkey’s crackdown after the failed coup attempt continues and they have made many changes to their own NATO personnel . Stoltenberg said : “I think Turkey will fill these places. It is up to Turkey who will be appointed here.”
_ Stoltenberg traveled to Istanbul on Sunday for the annual NATO Parliamentary Assembly session and will meet with Erdogan on Monday.
_ 38-40 Turkish officers in Germany, ranking “from non-commissioned officer to colonel” applied for asylum, per Hurriyet’s Turkish military sources . German media DW reported “ close to 60 Turkish nationals holding diplomatic passports ” stayed in Germany when they were summoned or due to return to Turkey, and the majority of those were military personnel (and some family members) from NATO bases.
_ At least 2 Turkish officers at NATO headquarters in Brussels requested asylum. 41 of the 50 Turkish military personnel in Brussels were “withdrawn from duty” and Turkey has not yet replaced them.
_ On Sunday, Erdogan said : “How can a terrorist, a terrorist soldier, a soldier who has been involved in plotting a coup, be employed in NATO? […] NATO cannot entertain accepting asylum requests of this kind.”
_ More than 400 Turkish military and staff were summoned back to Turkey after the coup attempt but some chose not to return, claiming that colleagues who did return were arrested.
Syria: De Mistura’s Proposal for Aleppo _ UN envoy Staffan de Mistura proposed that the Syrian government grant autonomy to East Aleppo “in exchange for peace” and he called for the al Qaeda affiliated rebels to leave East Aleppo and go to other rebel-held parts of Syria. The Syrian foreign minister, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, rejected the proposal and said state institutions should be restored across the city and that Syria would not let the people of East Aleppo remain “hostages to 6,000 gunmen […] “We agreed on the need that terrorists should get out of east Aleppo to end the suffering of the civilians in the city.”
_ Retired Col. Pat Lang’s response to de Mistura’s proposal: “Say what?” In speculating why de Mistura would do this: “The barrel bombing and hospital destruction memes are not having the desired effect and the “White Helmet” farce has been thoroughly debunked, so something else had to be tried.”
_ Moallem welcomed Syrian-to-Syrian talks without foreign influence but de Mistura couldn’t offer help with that, nor could he guarantee a ceasefire.
_ De Mistura has made offers to the jihadis in East Aleppo before, including an offer to personally escort them (with their weapons) from the city. The jihadis refused to leave and said they would fight to the death and they continue to shell the government-held West Aleppo, killing 8 school children and a teacher in recent days.
Syria: Rebels Continue to Shell Government-Held West Aleppo _ The original headline of this BBC article was “Syria war: Aleppo rebel attack on school kills seven children.” The headline was changed to: “Syria war: Aleppo self-rule rejected by government.” The text of the article changed significantly too, as demonstrated by this comparison tool .
Syria: Nusra-Led Rebels Deny Civilian Exit _ The pro-rebel Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has confirmed that the al Nusra-led rebels “are actually blocking the civilians from getting out”of East Aleppo.
_ Anti-war.com also reports that the Associated Press has spoken to people whose relatives have told them that the rebels told civilians who decided to leave to do it at night for safety reasons. Then when the civilians approached the crossing, the rebels opened fire on them. Food shortages in East Aleppo are caused by rebels hoarding aid supplies, according to the Syrian army. The rebels deny this.
Syria: ISIS Weakening at Deir Ezzor _ ISIS position in Deir Ezzor is weakening . Both the Syrian and Russian air forces have been bombing ISIS in and around Deir Ezzor. They also have ground forces in the area. ISIS manpower is affected by the battles in Mosul and Raqqa.
_ ISIS continues to launch offensives on the Syrian army position, and Al Masdar reports that despite repeated offensives, ISIS has not been able to make any significant advances on the Syrian army positions at “Al-Jafra Farms and Deir Ezzor Airport.”
Syria: Al-Bab _ Syrian foreign minister Al-Moallem said Turkish forces were violating Syria’s sovereignty: “We cannot accept to have one Turkish soldier to remain on Syria’s land.”
Halifax Security Forum _ Turkey’s EU affairs minister, Omer Celik, criticized Turkey’s NATO allies on Saturday while at the Halifax Security Forum in Canada, and while accompanied by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, retired US Gen. John Allen, and US Senator John McCain:
Celik : “Iran and Russia intervened in Syria, made a lot of mistakes, and caused the deaths of many people. As NATO allies, do we have a consensus on [reaching] a solution in Syria? […] Turkey proposed a no-fly zone, [but] our allies did not support that. We asked for safe zones, our allies did not support that. We said let’s fight terrorist groups, our allies did not support that. Our NATO allies are not showing solidarity with Turkey.”
War and Elections _ Doug Bandow for Forbes: “ President-Elect Donald Trump: Stay Out Of Syria .” Bandow notes that “American politicians are still attempting to drag America into another tragic, bloody Middle Eastern conflict” and to do so would be “madness” but like Obama, Trump is surrounded by allies and advisors who are militaristic. Bandow calls out “ivory tower warriors” like Charles Lister and Thanassis Cambanis. “Washington has a half dozen or more conflicting goals, none of are important enough to warrant the use of force.”
_ From October, a profile of retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s choice for national security advisor: “ How Mike Flynn Became America’s Angriest General .” “He was one of the most respected intelligence officers of his generation. Now he’s Donald Trump’s national security alter ego, goading a crowd to lock Hillary Clinton up. What happened?”
_ Robert Parry: “ Trump’s Tulsi Gabbard Factor .” Parry says that Gabbard might be a signal that Trump intends to do a major break with the neocon foreign policy establishment, moving toward a more libertarian stance, but his choice for Secretary of State will be the biggest tell. If it’s someone like Romney, Giuliani or Bolton, the neocons “can breathe a sigh of relief.”
Analysis and Opinion _ DW interview with researcher Siemon Wezeman: “ Diplomacy and war games in the global arms trade .” “Moscow and Washington are rivals once again, using arms exports to boost their allies and frustrate each other’s plans. The two countries are also renewing their own nuclear arsenals.” Wezeman says that Russia is trying improve relations with Arab countries and sell them weapons but Gulf countries aren’t likely to buy from Russia if Russia sells to Iran.
_ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “ Syria and the Statistics of War : Trust none of what you hear, some of what you read, and half of what you see.”
Taleb: “I see propagandists and Al Qaeda apologists such as Charles Lister (at the Salafi-funded Middle East Institute) throw numbers that get cited –yes, some idiot will cite numbers from the Al Qaeda propagandist Charles Lister, and may eventually be cited in turn by some decent newspaper, hence get fixed for posterity.”
The post Green Berets Casualties in Jordan Story Disputed; Mosul Siege Completed; Zumwalt Broke Down Again appeared first on Shadowproof .
| 1real |
Police and Protesters Clash Over Flag Burning at Republican Convention - The New York Times | CLEVELAND — The tensest exchange yet between the police and protesters at the Republican National Convention unfolded Wednesday afternoon with officers arresting several people after some of them tried to burn a United States flag near the site of the convention. Just before 4 p. m. demonstrators spread word that someone would be burning a flag near the entrance to the Quicken Loans Arena, where the convention is being held. Soon after, a group of people, some claiming to be members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. came to the area with a flag and someone began to light it on fire, several witnesses said. As the flag’s edge began to singe, the police called out for assistance and officers swarmed through the area on foot, on bicycle and on horses. One officer clutched the flag while others began handcuffing demonstrators. Nearby, officers on bicycles and horses pushed the crowd back and tried to calm the scene. Matt Harkins, 22, a reporter for WVBR, a radio station at Cornell University, who witnessed the first moments of the encounter, said the flag was “singeing. ” He added that soon after a mist filled the air. “I almost passed out,” Mr. Harkins, of Erie, Pa. said. “It was putrid. It smelled sour. ” Later, officers shouted “move, move, move” while using their bicycles to push back people in the crowd and form a barrier around those getting arrested. Minutes after the arrests, the Cleveland Police Department said in a Twitter message, “Firefighters extinguished and took the flag that protesters attempted to destroy. ” The department said two officers were assaulted and suffered minor injuries. Those who were arrested were wearing black with red and orange lettering that read, “Revolution nothing less!” As they were led away in handcuffs. s Calvin D. Williams, the chief of the Cleveland Police Department, said on Wednesday evening that about 18 people were arrested and that two had been charged with felonies and 15 with misdemeanors. The charges included failure to disperse, inciting violence and assault. The two police officers had “minor bumps and bruises,” the chief said. Burning a flag is permitted by law, Chief Williams said, and the officers intervened with fire extinguishers because the person who set fire to the flag “lit himself on fire” and then, while trying to fend off the police, “got a couple of other people lit on fire. ” Chief Williams said that he did not know of anyone who had been treated for burns. The arrests followed a mostly peaceful day of protests, with police standing nearby but not interfering much with the demonstrations. In the morning, Code Pink, an antiwar group led by women, staged a “beauty pageant” to voice their opposition to Mr. Trump’s candidacy and accuse him of unfairly stereotyping various groups. Later, a coalition of groups built a “wall” made of posters around the entrance of the Quicken Loans Arena to criticize Mr. Trump’s plan to build a wall across the border with Mexico. Activists, who locked arms and formed a long line, shouted “wall off Trump,” “undocumented, unafraid” and “there ain’t no debate, Trump equals hate. ” | 0fake |
Trump Couple, Now White House Employees, Can’t Escape Conflict Laws - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The team of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, now both senior federal government officials, has been alongside President Trump as the White House has hosted dozens of chief executives and a handful of world leaders in recent weeks. It is a rarefied crowd, one that has included the top executives of some of the world’s largest automobile, airline, chemical, pharmaceutical and tech companies. Mr. Kushner will continue to keep such select company now that he has helped create a new office that Mr. Trump is calling the White House Office of American Innovation. But the financial disclosure report released late Friday for Mr. Kushner, which shows that he and his wife still benefit financially from a real estate and investment empire worth as much as $740 million, makes clear that this most powerful Washington couple is walking on perilous legal and ethical ground, according to several prominent experts on the subject. Unlike Mr. Trump, who is exempt from conflict of interest laws, both Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump — who took a formal White House position this past week — are forbidden under federal criminal and civil law to take any action that might benefit their particular financial holdings. “Donald Trump can evade legal responsibility even if the conflicts of interest remain,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal nonprofit group. “His daughter and don’t have that escape hatch. ” Mr. Kushner did resign from more than 200 positions in the partnerships and limited liability companies that make up the real estate business. But the financial disclosure report shows that Mr. Kushner will remain a beneficiary of most of those same entities. Jamie Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney general at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration and is now advising Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump on government ethics issues, said that the couple could continue to hold on to so many of their assets because most of the value is tied up in buildings. “The real estate assets that Kushner is holding on to are unlikely to pose the kinds of conflicts that would trigger the need to divest,” Ms. Gorelick, a partner at WilmerHale, the law firm, said in a statement on Friday. “The remaining conflicts, from a practical perspective, are pretty narrow and very manageable. ” But real estate projects like the Kushner Companies’ deals have become a magnet for opaque foreign money — often from parts of the world that present thorny policy questions, such as China, where Mr. Kushner’s company has actively sought investors, as well as the Middle East and Russia. As part of his exceptionally broad portfolio in the White House, Mr. Kushner has been a crucial figure in arranging the visit of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, on Thursday in Florida. The mystery behind many real estate investments involving foreigners prompted the Treasury Department last year to push for additional disclosures as a way to combat money laundering. While Mr. Kushner may face a potential ethical minefield, the disclosure form makes it difficult to determine exactly where those mines might be situated. The form, which runs 54 pages and lists hundreds of entities, reveals few details about the underlying investments that make up the Kushner empire, such as the addresses of buildings, sources of financing and names of partners. John Pudner, a conservative who has helped elect Tea Party candidates to Congress and now runs a nonprofit group called Take Back Our Republic, said that Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, if they wanted to serve in the White House, would have been better off if they had taken the difficult step of liquidating their holdings. “A for the president’s family and everyone else is if there were no question anytime a decision is made that it’s being done for the good of the country,” he said. The actions by Mr. Kushner stand in contrast to the moves by some other top aides to Mr. Trump, such as Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, who before he was sworn in agreed to liquidate all of his stock holdings and his ownership stake in Exxon, putting his assets mostly into Treasury bonds and other permitted investments, such as diversified mutual funds, which make formal financial conflicts unlikely. Mr. Kushner, by contrast, continues to hold lines of credit from institutions such as Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, while companies he is still a beneficiary of have billions of dollars in additional loans from heavily regulated institutions. Richard W. Painter, who served as a White House ethics lawyer in the Bush administration, said that Mr. Kushner’s financial holdings would complicate any interactions he might have with such banks. “The one thing Jared really ought to stay completely away from is anything having to do with ” Mr. Painter said, referring to the 2010 law that increased capital reserve requirements and instituted many other regulatory changes that affected the nation’s banks. Mr. Trump has already said he hopes to roll back the law, with the help of Congress and his top aides. Several of the companies that are in business with Kushner Companies have faced scrutiny by federal law enforcement. Deutsche Bank, for example, reached a $7. 2 billion settlement last year with the Justice Department over its sale of toxic mortgage securities. Mr. Kushner, who frequently speaks with world leaders and is tasked with overseeing Middle East peace negotiations, also has an unsecured line of credit worth as much as $5 million from Israel Discount Bank. Kushner Companies has also taken out at least four loans from Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s largest bank, though they are not disclosed in the filing. That firm is the subject of a Justice Department investigation into whether it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes with undeclared accounts. Another potential conflict rests in Ms. Trump’s continued stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, a project that has drawn protests from ethics experts who worry that people representing special interests could stay there or host events there to gain influence with the White House, which is just a few blocks away. Ms. Trump has rolled her fashion brand into the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust, which is overseen by her Josh Kushner, and Nicole Meyer. The documents released on Friday valued the trust at more than $50 million. Discussions about changes in federal tax law — a major agenda item for Mr. Trump that could affect issues such as depreciation on Mr. Kushner’s buildings and clothing imported for Ms. Trump’s brand — could also pose problems, or force them to recuse themselves from participating. “They are going to have to walk a fine line between matters they are involved with financially and the policies they are helping create and legislation they may be advocating,” said Scott H. Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group. The federal ethics regulations formally prohibit federal employees from being involved in any “particular matter that will have a direct effect on a financial interest, if there is a close causal link between any decision or action to be taken in the matter and any expected effect of the matter on the financial interest. ” But Mr. Painter said that most administrations had interpreted the law more broadly, so that officials who own stakes in individual industries do not participate in even broad policy decisions affecting that sector, unless they seek a formal ethics waiver, as certain officials did during the first George Bush administration, given that they owned energy industry stocks and were participating in the decision to enter the war against Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait. Federal employees, under ethics rules that Mr. Trump imposed, are also prohibited, for at least two years after they arrive in the government, from working on particular matters that involve former employers or clients, even if these actions do not directly financially benefit the federal employee. The disclosures by Mr. Kushner and other White House officials released on Friday demonstrate just how complicated it is going to be to police these rules, given the vast and extremely complex financial assets not only within the Trump family but also among dozens of aides they have selected. The National Economic Council director, Gary Cohn, as well as the top White House aides Christopher P. Liddell and Reed Cordish, collectively reported assets with a maximum value of more than $1 billion. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, reported assets worth as much as $53. 9 million. Even Mr. Bannon’s aide Julia Hahn, who is 25, reported investments worth between $1 million and $2. 1 million, according to a tally by The New York Times, while Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, had assets worth between $11 million and $44 million. Some of those financial holdings are already creating questions. Mr. Liddell, an assistant to the president and the director of strategic initiatives, has participated in White House meetings since January that involved several companies in which he continued at least through February to own stock in, including International Paper and General Motors. Mr. Bannon disclosed more than $500, 000 in income from entities linked to the hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, major Republican donors who were crucial figures in Mr. Bannon’s appointment as the Trump campaign’s chief executive last year. Mr. Bannon is selling off some of these assets, his financial disclosure report says, including shares in Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm, and Breitbart News, the website. But Mr. Bannon, even after joining the White House, has continued to interact with certain reporters at Breitbart, at times to express frustration with the site’s coverage of the White House or to discuss coverage, editors there have said. Even Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former hedge fund manager, wrote a letter on Friday to the Office of Government Ethics saying he should not have made a supportive remark about a film, “The Lego Batman Movie,” that one of his companies helped produce. The comment was viewed by some as a commercial endorsement of the film. “The White House staff’s massive businesses are creating so many possible conflicts of interest it seems almost impossible for them to avoid running into trouble as they mix their former business interests with their new professional duties,” Mr. Bookbinder said. | 0fake |
Nasty Women | Recipient Email =>
Donald Trump grabbed a new lifeline. Speaking at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 15th, he raised a hand as if to take an oath and declared : “I am a victim!” The great business tycoon, the one and only man who could fix America and make the place great again (trust me, folks), was laying claim to martyrdom — and spinning another news cycle. “I am a victim,” he declared, “of one of the great political smear campaigns in the history of our country. They are coming after me to try and destroy what is considered by even them the greatest movement in the history of our country.”
“I am a victim.” That pathetic line echoed in my head, which is why I’m writing this. In my long life, I had seen a large white man stand up in a public arena and proclaim those words — the shrill, self-pitying complaint of the remorseless perpetrator — only once before. That was in a courtroom in lower Manhattan in 1988. The man was Joel Steinberg , a New York lawyer who, over a 12-year period, had brainwashed and beaten into oblivion a woman named Hedda Nussbaum, once a successful young editor of children’s books. In the early years of their relationship, she had run away several times, seeking help, and every time a doctor or friend had called Steinberg to come and get her. At that point — time and again — Steinberg would administer “punishment,” breaking her bones and her spirit. She took on what police would later describe as “a zombie-like quality.”
Some years earlier, a teenage girl had hired Steinberg to arrange an adoptive home for her baby. Instead he kept the child, Lisa, until one evening when she was six years old and “stared” at him in a way he didn’t like. He responded by striking her repeatedly in the head. After which he went out to dinner with his cocaine dealer, leaving the child unconscious on the floor. Nussbaum, by then so traumatized, so absent from anything like life, thought vaguely of calling a doctor, but she was not allowed to use the phone in Steinberg’s absence. Instead, she sat on the floor and watched over the girl as she lay dying.
