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Myanmar bars U.N. rights investigator before visit | GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. independent investigator into human rights in Myanmar called on Wednesday for stronger international pressure to be exerted on Myanmar s military commanders after being barred from visiting the country for the rest of her tenure. Yanghee Lee, U.N. special rapporteur, had been due to visit in January to assess human rights across Myanmar, including alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. But Myanmar had told her she was no longer welcome, she said, adding in a statement that this suggested something terribly awful was happening in the country. From what I see right now I m not sure if they are feeling pressured. I m not sure if there is the right kind of pressure placed on the military commanders and the generals, she later told Reuters by telephone from Seoul. She said it was alarming that Myanmar was strongly supported by China, which has a veto at the U.N. s top table in New York. Other countries including the United States and human groups were advocating targeted sanctions on the military, she said. It has to work. And I m sure the world has to find a way to make it work. And I think the United Nations and its member states should really try to persuade China to really act towards the protection of human rights, she said. Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug 25, the aid group said last week. More than 650,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping response by the army and Buddhist vigilantes. Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the situation in Rakhine State was an internal affair for Myanmar with its own complex history. Myanmar and Bangladesh resolving this issue was the only way to go, she told reporters. The international community should provide constructive help for Myanmar and Bangladesh to resolve the issue rather than complicating it, Hua added. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place. Lee had planned to use her visit to find out procedures for the return of Rohingya refugees, and to investigate increased fighting in Kachin State and Shan Sate in northern Myanmar, where the military is battling autonomy-seeking ethic minority guerrillas. Lee, in an earlier statement, said Myanmar s refusal to cooperate with her was a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening throughout the country, although the government had repeatedly denied any violations of human rights. They have said that they have nothing to hide, but their lack of cooperation with my mandate and the fact-finding mission suggests otherwise, she said. She was puzzled and disappointed , since Myanmar s ambassador in Geneva, Htin Lynn, had told the U.N. Human Rights Council only two weeks ago that it would cooperate. Now I am being told that this decision to no longer cooperate with me is based on the statement I made after I visited the country in July, she said. Htin Lynn did not respond to a request for comment. Neither Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmar government leader Aung San Suu Kyi, nor Kyaw Moe Tun, a spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs that Suu Kyi heads, were immediately available. | 0fake |
U.S. House Speaker: Justice Department must hand over documents on Trump dossier - Reuters interview | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Department of Justice needs to immediately give Congress documents related to the funding of a dossier on Donald Trump during the presidential campaign, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday, saying the department and the FBI were “stonewalling.” “We’ve had these document requests with the administration, with the FBI in particular, for a long time and they’ve been stonewalling,” Ryan told Reuters in an interview, adding that the department and the FBI needs to comply with Congress’ documents requests “and they need to do it immediately.” Ryan was responding to a question about a Washington Post report on Tuesday that said the campaign of Trump’s Democratic rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee had helped fund research that became a dossier of allegations about Trump’s connections to Russia. Several congressional panels are investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign to try to tilt the election in Trump’s favor, and potential collusion by Trump aides. Moscow has denied such interference and Trump has denied any collusion by his campaign. | 0fake |
IS LONDON About To Elect Its First MUSLIM Mayor? [VIDEO] | London is about to find out why putting political correctness before your country is a bad idea By BI: Sooner than you think if the Labour (far left) Party has anything to do with it. Labour has chosen Sadiq Khan as its candidate for Mayor of Londonistan in 2016 a Muslim career politician with strong sympathies for Islamic radicals and extremists.https://youtu.be/dHOYOrThmdsVia: Shoebat.com | 1real |
U.S. government watchdog to review Mar-a-Lago trips, Trump hotel profits | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. government watchdog has agreed to review how classified information is kept secure at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the agency said on Monday, after Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about the issue last month. The Government Accountability Office’s review will examine whether Secret Service agents subject Mar-a-Lago guests to any security screening, and evaluate the expenses incurred by government employees who travel with Trump to Mar-a-Lago, according to a letter the agency sent the lawmakers on Friday. The GAO will also check whether Trump has made any payments to the U.S. Treasury from profits at his hotels, the letter said. Trump’s lawyer pledged at a Jan. 11 news conference to donate Trump Hotel profits from foreign governments to the Treasury. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump’s handling of U.S. security information at Mar-a-Lago came under congressional scrutiny in February after photos taken by private guests in the club’s public dining area showed Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reviewing documents following a North Korean missile launch. The White House denied afterward that any classified material was present in the dining room. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said on Monday the GAO would be able to conduct an “independent review” of how Trump spends his weekends at the resort, which the Republican president has dubbed his “Winter White House.” In a Feb. 16 letter, Cummings and Democratic Senators Tom Udall, Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse asked the GAO to assess whether Trump and his staff had violated security protocol when hosting foreign dignitaries and handling classified information at the Florida resort. Udall said on Monday the American people “deserved to know who has access to the president, how much it’s costing to protect him and whether the Trump Organization is benefiting from that protection.” He introduced a bill on Friday that would require the White House to publish logs of people who meet with Trump there and at other locations. The GAO is expected to begin the review in a few months. | 0fake |
Trump spokeswoman denies media report that Ohio rally canceled | (Reuters) - A spokeswoman for U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Saturday denied a media report that he had canceled an Ohio rally because of security concerns. The Cincinnati.com news website had quoted Eric Deters, a local spokesman for Trump’s campaign, as saying the candidate’s Secret Service security detail could not complete preparations in time to hold the event on Sunday at Cincinnati’s Duke Energy Convention Center. But Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email: “We don’t know Eric Deters. There has been no cancellation.” Ohio is among five states holding primary elections on Tuesday. A Trump rally in Chicago was called off on Friday after scuffles between Trump supporters and protesters. (Reporting by Idrees Ali and Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Kevin Liffey) 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 |
How Trump Just Answered This One Question Could Sink His Campaign With Conservatives [VIDEO] | Maybe Donald would change his opinion about this important issue if his home was threatened by an overreaching government I think eminent domain for massive projects, for instance you are going to create thousands of jobs and you have somebody who is in the way, and you pay that person far more. Don t forget, eminent domain, they get a lot of money. And you need a house in a certain location because you are going to build this massive development that is going to employ thousands of people, I think eminent domain is fine. It s called economic development. | 1real |
Republican Panics On Live TV, Can’t Say Trump Is Capable Of Handling North Korea (VIDEO) | Donald Trump s credibility and power has become such a joke that not even members of his own party have any faith in him to deal with the current issues that America is facing.On Sunday, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) unintentionally showed everyone just how little the GOP believes in Trump when he couldn t force himself to say that Trump could handle the current nuclear crisis the United States is facing with North Korea. In an interview with CNN s Dana Bash, Flake was put on the spot about how capable Trump is (and isn t). Bash asked Flake: Senator, there are a lot of people waking up this morning in this country very concerned about what they re hearing from North Korea. Do you share Clapper s concern, not just about North Korea, but with the president s ability to respond? Flake couldn t give a straight answer. He said: Well, I I do have good confidence in our national security team and those who are advising the president. And the president does not have experience in this in this kind of situation, but few presidents do when they come into office. And I m confident that the people around the president are giving him good advice, and I believe that he will follow it. I sure hope he does. Obviously, you like a leader that s measured and sober and consistent. Our allies want to hear that. I think our adversaries need to hear that. But we have got a good team around the president. Bash was quick to put Flake on the spot and point out that he hadn t actually said that Trump could handle this matter. Bash pressed, Senator, you talked there about the president s team, but not about the president himself. Are you concerned about the president himself, as James Clapper is? Flake continued to stumble through this interview: Well, like I said, no president comes in prepared with regard to foreign policy experience. That s why you have a good team around them. I have had my concerns, I think everyone has, at some of the statements that have been made by the president with regard to NATO and other areas in foreign policy. Like I said, I think we we want somebody who is who is measured and sober and consistent and conservative in this regard. But he has a good team around him, and I have confidence in them. This is absolutely humiliating for Trump. Not only was his Defense Secretary, James Mattis, sent out earlier today to deliver a public statement on North Korea in his place, but now a member of his own party practically said Trump isn t capable of handling North Korea. Flake refused to support Trump and say he was a competent president, and instead opted to talk about the experts surrounding him.You can watch Flake humiliate Trump below:Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Grammy To Go To David Foster Wallace | Health Groups Urging Chart Topping Band the Chainsmokers to Change Their Name They may be one of the hottest acts in pop at the moment, but US dance music duo the Chainsmokers are being criticized by health organisations and campaigners because of their rather unhealthy-sounding name. The twosome, Andrew Taggart and Alex Pa... Adele helps pregnant mothers by telling them; "It aint no fun being a mum!" One of Britain's most famous exports, singer/songwriter Adele, has decided to go public and warned pregnant mother's about having babies, she say's "being a mum aint no fun!" Adele just happened to be paid a couple of million for telling her despe... | 1real |
Fifth Varshavyanka submarine joins Russia’s Navy | Russia & India Report | Fifth Varshavyanka submarine joins Russia’s Navy 26 October 2016 TASS By the end of this year the Russian Navy will have the sixth submarine in the series, The Kolpino. Facebook submarines , russian navy , black sea fleet
The fifth non-nuclear submarine of project 636.3, The Veliki Novgorod, has joined the Russian Navy, a TASS correspondent reports from the flag-hoisting ceremony at the Admiralty Shipyards in St. Petersburg, attended by the Russian Navy’s Deputy commander, Vice-Admiral Alexander Fedotenkov and the shipyards’ CEO Alexander Buzakov.
"The Veliki Novgorod submarine has been through all government certification tests. All of the previous submarines in that series built for the Black Sea Fleet have confirmed the expected parameters, too," Buzakov said.
The Veliki Novgorod is the fifth in the group of six submarines of project 636.3 (Varshavyanka) built for the Black Sea Fleet. The first two - The Novorossiysk and The Rostov-on-Don were delivered in 2014, and another two, The Stary Oskol and The Krasnodar, in 2015. By the end of this year the Russian Navy will have the sixth submarine in the series, The Kolpino. The flag-hoisting ceremony is due November 25.
Another six Varshavyanka subs will be built at the Admiralty shipyards for the Pacific Fleet. The contract was signed at the Army-2016 forum near Moscow. The last submarine in the second group is to be delivered in 2021.