On trial for the child’s murder, Steinberg blamed everyone but himself. “I’m the victim here,” he whined in court. He swore that he had “never hit anyone,” not anyone , even though he was known to have assaulted a business associate and three other women before he settled into the single-minded, single-handed demolition of Hedda Nussbaum.
Judge Harold Rothwax observed that Steinberg was “a man of extraordinary narcissism and self-involvement” who had “an extreme need to control everyone in his ambit” while he lived a “life of self-gratification.” Yet Steinberg could not see in himself the man Judge Rothwax described. He thought people should feel sorry for him. He had been disbarred and had lost a child (not to mention his Greenwich Village apartment). He railed at those who had conspired to bring him down: the police, the neighbors, the judge, the prosecutor, the expert medical witnesses, his defense attorney, the jurors, the press, and Hedda Nussbaum. “I’m the victim here,” he claimed.
At the time, nearly 30 years ago, the public blamed Hedda Nussbaum. The district attorney, the police, the doctors and psychiatrists who treated her intensively for more than a year before the trial all agreed that, on the evening in question, she was too physically and mentally “incapacitated” either to cause the girl’s injuries or take action to save her. Nonetheless, she was tried and condemned by the press and public opinion, including women who called themselves “feminists.” In court, the jurors were merciless. When they began to deliberate, only four thought Steinberg guilty of murder as charged, five were “in the middle,” and three held out for lesser charges, feeling certain that Hedda Nussbaum had somehow been responsible for killing the child.
They finally agreed upon a verdict of manslaughter. Even then, a woman juror assured the press that Nussbaum was “a very sick woman” who should have been charged and convicted of “some crime.” Another juror, also female, expressed popular opinion this way: “I just feel that she was to blame.” And a third woman juror, who claimed that “certain others” agreed with her, said, “Poor Joel. Joel’s a victim. We have to send a message to the system: ‘You don’t make victims out of nice men like Joel.’”
Judge Rothwax sentenced Steinberg to eight and a half to 25 years. Released after 17 years, Steinberg, now in his seventies, still claims to have done nothing hurtful to anyone. He has not paid a civil court-ordered settlement of $15 million to the birth mother of the dead child, nor has he ever been charged with any crime for what he did to Hedda Nussbaum.
Two lessons lurk in this story, one old and one very up to date. First, it’s a reminder of how much women at that time, even after a great wave of feminism, still blamed women (including themselves) for whatever happened to them at the hands of men; second, a man with a character like Steinberg’s is not the kind of guy you want to choose for high office — or any office at all.
Joel Steinberg stalked a far tinier stage than Donald Trump and he did more deadly damage, but the two men seem to be brothers under the skin, sharing common character defects well described in psychiatric texts: extreme narcissism, a taste for sexual predation, and very similar views of the women on whom they prey. Like Steinberg, who was incapable of seeing himself as the judge accurately described him, Trump seems blind to the real nature of his own behavior. (His current wife describes him as a “boy.”) Neither man seems capable of taking responsibility for the harm he’s done, and when their own actions finally call down retribution, branding them as losers — ah, then come the conspiracy theories and the vindictive wail of the victim.
Men Who Use Women
Last June, I published a piece at TomDispatch venturing to explain why candidate Donald J. Trump was getting “rock-bottom ratings” in the polls from women voters. Nearly 70% of them reportedly couldn’t stand the guy. I pointed out what seemed to me to be the obvious: “Trump’s behavior perfectly fits the profile of an ordinary wife abuser.”
In a sworn deposition introduced in divorce proceedings , his first wife Ivana swore under oath that he had torn out her hair and forcibly raped her, raging at her because he didn’t like the results of a “scalp-reducing” procedure (meant to remove a bald patch) performed on him by a plastic surgeon she had recommended. (Before she collected a $14 million divorce settlement, she toned her story down, saying the assault was not “criminal.”)
About one in three American women are survivors of some version of such treatment, euphemistically called “ domestic abuse .” That’s roughly 65 million women voters who, as I wrote last June, “know a tyrant when they see one.” I raise this subject again because the now-infamous tape of Trump’s open-mic Hollywood Access bus ride in 2005 added a new page to the rap sheet of this particular abuser.
In that piece of mine, I traced the history of the principal tactics of coercion used by controlling men like Trump. Some of those tactics, including Steinberg’s favorites, involve physical force, but most, when used by a skilled abuser, require no force at all. Trump applies the handiest tools to his targeted victims regularly, leaving no physical marks behind: threats, intimidation, degradation, put-downs, humiliation, insults, trivial demands, occasional indulgences (a flash of charm, for example, or a bit of feigned reasonableness). The lesson is simple and clear: the mind can be bent and the spirit shattered without battering the body.
I neglected, however, to mention one of the most insidious tactics of such abusers, perhaps because it’s so obvious that it regularly hides in plain sight. In the military, it’s called “pulling rank.” High status is itself a powerful coercive force that can stifle resistance in a lower-status victim and so silence him or her. Status is Trump’s brandished weapon, his open carry. On this, he couldn’t have been clearer in boasting of his pussy-grabbing skills on that Hollywood Access tape : “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
The most chilling moments on that tape, however, occur after Trump emerges from the bus in all his orange splendor, followed by his escort Billy Bush — now a former NBC “personality” — who could be heard on that tape laughing as Trump recounted his compulsive assaults. Bush then greeted his television colleague Arianne Zucker, who like so many women on American TV was less fully clothed than the men around her, and whom Trump had been ogling from the bus while sucking Tic Tacs to freshen his potty mouth for a possible kissing attack. Billy Bush “asked” Ms. Zucker, “How about a little hug for The Donald?”
In that short bus trip across the parking lot, Bush had learned just what to do to get in good stead with his high-status guest, and so, without missing a beat, he threw his lower status co-worker to his peppermint-salivating pal. He then collected a hug from her, too, as Trump is heard exonerating himself with the bizarre remark, “Melania said this was okay.”
It hardly seemed to matter what Arianne Zucker wanted or believed to be okay. Billy Bush’s question wasn’t actually a question, but a notice of what was expected. Clearly, she wanted to keep her job and, just as clearly, hugging predatory, high-status stars and coworkers had never been part of her job description, but was a little instant add-on of coercion from her colleague.Setting the star power aside, all of this amounts to commonplace harassment in what appears to be a hostile workplace , and it just happens to be against the law.
One in three women between the ages of 18 and 24 say that they have been harassed at work . Yet 70% of all workers (woman and men) harassed on the job do not report the offense, often for fear of disbelief or reprisal. Think of all the women in television who were subjected to harassment and worse by Roger Ailes — the charges now reach back 50 years — fired at last by Fox News, only to become official media adviser to whom else but presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Some in the media glossed over Trump’s bragging as just so much “ lewd conversation ” — or as Trump himself put it “ locker room talk ”— while his wife Melania dismissed it as “ boy talk .” In fact, Trump’s unwanted kissing and groping — his self-described M.O. substantiated by one victim after another — can be classified in his home state (under New York Penal Law, Article 130 , Section 130.52: forcible touching) as a Class A misdemeanor. That may not sound serious, but it’s punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 (chump change for The Donald) and a more sobering potential year behind bars.
It was that tape, all over the media on October 7th, that prompted Anderson Cooper during the second presidential debate to ask Trump three times if he had actually done the sort of things he described to Billy Bush, which Cooper correctly named “sexual assault.” Trump finally answered: “And I will tell you, no I have not” — and women who had lived for five, 10, 20, even 30 years with nagging memories of a Trump assault and humiliation had to restrain an immediate impulse to smash the TV set and instead called a news outlet or a lawyer.
As of this writing, more than a dozen women have gone public with reports of Trump’s sexual attacks since the release of that Hollywood Access tape. They join a list of women and girls who had previously reported offenses ranging from outright sexual assault to crashing dressing rooms at beauty contests where nude and semi-nude women and girls were preparing to compete for the titles of Miss Universe or Miss Teen America. That brings the number of Trump’s accusers , as I write, to at least 24. Journalists and lawyers have generally managed to verify their accounts.
Of course, Trump has repeatedly denied the women’s allegations, saying before, during, and ever since the third presidential debate that he had never seen those women before, had no idea who they were, found them insufficiently attractive to warrant his attention, and that their stories had, in any case, been debunked . None of his claims were true. (And, for good measure, he announced during his version of a Gettysburg Address that he would sue every one of them after the election was over.)
In my June post, I wrote:
“Trump’s behavior perfectly fits the profile of an ordinary wife abuser — but with one additional twist… Trump has not confined his controlling tactics to his own home(s). For seven years, he practiced such tactics openly for all the world to see on The Apprentice , his very own reality show, and now applies them on a national stage, commanding constant attention while alternately insulting, cajoling, demeaning, embracing, patronizing, and verbally beating up anyone… who stands in the way of his coronation.”
In this fashion, he humiliated his male Republican primary opponents, demeaning them with nicknames — Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, Low-Energy Jeb — and denigrated his only female primary opponent, Carly Fiorina, by unfavorably appraising her appearance. (“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”) More recently, of course, he’s disparaged “Crooked Hillary” in a similar fashion . (“Such a nasty woman!”)
Growing Up in America
Hillary Clinton, as Trump himself has acknowledged, is a fighter who will not quit — unperturbed even by his stalking her on stage throughout the second presidential debate and body-shaming her afterwards. “She walked in front of me,” he said of a moment in that debate when she crossed the stage to speak to a questioner in the audience. “Believe me, I wasn’t impressed.” In the third debate, she called him out directly on his behavior. “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger,” she said. “He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don’t think there is a woman anywhere who doesn’t know what that feels like.”
Here was something new under the sun: a woman on a presidential debate stage calling out an insufferable man — a serial predator, at that — on behavior so common among men for so long that the vast majority of women in this country have experienced it and learned to call it “life.”
Some women still see it that way. The New York Times , for instance, interviewed a 62-year-old woman voting for Trump who said that other women offended by his “banter” should “ grow up .” I like to think that hers is a good description of what’s happening nationally at the moment, though obviously not in the fashion that she imagined. After all, grown-up women led the way, among congressional representatives, in calling Trump out. Republican Congresswomen Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Martha Roby of Alabama both asked him to withdraw from the race. Kay Granger of Texas, Mia Love of Utah, and Ann Wagner of Missouri said they could not vote for him. Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia withdrew their support. Susana Martinez, Republican governor of New Mexico, said she would not support Trump, while former Republican presidential candidate Fiorina said that Trump should step aside. Republican former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice wrote on her Facebook page: “Enough! Donald Trump should not be President. He should withdraw.”
Still, don’t expect a serial abuser to be a quitter either. Faced with accusations of abhorrent and criminal acts he can’t acknowledge, plus impending incomprehensible defeat at the polls, and the very real possibility of becoming one of those people he so despises — a loser — Trump casts about for others to blame. Given his character, it’s not surprising that he follows, as if by instinct, what we might call the Joel Steinberg path to self-exoneration — painting himself, and himself alone, as the ultimate innocent victim of abusive others in a world whose every aspect is “rigged” against him.
In his own telling, he, not the women he’s demeaned or assaulted, is the abused one and he’s taking it for us, for America. It’s quite a self-portrait when you think about it and should make us appreciate all the more those women who stepped before the cameras, reported his sexual assaults, and left themselves open to further abuse from Trump and his supporters. They have done something rare and brave. It’s one thing for a woman to say publicly that she has been sexually assaulted or battered or raped. Feminist speak-outs taught us decades ago to support our sisters by sharing our experience in this way. But it’s another thing to name the perpetrator and call him to account. That’s what these women have done. And wonder of wonders, most women and a whole lot of men believe them , and more than 60%, in the tepid language of the pollsters, “have some concerns” about the issue. Count that as a positive change of recent years — a light in dismal times.
On the dark side, you never know what a sore loser and his loyal, bullying, misogynist followers might do. Say, for example, followers of the type who show up outside Hillary rallies with banners reading “Trump that Bitch!” The moment the trial of Joel Steinberg ended, armed guards surrounded him and hustled him off to prison. Unfortunately, when this election is over, whether Trump wins or loses, he’s not likely to go away.
Ann Jones, a TomDispatch regular , is the author of several books on violence against women, including the feminist classic Women Who Kill and Next Time, She’ll Be Dead: Battering and How to Stop It , which Gloria Steinem calls “the one book you should read” on the subject. It includes a chapter on the Steinberg case. She is also the author of the Dispatch Books original , They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars — The Untold Story . (Reprinted from TomDispatch by permission of author or representative) | 1real |
Donald Trump Has Big Plans For Trump University After Lawsuit Is Over | Despite all the problems plaguing Donald Trump over his failed Trump University, he says he plans to reopen it after the lawsuit is over. He believes that he ll win the case, or that it ll be dismissed or otherwise disposed of, despite overwhelming evidence that the whole scam was just that a complete fraud. On Trump s warped planet, this whole thing just makes Trump U. a pile of gold.That s not all, though. Not only did he say he s planning to reopen it after the suit, he also plans to be president:After the litigation is disposed of and the case won, I have instructed my execs to open Trump U(?), so much interest in it! I will be pres. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 2, 2016Trump U. closed in 2010 because they couldn t afford to stay open with so few students enrolling in its $35,000 Gold program. A former employee told CBS News that the program was run into the ground, but Trump says there s tons of interest in it now. Even if that s true, the man is an unethical profiteer who will likely do the same thing again.New York s attorney general has been investigating Trump U. for fraud for a long time, and he says that Trump knew it was a fraud. For instance, he claimed in video tapes that he handpicked instructors, but later testified under oath that he never met the instructors, meaning they weren t handpicked, nor were they experts.Internal documents also show how Trump U. pushed students through increasingly expensive courses without really teaching them any of the real estate mogul s secrets. Students were left with heavy debt and little hope of making their dreams of wealth come true.Trump fancies himself a master negotiator, and keeps saying that s why he ll be a great president. He s making people think he can negotiate us out of whatever rut conservatives think we re in. However, he wields lawsuits as one of his prime negotiating tools, which very likely wasn t taught in his courses. He and his organization just fleeced students for all they were worth (and, in many cases, more).Just how does he think Trump U. will fare if he loses the suit? Or at all? This reeks of the posturing that s so typical of Trump when someone makes him look bad. The lawsuit against Trump U. has definitely made him look terrible, and he s trying to make up for it now.Featured image by Thos Robinson/Getty Images | 1real |
Report: Russian, U.S. Jets Have Close Encounter Over Syria | By wmw_admin on October 29, 2016 Morgan Chalfant — Washington Free Beacon Oct 28, 2016
U.S. and Russian military jets reportedly had a close encounter in Syrian airspace several days ago.
AFP, citing U.S. officials, reported Friday morning that a Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. jet in airspace over eastern Syria on Oct. 17, nearly two weeks prior.
A Russian jet escorting a larger spy aircraft flew into the vicinity of the U.S. warplane, moving to “inside half a mile” from the American plane, according to Air Force Lieutenant General Jeff Harrigian. #BREAKING Russian, US jets had near miss over Syria: US officials
— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 28, 2016
“I would attribute it to not having the necessary situational awareness given all those platforms operating together,” Harrigian further stated, according to AFP.
An unnamed defense official said that the Russian aircraft “was close enough you could feel the jet wash of the plane passing by.”
The U.S. and Russia have set up a line of communication to avoid clashes in airspace over Syria. In this incident, the American pilot reportedly attempted to communicate with the Russian warplane but was unsuccessful.
Harrigian also reported an increase in close encounters between American and Russian military jets in the region in the past six weeks. He said that Russian jets have intentionally flown close to U.S. warplanes about once every 10 days.
Tensions between the United States and Russia have been exacerbated over the situation in Syria in recent weeks, following a failed ceasefire deal and suspension of communications between the two countries.
Russian and Syrian jets have bombed civilians and U.S.-backed rebels in Aleppo, drawing ire from America. Moscow has threatened to shoot down coalition jets that target Bashar al-Assad’s forces with air strikes in Syria, after reports indicated that the Obama administration would consider targeting Syrian government forces with strikes. | 1real |
MORE TRANSPARENCY: CLINTON’S REFUSE TO RELEASE HILLARY’S HEALTH RECORDS | Karl Rove is suggesting Hillary suffered brain damage following her blood clot.On Sunday, Hillary Clinton s campaign manager would not commit to releasing her health records during the 2016 campaign.Face the Nation host John Dickerson pointed out that Hillary Clinton had a big health scare when she was secretary of state and asked campaign manager Robby Mook, will she release her medial records as part of this campaign? I will let Hillary decide that, Mook answered. But I can tell you she has been hitting the campaign trail hard. In 2012, Clinton had to delay her Benghazi testimony to Congress after she fell and suffered a concussion. She later was treated for a blood clot in her brain, which experts said could have been life threatening. Though Clinton joked about her cracked head in emails that the State Department recently released, Bill Clinton revealed last year that Hillary s injuries required six months of very serious work to get over. On the stump this weekend, Clinton tried to deflect concerns about her age by saying that she would be the youngest woman president if elected to the White House.Via:Breitbart News | 1real |
Bipartisan Senate Group Proposes ‘No Fly, No Buy’ Gun Measure - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Signaling a possible breakthrough in the long stalemate in Congress over tightening the nation’s gun laws, a bipartisan group of senators called on Tuesday for banning gun sales to terrorism suspects on the government’s “ ” list. The proposed measure, while modest, puts new muscle and momentum behind what would be one of the few restrictions placed on gun ownership in the past 20 years. The push for the compromise bill, led by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, came a day after the Senate refused to advance any of four measures intended to make it harder for suspected terrorists to buy guns. Ms. Collins and the lawmakers who joined her, including Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, who is frequently mentioned as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton, voiced deepening exasperation over the failure of Congress to take any action to prevent shootings like the massacre this month in Orlando, Fla. “Surely the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando that took so many lives are a call for compromise, a plea for bipartisan action,” Ms. Collins said at a news conference. “Essentially, we believe if you are too dangerous to fly on an airplane, you are too dangerous to buy a gun,” she added. The Collins proposal is tailored narrowly to prohibit gun sales to suspected terrorists who appear on the government’s “ ” list or its “selectee” list, which requires more rigorous security checks before a person is allowed to board an airplane. Those lists, containing a total of about 109, 000 people, of whom just 2, 700 are American citizens, are far smaller than the federal terrorist screening database, which includes about one million names and was the focus of a proposal sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, one of the four measures defeated on Monday. Ms. Collins’s measure would bar gun sales to anyone on the two lists, but would allow for an appeal by any citizen or green card holder blocked from making a purchase and it would award lawyer’s fees if the appeal is successful. The bill would also require notification of federal and local law enforcement agencies if anyone who had been on the lists in the previous five years seeks to buy a weapon — a provision intended to address the situation in Orlando, in which the gunman, Omar Mateen, had been on placed such lists but removed before he bought his weapons. In addition, the bill would give the federal authorities the flexibility to allow a gun purchase by someone on one of the lists if needed to safeguard a continuing investigation. While leaders in each party expressed pointed misgivings about the proposal, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, indicated that it would be likely to get a vote as an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill that is being debated on the Senate floor. “I’m going to be working to make sure she gets a vote on that proposal,” Mr. McConnell said. To overcome procedural hurdles and win approval, the measure would need the support of 60 senators, and it was not immediately clear that enough Republicans would back it. Just three of the 54 Senate Republicans — Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — attended the news conference with Ms. Collins, well short of the 16 votes needed even if the entire Democratic conference voted in favor, which was also not assured. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican and author of another of the proposals that was voted down on Monday afternoon, said he was apprehensive about the provision in the Collins proposal because it permitted an appeal only after a gun sale is prohibited. Mr. Cornyn said: “I think it’s a slippery slope when an American citizen is denied a constitutional right without forcing the government to come forward with some evidence on the front end, as opposed to leaving that on the back end. But we’ll see how the vote comes out. ” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said that there were numerous flaws in the Collins proposal, but Democrats ultimately were willing to consider the measure, noting that it would represent a breakthrough if adopted, given the opposition of the National Rifle Association. “It’ll be the first time that in a bipartisan way, with significant Republican support, the N. R. A. is told, ‘You’re way ’” Mr. Schumer said. Supporters of the Collins measure said they believed it was written strategically to avoid becoming ensnared in that old tug of war, by focusing on a simple goal: “no fly, no buy. ” Mr. Kaine, at one point pounding the wooden lectern in front of him, said: “I am sick of the shootings. I am sick of the vigils. I am sick of the homicide victims’ support groups. I am sick of the claims that we’ll do something about it. I am sick of the partisan rhetoric and I am really sick of getting to the end of all of it and not doing something about it, and seeing that happen again and again and again and again. ” | 0fake |
Young Catalan liberal rises in challenge to Rajoy's grip on Spanish power | MADRID (Reuters) - Forget the traditional Socialist opposition and perhaps even the Catalan separatists: the main threat to Spain s conservative prime minister may now come from a Barcelona politician dedicated to national unity - Ines Arrimadas. The 36-year-old leader of the liberal Ciudadanos party in Catalonia has jumped to the frontline of Spanish politics by coming out on top in elections to the region s assembly. Supporters even compare her performance with Emmanuel Macron s meteoric rise to the presidency across the border in France. Laying down the gauntlet to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the separatists alike, Arrimadas boosted her party s share of the vote to more than 25 percent in Thursday s snap election, up from just 7.6 percent two years ago. That made Ciudadanos ( Citizens ) the biggest group in the assembly, ahead of parties backing either more Catalan autonomy or outright independence which had won every regional election since the restoration of Spanish democracy in the 1970s. Arrimadas will struggle to form a regional coalition as collectively separatist parties achieved a narrow majority. Still, she celebrated victory with hundreds of supporters in the streets of Barcelona on Thursday night, flanked by her party s national leader, 38-year-old Albert Rivera. On Friday she made an appeal for unity following October s independence referendum which led to the Catalan leader fleeing the country, other separatists leaders landing in jail and Madrid imposing direct rule. Yesterday was a great night, a historic night and for me the start of reconciliation in Catalonia, even if sometimes things take a little longer than what we would expect, she told Onda Cero radio. Her performance echoed similarly strong showings from centrists in French presidential and legislative elections earlier this year, raising the hopes of Ciudadanos. This result is fully transferable to national politics, said Toni Roldan, a lawmaker for the party in the Spanish parliament who is also from Catalonia. It takes Ciudadanos to the next level and we will be competing on equal footing with Rajoy in the next Spanish election. Describing Arrimadas as a political jewel , Roldan said the choice for all Europeans was now between liberalism and populism. In this struggle, Ciudadanos stood alongside Macron - who beat far right candidate Marine Le Pen to the presidency - and was now ready to blow apart the traditional left-right divide in Spain, Roldan added. Ciudadanos, which has its roots in Catalonia, will need strong momentum if it is to threaten Rajoy s grip on power as the party came only fourth in last year s national election with 13.9 percent. An opinion poll taken before the Catalan vote put it still in fourth. However, alone among the major parties, its support was up to 17.5 percent, suggesting voters are being won over by its tough stance on Spanish unity and against corruption, as well as its young professional leaders. A veteran politician who has survived past crises, Rajoy leads a minority government and has yet to get a 2018 budget through parliament. However, he is under no immediate pressure as he can simply roll over the 2017 budget for months. Also, the opposition is so fractured that it probably cannot bring Rajoy down and no serious leadership rival has emerged within his traditional center-right Popular Party (PP). If the secessionists pursue their aims by negotiation, they too are unlikely to pose a great threat to Rajoy, who could also re-impose direct rule in the region if they decided to act unilaterally. Arrimadas was born in the Andalusian town of Jerez, far from Barcelona where she moved after completing a law degree. Her husband was a lawmaker for separatist leader Carles Puigdemont s party, before resigning in 2016 to avoid complicating her political rise. Both have said their passion for Barcelona football team brought them together. She was first elected as a Ciudadanos lawmaker in 2012 at 31, two years after a colleague at the consultancy where she worked in Barcelona had invited her to a party rally. The political and social situation was so serious that I felt the need to stop complaining from the sofa and go on to propose ideas and debate from parliament, she told an interviewer in 2015. Since then, her party has made a successful move into national politics, backing Rajoy s minority government although not joining it. Ciudadanos is creating the next big headache for Rajoy. They can extract concessions from the PP without any political cost. And if Rajoy fails to pass the budget because of the Catalan issue, he won t be able to blame Ciudadanos for the stalemate and a potential snap election, said Teneo Intelligence analyst Antonio Barroso. Barroso and other analysts said the moment of truth may come in the second half of 2018, should Rajoy have failed to normalize the situation in Catalonia. Rivals express grudging admiration for the party. Ciudadanos has managed to bring together all unionism in a technically perfect campaign, a source close to Puigdemont said on condition of anonymity. It is an artificial product that represents the feelings of many people. | 0fake |
UK says Briton kidnapped in Nigeria last month killed, three others released | LONDON (Reuters) - A Briton kidnapped in Nigeria last month has been killed with three others released after negotiations, Britain s Foreign Office said on Monday. The four Britons were taken hostage three weeks ago and although the British High Commission, with help from the Nigerian authorities secured the release of three of them, Ian Squire was killed, the Foreign Office (FCO) said in a statement. It said it was unable to give further details because of an ongoing investigation by the Nigerian authorities We are supporting the families of four British people who were abducted on October 13 in Nigeria, one of whom was tragically killed, the statement said. This has clearly been a traumatic time for all concerned, and our staff will continue to do all we can to support the families. A statement from the families of Squire and the other hostages, Alanna Carson, David Donovan and Shirley Donovan, said the last three weeks had been traumatic for the relatives and friends of those involved. We are delighted and relieved that Alanna, David and Shirley have returned home safely. Our thoughts are now with the family and friends of Ian as we come to terms with his sad death, their statement said. | 0fake |
This Lawyer Just Obliterated The GOP’s Interpretation Of Comey’s Remarks (TWEETS) | Lawyers, especially on Twitter, like giving their own legal opinions on things to their followers. Some of them will try and explain legal matters happening in the nation s capital, and they don t always agree, but they always have insight for us laypeople. Seth Abramson, one such lawyer, has been tweeting threads explaining some of what s happening, and he just posted one that s pretty damning for the GOP.The GOP is calling Comey s testimony a win for Trump. The fact that they would be so obviously false is just amazing, and not in an I didn t expect this, way. Abramson calls them out on that by rehashing Comey s testimony in a series of 21 tweets. Two particular tweets allude to the GOP s, and Trump s, insistence that Comey proved Trump was not under investigation today:(3) The President of the United States IS under criminal investigation for felony Obstruction of Justice by Special Counsel Bill Mueller. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017(4) Comey told Trump he WASN T under *counter-intelligence* investigation but KNEW that that assessment could well change and STILL might. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017Comey testified that he wouldn t tell the world that he told Trump he was not personally under investigation because he didn t want to create a duty to correct the record later. If he publicly stated that Trump wasn t under investigation, and that changed, he d have to correct the record. He went down that road with Hillary Clinton s email investigation. He knew where it led. He didn t want to further damage the FBI s credibility by going down that road again.None of that changes the fact that Special Prosecutor Mueller is investigating Trump for obstruction of justice a probe that includes Comey s contemporaneous memos.Then there s this, which the GOP hasn t yet addressed and seems to have completely forgotten:(5) President Trump never ONCE talked with Comey about ways to STOP Russian cyberattacks nor expressed ANY concern on that score to the FBI. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017(18) Of the THOUSANDS of open FBI investigations, the ONLY one Trump ever asked his FBI Director about was an investigation of HIS campaign. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017As far as Comey s testimony goes, Trump was only concerned about himself. As Comey put it, [W]e re talking about a foreign government using technical intrusion and lots of other methods tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act And people need to recognize that They re coming after America. Someone needs to ask why Trump doesn t find that concerning.Abramson brings up a major, solid point about Comey s behavior during his testimony. While he answered some questions with I don t know, and, I m not sure, he also had a very strong recollection of the meeting in the Oval Office that prompted him to ask Jeff Sessions to not leave him alone with Trump again:(12) Comey s recollection of these events is SO IRONCLAD he knew who sat where, which doors he used SO MUCH DETAIL he CANNOT be impeached. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017Abramson s final take on Comey s testimony today is that we got far more damaging information today than we did yesterday, despite more fireworks being launched during yesterday s hearing. You can read the entire thread here.Featured image via Doug Mills -Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
Bangladesh Attack Is New Evidence That ISIS Has Shifted Its Focus Beyond the Mideast - The New York Times | DHAKA, Bangladesh — The cook was crouching in a washroom, taking refuge from the gunmen who had invaded the Holey Artisan Bakery, when he understood that there was a logic behind the killing: The people in the restaurant were being sorted. “Bengali people, come out,” one gunman shouted. When the cook, Sumir Barai, and eight other men opened the bathroom door, trembling, they saw two young men, clean shaven and dressed in jeans and . “You don’t need to be so tense,” one of the men told them. “We will not kill Bengalis. We will only kill foreigners. ” At that, Mr. Barai’s gaze flicked to the floor of the restaurant, where he could see six or seven bodies, apparently shot and then sliced with machetes. All appeared to be foreigners. The gunmen, he said, seemed eager to see their actions amplified on social media: After killing the patrons, they asked the staff to turn on the restaurant’s wireless network. Then they used customers’ telephones to post images of the bodies on the internet. Friday night’s assault on the Holey Artisan Bakery in the diplomatic district of Dhaka, in which at least 20 hostages and two police officers were killed, marks a scaling up of ambition and capacity for Bangladesh’s Islamist militancy, which has until now carried out pinpoint assassinations, mostly of critics of Islam and members of religious minorities. Among the dead from Friday’s attack, the police said, were nine Italians, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshis, one American and one Indian. The attack also suggests that Bangladesh’s militant networks are internationalizing, a key concern as the United States seeks to contain the growth of the Islamic State. Bangladesh’s 160 million people are almost all Sunni Muslims, including a demographic bulge under the age of 25. This makes it valuable as a recruiting ground for the Islamic State, now under pressure in its core territory of Iraq and Syria. Western intelligence officials have been watching the organization pivot to missions elsewhere in the world, launching attacks on civilian targets that are difficult to deter with traditional military campaigns. “We need to take serious stock of the overall threat,” said Shafqat Munir, a research fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies. “There were all sorts of warnings and signs and everything. But I don’t think anyone expected anything as audacious and as this. ” It was a slow night at the restaurant. Eighteen people had reserved seats at the Holey Artisan Bakery, whose crusty loaves of bread and piles of homemade pasta offered a respite from the sticky, clamorous city that surrounded it. Seven Italian friends had gathered around one table, and three or four at a second, recalled Diego Rossini, a chef who is from Argentina. Someone had just ordered an Italian pasta dish, and Mr. Rossini made his way to the kitchen, preparing for a much larger crowd that was expected at 9:30 p. m. But at 8:45, a young men entered, carrying heavy bags of weaponry, including grenades and long rifles. Mr. Rossini, the chef, fled to the roof. He heard screams, and shouts of “Allahu akbar,” as the gunmen sought out patrons who were hiding. “There were a lot of foreigners,” he told Canal 5 Noticias, an Argentine cable news station. “That’s who they were particularly looking for. ” Even as they killed the foreigners, the attackers were unfailingly polite and solicitous with the restaurant staff and other Bangladeshis, Mr. Barai said. They took the staff into their confidence, complaining that foreigners, with their skimpy clothes and taste for alcohol, were impeding the spread of Islam. “Their lifestyle is encouraging local people to do the same thing,” a militant said. They asked the staff to make coffee and tea and serve it to the remaining hostages. At 3:30 a. m. when Muslims eat a predawn meal before fasting, they asked the kitchen staff to prepare and serve dishes of fish and shrimp, he said. Mr. Barai recalls being puzzled by the attackers, who spoke cosmopolitan Bengali, and even some English, when conversing with the foreigners. “They were all smart and handsome and educated,” he said. “If you look at those guys, nobody could believe they could do this. ” In the predawn hours, the militants lectured their captives on religious practices, instructing the kitchen staff to say regular prayers and study the Quran. Early in the morning, the gunmen released a group of women wearing hijabs and offered a young Bangladeshi man, Faraz Hossain, the opportunity to leave, too, said Hishaam Hossain, Mr. Hossain’s nephew, who had heard an account from the hostages who were freed. Mr. Hossain, a student at Emory University, was accompanied by two women wearing Western clothes, however, and when the gunmen asked the women where they were from, they said India and the United States. The gunmen refused to release them, and Mr. Hossain refused to leave them behind, his relative said. He would be among those found dead on Saturday morning. In the hours after the gunmen appeared, hundreds of police officers massed outside the restaurant compound’s walls, but an attempted raid was repulsed by a grenade, killing two officers and injuring more than 20. Mr. Rossini, who was on the roof, frantically texted his location over social media. “It was practically impossible for the police to get in,” he said later. The restaurant was like a little fort, and the police had to wait for the army. A senior police official, speaking to a reporter on the condition of anonymity, said that the police tried unsuccessfully to establish contact with the captors, who never passed on any demands. The night crept on with painful slowness in the crowded washroom, where Mr. Barai and the eight other men were again locked in, this time by the gunmen. At 1:44 a. m. Mr. Barai messaged a cousin, who was only a few yards away, outside the police cordon. “What is the news on the outside?” His cousin typed back that a Rapid Action Battalion, Bangladesh’s elite counterterrorism squad, was now involved in the operation. “They are not doing anything right now so you people don’t become victims,” he wrote. Mr. Barai passed on the name of a who could lead authorities to the washroom. “We are here,” he typed. “If possible break the wall of the toilet and rescue us. ” As dawn approached, Mr. Barai feared that the men would suffocate in the cubicle, which measures about four feet by four feet. “Please come to the toilet quickly as it is very difficult inside the toilet. ” After that, when Mr. Barai’s cousin called his number, there was no answer the cousin, seated on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, began to sob. In an meeting at her residence, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had authorized a military raid, but that required transporting a team of commandos via from Sylhet, roughly 150 miles from the capital. Shortly after sunrise, dozens of armed personnel carriers formed columns in the lanes around the restaurant. Mr. Barai said the surviving hostages sensed that the siege was ending. During the long hours that passed inside the restaurant, the gunmen made it clear that they expected to die, Mr. Barai said. One of them calmly said as much. “You see what we did here,” the militant said, pointing to the bodies around. “The same thing is going to happen to us now. ” At 7:30 a. m. he said, the militants told them: “We are leaving. See you in heaven. ” They were getting ready to walk out the door, he said, when the commandos stormed the restaurant. | 0fake |