First published by TASS . | 1real |
With Coverage in Peril and Obama Gone, Health Law’s Critics Go Quiet - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — For seven years, few issues have animated conservative voters as much as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But with President Barack Obama out of office, the debate over “Obamacare” is becoming less about “Obama” and more about “care” — greatly complicating the issue for Republican lawmakers. Polling indicates that more Republicans want to make fixes to the law rather than do away with it. President Trump, who remains popular on the right, has mused about a replacement plan that is even more expansive than the original. The conservative news media are focused more on Mr. Trump’s skirmishes with Democrats and reporters, among others, than on policy issues like health care. And the congressional debate, as well as the paid advertisements on both sides, is centered on the substance of the law rather than its namesake, draining some of its toxicity on the right. As liberals overwhelm congressional town meetings and deluge the Capitol phone system with pleas to protect the health law, there is no similar clamor for dismantling it, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment. From deeply conservative districts in the South and the West to the more moderate parts of the Northeast, Republicans in Congress say there is significantly less intensity among opponents of the law than when Mr. Obama was in office. “I hear more concerns than before about ‘You’re going to repeal it, and we’re all going to lose insurance’ because they don’t think we’re going to replace it,” said Representative Mike Simpson, a Republican who represents a conservative district in Idaho. Since Mr. Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, about 20 million Americans have gained insurance because of it. And millions more who had health conditions have been able to obtain coverage under the law. At the same time, many Americans have seen their premiums rise or their choices of insurance carriers dwindle. But it was not until now, with the Republicans taking control of the federal government, that the debate fully shifted from the theoretical to the tangible. It was easy for conservatives to rally against a law identified with a president they despised when he was capable of vetoing any repeal. Now that he is gone and the law’s benefits appear to be on the chopping block, the people who stand to lose the most are the most vocal. “I’ve heard from constituents who have been harmed by the Affordable Care Act over the course of its being in existence,” said Representative Leonard Lance, Republican of New Jersey, whose affluent district Mr. Trump narrowly lost last year. “More recently, because of our discussions on repairing it, I’ve heard from those who do not wish to have the act amended. More recently, that is the preponderance of those who have contacted me. ” It is a longstanding rule of politics that rallying opposition to a proposal is usually easier than galvanizing support. And never is this more the case than when a widely distributed benefit is at risk of being taken away. “I was here in 2009 and 2010, and we’re not getting the calls like that,” said Representative Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican who is on one of the committees tasked with rewriting the law. “I think people are going to hold us accountable for making sure we not only repeal, but we have a law in place that creates a better opportunity for people. ” The demands from constituents in districts like Mr. Guthrie’s are plainly shifting. In a nationwide CBS News poll last month, 53 percent of Republicans said they wanted to change the law to make it work better while 41 percent said they wanted to abolish it. Overhauling the law, however, is far more politically complicated than simply scrapping it. Congressional Republican leaders were met with a backlash from their own ranks after it emerged that they were considering financing a new law by ending the longstanding practice of letting employers exclude from taxation the health benefits they offer. “Our voters do expect action, but as you make changes you become vulnerable to attack,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma said. “This is fraught with difficulties, no doubt about it. ” Adding to the anxiety is Mr. Trump, who is a wild card on the health law. His health secretary, Tom Price, signaled to House Republicans at a private meeting on Thursday that the administration would let Congress draft a replacement bill, Mr. Cole said. But the president has said multiple times that he is uneasy about depriving anybody of health insurance, and he may bridle if Democrats attack any Republican plan that may lead to that. As Democrats note, Mr. Trump owes his victory in part to voters who have benefited from the law. “A lot of economically vulnerable Republican voters have come to rely on government’s involvement in making sure they have affordable health care,”said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster. And with Mr. Trump and Republican lawmakers facing less pressure from the right than the left, conservative groups worry that the party will not ultimately have the stomach to repeal the law, which Republicans have been running against since 2010. “Voters gave Republicans the charge to repeal and replace Obamacare, and the continued delays and discussions about repairing Obamacare need to stop,” David McIntosh, the head of the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group, said last week. | 0fake |
F.B.I. Gives Congress Documents Related to Hillary Clinton E-Mail Inquiry - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The F. B. I. on Tuesday handed over to Congress documents related to its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server after House Republicans pushed the bureau to surrender material it had gathered before it concluded last month that she should not face criminal charges. The documents were believed to include notes from the F. B. I. ’s interview with Mrs. Clinton in early July, the last step in a lengthy investigation into her email practices as secretary of state that continues to dog her run for president. “The F. B. I. has turned over a ‘number of documents’ related to their investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email server,” according to a statement from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “Committee staff is currently reviewing the information that is classified Secret. There are no further details at this time. ” Though he did not recommend criminal charges, the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey Jr. said in July that Mrs. Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email address and server was “extremely careless. ” He also appeared to contradict statements she had made, saying the F. B. I. had uncovered a small number of emails that were marked classified. House Republicans have asserted that the F. B. I. documents could demonstrate that Mrs. Clinton committed perjury when she testified last October that she did not send or receive emails that were marked classified at the time. The State Department expressed concern that the documents might contain sensitive diplomatic information, and had asked to review them before the F. B. I. handed them over. The department said it had reviewed emails that the F. B. I. planned to give to Congress, but not summaries of its interviews with Mrs. Clinton. “We are satisfied that the F. B. I. has made arrangements to ensure that the documents will be transmitted subject to appropriate handling controls,” said Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman. A congressional aide said the material was being held under tight security while staff members reviewed it. The F. B. I. said in a statement that it had decided to turn over the documents to several congressional oversight committees to fulfill its commitment to make the investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email practices transparent. But it added, “The material contains classified and other sensitive information and is being provided with the expectation it will not be disseminated or disclosed without F. B. I. concurrence. ” House Democrats have voiced worries that details from the documents could be leaked selectively to damage Mrs. Clinton in the campaign. “This will neither serve the interests of justice nor aid Congress in its responsibilities and will merely set a precedent for the F. B. I. to turn over closed case files whenever one party in Congress does not like a prosecutorial decision,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, said in a statement. The Clinton campaign expressed displeasure with the transfer of the material, saying that Republicans would it to discredit Mrs. Clinton and that it would be used to raise questions about the F. B. I. ’s judgment. “We believe that if these materials are going to be shared outside the Justice Department,” said the campaign’s spokesman, Brian Fallon, “they should be released widely so that the public can see them for themselves, rather than allow Republicans to mischaracterize them through selective, partisan leaks. ” A congressional aide said she did not expect anything from the documents to be made public for at least a few days. The committee’s chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, is traveling outside the United States. Separately, Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, said that the State Department had agreed to disclose “emails sent or received by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that were uncovered by the F. B. I. in its investigation of Clinton and her use of the clintonemail. com system. ” Judicial Watch has sued under the Freedom of Information Act for the release of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. She said she had turned over to the State Department all the emails from her four years as secretary of state, but the F. B. I. in its examination of her server, uncovered several thousand emails that had not been handed over. | 0fake |
Trump Brags About His Inauguration’s TV Ratings And Gets A BRUTAL Reality Check | Donald Trump s inauguration was one of the most disappointing in American history, but he keeps desperately trying to sell it as one of the best.Actual attendance at Trump s inauguration didn t even get close to a million people as aerial photos show that much of the National Mall was empty by the time Trump delivered his divisive and negative inaugural address.Neilson television ratings for Trump s inauguration were not much better as 31 million tuned in to watch a national tragedy unfold before their eyes.But Trump is bragging about this number on Twitter and comparing it to President Obama s second inauguration ratings as if he thinks he deserves some sort of prize for cherry-picking an inauguration that got lower ratings.Wow, television ratings just out: 31 million people watched the Inauguration, 11 million more than the very good ratings from 4 years ago! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2017The problem is that Trump deliberately chose to compare his inauguration to President Obama s second inauguration because his numbers were far lower than Obama s first inauguration. And Twitter once again brutally flattened Trump s fragile ego with a reality check..@realDonaldTrump Donald, I m worried you re treating the United States Presidency like a television show, dear. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 22, 2017@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/V6VuSvfl9p Oliver Chinyere (@Oliverdirtyb) January 22, 2017@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/EFP59b6TY6 Oliver Chinyere (@Oliverdirtyb) January 22, 2017@realDonaldTrump I thought ratings were fake? Can t keep up with you, Donny. Ben Rachinger (@BenSRachinger) January 22, 2017.@realDonaldTrump got: 7 mil fewer viewers than BO s 1st #Inauguration 3 mil fewer votes than HRC 50% fewer attendees than the #WomensMarch pic.twitter.com/52owPPsb5o Khary Penebaker (@kharyp) January 22, 2017@realDonaldTrump 7 million fewer than Obama s first ceremony https://t.co/k4nlGLJFbO Fergus Ryan (@fryan) January 22, 2017@realDonaldTrump Variety: Donald Trump s inauguration ratings lose to Obama in 2009 https://t.co/In8Wt6uRtR Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) January 22, 2017@realDonaldTrump no one gives a shit Mike Denison (@mikd33) January 22, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Jesus Christ! Are you in this for TV ratings? pic.twitter.com/M9o6l7wLRz Bate Felix Tabi Tabe (@BateFelix) January 22, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Except that you should compare your ratings to Obama s in 2009, not 2013. And in 2009, Obama had 38 million viewers. Oops Simon Hedlin (@simonhedlin) January 22, 2017Donald Trump is supposed to be president now, but he is acting far from presidential and is only demonstrating that he will be just as petty, vain, and thin-skinned as ever before and those traits will only amplify because he has a bigger platform now.Featured image via Pete Souza | 1real |
Lagarde Case Is ‘Weak,’ French Prosecutor Says, Raising Chances of Acquittal - The New York Times | PARIS — The prosecutor in the trial against Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, raised the chance that she would be acquitted of criminal charges linked to the misuse of public funds, after he called the case “very weak” on Thursday. Ms. Lagarde stands accused of “negligence by a person in a position of public authority,” in a matter related to her time as French finance minister. The case stems from an arbitration hearing ordered by Ms. Lagarde that ultimately awarded a French tycoon more than 400 million euros, or $425 million. She has long dismissed the allegations — which have dogged her for nearly a decade — as politically motivated and without basis. But they have nevertheless captured the attention of the public, illustrating close ties between France’s powerful politicians and the country’s business elite. Wrapping up a trial, Marin, the public prosecutor, said the testimony presented did not appear to be sufficient to merit a conviction. It is a theme prosecutors have echoed previously. The case was halted in September 2015, when France’s top prosecutor said there was insufficient evidence. But a special court, which had been set up in 1993 to hear cases against the country’s politicians, overrode that recommendation. Ms. Lagarde, a former senior lawyer and executive with the international law firm Baker McKenzie, has taken time to defend herself in person, while remaining at the helm of the I. M. F. The I. M. F. has said that while the case was a private matter, it retained confidence in her. The case against Ms. Lagarde centers on Bernard Tapie, a former executive who has previously been jailed on corruption charges. Mr. Tapie had accused Crédit Lyonnais of cheating him out of money when he sold his stake in the sportswear company in 1993. At the time, the bank was still partially owned by the French state. Years of legal battles ensued, with Ms. Lagarde eventually sending the dispute to a private arbitration authority in 2007. The panel awarded Mr. Tapie damages and interest to be paid by the government, a ruling that angered the French public. Ms. Lagarde’s aides suggested she annul the decision. But she declined to do so because it could result in a slew of new lawsuits from Mr. Tapie and further costs to the state. After the ruling, questions emerged about the impartiality of one of the arbiters. That arbiter, Pierre Estoup, was accused of having ties to Mr. Tapie’s lawyer. The lawyer and Mr. Estoup are now expected to stand trial in France over whether they colluded during the arbitration proceedings. The payout itself has since been annulled, with Mr. Tapie ordered to repay €404 million with interest to the state. He is, however, currently under bankruptcy protection and has not yet repaid the sum. | 0fake |
VIDEO: CNN Accused of Staging Muslim Demo Against Terror Following London Attacks | CNN has been forced to deny staging an protest by ‘Muslim Mothers’ for a “fake news” report, after raw footage appeared to show the event was choreographed for the cameras. [The video shows Anderson and a substantial crew appearing to direct the mostly female “demonstrators” who file under a cordon one at a time under the watchful eye of nearby police constables. Flowers are laid out around the group as it appears, and printed placards bearing slogans such as ‘#Love Will Win’ and ‘#TurnToLove’ are spread out. After crew members make sure everyone is in place, Anderson begins her report saying, “What I want to show you now, viewers, is a wonderful scene” — to muffled laughter from Mark Antro, who filmed the and other bystanders. This is outrageous. Propaganda. Choreography by ”news” channels. https: . — Raheem (@RaheemKassam) June 4, 2017, “Look at all the people around me here, behind me here, sad about last night but hopeful for tomorrow,” the normally the normally Abu journalist continued. “On the left here, Londoners came to help hurt, behind me you can see a sign here, hashtag ‘turn to love’ hashtag ‘for London’ hashtag ‘ISIS will lose’ and flowers left in remembrance of those who left their lives. ” U. S. media commentator Richard Grenell described the scene as “very disturbing” in a Twitter post which was later recirculated by Dr Sebastian Gorka, the Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump. Other online commentators, such as former LBC host Katie Hopkins and popular Trump supporter Mike Cernovich, were more forthright. “WATCH. @CNN scripting a narrative. Right before your eyes. ” tweeted Hopkins. “CNN caught staging news!” tweeted Cernovich. “They even brought ‘peace group’ printed out papers and props”. The network fired back, however, with its public relations team insisting their employees had done nothing wrong. This is nonsense. Police let demonstrators through the cordon to show their signs. CNN along with other media simply filmed them doing so. — CNN International PR (@CNNPRUK) June 5, 2017, “This is nonsense,” they claimed. “Police let demonstrators through the cordon to show their signs. CNN along with other media simply filmed them doing so. ” | 0fake |
State Dept. accused of stiff-arming intel watchdog over Hillary emails | Top U.S. intelligence officials are running out of patience with the State Department's reluctance to turn over emails from Hillary Clinton's private email server, which have already been shown to have included top secret communications, Fox News has learned.
The Intelligence Community's Inspector General has requested some 30,000 emails from Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State in order to conduct its own review. Those emails are in possession of the State Department, which has been gradually releasing them to the public.
Clinton has agreed to turn over a similar-sized batch of emails, as well as the highly unusual private server she had installed in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, to the Department of Justice which is conducting a separate investigation.
An intelligence source told Fox News the State Department has pushed back on the government intelligence watchdog's request, and that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is considering intervening. The source said the inspector general wants to check the controls on the redaction process and ensure that the office can get a handle on all of the potentially sensitive information that was contained in the Clinton emails.
The flurry of activity came after Charles McCullough, the inspector general, notified senior members of Congress that two of four retroactively classified emails found on Clinton's server were deemed "Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information" — a rating that is the government's highest classifications.
Clinton, the former first lady, senator from New York and top diplomat now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, announced Tuesday that she had told aides to turn over the actual server to the Justice Department, giving in to months of demands that she relinquish the device she used to store her correspondence while secretary of state.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said McCullough had reported the new details about the higher classification to Congress on Tuesday.
The State Department disputes McCullough's determination that the emails were classified at the time they were sent. McCullough had previously told Congress that potentially hundreds of classified emails are among the cache that Clinton provided to the State Department.
A State Department spokesman said Wednesday that the agency is still processing the emails Clinton initially turned over and took a veiled swipe at Grassley for disclosing what McCullough had said.
"The emails that have been discussed have not been released to public," said Deputy Press Secretary Mark Toner. "We are working to resolve if it is indeed classified [and] we are taking steps to make sure the information is protected and stored properly.
"These emails were not marked classified when they were sent," he added.
A source familiar with the investigation told Fox News late Tuesday that the two emails in question contained operational and geospatial intelligence from the CIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which produces satellite images.
The FBI is investigating whether classified information was improperly sent via and stored on the so-called "home-brew" e-mail server she ran from her home in the New York City suburb after concerns were raised by McCullough. Investigators have said that the probe is not criminal in nature and have denied that Clinton is a target of their inquiries.
Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said she has "pledged to cooperate with the government's security inquiry, and if there are more questions, we will continue to address them."
It's not clear if the device will yield any information — Clinton's attorney said in March that no emails from the main personal address she used while secretary of state still "reside on the server or on back-up systems associated with the server."
An intelligence source familiar with the matter told Fox News that the campaign's statement of cooperation was overblown, as the FBI had previously taken possession of a thumb drive containing sensitive emails that had been held by Clinton's personal attorney, David Kendall. The Associated Press reported that Kendall gave three thumb drives containing copies of roughly 30,000 work-related emails sent to and from Clinton's personal email address to the FBI after the agency determined he could not remain in possession of the classified information contained in some of the emails.
The AP's report cited a U.S. official briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. The State Department previously had said it was comfortable with Kendall keeping the emails at his Washington law office.
Clinton had to this point refused demands from Republican critics to turn over the server to a third party, with Kendall telling the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that "there is no basis to support the proposed third-party review of the server." Clinton has also defended her use of the server, saying she used it as a matter of convenience to limit the number of electronic devices she had to carry.
"It's about time," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio said in a statement. "Secretary Clinton's previous statements that she possessed no classified information were patently untrue. Her mishandling of classified information must be fully investigated."
"Secretary Clinton said she created this unusual email arrangement with herself for 'convenience.' It may have been convenient for her, but it has been troubling at multiple levels for the rest of the country," said Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the Benghazi select committee. "Secretary Clinton's decision to prioritize her own convenience - and desire for control - over the security of our country's intelligence should concern all people of good conscience."
There is no evidence Clinton used encryption to shield the emails or her personal server from foreign intelligence services or other potentially prying eyes. Kendall has said that Clinton is "actively cooperating" with the FBI inquiry.
In March, Clinton said she exchanged about 60,000 emails in her four years in the Obama administration, about half of which were personal and were discarded. She turned over the other half to the State Department in last December.
The department is reviewing those emails and has begun the process of releasing them to the public.
"As she has said, it is her hope that State and the other agencies involved in the review process will sort out as quickly as possible which emails are appropriate to release to the public, and that the release will be as timely and transparent as possible," Merrill said Tuesday.
Earlier this week, Clinton said in a sworn statement submitted to a federal judge that she has turned over to the State Department all emails from the server "that were or potentially were federal records." The statement, which carries her signature and was signed under penalty of perjury, echoed months of Clinton's past public statements about the matter.