Donald Trump, the Unsinkable Candidate - The New York Times | This American presidential election is a dizzying wonder: a torrent of outrages, gaffes and dramas, where one story blurs into the next, most of it driven by the Republican contender, Donald J. Trump. With such a ferocious pace it’s easy to lose sight of the details, especially when it comes to Mr. Trump. So here’s a quick summary of what voters have learned in recent weeks. ■ The attorney general of New York has started an investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation. At issue is a $25, 000 donation, made three years ago, in support of a Florida official who was weighing possible fraud charges against Mr. Trump. No charges were brought, and the official became a supporter of Mr. Trump. ■ Reporters have uncovered evidence that Mr. Trump spent $20, 000 of his charity’s money on a tall painting of himself. It was sent to one of his private golf clubs. ■ There have been new accounts of widespread discrimination against black people at Mr. Trump’s New York properties during the 1970s. ■ Last Friday, he finally admitted that “birtherism” — the racially tinged smear of President Obama he repeated for five years — was, in fact, a lie. Instead of apologizing, Mr. Trump said the baseless conspiracy theory was started by his rival, Hillary Clinton — which was itself untrue. In a conventional race, any of these revelations, slanders or gaffes might be enough to torpedo a candidate. Not Mr. Trump. A New York News poll published last week found he enjoys support among 44 percent of likely voters, a shade behind the 46 percent backing Mrs. Clinton. She remains the outright favorite, thanks to an electoral system that is based on results. Still, her supporters have reason for concern. According to my colleagues at The Upshot, The New York Times’s report, Mr. Trump’s chances of victory have jumped to 26 percent as of Monday evening from 10 percent in August. Another respected website, FiveThirtyEight, put his chances at 40. 6 percent on Monday morning. Mrs. Clinton’s Achilles heel is well known: A majority of Americans neither like nor trust her. If Mr. Trump is Teflon, Mrs. Clinton must be Velcro: Every transgression, real or perceived, from her career in politics stubbornly sticks to her. When it comes to Mr. Trump, though, his enduring popularity is a mystery. Mr. Trump was among the first to note his ability to defy the laws of political gravity. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters,” he said in January. What’s remarkable now is how, after months of withering scrutiny — including accusations of graft, malfeasance and racism — he remains apparently immune to the effects of negative news. This is a conundrum that has perplexed many New York Times readers who live abroad. “Trump has sleaze written all over his face and behavior,” Neil Douglas, a retired teacher from Canada, wrote in an email that echoed a common sentiment. “Why can’t Americans see through his braggadocio?” In other countries, and other campaigns, politicians have been derailed by much less. In 2014, the British culture secretary, Maria Miller, resigned over a $10, 000 discrepancy in her expense report. In 2012, Mitt Romney’s challenge to Mr. Obama suffered a major blow after he made a comment that criticized 47 percent of the electorate. American congressional candidates have also been wrecked by comments: In 2012, Todd Akin, a Republican from Missouri, crashed out of the Senate race soon after he made a misguided statement about “legitimate rape. ” Yet in choosing their president, many American voters seem prepared to accept nearly anything Mr. Trump says or does. He has praised the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, and invited foreign hackers to breach American servers. He has aired crackpot conspiracy theories, such as one linking the father of Senator Ted Cruz, his Republican primary rival, to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (His source: The National Enquirer, better known for celebrity gossip and stories about U. F. O. s) He has defended the size of his penis, and suggested gun owners might take matters “into their hands” should Mrs. Clinton come to power. It can go wrong for Mr. Trump, a former reality TV star, as demonstrated by his undignified feud with the family of Capt. Humayun Khan, a fallen Muslim American soldier — a confrontation that appeared to mark the limit of his brash, undisciplined brand of politics. Critics say it is only a matter of time before he shoots himself in the foot again, setting off a fresh plunge in popularity. For now, Mr. Trump appears to be wearing down his critics’ capacity for outrage. Protests still occur at his campaign rallies, like the one in North Carolina last week when a woman was punched in the face. But the impassioned clashes of last spring, when rival groups squared off against each other after his speeches, have become more rare. In part, Mr. Trump’s endurance is a product of sheer churn — the endless stream of his own provocations. “There’s been so many scandals, so much outrage, that it’s hard to focus on any one of them,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative talk show host and Trump critic. Mr. Sykes turned on Mr. Trump because he said that the candidate was damaging true conservatism. These days, that frequently brings him into conflict with callers to his own show, who refuse to countenance any criticism of Mr. Trump. “They don’t want to hear it,” he said. “They want their biases confirmed. ” That points to another underlying theme of this election: the vicious polarization of America’s news media. More voters than ever are getting their news from the walled gardens of Facebook and other social media sites, where views often reinforce one another. And on mainstream channels like Fox News, conspiracy theories that were once limited to the fringes of the internet are getting an airing. As a result, public trust in the media has collapsed. A Gallup poll published last week found that 32 percent of Americans trust the news media’s ability to “report the news fully, accurately and fairly” — the lowest figure since Gallup started the poll in 1972. The partisan breakdown of trust is even more stark, with 14 percent of Republicans saying they trust the news media, compared with 51 percent of Democrats. On Sunday night, Mr. Obama blamed media “misinformation” for what he predicts will be a close race in November. Can any story, or revelation, hurt Mr. Trump’s Teflon qualities at this stage? Mr. Sykes, the radio host, said he believed Mr. Trump had fostered a “cult of personality” among conservatives that has few parallels in the history of American politics, “except maybe in fiction. ” “It doesn’t matter what he says, or what his ideas are,” Mr. Sykes said. “It’s about the persona. He’s the strong man. And he’s apparently figured out a way to bond with millions of Americans. ” With seven weeks until the vote, Mrs. Clinton needs to find a way to break that bond. Her next opportunity could come at the first presidential debate, on Sept. 26, at Hofstra University on Long Island. Mr. Trump may ultimately do the work for her: His bluster, lies and insults could eventually drag him down. But to ensure victory, Mrs. Clinton will also need to overcome her handicap. The high levels of voter distrust, unique in a modern presidential leave her vulnerable. | 0fake |
Comment on Due Process is Dead: A Staggering 95% of All Inmates in America Have Never Received a Trial by Raymond Karczewski | Home / Be The Change / Government Corruption / Due Process is Dead: A Staggering 95% of All Inmates in America Have Never Received a Trial Due Process is Dead: A Staggering 95% of All Inmates in America Have Never Received a Trial Claire Bernish January 25, 2016 268 Comments
In the Land of the Free, one-quarter of the entire planet’s prison population, some 2.2 million people, currently languish behind bars; yet, an astonishing number of them — around 2 million — have never been to trial . Indeed, these figures categorically debunk the notion the criminal justice system in the United States maintains any semblance of its formation’s original intent: to ensure the guilty suffer punishment befitting their crimes, while the innocent avoid false conviction.
As the fundamental basis for the justice system in the United States, the Sixth Amendment states: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”
Justice, as an untold — though no doubt, appalling — number can attest, has been utterly abandoned for the interests of the careless expedience , apathetic convenience, and unabashed profiteering of the U.S. prison-industrial machine.
“The reality is that almost no one who is imprisoned in America has gotten a trial,” explains award-winning journalist, Chris Hedges, in a recent Truthdig column . “There is rarely an impartial investigation. A staggering 97 percent of all federal cases and 95 percent of all state felony cases are resolved through plea bargaining.” Of those millions who bargained away their right to a trial by accepting plea deals, “significant percentages of them are innocent.”
Plea bargaining failed in its attempt to facilitate pragmatic justice seen in earlier courts, before the advent of the “adversary system and the related development of the law of evidence,” as John H. Langein once described . After the Civil War, as Judge Jed S. Rakoff explained in the New York Review of Books , rising crime and immigration rates began to burden the system and plea bargains offered an acceptable solution. In other words, court proceedings were at one time swift and simple, and though such expediency might have seemed a desirable quality in the past, the incontrovertible reality at present is a system wholly focused on speed at the expense of the necessary — in fact, imperative — assumption of innocence of the accused.
Indeed, for incontrovertible proof the court system no longer functions for the people — neither in its capacity to protect the public from the actual criminals, nor in its ostensible assurances no innocent person will be punished unfairly — take even a cursory glance at the trial system. Plea bargains have actualized a replacement of justice with a farcical, well-oiled machine of incarceration. “In actuality,” as Rakoff described, “our criminal justice system is almost exclusively a system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors and with no judicial oversight. The outcome is very largely determined by the prosecutor alone.”
Of all federal criminal cases, “fewer than 3 percent went to trial. The plea bargains largely determined the sentences imposed.”
Plea deals are presented to defendants as a way to escape the near certainty of a heavy-handed sentence should they be found guilty by a jury at trial — because defense attorneys’ and prosecutors’ most pressing goal is to prevent a trial in the first place. “Once you are charged in America,” Hedges said, “whether you did the crime or not, you are almost always found guilty.”
In part, such ‘unconditional guilt’ begat the need for The Innocence Project — “a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.” Since 1989, there have been 337 DNA-related exonerations with individuals having served a combined total of around 4,606 unjustified years — an average of 14 years, each, before being freed. Of those 337 cases, 31 individuals , who had served over 150 combined years, “pled guilty to crimes they didn’t commit — usually seeking to avoid the potential for a long sentence (or a death sentence),” states The Innocence Project’s website.
“If all of the accused went to trial, the judicial system, which is designed around plea agreements, would collapse. And this is why trial sentences are horrific. It is why public attorneys routinely urge their clients to accept a plea arrangement. Trials are a flashing red light to the accused: DO NOT DO THIS. It is the inversion of justice. ” Of the students he teaches in prison, those “who have the longest sentences are usually the ones who demanded a trial.”
While the rich and powerful, especially those associated with corporations and banks , are able to escape significant punishment — even when their crimes affect millions of people, such as those complicit in the 2008 financial crash — the poor, whether guilty or not, fall victim to this slanted system. As Hedges summarized:
“If you are poor, you will be railroaded in an assembly-line production, from a town or city where there are no jobs, through the police stations, county jails and courts directly into prison. And if you are poor, because you don’t have any money for adequate legal defense, you will serve sentences that are decades longer than those for equivalent crimes anywhere else in the industrialized world … Being poor has become a crime. And this makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.” Share | 1real |
Four French schoolchildren killed as train plows into bus | PARIS (Reuters) - Four adolescents were killed when a train smashed into a school bus on a level crossing outside the town of Perpignan in southwestern France on Thursday. Images from the scene showed the bus split in two, with a long line of emergency vehicles on an approach to the crossing. Another 20 people were injured in the crash, 11 of them seriously, according to French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who traveled immediately to the scene. Most of the injured were schoolchildren aboard the bus, aged 13-17. Philippe told reporters the authorities were focused on getting accurate information to families, a process made difficult by the question of identification of those who have died and some of the injured. A crisis coordination center has been set up at Millas town hall on Perpignan s western outskirts, about 850 kilometers (530 miles) from Paris. According to local media reports, the bus was transporting pupils from the town s Christian Bourquin college. All my thoughts (are with) the victims and their families, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter. The causes of the crash are unknown, pending a full investigation, officials said. The bus and train drivers both survived and will be interviewed by police. The train was carrying 25 passengers and traveling at 80 kmh, the regulatory speed for the section of track where the collision occurred, a spokeswoman for the national SNCF railway told Reuters. Three train passengers sustained relatively minor injuries, according to the interior ministry. Witnesses had reported that the barriers of the crossing were down at the moment of impact, the SNCF spokeswoman said, adding that all such preliminary information was subject to confirmation by investigators. France has suffered several serious rail accidents in recent decades. One of the deadliest was in 1988, when a commuter train heading into Paris Gare de Lyon crashed into a stationary train, killing 56 people, after its brakes failed. | 0fake |
Meteor Puts on a Light Show Over Midwest, and for the Cameras - The New York Times | A fiery meteor streaked across the Midwest sky early Monday morning, seen as far west as Nebraska and as far east as New York. Unfortunately for scientists who would like to study where it came from and how it got here (although perhaps fortunately for people living in the vicinity) all of the surviving bits of rock plopped into Lake Michigan. The American Meteor Society has received more than 350 reports from witnesses of the green fireball, which occurred around 1:25 a. m. local time. William B. Cook, a NASA meteor expert, reported in a email to NASA headquarters that the fireball originated about 60 miles above West Bend, Wis. moving about 38, 000 miles an hour toward the northeast before disintegrating about 21 miles above Lake Michigan. As the meteor fell apart, it emitted sounds that were recorded in the Canadian province of Manitoba, about 600 miles away. The blast released energy that was equal to at least 10 tons of TNT, Dr. Cook said, suggesting that the object that entered the atmosphere was at least 600 pounds and two feet in diameter. Most of the reports came from Wisconsin and Illinois. Michael Hankey of the American Meteor Society said such fireballs happen every day somewhere, but only rarely — perhaps four a year — do they occur over populated areas of the United States where the light show can be captured by dashboard cameras, security cameras and night owls carrying cellphones. “There were just a ton of videos,” Mr. Hankey said. “That was unique. ” Marc D. Fries, another NASA scientist, said that weather radar captured the shower of meteorites and that he was analyzing the data to estimate the masses of the meteorites and where they fell. From the multitude of reports, scientists should be able to calculate the trajectory of the object, which most likely originated in the asteroid belt. (An asteroid is a rock orbiting in the inner solar system, usually between Mars and Jupiter. A meteor is the streak of light as an asteroid enters the atmosphere. A meteorite is an asteroid remnant that makes it to the ground.) Philipp R. Heck, a scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, said the fireball seemed comparable to one that fell over a southern suburb of Chicago in 2003. Meteorites as heavy as several pounds hit the ground, some damaging homes. With the asteroid remnants, scientists could study the mineralogy in detail, even estimating how many million years it took for the asteroid to cross paths with Earth. But it is unlikely that anyone will find pieces of Monday’s meteor. Mr. Hankey said the biggest meteorites were probably the size of baseballs, sunk in the sediments at the bottom of Lake Michigan. “Good luck finding that,” he said. | 0fake |
Germany expects close relationship with new Austrian government | BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany expects to work closely together with Austria s new government, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Monday when asked if Berlin had reservations about the presence in the new coalition of a far-right party. We are open to and prepared for a close and trusting relationship with the new Austrian government, Seibert told a regular news conference held some minutes after the new Vienna government, a coalition of the centre-right with the far-right Freedom Party, was sworn in. Asked if he had concerns about cooperating with a foreign ministry or security services under the control of far-right ministers, he said: We do not comment on ministerial assignments, especially not those made by our friends and neighbours. | 0fake |
Retaliating For Killings, Egypt Launches Airstrikes Against ISIS In Libya | " 'Your armed forces on Monday carried out focused air strikes in Libya against Daesh camps, places of gathering and training, and weapons depots,' the military said in a statement, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
"It was the first time Egypt confirmed launching air strikes against the group in neighboring Libya, suggesting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is ready to escalate his battle against militants seeking to topple his government.