Fox News' Matt Dean and The Associated Press contributed to this report. | 0fake |
If Clinton Goes Down, Loretta Lynch Will Go Down With Her | Posted on October 31, 2016 by Daisy Luther
Oh, Loretta.
I’ll bet that AG Loretta Lynch is shaking in her boots right now, because when Hillary Clinton goes down, Lynch’s career will go down with her. Heck, maybe they’ll even be cellmates.
Loretta Lynch’s ties to the Clintons go back to 1999 when then-President Bill Clinton appointed her to run the Brooklyn US Attorney’s office. She left in 2002 and went into private practice, but returned to the Brooklyn office in 2010 at the behest of President Barack Obama. ( Here’s her official bio. )
In 2015, she was sworn in to become the 83rd Attorney General of the United States, taking the place of the blatantly corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder , who will probably be most famous for his roles in the Fast and Furious operation, inciting racial tensions, and his mishandling of the Lois Lerner/IRS debacle. First, there was the secret airplane meeting with Bill Clinton
It all started to publicly go downhill for Lynch during the first investigation into Hillary Clinton’s carelessness with national secrets via her home email server . Right before FBI Director James Comey was to meet with Hillary Clinton to interrogate her about the subject, Lynch was busted having a secret meeting with Bill Clinton . The Washington Post reported:
Clinton’s private, unplanned meeting with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch at the Phoenix airport last week, coming at a time when the Justice Department should be nearing completion of its examination of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for her emails as secretary of state, will inevitably — and negatively — affect public attitudes about that investigation…
…Lynch has tried to make amends, though not without leaving some confusion in her wake. In a conversation Friday with Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart at the Aspen Ideas Festival, she insisted again that the conversation was innocent — about grandchildren and golf and such — and did not touch on the investigation of the emails. But she said she recognized that others would not see it that way. “The fact that the meeting that I had is now casting a shadow over how people are going to view that work is something that I take seriously, and deeply and painfully,” she said.
Lynch said that she would “be accepting” whatever recommendation the career prosecutors and FBI Director James B. Comey bring her — though she did not say she would remove herself completely from the case. She also said she had made that decision some months ago but was only now making it public.
Of course, it was all much easier for Lynch to abide by the decision when Comey miraculously found that Hillary Clinton was not criminal in her negligence with national secrets.
Now, though, people are asking questions about that ill-founded meeting. Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit for “all records” related to the illicit meeting between Attorney General Lynch and former President Bill Clinton .
“On June 29, 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch is reported to have met privately with former President Bill Clinton on board a parked private plane at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. The meeting occurred during the then-ongoing investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email server, and mere hours before the Benghazi report was released publicly involving both Mrs. Clinton and the Obama administration. Judicial Watch filed a request on June 30 that the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General investigate that meeting.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested that during that meeting, Bill Clinton may have offered to extend Lynch’s position in the AG’s office during a Hillary Clinton administration. Then she blocked a congressional investigation into the notorious Iranian ransom payment.
Last week, AG Lynch blocked a congressional investigation into the cash payments that the Obama administration made to Iran by pleading the Fifth. The Washington Free Beacon reported:
Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon …
…“It is frankly unacceptable that your department refuses to answer straightforward questions from the people’s elected representatives in Congress about an important national security issue,” the lawmakers wrote. “Your staff failed to address any of our questions, and instead provided a copy of public testimony and a lecture about the sensitivity of information associated with this issue.”
“As the United States’ chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries,” they stated. “The actions of your department come at time when Iran continues to hold Americans hostage and unjustly sentence them to prison.”
How very judicial of her. Lynch tried to shut Comey up about the new investigation into the Clinton emails.
Now, even the mainstream media can’t turn its head.
Earlier I wrote about the fact that FBI Director James Comey made the decision on his own to go public about the new investigation into the Hillary Clinton emails. But let’s talk a little further about Lynch’s desperate attempts to shut him up.
The New York Times reported that the Justice Department “strongly discouraged Comey” against releasing the information: The day before the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, sent a letter to Congress announcing that new evidence had been discovered that might be related to the completed Hillary Clinton email investigation, the Justice Department strongly discouraged the step and told him that he would be breaking with longstanding policy, three law enforcement officials said on Saturday. Senior Justice Department officials did not move to stop him from sending the letter, officials said, but they did everything short of it, pointing to policies against talking about current criminal investigations or being seen as meddling in elections.
How interesting that it’s seen as “influencing the election” to investigate someone now but it wasn’t back when she was investigated and not charged. I’m not sure exactly how that works, but according to USA Today (emphasis mine), a “…federal official familiar with Comey’s decision said Saturday that the FBI director considered the attorney general’s advice during a spirited discussion of the matter Thursday and early Friday but felt compelled to act.” Do you remember Janet Reno?
Poor Janet was another Attorney General who went down for the Clintons. She was also sworn in as AG under Bill Clinton, and many questioned her appointment at the time. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune :
She arrived in Washington from Miami as Caesar’s wife, and so she has remained. She was ignorant and independent of insider D.C. and has stayed that way. Bill Clinton never much liked her and never confided in her, and she reciprocated.
She became AG just in time to take the fall for the debacle in Waco , actually. According to History.com
The Waco standoff had already begun by the time Janet Reno became the first female attorney general on March 12, 1993. She approved the FBI’s tear gas plan the following month, explaining that negotiations with the Branch Davidians had stalemated and that the children inside the compound were at risk. “We will never know whether there was a better solution,” Reno said in 1995. “Everyone involved … made their best judgments based on all the information we had.” Nonetheless, a Republican-led congressional report called her decision “premature, wrong and highly irresponsible.” She was also criticized when facts emerged contradicting some of her earlier statements.
The Tribune post continued to discuss Reno’s position as a scapegoat:
Every day since she took office , she has been supervising at least one probe embarrassing to Clinton–Whitewater, fundraising, Lewinsky, China espionage, etc. Clinton can’t afford the political beating he would take if he cashiered her.
…But no such attorney general could have survived the Clinton scandals, much less survived them with her own reputation–and her department’s–intact.
Attorney Generals who have anything to do with the Clintons don’t seem to fare too well. They end up so embroiled in Clinton scandals that they, too, are pulled down into the mire, regardless of what their intentions were when they started out. Lynch can see her future…and it has something to do with “Help Wanted” ads
The last time Lynch was involved in the Clinton email kerfuffle, she promised to abide by FBI Director James Comey’s recommendation .
I wonder if she’ll make that same promise this time?
She really can’t, because if she does, it will show she was complicit with the Clintons the last time around, and also this time when she decried Comey’s release of information about the investigation.
I wonder if she and Hillary Clinton will be able to get adjoining cells when/if the truth comes out.
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The 7 Biggest Republican Lies About The Economy Torn Apart In Three Minutes (VIDEO) | In two-and-a-half minutes, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich destroys the seven biggest economic lies told by Republicans.In the short video, uploaded to YouTube by MoveOn, Reich uses facts to shred the Republican myth of trickle-down economics.While Republicans tell us that cutting taxes on the rich will spur economic growth and fuel job creation, the economic data tells a very different story. As Reich points out in the video, both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush cut taxes on the rich, and nothing trickled down. The result of Republican tax cuts for the rich have been the same across the states. GOP governors like Bobby Jindal and Rick Snyder have driven their states into economic ruin by imposing experimental trickle-down economic policies on citizens, with disastrous results.Along the same lines, Republicans claim that high taxes on the rich are bad for the economy. Yet history shows the opposite is true.Until 1980, taxes on the top earners in the U.S. were 70 percent. It wasn t until Republicans started cutting these tax rates that economic growth began to slow.Reich also tackles the myth that shrinking government creates jobs. The idea that we create jobs by firing people who already have jobs literally defies reason, but that hasn t stopped republicans from pushing it. It doesn t take much to destroy this lie.While republicans were remarkably silent about the national deficit while George Bush was in the White House, it suddenly became earth-shatteringly important on the day President Obama took office.Reich destroys the myth of deficit reduction as a top priority, explaining that the goal is to reduce the debt as a percent of the GDP, something that cannot be accomplished by slashing budgets all over the place.Reich also looks at how the rising cost of health care impacts the budget, busting the GOP myth that programs like Medicare and Medicaid are negatively impacting the economy.What s important to understand in relation to the health care debate is that government programs actually help slow the increase in health care costs for everyone.The right has been attacking social security as a Ponzi scheme ever since they figured out that there was a lot of money in the social security fund that they couldn t get their greedy little hands on.Is this true? Of course it s not. As Reich explains in the video, Social security is solvent for the next two-plus decades, and it would solvent for much longer if we lift the income cap.The video would not be complete if it didn t address the lie that lower-income people not paying taxes is horribly unfair to the rich.Watch the video below, courtesy of MoveOn on YouTube: While the video above was released in 2011, Republicans are still using these same debunked economic myths to press their disastrous agenda all across the country.As long as Republicans continue to try to repackage and sell these same old lies at election time, we ll be forced to keep debunking their myths time and time again.Image credit: wikimedia commons, video screen capture via MoveOn | 1real |
Israeli minister says was misunderstood on war remarks with Iran | JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli minister was not suggesting U.S. President Donald Trump s words could lead to war with Iran when he reacted to the U.S. leader s speech concerning the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, the minister s spokesman said on Saturday. In an interview on Friday on Israel s Channel 2 news after Trump s speech, in answer to a long question that ended with whether he saw a risk of war, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said: Absolutely, yes. I think that the speech was very significant, before expanding on the issue. Katz s spokesman said on Saturday that the minister s reply was directed at an earlier part of the question and that he had not intended to say that an armed conflict would erupt. Katz was not reacting to the question which the anchor added later whether the president s speech could lead to war with Iran, the spokesman said, rather that the speech and new strategy could bring about a real change. The spokesman added that Katz thought the speech signaled the (U.S.) administration s resolve to actively counter the threats which Iran poses, including its nuclear and ballistic missile threat, its support of terror organizations, its subversive activities in the region and its human rights violations. | 0fake |
Legal Community SCHOOLS Trump’s Lawyer For Claiming Collusion Is Not A Crime | Donald Trump s attorney Jay Sekulow made a fool of himself on Tuesday morning.During an interview with ABC host George Stephanopoulos, Sekulow actually claimed that collusion is not a crime in an effort to defend Trump after his associate George Papadopoulos plead guilty to lying to FBI agents about meeting with Russians. He was a volunteer with the campaign, he served on one of the committees, Sekelow said. He was involved with individuals that purported to be somehow involved with Russia or Russian government it s not clear from the documents. The end result is the meeting doesn t take place. So what you had is you had all this conversation about collusion. Remember this, collusion in and of itself there s no crime of collusion. Even Stephanopoulos knew that claim was bullshit. Collusion is cooperation and that s what he was doing with Russians, Stephanopoulos replied.Here s the video via YouTube.Indeed, collusion is just another word for conspiracy, which is a crime. A MAJOR crime.Sekulow s claim was immediately debunked by prominent members of the legal community.Harvard University law professor John Coates and University of California, Irvine law professor Rick Hasen schooled Sekulow. It is a federal crime to conspire with anyone, including a foreign government, to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services, Coates told Politifact after Fox News host Eric Bolling made the same claim in July. That would include fixing a fraudulent election, in my view, within the plain meaning of the statute. If others participated in the scheme to do this it could be a conspiracy, Hasen added. Whether you want to call that collusion or not seems besides the point. In short, Trump s own attorney doesn t understand the law and apparently thinks that the use of the word collusion absolves Trump and his campaign team of any crimes. But that s simply not the case and any self-respecting judge would laugh at Sekulow in open court if he tried to use such a defense.Featured Image: Win McNamee/Getty Images | 1real |
HOT Topic: Catholics & Lutherans | HOT Topic: Catholics & Lutherans October 28, 2016 File photo of Pope Francis talking during his visit to the Lutheran church in Rome, November 15, 2015.
An unlikely match is in the works. Pope Francis creates anticipation for intercommunion between Catholics and Lutherans.
After 500 years of clear differences between them, intercommunion between Catholics and Lutherans seems to be closer to becoming a reality. Lutheran and Catholic bishops are expressing their expectation of the ability to receive Communion in the Catholic Church, a practice that is not lawful. Pope Francis, who will travel to Lund, Sweden, to participate in the ceremonies, has himself elicited the excitement by suggesting that intercommunion is a possibility.
The Lutheran Church of Sweden to which Pope Francis is going for the celebration accepts contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and female clergy, all of which are strictly forbidden in the Catholic Church. Regarding the Eucharist, Lutherans have a fundamentally different faith from Catholics. Nevertheless, Eucharistic intercommunion seems to be the main desire for Lutheran and Catholic leaders. There doesn't seem to be much talk about whether married homosexual couples will be taking communion together at the Catholic Church. It is after all a legitimate concern for many considering the position of both Catholics and Lutherans on the issue. Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories | 1real |
'Despondent' May losing sleep on in-fighting, said Juncker: FAZ | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Theresa May looked despondent , with deep rings under her eyes, EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker told aides after dining with the British prime minister last week, a German newspaper said on Sunday. The report by a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung correspondent whose leaked account of a Juncker-May dinner in April caused upset in London, said Juncker thought her marked by battles over Brexit with her own Conservative ministers as she asked for EU help to create more room for maneuver at home. No immediate comment was available from Juncker s office, which has a policy of not commenting on reports of meetings. The FAZ said May, who flew in for a hastily announced dinner in Brussels with the European Commission president last Monday ahead of an EU summit, seemed to Juncker anxious, despondent and disheartened , a woman who trusts hardly anyone but is also not ready for a clear-out to free herself . As she later did over dinner on Thursday with fellow EU leaders, May asked for help to overcome British divisions. She indicated that back home friend and foe are at her back plotting to bring her down, the paper said. May said she had no room left to maneuver. The Europeans have to create it for her. May s face and appearance spoke volumes, Juncker later told his colleagues, the FAZ added. She has deep rings under her eyes. She looks like someone who can t sleep a wink. She smiles for the cameras, it went on, but it looks forced , unlike in the past, when she could shake with laughter. Now she needs all her strength not to lose her poise. As with the April dinner at 10 Downing Street, when the FAZ reported that Juncker thought May in another galaxy in terms of Brexit expectations, both sides issued statements after last week s meeting saying talks were constructive and friendly . They said they agreed negotiations should be accelerated . May dismissed the dinner leak six months ago as Brussels gossip , though officials on both sides said the report in the FAZ did little to foster an atmosphere of trust which they agree will be important to reach a deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also reported to have been irritated by that leak. Although the summit on Thursday and Friday rejected May s call for an immediate start to talks on the future relationship, leaders made a gesture to speed up the process and voiced hopes of opening a new phase in December. Some said they understood May s difficulties in forging consensus in London. | 0fake |
How to Plan a Weekend Getaway - The New York Times | Can’t take time off for a weeklong vacation? Getting away for a weekend is still a way to recharge your batteries, said Shawna Huffman Owen, the president of Huffman Travel, a travel consultancy based in Chicago. “If you plan well,” she said, “a quick trip can be a great break and even feel longer than it is. ” As a frequent weekend vacationer, she has plenty of advice on getting the most out of a little time off. Here, her top tips: KNOW YOUR GOAL Do you want to completely disconnect and relax, be active, hit popular nightclubs and restaurants or bond with your family? “Your weekend trip will be a waste if it doesn’t accomplish what you’re looking to do,” Ms. Huffman Owen said. Travelers interested in cultural attractions, for example, might not appreciate a stay in a countryside retreat with few sights nearby, while those who like to be pampered wouldn’t enjoy a property without a spa or one where the spa is small and has a limited menu of services. Plan a trip according to what interests you most. PICK AN DESTINATION Enjoying your destination — not spending all of your time traveling to and from it — is crucial when you have limited time off. Consider places that are within a drive or a nonstop flight from home. For travelers who live on the East Coast or in the Midwest of the United States, Ms. Huffman Owen’s favorite spots for weekend trips include South Beach, Charleston, Quebec City, Montreal, Newport and the New England region West Coast and Southwest residents could consider Cabo San Lucas or San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and Big Sur, Vancouver, Seattle, Sonoma and Napa. FULFILL A DREAM The exception to choosing an easily accessible destination, Ms. Huffman Owen said, is using your weekend getaway to fulfill a travel fantasy such as flying to Paris to have dinner in that restaurant you have always wanted to dine at, going to London to catch a tennis match at Wimbledon or heading to Morocco for a trek in the Sahara, a trip that the adventure travel company Epic Tomato can arrange. “Trips like these may require more effort and a bigger budget,” she said, “but they will be ones that you will never forget and can be rejuvenating in their own way. ” DO YOUR HOMEWORK Planning is crucial to making the most of your weekend away and avoiding disappointment. If you’re heading to a spa, for example, be sure to book treatments and fitness classes as far in advance as possible because many spas can be fully booked on weekends, and exercise classes, such as spinning, may have a limit on the number of participants. It’s also a good idea to book tables at nightclubs and restaurants, and reserve theater tickets and poolside and beachside cabanas at resorts. | 0fake |
Inside the war on coal | The war on coal is not just political rhetoric, or a paranoid fantasy concocted by rapacious polluters. It’s real and it’s relentless. Over the past five years, it has killed a coal-fired power plant every 10 days. It has quietly transformed the U.S. electric grid and the global climate debate.
The industry and its supporters use “war on coal” as shorthand for a ferocious assault by a hostile White House, but the real war on coal is not primarily an Obama war, or even a Washington war. It’s a guerrilla war. The front lines are not at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Supreme Court. If you want to see how the fossil fuel that once powered most of the country is being battered by enemy forces, you have to watch state and local hearings where utility commissions and other obscure governing bodies debate individual coal plants. You probably won’t find much drama. You’ll definitely find lawyers from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, the boots on the ground in the war on coal.
Beyond Coal is the most extensive, expensive and effective campaign in the Club’s 123-year history, and maybe the history of the environmental movement. It’s gone largely unnoticed amid the furor over the Keystone pipeline and President Barack Obama’s efforts to regulate carbon, but it’s helped retire more than one third of America’s coal plants since its launch in 2010, one dull hearing at a time. With a vast war chest donated by Michael Bloomberg, unlikely allies from the business world, and a strategy that relies more on economics than ecology, its team of nearly 200 litigators and organizers has won battles in the Midwestern and Appalachian coal belts, in the reddest of red states, in almost every state that burns coal.
“They’re sophisticated, they’re very active, and they’re better funded than we are,” says Mike Duncan, a former Republican National Committee chairman who now heads the industry-backed American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “I don’t like what they’re doing; we’re losing a lot of coal in this country. But they do show up.”
Coal still helps keep our lights on, generating nearly 40 percent of U.S. power. But it generated more than 50 percent just over a decade ago, and the big question now is how rapidly its decline will continue. Almost every watt of new generating capacity is coming from natural gas, wind or solar; the coal industry now employs fewer workers than the solar industry, which barely existed in 2010. Utilities no longer even bother to propose new coal plants to replace the old ones they retire. Coal industry stocks are tanking, and analysts are predicting a new wave of coal bankruptcies.
This is a big deal, because coal is America’s top source of greenhouse gases, and coal retirements are the main reason U.S. carbon emissions have declined 10 percent in a decade. Coal is also America’s top source of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other toxic air pollutants, so fewer coal plants also means less asthma and lung disease—not to mention fewer coal-ash spills and coal-mining disasters. The shift toward cleaner-burning gas and zero-emissions renewables is the most important change in our electricity mix in decades, and while Obama has been an ally in the war on coal—not always as aggressive an ally as the industry claims—the Sierra Club is in the trenches. The U.S. had 523 coal-fired power plants when Beyond Coal began targeting them; just last week, it celebrated the 190th retirement of its campaign in Asheville, N.C., culminating a three-year fight that had been featured in the climate documentary “Years of Living Dangerously.”
Beyond Coal isn’t the stereotypical Sierra Club campaign, tree-huggers shouting save-the-Earth slogans. Yes, it sometimes deploys its 2.4 million-member, grass-roots army to shutter plants with traditional not-in-my-back-yard organizing and right-to-breathe agitating. But it usually wins by arguing that ditching coal will save ratepayers money.
Behind that argument lies a revolution in the economics of power, changes few Americans think about when they flick their switches. Coal used to be the cheapest form of electricity by far, but it’s gotten pricier as it’s been forced to clean up more of its mess, while the costs of gas, wind and solar have plunged in recent years. Now retrofitting old coal plants with the pollution controls needed to comply with Obama’s limits on soot, sulfur and mercury is becoming cost-prohibitive—and the EPA is finalizing its new carbon rules as well as tougher ozone restrictions that should add to the burden. That’s why the Sierra Club finds itself in foxholes with big-box stores, manufacturers and other business interests, fighting coal upgrades that would jack up electricity bills, pushing for cheaper renewables and energy efficiency instead. In a case I watched in Oklahoma City, every stakeholder supported Beyond Coal’s push for a utility to buy more low-cost wind power—including a coalition of industrial customers that reportedly included a Koch Industries-owned paper mill.
“They’re not burning bras. They’re fighting dollar to dollar,” says attorney Jim Roth, who represented a group of hospitals on Beyond Coal’s side in the Oklahoma case. “They’ve become masters at bringing financial arguments to environmental questions.”
As the affordability case for coal has lost traction, the industry’s defenders have portrayed the war on coal as a war on reliability, an assault on 24-hour “baseload” plants that provide juice when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. They ask how the Sierra Club expects America to run its refrigerators around the clock—since it also opposes nuclear power and has a separate Beyond Gas campaign. Duncan’s group started a Twitter meme warning that Americans could end up #ColdInTheDark, and even Bloomberg suggested to me in a recent interview that the Club’s leaders seem to want Americans to wear loincloths and live in caves.
In fact, neither the decline of coal, nor the boom in renewables has blacked out the grid, and Beyond Coal’s leaders are confident electricity markets can handle much more intermittent power. In any case, they see coal as the lowest-hanging fruit in the struggle to stabilize the climate, not only our dirtiest fossil fuel but the one with the cheapest alternatives. In the long run, combating global warming will depend on a multitude of factors, from electric vehicles to carbon releases from deforestation to methane releases from belching cows, but for the next decade, our climate progress depends mostly on reducing our reliance on the black stuff. Coal retirements have enabled Obama to pledge U.S. emissions cuts of up to 28 percent by 2025, which has, in turn, enabled him to strike a climate deal with China and pursue a global deal later this year in Paris.
“We’ve found the secret sauce to making progress in unlikely places,” says Bruce Nilles, who leads Beyond Coal from the Club’s San Francisco headquarters. “And every time we beat the coal boys, people say: ‘Whoa. It can be done.’”
The Sierra Club can’t claim full credit for the coal bust. It didn’t ratchet down the prices of gas, wind and solar or enact the flurry of EPA rules ratcheting up the price of coal, although its lobbyists and lawyers have pushed hard for government support for renewables while fighting in court over just about every coal-related regulation. It didn’t produce the energy efficiency boom that has reined in electricity demand, either. Still, a Bloomberg Philanthropies analysis found that at least 40 percent of U.S. coal retirements could not have happened without Beyond Coal’s advocacy. The status quo wields a lot of power in the heavily regulated power sector, where economics and mathematics don’t always beat politics and inertia. The case for change keeps getting stronger, but someone has to make the case.
When Mary Anne Hitt, Beyond Coal’s national director, first visited Indianapolis to fight an inner-city plant, the headline in the Star was: “Beyond Coal’s Director Faces Tough Sell in Indiana.” But after two years of door-knocking, phone-banking and educating officials on the new realities of electricity, the Sierra Club and its local partners helped shut down the plant. Hitt has seen the same kind of miracle in Chicago, in Omaha, alongside a Paiute tribe reservation in Nevada, even in coal strongholds like Kentucky. It’s starting to feel more like a pattern than a miracle.
“David is fighting Goliath every day, and David keeps winning,” Hitt says.
Energy analysts have a way of making Goliath’s new underdog status seem inevitable. Then again, it wasn’t long ago that their burning question about the U.S. coal industry was not how fast it would go away, but how fast it would grow.
The story of coal is a rich vein in the American story, powering our industry, our railroads, our politics. For decades, the work of extracting coal after millions of years underground—so dangerous for some, so lucrative for others—was seen as God’s work. The alchemy of converting coal into valuable energy was seen as a fulfillment of America’s destiny to exploit nature for the benefit of mankind, even as the smog spewing out of coal smokestacks was seen as part of the dystopia of urban life.
These days, growing concerns about climate have heightened concerns about coal, which produces 75 percent of the power sector’s carbon, and more emissions than all our cars and trucks combined. But even at the dawn of the 21st century, the George W. Bush administration’s main concern about coal power and fossil energy in general was that the U.S. wasn’t producing enough of it. In 2001, an energy task force led by Dick Cheney, after a series of secret meetings with fossil-fuel executives, called for a new power-plant construction boom, warning that the alternative was a national reprise of the rolling blackouts that had just roiled California. Utilities quickly proposed about 200 new coal plants, and faced no organized national opposition. Coal plants have a useful lifespan of at least 40 years, so the U.S. was poised to lock in a new generation of dirty power. And all that new capacity was poised to destroy any incentive to develop clean wind or solar power.
That’s when the Sierra Club got into its first big coal fight over a proposed billion-dollar plant south of Chicago, a welcome-to-the-NFL episode. The Chicago area already had poor air quality—the coal plants around the Loop were known as the Ring of Fire—and local volunteers, led by an indefatigable German immigrant named Verena Owen, were desperate to block the project. Their cause seemed hopeless, but for Owen, who is now Beyond Coal’s lead volunteer, it was personal. Her best friend had struggled to breathe whenever the air was hazy and eventually died of lung disease, leaving behind a daughter in kindergarten. “I don’t know how many people we ended up saving, but I know one we didn’t,” Owen says.
The first time Nilles, at the time a lawyer for the Sierra Club’s Midwest office in Chicago, tried to attend a hearing about the plant, union members who supported the project came early and packed the hall while the Club was holding a news conference. Illinois regulators soon rubber-stamped the permit. Owen and Nilles can still recite the date and time of the news dump: Friday, Oct. 10, 2003, at 5:10 p.m., so the bureaucrats could ignore their calls and escape for the weekend. And the industry had an even easier time of it elsewhere. Nilles later reviewed the record for another billion-dollar plant that broke ground in Iowa about the same time, and discovered there hadn’t been a single public comment in opposition.
“Everything was going full speed in the wrong direction, and we had no capacity to fight,” he says. “We realized we needed a strategy. Fast.”
The strategy that Nilles devised was to fight every new plant from every conceivable environmental, economic and political angle. The Sierra Club began organizing boot camps to teach lawyers and volunteers around the region how to block coal permits. Demand for the seminars was so intense that, at one point, Nilles’ boss had to remind him that Texas was not part of the Midwest. But he figured Texans who breathed air and drank water had as much to lose from exposure to coal-fired pollutants as Midwesterners had. Some of the Club’s funders thought his fight-everything-everywhere approach was unrealistic during a national coal rush, but every proposed plant was in someone’s backyard, and the Club had members in every corner of the country. Nilles couldn’t imagine telling any of them their communities would have to be sacrificed for the greater tactical good.
Environmentalists have always been good at blocking stuff, and over the next few years, the kitchen-sink strategy produced some improbable victories. Nilles exploited threats to an endangered clover to delay the Chicago-area plant, and the utility eventually abandoned it. A local Sierra Club chapter stopped a massive plant in Kentucky coal country after a 63-day hearing, convincing regulators that the proposal had inadequate pollution controls, and that adequate controls would be exorbitant for ratepayers. These were shoestring crusades with expert witnesses crashing on the couches of volunteers, but the victories felt contagious, spreading hope to activists in other states who read about them on the Club’s coal listserv.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club was canvassing its members to develop a new long-term strategic plan. To the surprise of then-Director Carl Pope, they overwhelmingly wanted climate and energy to be the top priority, a major shift for a group that had emphasized wilderness conservation since its creation by the legendary outdoorsman John Muir. At a meeting in Tucson in early 2006, the Club’s board voted to build the fledgling Midwestern anti-coal effort into a national campaign. Climate activists are often accused of wasting energy on symbolic movement-building efforts with relatively limited impact on emissions, like their crusades to stop Keystone and get universities to divest from fossil fuels. Beyond Coal’s leaders do oppose the pipeline and support the divestment movement, but the rationale for the campaign was all about hunting where the ducks are.
“It was existential necessity: Look how many coal plants they want to build. Look how much carbon they’d produce. Well, it’s game over if we don’t stop them,” Pope recalls. “If we were going to focus on climate, we had to focus on coal.”