"The military said the dawn strike, in which Libya's air force also participated, 'achieved its targets accurately' and the pilots returned to base safely, the Egyptian military said, as state television ran brief footage of a fighter plane taking off in darkness." | 0fake |
Obama's not-so-secret admirer: Donald Trump | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has a new fan: Donald Trump. After lambasting Obama for months as a failed leader unfit to be president, the Republican president-elect found kinder words on Tuesday for the man he will succeed in the White House on Jan. 20 “I didn’t know if I’d like him. I probably thought that maybe I wouldn’t, but I did. I really enjoyed him a lot,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Times. Obama, a Democrat, met with Trump at the Oval Office on Nov. 10, two days after the presidential election. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said earlier on Tuesday the two had spoken again since then, citing Obama’s commitment to a smooth transfer of power, but offered no other details. “I had a great meeting with President Obama,” Trump told the Times. “I really liked him a lot.” Obama, who had his own harsh words for Trump as he campaigned for Democrat Hillary Clinton, has made clear he would put the bitterness of the campaign aside to ensure a smooth transition of power and protect a pillar of American democracy. Trump told the newspaper that Obama talked to him about what he considered the country’s biggest problems, one problem in particular that the president-elect did not mention, according to Twitter posts by Times reporters. Trump, who has vowed to undo a number of initiatives Obama holds dear, appeared conciliatory toward the president whose U.S. citizenship he had long questioned. “He said very nice things after the meeting and I said very nice things about him,” Trump said of Obama, according to the Times. | 0fake |
In Search of Lost Me Time - The New York Times | In retrospect, maybe I placed too much significance on that first trip alone after my son was born. For the first year of his life I had barely spent a single night away from him, so it was only natural that I saw this trip as a precious chance to be, however briefly, a sane adult again. The trip was only for one night to a city where I would stay in a hotel and deliver a talk in the evening. The place itself did not matter — it could have been anywhere. Instead, it was the promise of travel, of not being home and on duty that seduced me. Somehow the whole experience became a for everything that I had lost as a new father: I would be able to sleep in! I could drink more than one beer! I could drink 1, 000 beers! I could have a solo electronic dance party to early Kraftwerk records! I could dress up like a robot! I could play Ouija board with myself! (Apparently I have a very strange definition of being “an adult. ”) This is not to say I begrudged fatherhood. On the contrary, I loved my new human more than I thought possible, as if there were a hidden water tower of love mounted somewhere just above my gallbladder that released its spout only when I saw him emerge into the world. Mothers have nine months to adjust to the realness of this creature’s presence they feel the kicks and the morning sickness and the general hormonal tempest of gestation. Fathers can’t truly wrap their heads around a child’s existence until he or she actually appears: We have to play catch up in approximately 10 seconds, which is why at the moment of birth many of us weep or faint or start singing Whitney Houston songs. But we are allowed to dream, yes? We are allowed to pine for that simpler time before swaddle blankets and sleep cries, when time was still our time, unplanned and marvelously flexible, when we could watch an entire season of “Six Feet Under” in one sitting because … well, what else were we going to do? When every evening out did not also include a complex babysitter calculus (“These previews alone are costing me $10! ”) So my little trip became a surrogate for this glorious period from my past: We’ll call it B. B. V. (Before Baby Vomit). Funny that I took great pleasure in planning out my of this supposedly unplanned time. Perhaps, like me, you are one of those travelers who also takes great pleasure in meticulously designing a trip, in marinating in all the little delicious possibilities of getting from point A to point B. Oh, that restaurant supposedly serves the best carnitas tacos north of the Arctic Circle? Be still my beating heart. I often find the anticipation of a journey is much more enjoyable than the journey itself, which can frequently feel like a letdown, mired in such phenomena as “that hairball smell from the hotel bathroom that won’t go away. ” Reality never quite measures up to the unattainable perfection of the imaginary destination. So it was with great gusto that I filled up my imaginary day on the lam: I would go see a terrible movie! In the daytime! I would go to a barbecue restaurant! I would order a starter and a main course! I would take a bath! I would meet an old friend at a bar! Afterward we would go to another bar! Then I would sleep. My God, I would sleep. Just dreaming of this possibility of uninterrupted slumber was enough to sustain me for weeks of baby fluid management. The time for my trip came. It started off wonderfully. At the seventh circle of hell we call Newark Liberty International Airport I was amazed at how easily I breezed through and security without the usual accouterments of . I felt almost guilty. Out of habit, I helped a solo mom unfold her stroller coming off the belt. “Thank you,” she said, . Who was this shoeless man? she must have been thinking. “I have one too,” I said then held up my hands as if I had just lost him somewhere in the airport. The airport was perhaps the highlight of the trip. I walked and browsed. I had a beer! (This felt very indulgent. I didn’t know those people in airport bars were actual travelers. I always assumed they were all actors hired to lend the terminal a certain ambience.) Yet everywhere I went I couldn’t escape this feeling as if I had lost something essential. Keys, wallet, cellphone … hmmm. It was eerie. I examined every baby I passed, guessed their age, noted pacifier brand and travel stroller design. (Wow! That thing is tiny! I wonder how it handles the bumps?) I went into a gift shop and browsed through ugly “I♥NYC” onesies. Wait … what the hell was going on? What had I become? Before my scheduled talk in the evening, I went to my terrible daytime movie (“Jupiter Ascending”). I was the only person in the theater so I took great pleasure in discovering how high I could throw my Raisinets and still have a reasonable chance of catching them in my mouth. I went swimming in the hotel pool without fear of exploding swim diapers or dry drowning baby lungs. After my talk I enjoyed a (wait for it) barbecue dinner. Yet everything still seemed slightly off. I missed the feeling of anticipating this trip, of dreaming of solo adulthood. In the flesh, solo adulthood felt kind of … boring. Later, I met my old friend for a drink. Our friendship originated deep in the time before marriage and kids, deep in the B. B. V. back when we wore flannel and still thought Jack Kerouac was a good writer. I tried to put on a good face, tried to imagine us drinking until dawn, when we would go jump naked into a polluted river, but I was so tired from not being a father for a day I felt short of breath and almost fell off my bar stool. I could barely make it through one beer. “How’s fatherhood?” he asked. I could tell he was giving me the opening to rant against all of the lost sleep and endless responsibilities. We could talk women and drugs and the dream of the open road. “Actually I kind of miss it,” I said. “It’s hard to be away. ” He looked at me with great sadness. We mourned, he and I. Then I fell off my bar stool. The bed at the hotel was approximately one acre wide. There were no babies in it. I shed my clothes and fell into its vast territory. I called home to see if everyone was O. K. mining for mundane details (“So wait — he didn’t like pineapple? What is he, crazy? ”) and then set my alarm for 16 hours in the future, worried that I might miss my flight if I went all Rip Van Winkle up in here. How long was it physically possible for one man to sleep? I did not go all Rip Van Winkle up in here. Instead, I woke up two hours later. Confused, I listened for my son’s cries but heard only the dull, anonymous hum of hotel . I lay there for an hour, pondering my uselessness before finally drifting off, only to wake up again at 5 a. m. from a nightmare in which my son was choking on chunks of pineapple. Back at the airport the next day, exhausted and disoriented, I walked right past the bar full of background actors and bought a stuffed lion and an alphabet book at a garish kiosk. I read part of the alphabet book to the bemused cashier. “L is for lion,” I assured her. I could never go back to B. B. V. to the time of no time. That ship had sailed. But then I was beginning to realize the imaginary could never quite measure up to the unattainable perfection of reality. For now, I found myself looking forward to the ideal destination, a place full of exploding diapers and sleepless nights and water towers of love: home. | 0fake |
BREAKING WIKILEAKS BOMBSHELL! Murdered DNC Staffer Seth Rich Was DNC LEAKER: “He Was My Whistleblower” | Conspiracy theories have been surrounding the murder of Seth Rich. They reached a new frenzy after the hacking of DNC e-mails led to the resignation of its chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.Rich was beaten, shot and killed early on the morning of July 8 while he was walking home and talking on the phone to his girlfriend. Police have said they haven t determined if his murder was a botched robbery or something else. The killer or killers appear to have taken nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone.Wikileaks just confirmed murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was the source of the DNC leak.Wikileaks released a series direct messages from US alleged Russian spy Guccifer 2.0 to actress model Robbin Young (according to Young).In the stream of texts the discussion leads to the DNC leaker.His name is Seth ** In November Julian Assange said Russia did not hack into the DNC servers. -h/t GP Here s the proof:Direct Messages from U.S. alleged Russian spy @GUCCIFER_2 to actress-model @robbin_young (according to the latter) https://t.co/uMsB9WgxRQ WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 8, 2017Actress Robbin Young claims she had given this information she received from Guccifer 2.0 to the authorities but, no one cared :https://twitter.com/Robbin_Young/status/850743524953702404Actress Robbin Young states that Guccifer 2.0 told her, i m eager to find facts about seth, i m sure it wasn t just a robbery. seth was assassinated. :Guccifer 2.0 said, "i'm eager to find fact about seth, i'm sure it wasn't just a robbery. seth was assassinated." #SethRich Robbin Young (@Robbin_Young) March 29, 2017In June 2016,the hacker Guccifer 2.0 claimed responsibility for breaking into the Democratic National Committee s servers, lifting opposition research the DNC had gathered, including a 200-page document focused on presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.The hacker s moniker is an homage to Guccifer, the nom de guerre of Romanian hacker Marcel Lazar who claimed a previous hack into Hillary Clinton s private email server and is now awaiting prosecution for cybercrimes. RTWhile Wikileaks Julian Assange was being interviewed by John Pilger, he brought up the death of Seth Rich. Watch Assange s strange and somewhat cagey reply.Here is part of the conversation:Julian Assange: Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. As a 27 year-old, works for the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.Reporter: That was just a robbery, I believe. Wasn t it?Julian Assange: No. There s no finding. So I m suggesting that our sources take risks.Watch it again in slow motion below:Watch Assange answer question about Seth Rich s murder again in slow-motion: THE RUSSIA HOAX: Julian Assange acknowledges murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was Wikileaks source. Why is MSM covering this up? #Trump pic.twitter.com/FS297JooQI ViveLaFrance (@vivelafra) December 11, 2016Seth Rich s parents explain what happened only moments before his death. He was the Voter Expansion Data Director for the DNC. His parents say he was, Making sure everyone who wanted to vote, had the opportunity :Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a lead saying that Rich was en route to the FBI that fateful morning, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an ongoing court case possibly involving the Clinton family.More recently, Wikileaks s thousands of DNC emails and voice mails have piqued Reddit s interest, with Redditors combing through years of communications looking for any clue to Rich s murder.The theory is apparently based on Julian Assange s recent ITV appearance, where he scoffed at the idea that Russian hackers could be responsible for the data dump, and said that anyone within the Democrats organization could easily have sent Wikileaks the offending messages.Given that Rich as a DNC staffer presumably would have had some access to its servers, Reddit is absolutely positive Rich paid the ultimate price for exposing Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC s crusade against Bernie Sanders. HeatstreetGo HERE for fascinating timeline of events leading up to the brutal murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich. | 1real |
Virgil: The Age of the Lion: Donald Trump Puts America First | First of Two Parts … A lion isn’t always beloved, but it is always respected, even feared. In his inaugural address today at the Capitol, President Donald Trump roared, and decades’ worth of vapid orthodoxy melted away. As Trump said, his inaugural ceremony was more than a transfer of power from one administration to another, or from one party to another. Instead, it was something much more profound: “We are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people. ” It’s a safe bet that everyone in Powertown heard those words and realized, full well, that the were directed against them, their lifestyle, their and their overall worldview. Yet Trump was just getting warmed up: For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. As the headline atop The Drudge Report blared, “Trump eviscerates Washington. ” And Trump means to move fast, starting with executive orders. As he said, “The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. ” And it was the voice of the lion that added, “When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. There should be no fear. ” Unfortunately, some Americans will be fearful, even if they have no true reason to be afraid. As Trump said, extending his open hand to all Americans: It’s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots. We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag. And yet a few, those among the DC elite, have good reason to be afraid — very afraid. On the campaign trail, Trump always said, “Drain the swamp!” And today he proved that he meant it. Of course, Powertown won’t give up its power easily. So yes, it will be a fight. But then, every lion knows that, from birth, it is destined to fight what Trump said of America is also true of himself: “A nation is only living as long as it is striving. ” Then he closed on a deeply leonine note: Together we will make America strong again, we will make America wealthy again, we will make America proud again, we will make America safe again. And, yes, together we will make America great again. Virgil believes that Trump’s speech marks a watershed in American history. That is, in recent decades, it had been possible for a president to natter on about America’s duties to the world as a whole, and yet it was seen as gauche to talk about America’s duties to itself, and to her people. But that all changed today. It was Trump who spoke of “carnage” in our cities (and what other word could one use to describe, for example, the nearly 800 murders in Chicago last year, part of an overall 14 percent rise? ). It was Trump who spoke also of “ factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation. ” Yet now, in the era, both his political opponents today and his wannabe successors in the future will have to embrace at least the thought behind Trump’s stark imagery and tough thinking. That is, now that 45th president has set the 2017 baseline as being one of bloodshed and despair, it won’t be possible, in the years to come, for Democrat challengers to emphasize, instead, climate change and bathrooms. Moreover, now that Trump has invoked the power of the American people, the Democrats will not be well advised to resume their effort to weaponize the federal government and the judiciary against the values of the middle class. As the Democrats discovered in 2016, that’s the way to lose elections. And at the same time, Republicans are on notice to cool it with the libertarian jargon of “job creators” and “makers vs. takers. ” As Trump has said many times, people on Social Security, Medicare, and VA benefits have already given their fair share they don’t deserve to be lumped in with welfare recipients. In particular, the GOP should note Trump’s use today of the old word, “solidarity. ” That’s what the American people voted for in November, and that’s what the Republican wants as well. Meanwhile, heedless to the tectonic changes Trump is forcing, the MSM and the culture still trashes him at every opportunity, even at the risk of descending into total . To cite just two of thousands of possible examples, The New Republic headlined one piece on the 20th, “Welcome to the Trump Dark Age. ” And The Wrap, an entertainment publication, offered this headline, “Women’s March May Outshine Trump Inauguration. ” Yes, that’s the ticket. Except for one thing: Trump will be the 45th president when the marchers have all gone home. In fact, the MSM and the cultureplex have joined together to establish a “meme” about which they are quite proud — namely, that Trump is the least popular new president in a long time, maybe ever. Even pop culture blogger Perez Hilton is saying it, as he cites Seth Meyers, the sage of NBC’s late night. Yet here’s something that the chattering classes might not have thought about: The idea of Donald Trump is more popular, and powerful, than the man himself. Yes, he’s an alpha male of the highest order, and yet he has always been careful to situate himself within the larger current. As Trump told Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle back in July, “I’m the messenger to the movement. ” Yes, the movement: the deep forces that propelled Trump to victory last year, no matter what was thrown at him. This movement is as has been argued many times here at Breitbart. as seen also so vividly with the Brexit vote, is the story of the year — and, indeed, the story of our era. As has been said, nothing can stop the power of an idea whose time has come. Some, of course, will dispute this. They will argue, for example, that Trump won only a minority of the popular vote, even if, of course, he won a majority in the voting that mattered, in the electoral college. It’s also true that Trump has had some negative poll ratings. On November 8, his personal disapproval ratings — if one takes the average of the last five polls before the election — were, according to RealClearPolitics, an underwater 39:57. And yet Trump won more than 46 percent of the nationwide vote. So we can see, if the polls are to be believed, that a fair number of voters went to the polls with a negative opinion of Trump and . . . voted for Trump, So what happened? Here’s what happened: The country wanted a change, and so it was willing to put aside its hesitations about the Republican candidate. Again according to RealClearPolitics, the average “right track” for the nation in the five polls closest to Election Day was 32:62. So if Trump’s challenge was that a lot of voters didn’t like him, Hillary Clinton’s challenge was that by a 2:1 margin, voters didn’t like what was happening to them. As Angelo Codevilla wrote during the campaign: The overriding question of 2016 has been how eager the American people are to reject the bipartisan class that has ruled this country contrary to its majority’s convictions. In other words, “Throw the bums out!” We can see this point in finer detail thanks to a compilation of polling data from FiveThirtyEight. The site tracked the polling on 32 issues during the Obama presidency, 2009 to 2017, from abortion to Guantanamo to unions. On some issues, Obama scored well, but on the “gut” issues of the economy, immigration, race relations, and terrorism, the 44th president’s polling numbers were steadily below 50 percent. We can state the obvious: Big issues matter more to voters than little issues. So in her own campaign as Obama’s anointed successor, Hillary didn’t have firm ground to stand on — she had quicksand. A few journalistic outlets have caught on to the point that Trumpism is even bigger than Trump. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, normally critical of the the new president, wrote of Trump on January 19: He confronts the paradox of a country skeptical that he has the personal traits for the Presidency but still hopeful he can fulfill his promise to shake up a government that is increasingly powerful even as it fails to work. . . . If voters are ambivalent about Mr. Trump personally, he has a policy opening to earn their support. And other observers have echoed that point. As Mike Allen of Axios put it on January 20, “Applying traditional metrics to Trump means we haven’t learned anything in the past 19 months. ” Allen continued by saying that while voters might have qualms about Trump himself, they are nevertheless “more bullish about his big themes. ” To be sure, some reporters haven’t gotten the message. And many of them are at CNN, notably CNN’s Brian Stelter, who continues to hoot over Trump’s alleged “poll denialism,” even as Trump enters the White House. And on Thursday night, another CNN talking head, David Gergen, called Trump “unhinged,” as others on the panel nodded in agreement. Yet others in the MSM are starting to realize, however reluctantly, that, yes, Trump represents something bigger than they first realized. In the grudging words of The New York Times’ Nate Cohn, “There’s something about Mr. Trump’s appeal that’s not captured in the traditional approval ratings or the character questions. ” And that “something,” of course, is the hope of the American people for a better life — which they knew they wouldn’t get from four more years of under Hillary. Without a doubt, Trump is something different. As the new president said on Friday: We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries, and technologies of tomorrow. A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights, and heal our divisions. We can note the happy absence of the usual litany of grievances against America and, also, the happy presence of a new Trumpian theme: curing disease. Yet of course, the big issue is the economy. And as we know, even before taking office, Trump was changing the landscape. As he said, with characteristic bravado, at his January 11 news conference, he will be “the greatest jobs producer that God ever created,” and he aims to prove it. As Breitbart’s Warner Todd Huston recounted on January 17, many companies and investors are rushing to respond. And once again, MSM hecklers are having to eat their words. It must have pained CNN, for example, to print this January 19 headline about one of Trump’s interventions that some had disputed: “Trump was right about GM cars. ” Now ask yourself: In the future, is another US president, of either party, going to sit back and just watch passively while American jobs go across the border, or overseas? Now that Trump has shown what’s possible, in terms of is any American leader going to just ignore the ? Answer: Of course not. The idea of letting jobs drift away, in the name of the free market, or of globalism, is over. Good riddance! Coming next: More on lions in politics. | 0fake |
New York governor wants credit-reporting firms to follow cyber rules | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that he wants credit-reporting firms to comply with the state’s cyber-security regulations, the latest government official to crack down on the industry in the wake of the massive Equifax hack. Also on Monday, Bloomberg News reported that federal authorities have opened a criminal probe into stock sales by three Equifax Inc (EFX.N) executives before the company disclosed the massive data breach, news that has weighed heavily on the stock price. The company has said the executives were unaware of the hack when they sold the stock for $1.8 million. Equifax’s legal woes worsened as the U.S Attorney’s office in Atlanta issued a statement saying it was working with the FBI on a criminal investigation into the breach and theft of personal information. Equifax shares rose 1.5 percent on Monday after losing about a third of their value since the hack was announced. The Equifax breach discovered on July 29 exposed sensitive data like Social Security numbers of up to 143 million people. Cuomo said he planned to require all credit-reporting agencies to register with the state and comply with its cyber-security rules. The proposed regulation would take effect in February, Cuomo said in a statement. If the companies do not register, they risk being barred from doing business with financial companies regulated by New York state. The state would be able to bar credit-reporting agencies, including TransUnion (TRU.N) and Experian Plc (EXPN.L), as well as Equifax, from doing business in New York if the state found they engaged in “unfair, deceptive or predatory practices,” Cuomo said. “The Equifax breach was a wake-up call,” Cuomo said. “And with this action, New York is raising the bar for consumer protections that we hope will be replicated across the nation.” Proposed regulations are typically subject to a period for public comment before they become final. A New York state cyber-security regulation, the first of its kind in the United States, took effect on March 1. It requires financial firms to take measures to protect networks and customer data from hackers and disclose cyber events to regulators. Maine is the only U.S. state that requires credit agencies to register, said William Lund, superintendent of the Maine Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection. But its law does not cover cyber security, an issue the bureau will have to consider, Lund said. Maine, which has been registering credit-reporting agencies since the 1990s, has 30 such agencies on its roster, ranging from the largest to those dealing with everything from check approval to tenants’ rental histories, he added. The three credit-reporting agencies did not respond to requests for comment on Cuomo’s plan. Bloomberg reported on Monday that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Equifax’s chief financial officer, John Gamble, and two other executives broke insider-trading rules by selling stock after the breach was discovered in July and weeks before it was disclosed this month. Reuters was not able to confirm the Bloomberg report. Separately, the company issued a statement saying a second Bloomberg report late on Monday about a second cyber attack in March referred to a breach at Equifax payroll unit that was previously reported to regulators, customers and consumers and also been covered by the press. “Equifax complied fully with all consumer notification requirements related to the March incident. The two events are not related,” the statement said. | 0fake |