In a bow to political realism, the initial goal was to make sure coal was “mined responsibly, burned cleanly and disposed of safely.” But the campaigners didn’t really believe coal could be burned cleanly. The original mouthful of a mission soon evolved to “Move Beyond Coal,” then just “Beyond Coal.” It was a much simpler message, helping to unite a variety of activists—working for specific neighborhoods, Indian tribes, mountains targeted by mining outfits, public health, environmental justice, clean energy, and the climate—against a common enemy. The Sierra Club would be the one constant presence in the war on coal, but it began partnering with more than 100 local, regional and national groups in its battles around the country.
The campaign was remarkably successful. Nilles and his team scoured every permit application for vulnerabilities and managed to block all but 30 of the 200 plants proposed in the Bush era. The nice thing about fighting new plants was that they didn’t exist yet, so it only took one deal breaker—too much smog in a high-smog area, too close to a national park, too expensive for ratepayers, whatever—to break a deal. Some of the plants that did get built still haunt Nilles, but those defeats did not doom the decarbonization of America. The game was not over.
By 2008, with the economy crashing and power demand slumping, utilities had stopped pushing new coal plants. That’s when Nilles began plotting to go after old ones—an even tougher challenge, but a vital one to avoid the game-over scenario. He had moved to the liberal college town of Madison, and he was amazed that an old coal plant a mile from his home still had no pollution controls; it was way dirtier than the new plants he was fighting around the country. The nation’s fleet of existing coal plants was still emitting nearly 2 billion tons of carbon and causing an estimated 13,000 premature deaths every year. It felt good to stop projects that would have increased those numbers, but Nilles wanted to use the Club’s newfound expertise to reduce them.
“It’s a lot easier to throw ourselves in front of bulldozers to stop something than it is to shut something down that’s already part of the community, paying taxes, generating power, providing jobs,” Nilles says. “But that’s where the emissions are.”
That was also the year Obama won the presidency, creating hope for stricter EPA regulation of sulfur, soot and ozone, plus the first-ever regulations of mercury, coal ash and carbon. As difficult as it would be to kill plants that had been operating for decades—two-thirds of the coal fleet predated the Clean Air Act of 1970—Nilles thought the combination of top-down rules from Washington and bottom-up pressure at state and local hearings could force utilities to confront investment decisions they had been delaying all those decades. Most utilities would need approval from their financial and environmental regulators before they could install expensive pollution controls. And while the utilities might be happy to charge their customers tens of millions of dollars for upgrades in order to comply with one new rule—plus a tidy profit they’re usually guaranteed for capital improvements—utility commissions might not let them start down that road if they faced hundreds of millions of dollars in additional compliance costs from rules still to come.
Once again, the campaign produced some inspiring early wins, including the retirement of that antiquated plant near Nilles in Madison. He also filed a lawsuit against his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, to get it off coal. The Club quickly found that when it could stop investor-owned utilities from getting a blank check to charge ratepayers for coal upgrades, they would usually shut down the plants rather than risk shareholder dollars. That was even true in coal country, where homeowners, businesses and regulators were just as allergic to pricey upgrades—and utilities were just as reluctant to foot the bill themselves. As Nilles’ new deputy, Hitt, a West Virginia activist who had spent years trying to stop mining companies from blowing up mountains in Appalachia, found she could do more to protect the mountains by shutting down the plants that used their coal.
Beyond Coal had grown from three staffers to a 15-state operation, but it still lacked the scale to fight 523 plants all over the country. It needed to get a lot bigger. That’s when the combative billionaire who has financed his own wars on guns, tobacco and Big Gulps took an interest in the war on coal.
Beyond Coal’s pivotal moment came at a meeting in Gracie Mansion about, of all things, education reform. Michael Bloomberg, the Wall Street savant-turned media mogul-turned New York City mayor, was looking for a new outlet for his private philanthropy. It quickly became clear that education reform would not be that outlet.
“It was a terrible meeting in every way, and Mike was angry,” recalls his longtime adviser, Kevin Sheekey. “I said: ‘Look, if you don’t like this idea, that’s fine. We’ll bring you another.’ He said: ‘No, I want another now.’”
As it happened, Sheekey had just eaten lunch with Carl Pope, who was starting a $50 million fundraising drive to expand Beyond Coal’s staff to 45 states. The cap-and-trade plan that Obama supported to cut carbon emissions had stalled in Congress, and the carbon tax that Bloomberg supported was going nowhere as well. Washington was gridlocked. But Pope had explained to Sheekey that shutting down coal plants at the state and local level could do even more for the climate—and have a huge impact on public health issues close to his boss’s heart.
“That’s a good idea,” Bloomberg told Sheekey. “We’ll just give Carl a check for the $50 million. Tell him to stop fundraising and get to work.”
Bloomberg had never thought of himself as a Sierra Club kind of guy. But he saw coal as a killer, as well as the main threat to the climate, and the Club was in the field doing something about it. His only demand was a more analytical approach to the war on coal, with measurable deliverables, complex predictive models for vulnerable plants, and KPI—Key Performance Indicators, as Pope later learned.
“The Sierra Club had never heard of KPI,” Pope says. “We just had a gut instinct for what would work. The mayor said: ‘Oh, no, no. This will be data-driven.’”
On a sweltering day in July 2011, Bloomberg announced his gift to the Club on a boat he had chartered on the Potomac River, in front of a 63-year-old coal plant he had always noticed on flights into Washington. He saw it as a perfect illustration of the city’s inability to get anything done.
“You’d think the politicians would at least care about the air they breathe themselves!” Bloomberg marveled to me in a recent interview.
That plant on the Potomac is now closed. So is the Massachusetts plant that Mitt Romney once said “kills people,” a line Obama actually used against him in coal-state campaign ads in 2012. So are all of Chicago’s plants, as Mayor Rahm Emanuel boasted in his first campaign ad in 2015. Overall, the 190 plants that U.S. utilities have agreed to retire will eliminate about one fourth of America’s coal-fired capacity, a total of 79 gigawatts. And for every watt of coal capacity they’re taking out of commission, they’ve already installed a watt of wind or solar capacity. The Clean Air Task Force estimate of coal-fired premature deaths is down to about 7,500 a year, a decrease of 5,500 since Beyond Coal went national. And Bloomberg’s early support has helped attract more than $100 million from top foundations and wealthy individuals like the Silicon Valley billionaire Tom Steyer, the climate movement’s top political donor.
“It’s a reminder that you can do a lot with no help from Congress,” Bloomberg says. “I just wish we could point out the specific people who were saved.”
To coal backers, Beyond Coal is pure urban elitist lunacy, the kind of nightmare you get when a nanny-state mayor from New York hooks up with eco-radicals from San Francisco and a liberal president in Washington. Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma—chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, author of “The Greatest Hoax,” thrower of a Senate-floor snowball designed to highlight the folly of global-warming alarmism—told me it’s hard to believe some Americans actually want to keep our abundant energy resources in the ground.
“It’s a war on all fossil fuels, and coal is the No. 1 target,” Inhofe says. “You got a president who doesn’t care how many jobs it costs, and rich people who don’t care how much money they spend. They can do a lot of damage.”
I got to watch the war in Inhofe’s state, and the damage wasn’t getting done the way Inhofe imagined. The job creators were siding with the environmentalists. Economics was the most powerful weapon in the Sierra Club’s arsenal.
At a dry hearing in a drab courtroom in Oklahoma City, a methodical Beyond Coal attorney named Kristin Henry, whose bio identifies her as “one of the few environmentalists who would never be caught wearing Birkenstocks,” was pinning down an Oklahoma Gas & Electric executive with a barrage of wouldn’t-you-agrees, isn’t-it-trues, and would-it-be-fair-to-say’s. The power company was out of compliance with a federal air-quality rule called “regional haze,” so it was offering to convert one of its two coal plants into a natural gas plant. Henry knew she couldn’t stop that. But OG&E also wanted to install massive new scrubbers on the other plant so it could keep burning coal for decades to come. Henry was determined to stop that.
In the 90 minutes Henry spent cross-examining OG&E’s Joseph Rowlett in early March, she didn’t ask a single question about climate or public health. She focused exclusively on OG&E’s request for the largest rate increase in state history, a 15 percent hike to finance the utility’s $700 million compliance plan. Through her deadpan, leading questions, she portrayed OG&E as a company desperate to get its customers to foot the bill to prop up an inefficient plant, pursuing retrofits it would never consider if its own shareholders had to swallow the costs, operating in a dream world where regional haze was coal’s only challenge. At one point, she got Rowlett to admit his calculations assumed there would be no additional coal regulations for the next thirty years, even though the EPA intends to finalize at least four new coal regulations this year alone.
“Isn’t it true you’re assuming zero over the next 30 years?” Henry asked.
The Sierra Club, even though it didn’t sound much like the Sierra Club, was clearly in hostile political territory. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a conservative Republican who has spearheaded a national campaign to protect fossil fuels from legal challenges, had joined OG&E in fighting the EPA haze rule all the way to the Supreme Court. Now he was supposed to be representing consumers at the OG&E hearing before the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, but he hadn’t even filed a brief about the record rate hike. “That’s unheard of,” one commission official told me. Pruitt didn’t attend the hearing, either—the day it began, he was in Tulsa with Mike Huckabee raising money for his PAC—but one of his deputies who did attend occasionally raised objections when OG&E witnesses were asked uncomfortable questions.
But if the political deck seemed stacked against the Sierra Club, Henry held the economic cards. In Oklahoma, coal imported from Wyoming now costs more per kilowatt hour than the abundant gas under the ground or the wind that famously comes sweeping down the plain. In another recent haze case, the Sierra Club cut a deal requiring Oklahoma’s other major utility to phase out its only coal plant and buy 200 megawatts of wind—and the bids came in so low, the utility ended up buying 600 megawatts of wind. That’s why Wal-Mart, the hospital group and the coalition of industrial ratepayers all supported Beyond Coal’s push for more wind in the OG&E case. Cheap electricity has a way of scrambling political alliances.
Henry and the lawyers for OG&E’s corporate customers formed a kind of tag team, taking turns blasting the company for refusing to even study new wind power. They repeatedly pointed out that in-state competitors as well as Florida and New Mexico utilities were buying Oklahoma wind for just 2 cents per kilowatt hour, even cheaper than coal without pollution controls, while OG&E hadn’t purchased new wind in four years—even though its ads boasted about its commitment to wind. When its witnesses claimed their transmission lines were too congested to add new wind, Henry produced internal documents suggesting the congestion could be fixed for about 3 percent of the cost of the new coal scrubbers. As she pointed out, other Oklahoma utilities have much higher percentages of wind power on their systems.
Closing coal plants can sound radical, but Henry framed it for the Republican utility commissioners as the conservative response to EPA rules, avoiding the risk of “stranded” investments in outdated plants that might have to be shut down anyway. The most economical way to meet haze limits, she suggested, would be to stop burning the coal that causes the haze. Al Armendariz, who was Obama’s Dallas-based regional EPA administrator and is now Beyond Coal’s Austin-based regional representative, says the Club’s victories in states like Georgia, Mississippi and Kentucky have helped normalize the idea of abandoning coal in Oklahoma.
“We get respect because of our track record,” Armendariz says. “When we say a utility isn’t acting prudently, people can’t just dismiss us as ‘Oh, of course the Sierra Club says that.’ They see how we keep winning. They see these big industrial customers agreeing with us. Then they look at the numbers and see we’re right.”
Still, there’s no denying the war on coal is leading America into uncharted territory. The Sierra Club wants to eliminate all coal power by 2030, but what will replace it? Wind and solar, despite their rapid Obama-era growth, still make up just 5 percent of U.S. power capacity. And while technologies to store renewable energy (such as Tesla’s newly announced battery packs) are getting cheaper, they’re still a rounding error on the grid. Beyond Coal’s leaders are content to push cleaner power and let utilities figure out how to deliver it, but as OG&E Vice President Paul Renfrow told me: “That’s easy for them to say. We have to keep the lights on.”
Inhofe thinks the Sierra Club is simply obsessed with rooting out fossil fuels, citing “the guy who wants to crucify people” as an example of its extremism. He meant Armendariz, who left the EPA after he was caught on tape suggesting that harsh sanctions for law-breaking oil and gas companies could scare others into compliance, just as public crucifixions helped keep the peace in Roman times.
“The Sierra Club wants to stop coal now?” Inhofe asked. “You’ll see, they’ll be after gas next.”
Long-term, he’s right. While the Club accepted some donations from natural gas interests under Pope, it is now formally committed to eliminating gas as well as coal by 2030, and it has helped block new gas plants in cities like Austin and Carlsbad, California. After its victory last week in Asheville, Beyond Coal vowed to keep fighting to overturn Duke Energy’s decision to build a new gas plant to replace its 50-year-old coal plant. Even Bloomberg thinks the Club’s opposition to the fracking boom that has helped replace so much domestic coal with domestic gas is silly.
That said, Beyond Coal’s leaders, including Armendariz, understand that Beyond Gas is more aspirational than practical for now. They deeply prefer renewables to gas, but they almost as deeply prefer gas to coal. In Oklahoma City, Henry grilled OG&E witnesses about why they wanted to spend $500 million on scrubbers for coal boilers that could be retrofitted to burn gas for just $70 million. She shredded the implausible assumptions OG&E had made in its economic models to make scrubbing coal look cheaper than converting to gas, forcing one witness to admit gas prices were already 25 percent lower than his low-cost scenario. I sat in on one friendly lunch the Club’s legal team had with lawyers for a Conoco Phillips front group; they all hoped to move OG&E beyond coal, and gas is clearly part of the short-term solution.
“We want to be principled but pragmatic,” says Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, who stopped the Club’s gas-industry gifts when he took over in 2010. “We’ve wrestled with this, and there’s a definite disagreement with Bloomberg. We don’t see gas as an environmental fix. But we acknowledge that we still need some gas.”
Coal is different. Bloomberg calls it “a dead man walking.” When he made his initial gift to the Sierra Club, the goal was to secure the retirements of one third of the coal fleet by 2015. The Club is only slightly behind schedule, and in April, Bloomberg came to Washington to announce another $30 million donation, with a new goal of retirement announcements for half of the fleet by 2017. “We’re doubling down on an incredibly successful strategy,” Bloomberg said.