Twitter HILARIOUSLY F*cks With GOP For Tweeting Fake Lincoln Quote (TWEETS) | The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you don t know if they re genuine. Or something. Today is Abraham Lincoln s birthday, and to honor him, the GOP tweeted out an image of the statue in the Lincoln Memorial with a quote:What a respectable way to commemorate one of the greatest presidents this country ever saw. There s just one problem: The quote isn t Lincoln s. It s most likely from a 1947 ad for a book by Edward J. Stieglitz. He, in turn, was given credit for the phrase in 1949.Former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson also used that quote, but there s no evidence that Lincoln ever said it. And the GOP looks really stupid.The funny thing is that one could assume the general population wouldn t know whether the quote is Lincoln s or not. In the age of Google, however, one has to be far more careful about attributing quotes and anything else, because someone will inevitably look it up and make you look stupid if it s wrong.So Twitter decided to make the GOP look really stupid, and what they came up with has us rolling: Stop making fools of yourselves, guys. We re going to bust our ribs laughing at you for the rest of eternity give or take an eon.Featured image via screen captures | 1real |
NJ DEM RUNNING FOR CONGRESS Claims His Opponent Is Like A “Rural Alabama Conservative”…And That’s A BAD Thing? [Video] | Please listen to this incredibly offensive commercial from Josh Gottheimer who attacks his opponent for being divisive by attacking another state and demeaning everyone in Alabama as a racist. On a personal note, I m from Georgia and find that people from the South are stereotyped like crazy! How offensive is this? The people of new jersey should send this goofball packing for his idiotic commercial! Gottheimer was a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton which explains everything! | 1real |
Scarborough: 9th Circuit Ruling Is ’Laughable,’ ’Will Be Overturned’ - Breitbart | Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough criticized the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on President Donald Trump’s executive order halting immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Scarborough said that although he thought the executive order was bad policy, the appeals court’s ruling was “laughable” and he said it will be overturned. “Our law professors always told us — bad facts made bad law,” he said. “Horrific facts coupled with horrific politics makes for horrific law. That’s exactly what happened here. ” “This decision, though, is laughable,” Scarborough conitnued. “This is, for me, the most disturbing part of the entire case. And by the way, at the end, this isn’t going to matter because I think the White House is going to fix it up, briefly fix it up. They could do a couple quick changes and take care of these problems. But the Ninth said, ‘The government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order have perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.’ As if it is the executive branches job to actually get the Intel community in and say these are all the things that are going to happen. No, in fact, Barack Obama worked with a bipartisan Congress to come up with these seven countries, not because there was specific attacks, but because they saw deteriorating security situation that they wanted to remedy. They wanted to prevent attacks. That’s the entire purpose of that. ” “This will be overturned,” he added. | 0fake |
SoftBank President Nikesh Arora Plans to Step Down - The New York Times | TOKYO — A former Google executive and Silicon Valley star was on course to be the next chief executive of SoftBank of Japan, one of the world’s most prominent technology conglomerates. Now he is leaving, in an abrupt shakeout that shows cracks in SoftBank’s global ambitions. When the executive, Nikesh Arora, was poached two years ago from a coveted role as Google’s head of business operations, the hire was widely considered a coup for SoftBank. Its billionaire founder and chief executive, Masayoshi Son, crowned Mr. Arora heir apparent. Mr. Arora was vaunted for his prowess and seen as an international executive who would help transform SoftBank with a flurry of investments. One of Mr. Son’s most cherished ambitions was to turn SoftBank, a Japanese business with some notable overseas names like the American carrier Sprint, into a truly global enterprise. The honeymoon did not last. Investors have criticized Mr. Arora recently for his record of managing SoftBank’s overseas deals. Investments in like DramaFever and Housing. com, these shareholders have said, appear to have soured as the companies have faltered. And the carefully orchestrated succession plan — or what appeared to be — has collapsed. Mr. Son decided he was not ready to give up the reins soon. Mr. Son, 58, said in a statement that he still wanted to “work on a few more crazy ideas” at SoftBank. Mr. Son cited differences over when Mr. Arora would take over as chief executive as the reason he had agreed to step down. Mr. Arora, who was born in India, holds the titles of president and chief operating officer. “This will require me to be C. E. O. for at least another five to 10 years — this is not a time frame for me to keep Nikesh waiting for the top job,” Mr. Son said. Mr. Arora, 48, also presented the parting as amicable. “Masa and I are still in love with each other,” he posted on Twitter. “I will support everyone I invested in, and they know that. ” Mr. Arora’s legacy — good or bad — will ultimately be determined by his investment record. SoftBank’s strategy is centered on acquiring other companies, from established businesses to tiny . Shortly before Mr. Arora arrived, SoftBank bought Sprint for $21. 6 billion, a major expansion of Mr. Son’s empire overseas. The Japanese conglomerate also made a fortune when its early investment in the Chinese company Alibaba slowly swelled to billions of dollars in value. After joining SoftBank, Mr. Arora was put in charge of picking takeover targets around the world. His mandate was to diversify a company that, despite the Sprint acquisition and others, still makes about 70 percent of its operating profits in its home market. It owns a major mobile phone network and a controlling interest in Yahoo Japan, among other domestic assets. Mr. Arora struck more than a dozen deals, placing bets on technology, telecommunications and media companies in India, Indonesia and Singapore, among other countries. SoftBank paid $1 billion for a stake in the Korean company Coupang. It plowed $250 million into the giant American media and sports agency. India has been a particular focus, and Mr. Arora led investments into businesses like Snapdeal and OYO Rooms, which aspire to be its Amazon and Airbnb. Recently, SoftBank has been selling assets and raising cash, a pattern that has been a prelude to big, strategic deals. On Tuesday it sealed an agreement to sell its majority stake in Supercell, the developer of “Clash of Clans” and other mobile games, to China’s Tencent Holdings for about $8. 6 billion. It also recently sold about $10 billion of shares in Alibaba. Expectations for Mr. Arora had been high. Besides his Google pedigree, he had been unusually well paid. In his first six months at SoftBank, Mr. Arora earned 16. 6 billion yen, or $159 million at current exchange rates, including a signing bonus, according to company disclosures. That made him one of the best compensated executives in the world during that period, and one of the highest paid executives in Japan, a country known for relatively low pay at the upper echelon. He earned about 8 billion yen last year. Mr. Arora made a huge personal financial commitment to SoftBank in 2015, buying 60 billion yen of the company’s shares. But some of his bets haven’t panned out. DramaFever, a Korean video site, shed traffic months after SoftBank invested in the business, prompting the Japanese company to find buyers for some of its stake. This year, SoftBank has defended Mr. Arora against criticism from a group of mostly anonymous international shareholders, who laid out their case against Mr. Arora in a letter to the company’s board in April. They said a number of he backed have fizzled. They also questioned his decision to remain an adviser to an American investment firm, Silver Lake, that could potentially compete with SoftBank for deals. “Mr. Arora’s investment strategy as the C. E. O. of SIMI appears to be nothing more than throwing a dart at a dart board,” a lawyer representing the investors wrote in the letter, referring to SoftBank’s internet and media operations as SIMI. “How many more millions of dollars of shareholder value must be wasted before the board realizes something must be done?” A representative for Silver Lake declined to comment. Advisers like Mr. Arora generally receive limited insight into the private equity firm’s deliberations and spend only a few hours a month with Silver Lake. SoftBank said on Monday that an internal panel set up to investigate the investors’ claims had found no evidence of conflict of interest or other misconduct. Still, the episode may have shaken Mr. Son’s trust in Mr. Arora, soured Mr. Arora on SoftBank, or both. “Clean chit from board after through review. Time for me to move on,” Mr. Arora said in another tweet on Tuesday. And it was always an open question whether Mr. Son would readily give up control. Mr. Arora was one of only a small number of to have attained a top management position at a major Japanese company. He faced fewer bureaucratic and cultural obstacles than most, in part because SoftBank’s power structure is simple. SoftBanks starts and ends with Mr. Son, who founded the company in the 1980s and runs it with unquestioned authority. “I feel my work is not done,” Mr. Son said in a statement on Tuesday. | 0fake |
Ukraine - biggest obstacle to normal Russia ties, says Tillerson | VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States would badly like to lift sanctions against Russia but will not do so until Moscow has pulled its forces out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday, calling that the main obstacle to normal ties. Tillerson is on a visit to Europe during which he has reassured allies with tougher rhetoric against Moscow than that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), also attended by his Russian counterpart, Tillerson said Moscow was to blame for increased violence in eastern Ukraine and that had to stop. We ve made this clear to Russia from the very beginning, that we must address Ukraine, Tillerson told a news conference with his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz. It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing the relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do. On Wednesday, Tillerson met NATO foreign ministers and criticized Russia for the mix of state-sponsored computer hacks and Internet disinformation campaigns that NATO allies intelligence agencies say is targeted at the West. The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies accusations that it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the OSCE conference that all the responsibility is with Ukraine as far as violence in the east was concerned. In his speech to the gathering, Tillerson went even further in spelling out Russia s involvement in the conflict and the consequences it faced than he had the day before in Brussels. We should be clear about the source of this violence, Tillerson said, referring to increasing ceasefire violations recorded by OSCE monitors in eastern Ukraine. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces. We call on Russia and its proxies to end its harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. While both sides have called for a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine, they disagree on the terms of its deployment, and there was little sign of concrete progress at Thursday s meeting. We will continue to work with Russia to see if we could not agree a peacekeeping force that could enter Ukraine (and) reduce the violence, Tillerson told the news conference. He and Lavrov met on the sidelines of the conference, though both ignored reporters questions when the meeting began. Asked later what commitments he had received at the meeting, Tillerson said: I m not going to tell you specifically what we get. We get progress, that s what we get. We get dialogue, we get cooperation, we don t have it solved. You don t solve it in one meeting. In his speech, he referred to the 2015 Minsk ceasefire agreement, brokered in the Belarussian capital by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine. In eastern Ukraine, we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbass (region) and meets its Minsk commitments, Tillerson said. He also made clear that Washington did not accept Russia s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. We will never accept Russia s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea. Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine, he said. | 0fake |
FBI Director Comey’s October Surprise | Dispatches from STEPHEN LENDMAN I t doesn’t matter. The Clintons are untouchable. Despite clear evidence of war crimes, racketeering, perjury, and Hillary’s email scandal, along with suspicion of murder, and who knows what else, they’re heading back to the White House in January. Electoral rigging virtually assures it. FBI director James Comey’s announced revisiting of Hillary’s use of her private email server to maintain and send classified information won’t derail her presidential bid. .. Last July, Comey whitewashed her criminality – serious enough to send ordinary people to prison. At the time, Trump was right, saying she “compromised the safety of the American people by storing highly classified information on a private email server with no security.” .. “Our adversaries almost certainly have a blackmail file on (her), and this fact alone disqualified her from service.” She was caught red-handed lying to the FBI and Congress – claiming she didn’t use her home server to maintain or send classified information. Comey confirmed over 100 emails were classified when sent, including top secret ones – maybe hundreds more we haven’t heard about or not yet discovered. .. Deleting thousands of emails compounded her criminality. Yet her road to the White House remains on track. Still, Comey’s Friday announcement was astonishing, less than two weeks before November’s election, an unprecedented act Trump will try using to his advantage – though likely no more successfully than earlier. .. Comey’s letter was disturbingly vague, suggesting having absolved Hillary’s criminality once, he’ll do it again. Announced “investigative steps” take time – likely concluding next year after November’s election and January’s inauguration. Here’s his letter to FBI employees explaining his action: .. “This morning I sent a letter to Congress in connection with the Secretary Clinton email investigation. Yesterday, the investigative team briefed me on their recommendation with respect to seeking access to emails that have recently been found in an unrelated case.” .. “Because those emails appear to be pertinent to our investigation, I agreed that we should take appropriate steps to obtain and review them.” .. “Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.” .. “At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression.” .. “In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.” Judicial Watch (JW) has done important work, trying to have Hillary held accountable for her scandalous email practices – criminality without punishment so far, unlikely to change ahead, especially if she’s anointed in November to succeed Obama, a near-certainty as things now stand. .. In response to Comey’s announcement, JW president Tom Fitton issued the following statement: .. “ The FBI’s seeming decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information is astonishing. Once again, we suspect our Freedom of Information Act and other investigations have spurred the FBI to act. This decision highlights the corruption, favoritism, and incompetence in the FBI/Justice Department investigation of Hillary Clinton.” .. Her “email misconduct and lies, aided and abetted by the Obama administration, have created a national crisis. The FBI needs to disclose more information about what it found and when – the American voters deserve answers now.” .. “Judicial Watch helped break open the Clinton email scandal and, no matter what the FBI does, will independently continue its historic litigation and investigation.” U S voters go to the polls in 10 days. Millions already voted in advance. Things were likely rigged way ahead of November 8. Hillary is the establishment choice. Power brokers running America picked her last year to succeed Obama. Trump surprisingly emerged last man standing among a deplorable array of GOP aspirants, resembling a police lineup – or an FBI most wanted list. .. Bill and Hillary Clinton belong in prison, not high office for a third co-presidential term. Given everything publicly known, they remain irreparably tainted, a disturbing indictment of a political process too debauched to fix. Voters have no say over who leads them. Powerful interests decide everything. Democracy in America is pure fantasy, not the real thing. .. The only solution is grassroots revolution. Nothing else can work. ABOUT THE AUTHOR STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net . His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com . | 1real |
MUST WATCH Trump Ad Highlights Hillary’s War On Women: Bill, Monica And Other Perverts Make Guest Appearances | The days of Hillary s past being off limits are officially over Bill s escapades and sexual assaults with various women throughout their marriage will all be coming out in this election. Stories about how Hillary threatened victims of Bill s sexual assaults are beginning to emerge. Hillary s closest friend, ally and top aide Huma Mahmood Abedin is also an enabler of a perverted husband, former Democrat NY Congressman Anthony Weiner, who thanks to Andrew Breitbart, was caught sexting several women during his term as a NY Congressman while his wife, Huma was pregnant with their first child. Birds of a feather Enjoy his latest Instagram ad here:Hillary and her friends!A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jan 7, 2016 at 9:19am PSTHere s Trump s tweet announcing his new Instagram ad:Hillary and her friends! https://t.co/q45tTapqMI Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2016 | 1real |
From kitchen to soccer pitch, Catalonia crisis opens old Spanish wounds | MADRID (Reuters) - Dinner at the Barcelona home of Catalonia-born Montserrat Armisen, an independence supporter, can be a tense affair. He criticizes us and doesn t let us eat in peace, said Armisen of her husband, Gustavo Gomez, a Colombian who favors keeping the Spanish state intact, and their children, Jordi, 18, and Nicolas, 27. We go to our protests, return and don t say anything, but he just carries on, said Armisen, 55. It bothers us because there is no respect for us from his part. For many in Spain, the Catalonia crisis that threatens to fracture the country is also tearing at ordinary families and evoking painful memories of Spain s 1936-39 civil war. The prospect that Catalonia, a former principality which prides itself on its distinct language and culture, might break away has created divisions across Spanish society, from the kitchen table to the soccer pitch. Many in Spain regard Catalan secessionists as a noisy minority whose national identity is built on a misreading of history, ungrateful to a Spanish state that has underwritten the region s peace and prosperity. In their turn, some secessionists decry unionists as fascists , harking back to dictator Francisco Franco, who suppressed Catalan language and traditions after his forces won the civil war until his death in 1975. Most Catalans backed the Republican side against Franco. Small groups of far-right activists have taken part in recent anti-independence protests, with a few giving fascist salutes or carrying the flag of the Falange, the dominant party under Franco. Neo-fascists are disowned by the vast majority of those who want to keep Spain intact but their appearance in public shows how the Catalonia crisis has reopened some of Spain s deepest and most painful wounds. If I say things I am called a fascist, said Armisen s husband, Gomez, 58, who has lived in Barcelona with his family for a decade. Telling them they should not be independent is not being a fascist. Everything that has been done, in my view, is completely illegal, he told Reuters Television, adding that his wife had even asked him to leave home - something she denies. What am I doing here? Gomez asked, holding back tears. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont had pledged to proclaim the region s independence from Spain after Catalans defied a ban and police crackdown and, according to his government s count, voted overwhelmingly to break away in an Oct. 1 referendum. But, in a speech to the Catalan regional parliament on Tuesday, Puigdemont stepped back from a formal declaration of independence, claiming a mandate to launch secession but saying he would delay doing so to allow time for talks with Madrid on the region s future. Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria savaged Puigdemont s speech, saying he should come back to the path of the law if he wanted talks with Madrid. She said the Spanish cabinet would meet on Wednesday to discuss its response. On Monday, Pablo Casado, a spokesman for Spain s ruling Popular Party, recalled that 83 years ago, the then Catalan leader, Lluis Companys, was jailed for declaring a Catalan state. He was executed by firing squad in 1940 during Franco s rule. Casado said anyone who declared independence might end up like Companys, in prison. In response, the pro-independence Catalan CUP party said on Twitter: Thanks for being so Franco, Pablo Casado , using a play on the Spanish word for frank and Franco . The dispute has touched Spain s sacred pastime, soccer. On the day after the referendum, the Spanish national team s Catalan defender, Gerard Pique, an independence supporter, was jeered by fans as he trained with the team. Trade unions are also divided. The Catalan arm of one of Spain s biggest unions, Comisiones Obreras (Workers Committees), initially backed calls for a general strike in Catalonia on Oct. 3 in response to the police crackdown on the referendum, according to media reports. But at a national level, Comisiones Obreras and another big union, the UGT, later said their Catalan affiliates would not take part in the strike, only protests against the crackdown. In no case are we going to support positions that give cover to a unilateral declaration of independence, they said in a joint statement. Rosa Borras, 47, took part in a demonstration in favor of national unity in Madrid last weekend. Thinking of her relatives in Catalonia, the situation is deeply saddening, she said. I ve come because I feel very Spanish and it makes me very sad what s happened, she said. I wanted to be here for unity, because I also feel very Catalan. | 0fake |
5 Strange Creature Sightings Ever Recorded In Russia, Brazil And Australia | 5 Strange Creature Sightings Ever Recorded In Russia, Brazil And Australia # Waldon Volpiceli Alves 3
This is the best ever compilation of real creature sightings captured on video. This is one scary video where we have caught real creatures footage on tape in Russia, Brazil and Australia. What youre about to see is a highlight clip and every creature hunting footage is real so beware some might find this paranormal footage too is a creature? Tags | 1real |
BREAKING: San Francisco Sheriff That Released Kate Steinle Murderer Loses In A Landslide | The people have spoken and it s clear that Americans are 100% FED Up! with the sanctuary city policy and illegal immigration. Embattled San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi convincingly lost his bid for re-election Tuesday after spending months in the national spotlight as the face of his city s controversial sanctuary city policy on illegal immigration. The murder of Kate Steinle brought to the forefront the sanctuary city policy in San Francisco. The refusal to acknowledge the illegality of this policy and the treatment of the Steinle family couldn t be more shameful. Our hope is that this landslide sends a message to those who have been ignoring the rule of law. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Steinle Family who ve suffered so much.Mirkarimi, 54, was defeated by Vicki Hennessy, a former sheriff s official who had the endorsement of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and the sheriff deputies association. With 42 percent of precincts reporting, Henessy had received 63 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Mirkarimi.Mirkarimi and his office received heavy criticism after Mexican illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez allegedly shot and killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle on San Francisco s waterfront July 1. Sanchez had been released from Mirkarimi s jail in March even though federal immigration officials had requested that he be detained for possible deportation.San Francisco declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, passing an ordinance that bans city officials from enforcing immigration laws or asking about immigration status unless required by law or court order. A follow-up ordinance in 2013 allows detention only under a court order targeting violent felons. Last month, San Francisco s board of supervisors unanimously approved a resolution to maintain the city s sanctuary status.San Francisco and other cities and counties have routinely ignored requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officals to keep people in custody. The jurisdictions say they can t hold arrestees beyond their scheduled release dates without probable cause.Hennessy has previously said the sheriff s order barring the San Francisco jail from cooperating with immigration officials is misguided. There are cases, she said, when federal immigration officials should be notified that the jail is about to release an inmate who is in the country illegally.Read more: FOX News | 1real |
Rollie Smoker Treats Himself To Pack Of Real Fags | 0 Add Comment
“IT’S like a little present to myself,” said Waterford man Kenneth Muldoon, unwrapping a pack of Marlboro cigarettes like a child on Christmas morning.