The campaign’s leaders believe coal has already passed a tipping point toward oblivion. Coal giants like Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal and Walter Energy are struggling to stay afloat. Just last week, in addition to the retirement announcement for the Asheville plant—as well as another for a Milwaukee plant that wasn’t official enough for Beyond Coal to count as #191—the insurance giant AXA announced that it will sell off more than $500 million worth of coal investments, the largest financial institution to flee the space to date, while the EPA announced it was closing a loophole that allowed virtually unlimited emissions from malfunctioning coal plants, a response to yet another Sierra Club lawsuit. And the more dirty plants get shut down, the more residents near other dirty plants are asking: Why not ours?
It’s hard to change the status quo, no matter how compelling the economic logic. Beyond Coal does not just deploy data. It organizes rallies and petitions and float-ins on kayaks; it shames utility executives on billboards and airplane banners; it mobilizes its members to show up at boring hearings where showing up can make a difference. If the Oklahoma City case displayed the war on coal as a numerical dispute, another hearing I watched south of Detroit was more like a street fight.
River Rouge is a depressed community at the city’s edge, a blightscape of boarded-up bungalows, overgrown lots and pawn shops. There’s no grocery store and virtually no medical services, but there is a nice little park where kids play at the playground and adults fish in the Detroit River. Unfortunately, the park smells like rotten eggs, thanks to sulfur dioxide from a DTE Energy coal plant overlooking the playground. Michigan health officials have called this area “the epicenter of the state’s asthma burden.” The fish aren’t safe to eat, either, though people eat them.
“It’s just an unhealthy situation,” says Alisha Winters, a local resident and mother of seven children, two with asthma. “They figure they can get away with dumping on us.”
The EPA has called out this area’s elevated sulfur dioxide levels, and last year Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s administration floated a compliance plan that would have required DTE to upgrade the coal-fired River Rouge Power Plant or (more likely) close it. But DTE proposed an alternative plan with no costly upgrades, and the state quietly accepted it. The Sierra Club has been mobilizing opposition ever since, drawing an unusual coalition of local whites, African-Americans, Latinos and Arab-Americans—as well as a busload of white liberals from Ann Arbor—for an environmental hearing in mid-March. The hearing had to be moved from City Hall to a school auditorium to accommodate the groundswell of protests, a far cry from that Chicago-area hearing over a decade ago where the Sierra Club got frozen out.
“We’re getting people to cross borders, physical and imaginary,” says Rhonda Anderson, a sharecropper’s daughter who is now an organizer for Beyond Coal.
If the Oklahoma City hearing was financial, the River Rouge hearing was political, a multiracial show of force in “I Love Clean Air” T-shirts. Every speaker opposed the DTE plan, including an Indian-American medical student, an Arab-American law student, an African-American asthma educator, a Latina anti-poverty activist and a white nun. Ebony Elmore, a child care provider who lives a block from the plant, talked about her four siblings and three nieces with asthma, as well as her two parents with pulmonary disease. I happened to ask Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, who was watching the testimony from the side of the hall, why she was there, just as another resident started telling a story about an 11-year-old local girl who died because she couldn’t get to her inhaler in time.
A few days later, Governor Snyder—whose top campaign supporters included one Michael Bloomberg—announced a new effort to cut Michigan’s reliance on coal. That would have been a huge political burden for Snyder if he had run for president in a GOP primary, where “anti-coal” will be an epithet like “anti-gun” or “anti-freedom,” but he decided not to run, and coal is becoming a huge economic burden for his industrial state.
The already frenetic national pace of plant retirements will have to double for Beyond Coal to meet its 2017 goal, but utilities will face daunting investment decisions over the next two years. The EPA recently settled a sulfur lawsuit with the Sierra Club that could replicate the River Rouge dilemma across the nation. The agency has also imposed regional haze plans that already are replicating the Oklahoma dilemma in Arizona, Arkansas and Texas. Today, Beyond Coal has more than 100 legal cases pending over power supply. Meanwhile, it’s pursuing a new strategy on the power demand side, pushing blue states like Oregon to stop importing coal-fired electricity, which could shutter plants in red states like Montana. Even inside Texas, the Club has worked with relatively progressive cities like Austin, San Antonio and El Paso to replace their coal power with renewables.
Beyond Coal is also continuing to lobby and litigate in Washington, pushing Obama to drop his “all-of-the-above” approach to energy and formally enlist in the war on coal. Obama has not been as maniacally anti-coal as the industry suggests, punting on ozone rules in his first term to avoid alienating voters in Ohio, issuing relatively weak restrictions on coal ash, taking a lenient approach to mining on public land, floating carbon rules with mild targets for the most coal-reliant states. Still, when you add up all he’s done and all he’s doing, you get a tremendously uncertain regulatory environment. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—whose wife, Elaine Chao, recently quit the Bloomberg Philanthropies board over coal—has urged states to defy the Clean Power Plan, but utilities with fiduciary responsibilities don’t engage in much civil disobedience. They have already shut down dozens of plants to comply with mercury rules the Supreme Court could still strike down, and they’re starting to think about carbon, too.
Some coal advocates still hold out hope that the decline can be reversed if Republicans can win the presidency and keep Congress. “We’ve got a Congress that’s sympathetic, but we’ve still got a bureaucracy running amok,” says Mike Duncan, the RNC chairman-turned-coal advocate. “That will play in 2016. Obviously, anytime you elect a leader, it’s important to this industry.”
If the EPA stands down under the next president, the pace of retirements could slow. But it probably won’t stop. The trends are too strong. Nilles recently met with leaders of the utility Southern Company, which has slashed its dependence on coal in half over the past five years. Its executives rejected his vision of a coal-free America by 2030, but some of them suggested 2050 could be realistic. In any case, the Sierra Club won a lot of coal fights during the pro-coal Bush administration, because they were ultimately local fights over local air.
The fights also have a global context. The Earth is already getting hotter, and the death of American coal would not avert a climate catastrophe if the rest of the world did not follow our lead. But the decline of American coal emissions will help U.S. negotiators insist that other countries do their part in the global negotiations in Paris. And while critics of climate action often grumble that it would be foolish for the U.S. to make sacrifices when China is still building a new coal plant every week, that’s no longer true. China actually decreased its coal use last year, and is shuttering all four plants in smog-shrouded Beijing. The trends killing coal in America—cheap gas, wind and solar; more energy efficiency; stricter regulations—are trending abroad as well. Cash-strapped U.S. mining firms are desperate to solve their domestic problems by selling more coal in foreign markets, but the Sierra Club has helped lead the fight to block six proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest, which will help keep even more coal in the ground.
There will be no formal surrender in the war on coal, no battleship treaty to mark the end. But Beyond Coal’s leaders believe they can finish most of their work setting the U.S. electric sector on a greener path over the next five years. The next phase of the war on carbon would be to try to electrify everything else—cars and trains that use oil-derived gasoline and diesel, as well as homes and businesses that rely on natural gas and heating oil. Nilles hopes power companies like OG&E and DTE that Beyond Coal has spent the last decade fighting with—but then cutting deals with—can become allies in Phase Two. And allies will be vital, because if King Coal seems like a rich and powerful enemy, it’s a pushover compared to Big Oil.
“Once we’ve taken out coal, we’ll need to take on oil, and who better to help than our new friends in the utility sector who can make money from electrification?” Nilles says with a grin. “It’s a long fight. This is how we win.”
| 0fake |
Sanders would skip unsanctioned debate, campaign manager says: NY Times | (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would not participate in a proposed debate next month in New Hampshire that would not be sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, his campaign manager was quoted as saying on Tuesday by the New York Times. Sanders does not want to participate in the debate on Feb. 4, five days before the state primary election, because he does not want to risk being denied participation in future debates, campaign manager Jeff Weaver said, according to the newspaper. It would be sponsored by MSNBC and the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper. (Reporting by Eric Walsh in Washington; Editing by Eric Beech) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0fake |
We need a ‘one pager’ tax form – Wilbur Ross on Tax Reform [Video] | Wilbur Ross spoke with WaPo about true tax reform He did a great job explaining his position on simplifying and cutting taxes. He said the W2 should be a one pager . He believes it takes entirely too long for the average employee to do taxes We say Amen to that!If Congress doesn t get in the way, tax cuts and simplification are a possibility. Ross is such a great pick for President Trump. he s another one who doesn t need this job at all but is doing it for America. Pretty awesome!MORE ON WILBUR ROSS:WILBUR ROSS ON NEIL CAVUTO: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is one smart man when it comes to making an economic argument against the Paris Accord. He appeared on Neil Cavuto right before President Trump spoke and brilliantly discussed why we need to get out of this boondoggle that will drain America of trillions of dollars. We re so lucky he s our Commerce Secretary! He s apolitical and strictly looking at what s best for America financially.WILBUR ROSS TAKES ON MATT LAUER: Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce, tells that President Trump s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord does not mean that the U.S. will do nothing to combat climate change. He says that President Trump is an environmentalist and that the decision will do nothing to damage America s national security. Yes, you can be an environmentalist and care about the planet BUT not be for this boondoggle! | 1real |
Congress moves closer to final tax bill with House vote | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted on Monday to go to conference on tax legislation with the Senate, moving Congress another step closer to a final bill. The House voted 222-192 to go to conference with the Senate, setting up formal negotiations on the legislation that could take weeks to complete. Seven Republicans voted “no.” The Republican-led Senate was expected to hold a similar conference vote later this week. House Speaker Paul Ryan named nine fellow Republican House members to the conference committee, including Kevin Brady, head of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, who will chair it. The other Republican representatives Ryan appointed were: Rob Bishop, Diane Black, Kristi Noem, Devin Nunes, Peter Roskam, John Shimkus, Greg Walden and Don Young. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi appointed five members of her party: Kathy Castor, Lloyd Doggett, Raúl Grijalva, Sander Levin, Richard Neal. The Senate narrowly approved its version of the tax overhaul early on Saturday, moving President Donald Trump a step closer to realizing one of his main campaign promises. The House passed its bill last month. The overhaul would be the largest change to U.S. tax laws since the 1980s. Republicans want to add $1.4 trillion over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt to finance changes that they say would boost an already growing economy. | 0fake |
Holocaust survivor celebrates bar mitzvah in Israel, 80 years later | HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) - Eighty years after he missed the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony, 93-year-old Holocaust survivor Shalom Shtamberg celebrated his bar mitzvah on Thursday with his family and friends in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Shtamberg was born in Warsaw, Poland, and should have celebrated his bar mitzvah when he turned 13, but instead he was taken to a Warsaw Ghetto with his family. He survived - unlike most of his family - by training as an electrician and acquiring skills that made him valued as a good worker. On Thursday, Shtamberg was picked up from his home by trainee police officers, who drove him to a synagogue in Haifa where he was welcomed by cheering crowds and flower bouquets. He was given a prayer shawl and read from the Torah scroll before breaking into dance with guests, including his wife. I haven t fulfilled my mission yet because I still have things to do, Shtamberg told Reuters. One of those things is to detail in lectures the horrors of the Nazi camps he survived, unlike his parents and five brothers who were killed. Recalling his time in the Ghetto, he said: In the beginning I did not speak, I said and told nothing because I stayed a child, aged 13, 14, and (living in) Warsaw Ghetto was extremely difficult, every day. | 0fake |
Michael Flynn, Kim Jong-un: Your Tuesday Evening Briefing - The New York Times | (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The resignation of Michael Flynn as President Trump’s national security adviser has added to the impression that the White House is in chaos, and that the U. S. security apparatus is, as Senator John McCain said, “dysfunctional. ” If Mr. Flynn was not entirely honest with the F. B. I. about his conversations with a Russian ambassador, it could expose him to a felony charge. Mr. Trump knew for weeks, his spokesman said, that Mr. Flynn had misled the vice president about the conversations. His departure dampened hopes of improving relations, just as news broke that Moscow had secretly deployed a new cruise missile in what U. S. officials said was a violation of the landmark arms control treaty that helped end the Cold War. _____ 2. Mr. Trump is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. A likely topic of conversation is the “ ” approach to a solution: building relationships with Arab countries worried about Iran and getting them to press the Palestinians in negotiations. Such an approach has been tried before, without success. Today’s episode of our new podcast, The Daily, considers the prospects now. Listen here if you’re on a computer, here if you’re on an iOS device or here for an Android device. _____ 3. The police in Malaysia are searching for two women in the assassination of the half brother of the North Korean leader, Kim in an attack that may have used poisoned needles at a Kuala Lumpur airport. The half brother, Kim was once considered the heir to power, but he had been living in for years. South Korea’s governing party called the killing a “naked example of Kim ’s reign of terror. ” _____ 4. “We finally have some measure of justice. ” That was the father of Etan Patz, the Manhattan boy who went missing almost 40 years ago, forever changing the way parents watched over their children. He spoke after a former Greenwich Village deli worker, Pedro Hernandez, was found guilty of murder and kidnapping in the case. _____ 5. The threat of catastrophic flooding from the damaged Oroville Dam in Northern California this week is a warning sign for the state, where a network of dams and waterways is suffering from age and stress. Climate change is exacerbating the challenges. Engineers and environmentalists said problems like Oroville’s damaged spillway could occur at many of the more than 1, 000 dams that dot the state. “When you build a dam, you are playing God,” one engineer said. “And it’s tough to be God. ” _____ 6. An influential science advisory group lent its support to a proposition: human genetic engineering. It’s an ethical minefield, and the group only endorsed the practice to prevent babies from being born with genes known to cause serious diseases and disabilities. The group acknowledged concerns that scientists could try to engineer traits like beauty, strength or intelligence — like something out of a dystopian novel — and said they were trying to ensure that the technique was used for the right purposes. _____ 7. India’s air pollution is surpassing China’s as the deadliest in the world. A new study found that smog in India is causing about 1. 1 million premature deaths a year and rising, while China’s rate has stabilized. _____ 8. After trying in 1853 to determine the origins of Valentine’s Day, The Times called it “one of those mysterious historical or antiquarian problems which are doomed never to be solved. ” Here is a guide to some of the competing theories, including that it emerged from a Roman fertility rite, or possibly to honor the martyrdom of St. Valentine. Now, if you’ve received flowers, some tips on how to keep them fresh longer: Clip the ends under warm running water and keep them out of direct light. Chrysanthemums and carnations are sturdier than roses, which are unlikely to last more than a week. Romantic movie recommendations, on the other hand, are forever. (O. K. sort of.) _____ 9. A walk behind the scenes at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show can be overwhelming. But our photographer took a close look, and his photos reveal what makes each breed unique. Pilot, the chow chow above, won best in breed. The chow chow’s tongue is perhaps its most distinctive feature. _____ 10. Finally, we’re continuing our roundup of the best of comedy. Last night, the comedians set their sights on the White House — especially Stephen Miller, above, the architect of some of Mr. Trump’s most explosive executive orders Betsy DeVos, the new education secretary and, of course, Michael Flynn. And if you want a break from politics, here’s a selection of the best nonpolitical stuff to read, watch and listen to from around the internet. Happy Valentine’s Day. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake |
RESPECT: HOLLYWOOD ACTOR VOLUNTEERS TO FIGHT ISIS IN SYRIA | Not every Hollywood actor is a liberal nut job with no understanding of the real world the rest of us are living in some of them, like actor Michael Enright are actually heros Michael Enright is one of the several hundred Westerners who have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join Kurdish combat units and fight the Islamic State.He s an unusual volunteer in several respects: he s 51 years old, the first time he handled a gun was at a shooting range right before he left for Syria, and he is almost certainly the only YPG fighter who has appeared in movies with Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp. Enright was in good spirits when he talked with the UK Daily Mail over the weekend about his decision to take up arms against ISIS and his experiences in Syria thus far. He does not seem to have received any special treatment from the Kurdish YPG militia due to his pre-war occupation and connections with celebrities, and he does not want any. He is not looking to hold down a desk at some Kurdish media office; he came to fight. Where I m going in the next two days, say a prayer for me, because I ll be going to a place which has a lot of action, a lot of fighting, he told the Daily Mail. He has already done a month s worth of guard duty on the front lines, watching coalition fighter jets attack ISIS forces.He would like to see a bit more of that, he says. The Daily Mail describes Enright as angry that Britain is not bombing Islamic State targets in Syria, concentrating instead on Iraq. He thinks the Kurds could defeat ISIS in Syria with more air cover. We re out gunned, and we re out manned. We need the air support, he said.Enright s story is breathtaking in its simplicity: he beheld the horrors of ISIS and felt it was his duty to his native Britain, the America where he prospered, and the victims of Islamic State atrocities to do something about it. Fortunately, he had a friend in the British SAS who could put him in touch with the Kurdish YPG militia. He made his arrangements quietly, without telling family or friends, because he feared they would try to talk him out of it. He brought everyone in his life up to speed with a Facebook post after he arrived in Syria. For me, the biggest regret of my life was not going to Afghanistan when 9/11 happened, he told the Daily Mail. The beheading videos brought out the same kind of feelings in me, and a real sense that I had a duty to America. I really feel a debt to the country. You know, they welcomed me with open arms. And then what added to it all was that it was an Englishman, that he had an English accent, Enright continued, referring to Jihadi John, the British-expatriate host of many beheading videos. And I just, it just touched me personally, in a very deep way. He said the last straw was ISIS burning captured Jordanian pilot Mu ath al-Kassasbeh alive in a cage. He watches that video on his smartphone whenever he needs a jolt of motivation for his military duties.It is not ironic or sarcastic to say that Enright s journey would make an amazing movie; his story of trying to hook up with YPG contacts in Iraqi Kurdistan is as harrowing as anything you ll find in an espionage thriller. His training alongside Kurdish fighters, as a gentleman of a certain age without any prior military experience, would make for a fine bit of action-comedy: imagine the Kurdish equivalent of R. Lee Ermey screaming, You think you re special because you were in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, maggot? Drop and gimme fifty! There is no sense whatsoever that he is thinking along those lines. (For the record, Enright describes his training as a combination of weapons drills, language classes, and running up and down hills, basically. To his surprise, he turned out to be a naturally gifted rifleman. He sleeps alongside his AK-47, which he has named Olga. )Enright is very serious about what he is doing, well aware of the risks he s taking, and conscious of all that he left behind, including a sister who was recently diagnosed with cancer. She s going through radiotherapy right now, he said. And so I m just hoping that we both get through it. To borrow a line from a previous generation of men who answered the call to battle, Enright won t be coming home until it s over, over there. He said he s not homesick after two months in the country. I m very happy to be here, to be doing something that I think will outlast me, he declared.Enright described ISIS as an abomination and said their atrocities were a call to humanity, it s a call to everybody, to do whatever we can, in whatever way we can. He said he wants to absolutely annihilate them, and kill them on sight. Whether or not he winds up documenting his experiences in Hollywood film, he has no intention of appearing in any Islamic State beheading videos. He is well aware of the terror state s $100,000 bounty for Western hostages and says he keeps a bullet in reserve for himself, in case he s about to be captured. Here s hoping you don t need that one, warrior.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
YIKES! NEW BILL CLINTON RAPE Details Emerge: “Her mouth was all swollen up…It was cut…Her pantyhose were all ripped” | Hillary s all about protecting women who are victims of rape unless of course her husband is the accused rapist In her first extensive interview in over a decade, the nurse who found Juanita Broaddrick in her hotel room immediately after Bill Clinton allegedly raped Broaddrick recounted what she says she witnessed in that room 38 years ago. She was crying, recalled Norma Rogers, a nurse who worked for Broaddrick, who at the time was a nursing home administrator volunteering for then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton s 1978 gubernatorial bid. And the thing I think I remember most is that her mouth was all swollen up. It was cut. Her pantyhose were all ripped, Rogers stated in dramatic, lengthy new testimony.Rogers drove Broaddrick back home after the incident. This week, she recounted that emotional drive. I think we stopped at least twice to get ice. I would go up and get fresh ice and put it on her mouth because she was trying to keep her face from bruising and looking like something bad had happened to her, you know. It was just crazy. The whole situation was just crazy. Rogers was speaking in a lengthy interview on this reporter s talk radio program, Aaron Klein Investigative Radio, broadcast on New York s AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia.Events leading to incidentRogers took listeners back to the spring of 1978 when she traveled to Little Rock for an industry convention along with her nursing home boss, Broaddrick. The two shared a room at the city s Camelot Hotel.In an interview with me in November, Broaddrick herself provided background on her personal encounters with Clinton leading up to that infamous day.Broaddrick said Clinton previously singled her out during a campaign stop at her nursing home. He would just sort of insinuate, you know when you are in Little Rock let s get together. Let s talk about the industry. Let s talk about the needs of the nursing homes and I was very excited about that. Broaddrick said she finally took Clinton up on that offer when she traveled to Little Rock with Rogers for the convention.Broaddrick says she phoned Clinton s campaign headquarters to inform him of her arrival and was told by a receptionist that Clinton had left instructions for her to reach him at his private apartment. I called his apartment and he answered, Broaddrick recounted during our November interview. And he said, Well, why don t we meet in the Camelot Hotel coffee room and we can get together there and talk. And I said That would be fine. Clinton then changed the meeting location from the hotel coffee shop to Broaddrick s room. A time later and I m not sure how long it was, he called my room, which he said he would do when he got to the coffee shop. And he said, There are too many people down here. It s too crowded. There s reporters and can we just meet in your room? And it sort of took me back a little bit, Aaron, she said of Clinton s request. But I did say, okay, I ll order coffee to the room, which I did and that s when things sort of got out of hand. And it was very unexpected. It was, you might even say, brutal. With the biting of my lip. In the new interview, Rogers confirmed Broaddrick s version of events:I just know when I left that morning it was my understanding that she was going to be meeting with Mr. Clinton downstairs in the coffee shop for a meeting that they had planned ahead of time to discuss nursing home issues.Bloody lip. Ripped pantyhose. State of shock.Broaddrick previously recounted the aftermath of the incident, when her friend Rogers came back to the room after Broaddrick failed to show up to the convention.In our radio interview, Rogers recounted what she says she saw upon entering the room.I went back to the room and I can t remember if it was because she didn t come down to the meeting because I expected her to have a short meeting and then come to the meeting. And so I went back up to the room and when I went back into the room and she was just very, very upset. She was crying.And the thing I think I remember most is that her mouth was all swollen up. It was cut. And she just told me. She started then telling me the story of how he had just basically overtaken her and bit her lip in order to keep her quiet and to keep her from trying to leave or get away from him. And then she proceeded to tell me that he had pushed her onto the bed, and had raped her.Her pantyhose were all ripped. And she was just in a terrible state. Crying and just, she began telling me, you know, what had happened.But in the meantime she was starting to get her things together and she said we are leaving now. And you know we just started getting our stuff together and I drove her home.Asked whether Broaddrick s lip was bleeding, Rogers replied, There were obviously open spots where he had bitten her. It was open but not openly bleeding. You know it was just open spots on her lip. Read entire story here: Breitbart News | 1real |
Ukraine MPs vote to withdraw law to spur creation of anti-corruption court | KIEV (Reuters) - The Ukrainian parliament voted on Thursday to withdraw a law on the creation of an anti-corruption court, paving the way for the submission of a new law more in line with demands from backers, including the International Monetary Fund. Slow progress establishing an independent court to deal with corruption cases has been one of the main obstacles to the disbursement of loans under a $17.5 billion aid-for-reforms program from the Fund. President Petro Poroshenko has promised to submit a draft law to set up such a court, but first parliament needed to vote to withdraw a similar bill that did not meet recommendations by a leading European rights watchdog. The motion was backed by 235 lawmakers, slightly more than the 226 required to pass. A government source told Reuters the president would submit the new law to parliament by the end of this week. The IMF and Ukraine s other foreign backers have repeatedly called for Ukraine to improve efforts to root out graft. They see an anti-corruption court as an essential tool for eliminating the power of vested interests. MP Mustafa Nayyem criticized the president for the delays. It took the presidential administration a whole year to develop this document, he said in a post on Facebook. They (the authorities) tried to convince the world that we have no use for it (a court). As a result of public accusations from foreign partners and the noise of street protests, they ve backed down, he said. Earlier in December, Poroshenko emphasized his commitment to reform, responding to accusations that the Ukrainian authorities were deliberately sabotaging the anti-corruption fight. Establishing the court, sticking to gas price commitments and implementing sustainable pension reform are the key conditions Ukraine must meet to qualify for the next loan tranche of around $2 billion from the IMF. | 0fake |
VIDEO: Citizen Journalists Capture Despair of Cartel Shooting War near Texas Border | Citizen journalists in the rural communities of Chihuahua recorded scenes of despair caused by a fierce clash between members of the Juarez Cartel. The fighting left at least eight people dead and four police officers injured. [One of the videos shot by citizen journalists shows the magnitude of the gun battle as one crying resident huddles next to a window while thousands of rounds can be heard being fired near him. Initially, the man appeared to show some surprise as the gunfire could be heard in the distance, but that excitement soon turned into horror and despair as the battle ensued. “Oh dear God please help us,” the man cries out sobbing as the gun battle continues. Armored SUVs and some with modifications to mount large machine guns were left along the various streets of Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua. Videos taken by local residents show the various vehicles that had been heavily damaged by gunfire are believed to have started on Sunday afternoon and continued until Monday. The fighting appears to have taken place between two rival faction of the Juarez Cartel also known as “La Linea”. One group of gunmen were led by Cesar Raul “El Cabo” Gamboa Sosa and the other were by top plaza boss Carlos Arturo “El 80” Quintana. The internal conflict appears to have started last month when Gamboa’s men allegedly murdered and beheaded one of Quintana’s closest associates. Quintana is currently a fugitive from the U. S. Department of Justice after having been charged in a criminal indictment out of New Mexico for his role as a key leader in the Juarez Cartel. The effort by citizen journalists to record the aftermath of the fighting and share it on various social media platforms allowed for the information to spread in Mexico about the fighting and not be largely ignored as has happened in other areas like Tamaulipas, Coahuila, or Veracruz. According to information released by the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office, the fighting led to the death of Gamboa Sosa and seven others. Authorities were able to recover 15 SUVs that had been left behind with multiple weapons inside. Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J. M. Martinez” from Piedras Negras, Coahuila and “M. A. Navarro” from Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas. | 0fake |
Trump Appoints Michele Bachmann To Evangelical ‘Advisory’ Board | As Donald Trump heads into the general election with virtually no money, little support, and absolutely no dignity, he s pivoting to the group of voters who are already loyal to the Republican Party: evangelicals.Trump has had a hard time gaining traction with the influential, religious voting bloc. But when push comes to shove, they always vote Republican, and overwhelmingly so. But Trump s a special kind of candidate. Everyone seems to hate him, so he ll need all the help he can get.So that help includes another loser Michele Bachmann. The former Congresswoman and failed 2012 presidential candidate has been appointed, along with two dozen others, to a special evangelical advisory board.In announcing the formation of the board, Trump, who of course issued a gushing, pandering statement:I have such tremendous respect and admiration for this group and I look forward to continuing to talk about the issues important to Evangelicals, and all Americans, and the common sense solutions I will implement when I am President.Bachmann, who based her entire political life off a warped interpretation of God and the Bible, joins Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed, James Dobson, and a slew of mega church leaders all across the country.Bachmann, who ran as a Tea Party friend of the religious right in 2012, lost the contest in Iowa, a state with a heavy evangelical voting population. She placed a dismal sixth, while Mike Huckabee won. Bachmann is so hated by the evangelicals that even Phyllis Schlafly, a hero to the movement, wouldn t even consider Bachmann as her replacement for the ultra-conservative Eagle Forum.Having Bachmann on your advisory council for a demographic that hates her seems pretty counterintuitive, but hey, it s the Trump campaign nothing makes sense.The board, which will meet regularly, will be prepping Trump for upcoming meetings with religious leaders all across the nation. A few of the individuals, including James Dobson and Richard Land, who are both leaders of churches and religious talk shows, actively campaigned for Ted Cruz and denounced Trump.As stated before, when all is said and done, the evangelicals will come home to the Republicans. So instead of reaching out to women, Hispanic and Latinos and millenials, Trump is actively spending his time appealing to people who will vote for him no matter what.It looks like the crazy Trump train has added the crazier Michele Bachmann to the mix. Thanks, Trump, for making this election even more entertaining.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
The Worst Case for Republicans: Trump Wins | Republicans enter the fall campaign in moods ranging from grim foreboding to howling despair. They fear that Donald Trump will not only lose but lose so big he will take hordes of other candidates down with him, costing the GOP control of the U.S. Senate and even the House. This election could be the party's worst debacle since 1964.
Republicans don't seem to have prepared for an even bigger catastrophe that could occur Nov. 8: a Trump victory. In that case, they wouldn't be stuck with him for the next two months. They would be stuck with him for the duration of his presidency, and they would have to answer for him forever.