Muldoon, 23, is a regular smoker but is limited to smoking hand-rolled cigarettes due to also being too broke to afford ‘real fags’, most all the time.
Resorting to ‘making do’ with rollies that look like the inside of a bookie’s pen, Muldoon splashes out on proper cigarettes every four weeks or so, or whenever he has a spare tenner in his pocket or if he just feels that his lungs are due ‘a treat’.
“Rollies are alright, but it’s like putting together a Kinder Surprise toy every time you want a smoke,” explains Muldoon.
“And they’re a nightmare when you’ve a few pints on board, trying to put together a cigarette like Lego with a filter stuck in the corner of your mouth while you get bumped by people from all sides. So it’s nice to just open a pack and boom; there’s a smoke waiting for you. Open it again, there’s another! And another and another! It’s just the most magical experience in the world”.
Muldoon also states that real cigarettes seem healthier, and are basically good for you if you smoke enough of them. | 1real |
Will interest rates go up? Five things to expect | The Federal Reserve is likely to raise the federal funds rate at the conclusion of its two-day meeting on Wednesday.
Raising the banks’ overnight borrowing rate—held near zero since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008—has the potential to push up the cost of mortgages, slow jobs creation and curb stock prices but not always.
Here are five things to expect.
1. Mortgage rates are not likely to rise much
The effects of Fed tightening importantly depends on whether a higher federal funds rate pushes up the 10-year Treasury rate, because rates on mortgages, corporate and municipal bonds generally follow that rate up and down.
When Ben Bernanke raised the federal funds rate in 2004-2006, those rates hardly budged, because the Chinese government was purchasing U.S. bonds at a maddening pace to keep the yuan cheap against the dollar.
Now, both the Chinese and European economies are deeply troubled and their monetary authorities are printing lots of money to push down borrowing costs. Private investors seeking safer and better returns will increase their purchases of U.S. securities limiting any increase in U.S. long rates.
2. Bank fees and car loans will get more expensive
Tighter banking regulations designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis have pushed up banks’ costs for providing ordinary retail services. Higher short-term borrowing rates for banks will make things even tougher and banks will likely try to further boost fees on checking accounts and other services, and charge higher rates for short-term credit—credit cards, car loans and home improvements.
The good news is banks may start competing more for your money and pay higher rates on 1 to 5-year CDs.
The stronger dollar and lower oil prices are pinching corporate profits and hiring has slowed this year to about 210,000 new jobs a month—less than the 260,000 monthly average in 2014.
Small businesses are a particularly important source of new jobs in an economic recovery but even before the Fed pushes up bank borrowing costs, tighter federal regulations forced large banks to curtail lending to these. Somewhat higher short rates are not likely to have much additional impact on their access to credit.
Finding a job remains toughest for the long-term unemployed whose skills atrophied during the Great Recession and slow recovery, and for whom government benefits—expanded Medicaid and food stamps for healthy men—have often overwhelmed incentives to reskill.
4. Economic growth and inflation will pick up
Household balance sheets are in their best shape since the recovery began and lower gasoline prices give consumers more disposable income. Those factors should overwhelm the consequences of marginally higher short-term interest rates on consumer spending, and economic growth should accelerate to 2.5 to 3 percent in the New Year.
Overall, if Beijing can mount an adequate stimulus program to stabilize its economy, the global economy won’t sink America’s boat and job gains will continue.
Once gasoline prices have bottomed, overall inflation will rise to about 2 percent.
Problems in China and shifts in the broader global economy have rocked equity prices recently. However, the Fed rate increase is widely anticipated and is likely already built into equity prices. The market is more likely to react positively to a rate increase simply because uncertainty about timing has been removed.
The economy has emerged from a tough recession and slow recovery in which the Fed deemed ultra-low interest rates necessary. However, conditions have much improved and in past decades, stock prices have often moved up even as the Fed raised interest rates.
This remains a good time to be in stocks and if you are an investor on the sidelines, gradually start buying in.
Peter Morici served as Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission from 1993 to 1995. He is an economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and a widely published columnist. He is the five time winner of the MarketWatch best forecaster award. Follow him on Twitter @PMorici1. | 0fake |
Elizabeth Warren Just Blasted The FBI Director For Going After Hillary Instead Of Wall Street Crooks | Comments
In the wake of a string of completely extraordinary revelations starting this summer by FBI Director James Comey, Senator Warren is now demanding that the FBI release investigatory details about the 14 corporations and 11 individuals which the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) referred for criminal prosecution in 2010;
“Your recent actions with regard to the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provide a clear precedent for releasing additional information about the investigation of the parties responsible for the financial crisis.
These new standards present a compelling case for public transparency around the fate of the FCIC referrals. If Secretary Clinton’s email server was of sufficient interest to establish a new FBI standard of transparency, then surely the criminal prosecution of those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis should be subject to the same level of transparency.
As a consequence of the 2008 crash, trillions of dollars in American housing wealth was destroyed. Millions of Americans were touched personally as they lost their homes, their jobs, or both. Hundreds of pension funds were eviscerated, and millions of retirees saw their financial futures wiped out. Congress created the FCIC to examine what went wrong and to determine Whether any individuals or entities deserved law enforcement scrutiny as a result of their actions in this crisis. The FCIC followed the law and sent such referrals to the DOJ, yet not a single senior Wall Street executive has ever been criminally prosecuted.
For the uncounted millions of Americans whose lives were changed forever and for those who are still dealing with the consequences of the crash, I can think of no matter of intense public interest about which the American people deserve the details than the issue of what precisely happened to the criminal referrals that followed the 2008 crash.”
Until now, the FBI has never, ever released the investigatory file of anyone or any institution it has targeted. However, if the Democratic nominee herself was a bank, then she would have nothing to fear from the FBI.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is laser focused on protecting the American people from shady banks and financial scams, but the newly transparent FBI apparently doesn’t share her concern since those investigations don’t involve Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. To date, no executive has been criminally prosecuted for financial crimes by banks, Wall Street firms and lending institutions which caused the Great Bush Recession’s mass unemployment and foreclosure epidemic.
Of 25 entities named by the FCIC to be criminally investigated , only one actual person has paid a civil penalty, and another person – none other than Daniel Mudd, former CEO of mortgage giant Fannie Mae, was fined — but had his $100,000 penalty paid by the government sponsored enterprise that employed him.
FBI Director James Comey has deployed a massive double standard to protect the criminal financial institutions, handing them a free pass and complete secrecy for collapsing our national economy and wiping out $3 Trillion dollars in home equity, stock equity and savings, while dragging Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton through the mud for Comey’s partisan predilections for transparency when she’s demonstrably done absolutely nothing wrong.
The FBI Director himself admitted in July that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against the Democratic nominee, yet he himself cannot resist rehashing and releasing the investigatory details in public over and over. Releasing anything about an investigation, or even delivering an actual indictment, actually violates Department of Justice policy to remain silent in the 60 days before an election. It’s been described by former top Justice Department officials as the “difference between being independent and flying solo.”
Elizabeth is right. How long will the FBI wait to deliver transparency to the American people eight years after their jobs, homes and savings were attacked by irresponsible bankers?
Once the FBI completes disclosing those investigatory files, then how long will it take for them to deliver indictments and justice to the men and women who caused the Great Recession?
Neither can happen soon enough. For now, he needs to stop his partisan witch-hunt against Hillary and start going after the real crook.s | 1real |
LEFTISTS USE TRUMP To Teach Kids How To Use Violence Against Someone You Disagree With: “I Want To Kill Him” [VIDEO] | Just when you thought only Muslim terrorists teach their kids to use violence against anyone who doesn t agree with them Along comes the hateful American Left. What these poor misguided parents have clearly missed is how many Latino s don t support amnesty for people who ve illegally crossed our borders It seems like plenty of people have wanted to take a bat to Donald Trump s head this year, and last night in Oregon, some kids finally had the chance with a pi ata shaped like the Republican presidential candidate.At the grand opening for El Diablito, a food cart in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, a group of predominately of children and Latinos took turns hitting a candy-filled Trump pi ata with a baseball bat.The group had some choice words as they took swings at the life-size presidential candidate figure, which had Trump posing with his mouth open and his middle fingers raised. I want to kill him, one child said as he watched someone hit the pi ata.One woman eagerly smashed the pi ata as she hit it several times. Because f*** Trump, she said when asked why she wanted a turn. I m sorry I know there are kids here, but he really sucks that hard. Another man took several swings at the pi ata as he spoke about why he didn t believe that Trump should be elected. You re bringing hate and we don t want you as a president, the man said as he hit the figure.The owner of El Diablito said, however, that the Donald Trump pi ata had nothing to do with politics, and was instead a way of bringing people to his food truck s grad opening. It has nothing to do about politics, actually, he said. It s about having a good time. I figured that would be the best character for everybody to be excited to take a hit at, he added. It s all about popularity and he s at the top of it right now A video of the event concludes with a little girl smashing the body off of the pi ata and a man holding the Trump figure s head by the hair as its body likes broken on the ground.Via: UK Daily Mail | 1real |
Trump Just Got Caught Trying To Blackmail Morning Joe Hosts | Blackmail is a crime. It s time to impeach Donald Trump.Despite a desperate effort by the White House to deny it, Trump derailed those efforts by posting on Twitter Friday morning.In response to a Washington Post story in which Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski claim that Trump tried to blackmail them in order to force them to apologize by promising to stop a National Enquirer tabloid story about the pair if they complied with his demands, Trump went on Twitter and confirmed the whole thing.Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017The problem for Trump is that while he claims Scarborough called him and he s the one who said no, Scarborough has actual evidence to support his side of the story and he informed Trump of that on Twitter while calling him out for lying at the same time.Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven t spoken with you in many months. https://t.co/TZWiElo6Gs Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) June 30, 2017Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you? https://t.co/aAoUj5HYZS Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) June 30, 2017So Trump not only lied again, he literally tried to use blackmail against members of the media. It s all the more credible since the owner of the National Enquirer is David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump s.If anyone should be apologizing to someone, it s Trump. What he said about Brzezinski on Thursday was totally deplorable and completely beneath the dignity of the office he holds.As you recall, Trump attacked the Morning Joe hosts for criticizing him earlier in the week by claiming that Mika was bleeding badly from a face-lift and that she is crazy. I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came.. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017 to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017All Trump had to do is ignore their rightful criticisms. Instead, he lashed out because he has thin skin and a vulnerable ego and made things worse by trying to blackmail them. That s the very definition of abuse of power.This national circus has to be put to an end. Trump s crimes in office far exceed Richard Nixon s during Watergate. Trump should be sitting in prison, not in the Oval Office.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
Philippine military kills escaping Islamist militant in Marawi | MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine troops on Tuesday killed a pro-Islamic State gunman in the southern city of Marawi, a military official said, eight days after the government declared the end of hostilities. Soldiers have focused on securing Marawi against surviving militant fighters since ending five months of operations against Islamic State-inspired militants who seized control of parts of the city in May, in a bid to win a foothold in the region. The conflict displaced about 350,000 residents and killed more than 1,100 people, mostly militants, stirring concern that the southern Philippines is becoming Islamic State s hub in Southeast Asia. The military engaged in a gunfight with one of the suspected remaining gunmen in the main battle area, after foiling his bid to escape, army spokesman Colonel Romeo Brawner said. We still have to put in troops, because there s a possibility for stragglers, Brawner told a news conference in Marawi. In the main battle area, there are many possible hiding spots. Indonesians, Malaysians and Middle Easterners were among the fighters who flocked to Marawi to support the Islamic State s emirate in Southeast Asia. Thousands of Marawi residents have started returning home, only for some to find dwellings ransacked. Brawner said an army official and five more personnel were detained in barracks after being charged with looting. The main battle area in downtown Marawi remains off limits, pending the removal of booby traps and unexploded ordnance. | 0fake |
Photo of the day: Miss Russia at the international beauty contest in Tokyo | Photo of the day: Miss Russia at the international beauty contest in Tokyo AFP/East News
Miss Russia Alisa Manenok shows off her souvenir of a stuffed cat while boarding a boat at the Lake Ashinoko in Hakone town, Kanagawa prefecture. Manenok, a Vladivostok native, entered the final Top-15 of the prestigious Miss International 2016 beauty contest held on Oct. 27 in Japan’s capital of Tokyo. However, the Russian beauty failed to make the Top-5, with Kylie Verzosa representing the Philippines winning the contest. Facebook | 1real |
Police Investigate Fraud after Voter Registration Flips from Republican to Democrat | Police Investigate Fraud after Voter Registration Flips from Republican to Democrat Pennsylvania State Police investigating voter manipulation Image Credits: flickr, dokidoki .
Pennsylvania State Police are investigating a couple’s claim that their political party affiliation was fraudulently changed from Republican to Democrat on their voter registration applications.
“The Pennsylvania State Police are investigating a case of fraud,” authorities noted in a press release Tuesday.
“On the above date [10/09/16], unknown Actor(s) filed fraudulent Pennsylvania voter registration applications on behalf of the Victims,” a 46 year-old male and a 47 year-old female from the town of New Ringgold in Schuylkill County.
“The application changed their political affiliation from republican to democrat.”
“The Victims were made aware of these changes on 10/21/16 when the Schuylkill County office of voter registration sent them new voter registration cards.”
Infowars reached out to the Pennsylvania State Police who had no new updates, but stated they are currently actively investigating the incident. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP | 1real |
Chelsea Clinton to Release Children’s Picture Book ’She Persisted’ | Former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton is set to release a children’s book entitled She Persisted, which will highlight the contributions of more than a dozen accomplished women throughout U. S. history. [The daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton shared the cover for her upcoming book on her Twitter page Thursday morning, writing that she was excited to share the stories of girls and women “who didn’t take no for an answer. ” Persistence has changed the course of history — I’m so excited to share stories of girls women who didn’t take no for answer on May 30th! pic. twitter. — Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) March 16, 2017, According to Entertainment Weekly, the book will feature 13 women who made a significant impact in their fields while overcoming adversity, including Helen Keller, Harriet Tubman, Sally Ride, Oprah Winfrey, Maria Tallchief, Sonia Sotomayor, Claudette Colvin, Ruby Bridges and Nellie Bly. The book is also expected to include Clinton’s mother, former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The title of the book comes from a quote by Sen. Mitch McConnell ( ) after the Senate silenced Elizabeth Warren ( ) as she attempted to protest Jeff Sessions’ nomination as U. S. Attorney General. “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said in February. The quote has since become a rallying cry for the Left, and has since made its way into Grammys performances and onto Reebok . In a statement, Clinton said she wrote the book “for everyone who’s ever wanted to speak up but has been told to quiet down, for everyone who’s ever been made to feel less than. ” “The 13 women in She Persisted all overcame adversity to help shape our country — sometimes through speaking out, sometimes by staying seated, sometimes by captivating an audience,” she told EW. “With this book, I want to send a message to young readers around the country — and the world — that persistence is power. ” The announcement of the book comes amid rumors that Clinton is preparing for her own entrance into politics, perhaps as a candidate for a New York Senate seat. She Persisted — with illustrations by Alexandra Boiger — is due out for release on May 30. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0fake |
Professors head to courts, threaten strike after Estacio layoffs in Brazil | SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A battle between Brazilian private college operator Estacio Participacoes SA and the country s professors arrived in the courts on Thursday, as unions and students protested against the company s recent move to fire over 1,000 teachers. On Wednesday, newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo reported that the company was planning to fire 1,200 of its 10,000 professors in December, as many are being paid above-market rates. In response, the CSB, a Brazilian umbrella union, filed a motion in a court in capital Brasilia on Thursday demanding that the layoffs be halted. That motion was quashed by a judge. Estacio declined to comment on the judicial proceedings, but emphasized that Brazilian law requires that it make any staffing cuts within a limited period of the calendar year. It s important to remember that Brazilian legislation requires that potential layoffs of professors occur only within a very restricted window, the company said in a statement. Augusta Raeffray, a lawyer for the CSB, said by telephone that mass layoffs must be negotiated with union, which she said Estacio did not do. She added that the company had already filed paperwork for 230 layoffs in the city of Sao Paulo, almost 100 in Ribeirao Preto and 50 in Belo Horizonte. In Rio de Janeiro, where 33 of 93 Estacio units are located, the citywide teachers union is planning a Friday protest and students are planning a Monday demonstration, union head Joao Paulo Camara Chaves said in a telephone conversation. The body was also considering a teachers strike during the beginning of lessons next year, he added. The layoffs and subsequent protests at Estacio have raised wider questions about the treatment of academic professionals in Brazil, where professors say salaries and contracts have become more precarious both in the private and public sector, especially as the state tightens its belt. Some state universities are paying professors salaries in installments. Other private universities are using an intermittent or hourly pay schedule, said Jacob Paiva, director of Brazil s nationwide professors union, by phone. Shares in Estacio fell 2 percent on Thursday to 30.71 reais ($9.33), their biggest intraday loss in over a week. ($1 = 3.29 reais) | 0fake |
Trump nomination odds wane in online betting, third party run bets up | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s prospects of winning the Republican nomination for the White House have slid sharply in online wagering venues, and bets that Republicans could have a fractured convention or that Trump may run as a third-party candidate were increasing. Chances of Trump claiming the Republican mantle have fallen hard to 69 percent after cresting at 86 percent this week following his winning seven of 11 states in Super Tuesday voting, according to PredictWise, which aggregates betting on multiple venues into an implied probability. The billionaire businessman is still the prohibitive favorite, but it was the steepest slide in his imputed chances since his second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1. Trump faces withering attacks from rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and from 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who labeled him a danger to the Republican party and the United States. On PredictIt, a site aggregated into PredictWise probability, Trump’s chances were 70 percent early Friday, up slightly from late Thursday when they fell to 68 percent, their lowest since Feb. 23. PredictIt is operated by Victoria University in New Zealand. Online wagering venues such as Ireland’s PaddyPower, which express candidates’ prospects as traditional sports-betting odds, show Trump losing luster as Rubio and Cruz gain steam. PaddyPower’s odds show Trump as a 2-to-5 favorite compared with a 1-to-7 favorite right after Super Tuesday. Odds on Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, narrowed to 4-to-1 from 5-to-1 on Tuesday, and odds for Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, were 9-to-1 from 12-to-1 earlier this week. Intense squabbling among Republican candidates and efforts by establishment Republicans to block a Trump nomination at this summer’s Republican National Convention boosted bets that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the favorite for the Democratic nomination, would win the Nov. 8 general election. Clinton’s prospects of winning a head-to-head contest against Trump shot to above 60 percent earlier this week and stood at 57 percent on Friday, according to PredictIt. Trump’s chances of trouncing Clinton sank to 27 percent on Friday from 39 percent in late February. Republican infighting is fueling betting that Republicans will have a so-called brokered convention, which occurs when no candidate wins a majority of delegates before the convention, or that Trump will run as a third-party candidate. Chances for a brokered convention closed at 40 percent on Thursday on record volume in betting on PredictIt after starting the week at 23 percent. They were 39 percent early on Friday. The last brokered U.S. major-party convention was in 1952 when Democrats nominated Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson on the third ballot. The last brokered Republican convention was in 1948, when New York Governor Thomas Dewey won in three ballots. Neither candidate won the presidential election. Chances that Trump would run as a third-party candidate have ticked higher, but it remains a long-shot in betting circles. PredictIt put the chances of him running as an independent at 17 percent on Friday, from 14 percent on Thursday and 10 percent a week ago. (Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Toni Reinhold) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 0fake |
No-one can wreck our democracy, Schaueble tells Germans | BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s departing finance minister expressed optimism that his country s democratic institutions were strong enough to withstand the arrival of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the third-largest party in parliament. Wolfgang Schaueble, who is due to step down as finance minister to become president of the Bundestag parliament, told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that AfD s 90-odd elected lawmakers would be constrained by Germany s constitution. I d like to see more self-confidence, he told the newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday. Our free, democratic system based on the rule of law is so strong that nobody can wreck it, neither from within nor from without. Anybody who tries will fail. The 75-year-old conservative took his new job at the urging of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her conservatives are trying to patch together a three-way coalition with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, who are expected to demand the position of finance minister. Also, many in Germany s mainstream felt a senior politician was needed to rein in the first far-right party to enter parliament in 50 years. Schaueble is Germany s longest-serving parliamentarian, and his stature is second only to Merkel s in German politics. But Schaueble said he was ready to move on: I decided before the elections after eight years as finance minister and many years government responsibility to take on a new task. He added he was confident that a three-party coalition would be agreed, dismissing arguments about a formal cap on immigration as a false argument . He defended Merkel s 2015 decision to open Germany s borders to over a million migrants fleeing war in Africa and the Middle East. Even our children will remember with pride the willingness to help that the Germans showed during the refugee crisis, he told the paper. | 0fake |
LOL! Clinton News Network (CNN) SHUT DOWN At Trump Rally By Pro-Trump Deplorables [VIDEO] | A group of deplorables who are clearly sick and tired of the propaganda being passed off as truth by the Clinton News Network (CNN) managed to effectively shut down their pre-coverage of the Virginia Beach Trump rally. You gotta love the big guy wearing the Infowars Bill Clinton Rape t-shirt. You can hear the Trumpers yelling, CNN sucks and no integrity. Liberal media has no idea the genie that Trump let out of the bottle. Watch: | 1real |
UNAIRED Documentary Illuminati Child Abduction Rings Exposed PT 1 | Support Us UNAIRED Documentary Illuminati Child Abduction Rings Exposed PT 1 | 1real |
‘Meet Jeb’ – Going For Your Sympathy Vote | 21st Century Wire says As Republican, Ted Cruz and Democrat, Hillary Clinton both snatched narrow victories at the Iowa Caucuses this week, other big brand names didn t turn out so well.Nonetheless, old John Ellis, or Jeb Bush, is still hanging in there going into the upcoming New Hampshire primary. Although Jeb managed to get only 2.8% of the Iowa GOP caucus vote, he still has sufficient funds in his political war chest to carry on. Despite the fact that he appears to be more intelligent and compos mentis than his brother George, he still struggles to gain mass appeal.As campaign moments go, however, this has got to be one of the saddest, most doleful moments we ve seen yet. During one of Jeb s many staged, Meet Jeb town hall-style meetings, where segments are filmed in order to extract outtakes for use in an endless series of campaign ads, Jeb finished a good speaking stretch before sheepishly turning to a mostly disinterested audience, quietly begging them to clap for the cameras.You have to see it to believe it. Watch | 1real |
Canada will not send peacekeepers to Mali in near future: officials | VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Canada will not be sending hundreds of peacekeepers to support a United Nations mission in Mali in the near future, officials said on Wednesday, a move likely to disappoint allies who want Canadians to play a role in the West African country. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year promised to contribute up to 600 troops to peacekeeping operations and Canadian defense experts made three trips to Mali, where soldiers under the U.N. are fighting Islamist militants. Canada said it would split its soldiers among various missions instead, with no more than 200 going to any one spot, and will offer transport aircraft and helicopters in a series of smart pledge initiatives. It will also help train peacekeepers. U.N. officials downplayed concerns, saying that if Canada had pledged its troops and equipment to a single mission, like Mali, then those assets could not be deployed to support other missions in the region. This is exactly what we need, we need flexibility... we need to be able to allocate these resources where we need them the most, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, a U.N. under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations, told reporters. Lacroix said talks continue on how Canadian assets will be deployed, but added, I m sure there s a strong determination to turn this commitment into a concrete action on the ground. Earlier on Wednesday, a Canadian official told reporters the option of sending forces to Mali one day was still alive, but added the planning process took at least six months, So you re not going to going to see some kind of rapid deployment to any mission, let alone a complex one like Mali. Trudeau sidestepped questions about the likely international reaction at a news conference, saying the varied measures Canada was proposing would serve the U.N. better. Unhappy allies this year said Canada s bid for a U.N. Security Council seat could suffer unless Trudeau lived up to his promises. This approach will be a disappointment to some, and the Canadian government will have to work hard to overcome the credibility it has lost in not following through on its initial pledge, said Jane Boulden, a security studies expert at Queen s University in Kingston. Government insiders said enthusiasm for the Mali mission faded as the extent of likely casualties and the complex nature of the conflict became clear. More than 80 members have been killed since 2013, making Mali the world s deadliest peacekeeping operation. | 0fake |
Inspired by 'blasphemy killer', new Pakistani party eyes 2018 vote | LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - The head of a new Pakistani Islamist party that lionizes the killer of a provincial governor said it would take its rallying cry of death to blasphemers to next year s general election, after its surprisingly strong showing in a recent vote. The Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan party, which won more than 7,000 votes at a weekend by-election, was born out of a protest movement supporting Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform strict blasphemy laws. Supporters of Tehreek-e-Labaik waved photos of Qadri, who became an icon for Muslim hardliners after his execution last year, at campaign rallies in the eastern city of Lahore, where it won 6 percent of the vote in a contest for the seat vacated by ousted former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He is a hero, party leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi said when asked about Qadri, adding that after its third-place finish in Sunday s by-election it would focus on next year s poll. Our preparation starts from today. We will contest bravely. While the party has almost no chance of gaining power next year, it is part of a new crop of political movements that espouse stricter Islamic rule as a remedy to corruption accusations and squabbling among Pakistan s three main parties. A stronger showing for Islamists could give them more influence after the election, expected to be hard-fought after the Supreme Court barred Sharif from holding office. In an interview with Reuters, Rizvi outlined his vision of governance according the Barelvi branch of Islam, of which he is a prominent cleric. Frequently citing Koranic verses and Pakistani history, he said his party could solve corruption problems in a day through stricter adherence to sharia, or Islamic law. Sharia will have to be enforced. No one should be worried about it, he said, sitting in the upper room of a Lahore mosque surrounded by followers, many who had adopted Qadri s signature look of long hair and kohl-lined eyes. He acknowledged his vision would mean some changes to daily life, giving the example of barring women from working as airline flight attendants. In its party platform, Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan calls for free education, free healthcare and social justice. But it is best known for its public and passionate support for Mumtaz Qadri - campaign rallies featured posters with Qadri s photo - and its insistence that Muslim-majority Pakistan s blasphemy laws should remain among the world s harshest. Dozens of people convicted of blasphemy are currently on death row and at least 65 Pakistanis have been murdered over blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies. One of the highest-profile killings was of Punjab Governor Taseer, who had called for the laws to be re-examined after a minority Christian woman was sentenced to death for blasphemy. After his arrest over the killing, bodyguard Qadri drew a slew of admirers among Islamists who showered him with rose petal at court hearings. Tens of thousands thronged his funeral last year to condemn Sharif s government for his hanging. Tehreek-e-Labaik spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi said the party started out as The Movement to Free Mumtaz Qadri, but changed its name and entered politics after his execution. Asked about Qadri s role as an inspiration to the party, leader Rizvi said: He is a hero until doomsday. He is a hero beyond doomsday. Asked if any Muslim has the obligation to kill a blasphemer, Rizvi said: No ... there is a law. Hand him over to that. But Qadri, he added, was justified because Pakistani police had failed to charge Taseer with blasphemy for criticizing the law. Tehreek-e-Labaik surprised many by its relatively strong showing in the Lahore by-election to fill the parliamentary seat left vacant when the Supreme Court ousted Sharif over unreported income, in a case initiated by opposition figure Imran Khan. The seat was won, as expected, by Sharif s wife, Kulsoom, but the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party s share of the vote in the constituency was cut to 49.3 percent from 61 percent in a 2013 election. Khan, a former cricket star, saw his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party increase its share to 37.6 percent from 35 percent in the last vote. But much of the PML-N s margin loss came from votes cast for candidates of new Islamist parties. In addition to Tehreek-e-Labaik, a newly declared party linked to Hafiz Saeed, named by the United States and India as the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, won about 5 percent of the Lahore vote. Religious parties have never gained more than a few seats in Pakistan s parliament because they tend to appeal to one particular sect or a single issue, such as blasphemy. Still, a surge of support for the ultra-religious parties could drain away votes from mainstream groups and potentially give Islamists leverage in policy-making. Tehreek-e-Labaik s Rizvi said his only goal was to see a stricter vision of Islam enshrined in the law of the land. We want to bring the religion of Islam to the throne, he said. | 0fake |
GUESS WHO PAID FOR FAMILY OF GOV DEPENDENT MUSLIM TERRORISTS’ Security And Travel Expenses To U.S. | It s worth noting that the victims of this horrible terrorist bombing are responsible for their own court parking fees, food and any potential travel and lodging expenses they incur as a result of this trial. Muslim terrorists first it s the Obama way The family of the convicted marathon bomber is in America, on your tax dollars, and survivors are outraged after learning the news.As of Thursday, family members of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have been staying at the Hampton Inn in Revere under very tight security, just one of the things tax dollars are paying for. FOX25 s Sharman Sacchetti investigated how much this trip is costing you.Sources say these family members are being called as witnesses and not only that, at least three agencies are working around the clock to protect and transport them. This is all part of the defense team s strategy to save Tsarnaev. While it s unclear when their flight started, we know the last part of it came through Amsterdam and landed at Logan Airport and cost nearly $2,500 per person.The cost to put them up at the Hampton Inn at the government rate: almost $200 per night, per person. And a source says at least three agencies, the FBI, US Marshal s and Revere Police are involved in constant protection. I think you re probably talking about $100,000 plus in that neighborhood in terms of security and out of pocket costs associated with travel, former US attorney Michael Sullivan said.And that s just for this trip.Lawyer fees or even what all witnesses during the trial cost is still unclear. One defense witness, Mark Spencer of Arsenal Consulting, charged $375 per hour and billing taxpayers for $150,000.Governor Charlie Baker said, It s a federal trial, it s a federal case, the feds ultimately need to make the decisions about this. Baker was non-committal about how resources are being used, even state ones.Sullivan told Sacchetti that while he understands taxpayer outrage, the whole point is to make sure it s done right. The court wants to make sure that at the end of the day, the defendant gets a fair trial and would not want to add any potential issues on appeal in the penalty phase, prosecutors finished making their case yesterday, he said.JUDGE JEANINE HAS A POWERFUL MESSAGE for Jihadi Mom:Marathon survivor Marc Fucarile reached out to us Friday night, reacting to this news, saying that he s outraged that Tsarnaev s family s expenses are being paid for when myself and some of the other survivors and our families have to pay for our own parking at court, lunch, and we were told that if the trial was moved out of state, we d have to pay for our own travel and lodging, there. The statement went on to say: Why should our country pay for them when that family committed a violent act against our country? Not to mention, all of the free government services this family previously enjoyed on the backs of the taxpayers including government assistance and a free ride to UMass Dartmouth. In contrast, I was denied housing assistance I sought after the bombings, even though I needed a handicapped accessible apartment, and my wife lost her job as a result of the events. He ended by saying he feels badly for the taxpayers that have to pay for this after they were so generous to all the survivors and the One Fund. The defense team is up next. And the penalty phase picks up again Monday.Via: MyFOXBoston | 1real |
Sean Hannity Just Openly Threatened Someone On Twitter, And It May Be A Fox News Exec | Is there some reason people like Donald Trump and his most ardent fans can t handle problems without making threats? Sean Hannity is publicly threatening someone after tweeting that he s been talking to lawyers about libel, slander, defamation, tortious interference. As an alleged journalist, he really ought to know what those words mean and not throw them around.He s also doing quite a bit of posturing about it, up to and including issuing this threat:Oh FYI, Whoever you are just remember, IP addresses are traceable. Get Ready. Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 1, 2017Many on that tweet assume he s referring to his sexual harassment accuser, Debbie Schlussel. However, this tweet suggests he s talking about whoever it is he thinks the traitor is at Fox News:This is way way way bigger than any one individual. https://t.co/ERvdrmUdeE Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 30, 2017Hannity recently gave an interview to Vanity Fair, in which he defended embattled co-president Bill Shine, who has been caught up in the sexual harassment investigation into Fox News. In it, he said there was a traitor at Fox News, and claimed to know who it is. After Bill O Reilly s ouster amid a sexual harassment scandal, people began saying that they were going to come after Hannity.Sure enough, Schlussel came forward saying that Hannity had been creepy with her. Hannity has repeatedly denied that he was even remotely inappropriate with her, and he and his followers seem to think that she s either an active participant in some grand conspiracy to shut down Fox News (and indeed, conservatives in general) entirely, or a pawn that they are using to take down every conservative there is.Honestly, he sounds too much like Trump, dropping saying on Twitter that he s got all this information and hinting that it could blow something wide open. Since he s a television personality, it s a little more likely that he s actually got something on someone (or a lot of someones), but then again he really does sound like Trump blowing hot air and this could wind up being a huge nothingburger.He shut down before he said too much to his Twitter audience, and is now simply saying, stay tuned. So he s hinting that he and his team are going to bust something wide open. Because the scandal at Fox News can t possibly be a culture fostered by serial harasser Roger Ailes (and probably other serial harassers), could it?Featured image by Gerardo Mora via Getty Images | 1real |
Re: What security threat? Huma Abedin doesn’t know how her emails got on her husband’s laptop, either | — Don't Panic (@dd42bb) October 30, 2016 @mattzap That sounds like the worst possible answer.
— DC Dude (@DCDude1776) October 30, 2016
That’s not entirely unbelievable, seeing as Weiner was up to all sorts of things he wasn’t eager to share with the wife. Then again, it’s not a great defense to mount when trying to counter charges that Hillary Clinton and her aides at the State Department were extremely careless with their handling of sensitive materials. Trending If Hillary wants to know what new information the FBI has, Sharyl Attkisson knows someone she could ask
That’s weird, though: the story before was that Abedin would forward government emails to her Yahoo mail account so she could print them for the boss, who liked paper copies so that she could relax to the familiar, comforting sound of the office shredder grinding away. But all someone had to do was log into her Yahoo account, and … @ktumulty She used his computer at least once to check her email or maybe he was checking her email. Spouses are known to do that. | 1real |
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