They are in the position of a bride who, on the eve of her wedding day, knows she's making a mistake. If she backs out, she'll bring a mess down on her head. But if she doesn't, she'll be caught in a snare that will be painful and hard to escape, with consequences she will have years to regret.
The first harm from Trump is that he would be the new identity of the party. Forget the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Never mind what Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan propose. He would be the one defining the national agenda. If President Trump wanted to intern Muslims, launch drones against Mexico or put David Duke up in the Lincoln Bedroom, his fellow Republicans would wear the stain.
One of the miseries they have suffered in recent months is waking up each day anxiously wondering what new folly their candidate is about to commit. It's bad enough having to put up with his insulting of a gold star mother, not knowing that Russia has invaded Ukraine, accusing Barack Obama of founding the Islamic State, and retweeting white supremacists.
But all this amounts to an ignorant egomaniac running his mouth. In the White House, Trump would be acting, not just talking. He would possess powers that can be wielded in all sorts of destructive ways. As Republicans have learned from Obama's use of executive authority, it's hard to stop a determined president from doing whatever he damn well pleases.
Scrap NAFTA? Carry out indiscriminate bombing of the Islamic State? Refuse to come to the aid of a NATO ally attacked by Russia? Bring back torture, using methods that would make Dick Cheney weep?
Turn over decisions to advisers who couldn't find their way out of an elevator if you gave them a map and a compass? Dump Melania and start dating? The question is not whether Trump would make bad choices in the White House—only which ones and when.
Since he wrapped up the nomination, Republicans have been hoping Trump would change his reckless style, listen to people who know more than he does, avoid pointless fights and generally behave like a responsible adult. Their hopes have been in vain. He either can't change or sees no reason to.
Winning the election would turbocharge Trump's worst impulses. He would have new grounds to ignore GOP leaders and indulge his every whim. If that approach gets him elected, why would he behave any differently as president?
Maybe Trump would drag the country through four years of chaos and stagnation, trailing broken promises and aborted schemes. Or maybe he would handle the job so irresponsibly that he would provoke his impeachment and removal—an eminently plausible scenario.
The latter outcome would have some special downsides for Republicans. One is that it would saddle them with the herculean chore of defending him at his worst. Another is that it would derail any policy ideas they hope to advance. Then there's the political cost in the next election.
Compared with these nightmares, a Hillary Clinton presidency would have all sorts of advantages. It would give Republicans a unifying focus, mobilize them to block liberal policies, open the way for new conservative leaders to emerge and offer the party a chance to rebound at the polls in 2018. If she were to be embroiled in a White House scandal brought on by her own disregard for the rules, even better for the GOP.
Republicans might remember British statesman Benjamin Disraeli's explanation of the difference between a misfortune and a calamity. For his chief rival to fall into the river, he said, would be a misfortune. The calamity would be if someone pulled him out. | 0fake |
How Two Producers of ‘Transparent’ Made Their Own Trans Lives More Visible - The New York Times | On a hot night in July at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst perched on stools to discuss their new book of photographs, “Relationship. ” It is by far the most personal of the many projects they have worked on together. The photographs chronicle their romance, which ended soon after many of these images were shown at the Whitney Biennial in 2014. Drucker and Ernst, who are perhaps better known as producers of the winning Amazon series “Transparent,” speak regularly about their work. But Drucker is plainly more at ease in the spotlight. She is tall and blond, with eyes as blue as swimming pools. That night she wore a white shift and heeled and she kept the microphone in its stand so she could gesture with her hands. The images, she told the audience, were meant as a private visual diary. “There was never an intent to show the photographs, even though we are both makers. ” They are both 33 and around the same height, but Ernst appears slighter. Wearing light brown pants, bright white Reeboks and a diamond stud in his right ear, he explained that he and Drucker have backgrounds in “ ethnography,” which he defined as “the practice of creating reflexive work, or work that reflected my community. ” This, he said, was a guiding impulse for the photographs in “Relationship. ” Anyone familiar with the rush of young love will recognize its hallmarks in these photos: all smoldering looks, parted lips and bare limbs on rumpled sheets. Drucker and Ernst have an easy sexual charisma, but that’s not what makes this series novel, even daring. During the years they were together, from 2008 to 2014, Drucker was in the process of transitioning from male to female, and Ernst from female to male. They met soon after they each began taking hormones, so the photographs also capture what Ernst has described as “the unflattering throes of yet another puberty. ” In calling this series “Relationship,” Drucker and Ernst are describing not only their partnership but also their relationship with themselves and their genders, their choices and their bodies. Though Drucker and Ernst are no longer a couple, they chose to publish these photographs anyway, because even as transgender stories are becoming more mainstream, there are few public examples of trans people leading ordinary lives, filled with love and lazy mornings. There are even fewer cases, as Drucker and Ernst emphasized that night in July, of trans people taking control over how they are represented. On “Transparent,” whose third season begins this month, their goal has been to ensure not just that trans people are depicted accurately on screen, but also that they are working behind the scenes — as writers, directors and personal assistants. Except for the character of Maura, a father who comes out to his family as trans, played by Jeffrey Tambor, every trans role on the show is filled by a trans person. The desire to see more transgender people in front of and behind the camera also informs much of Drucker’s and Ernst’s work as artists. Drucker is often the star of her own experimental videos and performances, which challenge conventional views of sex and gender. Her work has been shown at MoMA’s PS1, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and SFMoMA. Ernst’s narrative filmmaking tends to feature trans actors and documentary subjects and travel the festival circuit. He is at work on his first feature, which he describes as a “ aged movie comedy. ” “I remember when we were installing the photographs at the Whitney, someone asked us: ‘Oh, this is great. Who was the photographer? ’’u2009” Ernst told the bookstore crowd. “They assumed we were just the subjects, which is of course the history of this kind of work. But this is what I hope changes going forward. It’s the work we’re doing in television. It’s the work we’re doing in filmmaking. It’s the work we’re doing in photography. It’s making trans people the author, rather than just the subject. That’s really the key. ” cultural representations of trans people have historically reduced them to objects of pity or scorn. “Over and over again, somebody is crying in the mirror, taking off their wig,” Ernst said over dinner at a gastropub near the Silver Lake home he shares with his partner, Patrick Staff, an artist. “There are these fixations that gender people get that are not the way our lives are being lived at all. ” (To be “ gender” is to identify as the gender you are assigned at birth i. e. not trans.) A prime example, he said, is “Dallas Buyers Club,” a critically acclaimed film that earned Jared Leto an Oscar in 2014 for his supporting role as Rayon, an H. I. V. positive trans woman. “She was a throwaway character,” Ernst griped, “a drug addict who was there to make the protagonist learn about himself, and she was named after a synthetic fabric. That’s not a real person. ” In the two years since, there has been a marked political and cultural shift, and a growing public fascination with trans people. For Drucker and Ernst, whose work has always been about making the trans experience more visible, this has meant a much bigger audience. “There needs to be a little demystifying about trans existence,” Ernst said. “That’s why people have so many burning questions about it all. ” Soon after their photographs were installed at the Whitney, they began working on the first season of “Transparent” with Jill Soloway, the show’s creator. Soloway met Ernst when they each had a short film screening at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. Soloway’s father had just come out as trans, and she found herself opening up to Ernst about what she was going through. They kept in touch. After Soloway finished writing the “Transparent” pilot, she reached out to Ernst and Drucker, knowing that she needed trans people involved from the start. “Everyone knows and loves them,” she told me in her office on the Paramount lot. “They’re the homecoming king and queen of the trans movement. ” Drucker and Ernst say the show has been able to “undo a lot of damage” when it comes to popular portrayals of trans people. Maura is not a sad loner whose every act and thought is about transitioning. Rather, she is the parent of a flawed but loving family in which everyone seems uncomfortable in their skin. Initially hired as consultants to prevent the show from trafficking in trans stereotypes, Drucker and Ernst were swiftly promoted to producers. They now offer notes on scripts, watch rough cuts of episodes and work closely with the writers and actors to make the trans performances as authentic as possible. Drucker helps Tambor understand how Maura feels about herself and her body, and she tweaks his mannerisms onscreen, regularly nudging him to close his legs, for example. Ernst directs the opening credits. Both also lead what they call “Trans 101” for everyone involved with the show, from Amazon executives to truck drivers, in which they explain the etiquette of working with trans colleagues. They stress that it is best to ask what pronoun people prefer. They advise against inquiring about the genitals or birth names of trans people, or referring to them as “trannies” or “ . ” “People are afraid of saying the wrong thing, so they don’t have the conversation,” Drucker says. “But I think there’s no undignified questions, only undignified answers. ” For many of the show’s trans performers and crew members, all of this has been changing. “’u2009‘Transparent’ was my out party,” Trace Lysette said at the show’s panel at Outfest, the L. G. B. T. film festival in Los Angeles, in July. Like many trans women, Lysette struggled for years to find employment, making money by stripping and sex work before she landed a recurring role as Shea, a friend of Maura’s. “It’s allowed me to get up off the pole and have a career that I never thought would really happen,” she said. Silas Howard, the show’s first trans director, says the call from Soloway was like getting “a golden ticket. ” Tambor has begun teaching acting classes for trans people in Los Angeles. Drian Juarez, the program manager of the Transgender Economic Empowerment Project, a Los Angeles nonprofit group, told me that the show’s success has inspired other companies, including NBC and Ryan Seacrest Productions, to ask her for leads on transgender talent for related stories. Given that trans people are twice as likely to be unemployed as the general population (four times as likely if they are not white) these industry jobs are a big deal. Drucker and Ernst also persuaded Amazon to sponsor the Trans Pride festival in Los Angeles. “I’ve just never seen any production like the familial, politicized, changing, changing empathy machine that is ‘Transparent,’’u2009” Ernst told me. The show, he conceded, doesn’t exactly represent a new norm in the industry, but he and Drucker hope that the many trans people involved in its production are gaining the tools necessary to make their own shows. “It’s certainly the beginning of something new,” Drucker says. For the moment, working on “Transparent” has turned Drucker and Ernst into trans spokespeople in Hollywood. Drucker was among the trans women hired to help Caitlyn Jenner navigate her new trans life on the season E! Network series “I Am Cait. ” Focus Features asked Ernst to be a consultant on “The Danish Girl,” a 2015 biopic about Lili Elbe, one of the first people to undergo reassignment surgery. Ernst was wary, as the film was already underway with a gender writer, director and star. Yet he found the studio receptive to his many recommendations, including his request that Focus “give back to the trans community in tangible ways. ” The studio created a $10, 000 scholarship for trans filmmakers and helped fund a web series of documentary shorts about trans pioneers called “We’ve Been Around,” directed by Ernst, which had its premiere online in March. “Being trans right now necessitates this multihyphenate way of being,” Drucker says. When Drucker and Ernst were growing up in the 1990s, mass media presented trans people mainly on talk shows like “Jerry Springer,” which tended to sensationalize with big reveals like “My Boyfriend Is a Girl!” and “Guess What . .. I’m a Man!” “You knew you didn’t want to be that, but at least there was something to point to,” Drucker said. We were eating homemade tabbouleh at her house in Cypress Park, which she shares with her boyfriend of nearly two years, Jerid Bartow, an urban designer. Finding models for how to live, or even a language to describe their feelings, was difficult for Drucker and Ernst. After Drucker discovered that she desired boys and Ernst that he liked girls (at least initially) they didn’t feel right calling themselves gay or lesbian because it didn’t feel as if they were attracted to the same sex. They were both relieved as teenagers to discover the term “queer,” which is elastic enough to elide standard definitions of sexual orientation and gender. Each was raised in a supportive home by compassionate parents — a rare privilege, they acknowledge. But public bathrooms were always sites of dread, and school was hard. Drucker’s taste for blue hair, dog collars and makeup made her a target in Syracuse, her hometown. “She hid a lot from us,” her mother, Penny Sori, told me. “It was only when I started working at the high school that I saw she took a lot of crap. ” When Drucker insisted on wearing a gown to the prom, her parents worried that she was putting herself at risk. But when Sori approached her, “Zackary looked at me in this funny way and said, ‘I need your support on this.’ So I said, ‘O. K. let me find my long black gloves and at least accessorize you effectively. ’’u2009” Ernst was similarly ostracized and bullied in Chapel Hill, where his father, Carl Ernst, is an studies professor at the University of North Carolina. As the only queer kid at his public middle school and later at the local Quaker school, he says, he was treated poorly by both students and teachers. With his parents’ blessing, he dropped out in ninth grade. He studied art and music at home, set up a darkroom in his closet and took classes at local community colleges. Art allowed them to vent their anger and defy convention. At her home, Drucker showed me a box of old photographs. Amid the pictures of her bar mitzvah (“a rare moment of gender conformity”) punk adolescence and androgynous college years was a series of snapshots from when she was 3 or 4, dressed in her mother’s clothes and beaming. “Those photographs provided an opportunity for me to see myself outside of the constraints of my reality,” she said. “ making has always provided this place to invent and reinvent myself. ” Drucker went on to study photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Soon after arriving in the city in 2001, she met Flawless Sabrina, a revered drag performer otherwise known as Jack Doroshow, and the first of many “ feminine elders” Drucker collected in search of “proof that it’s possible to have a sustainable life and live outside the rules. ” At Hampshire College, Ernst fell in love with media filmmaking, which allowed him to combine his many interests. For “The Drive North,” a 8 short that Ernst made and starred in as a undergraduate, he used his own animation and original score and experimented with slide projections and energetic editing to tell a story about two teenagers driving to college. It earned him several prizes at festivals around the world. After graduation he moved to New York, where he began working as a personal assistant on film and television projects and eventually became a producer and editor on MTV. Transitioning is a complicated and often stressful process. It took a while before it felt like a necessary step for either of them. Drucker always knew she flouted traditional gender categories, but she was able to maintain a level of androgyny until her early 20s. It was only when her body started aging in a masculine way that she realized “that wasn’t the path I wanted to go down. ” After she moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts in 2005, she began taking estrogen. Although Ernst knew he wasn’t female, transitioning made him nervous, particularly because he knew few people who had done it. “It was still this kind of distant, weird relative of ‘gay and lesbian,’ and people didn’t understand it,” he says. Without public examples of happy, successful, aging trans people, he remembered wondering: Do people grow old? Do the hormones kill you? As a feminist, he asked himself: Do I even want to be a man? He was also troubled by the fact that it is impossible to transition quietly. It feels extremely public, he explains, because essentially everyone else has to transition, too. “At what point would my mom change pronouns to her hairdresser when they chat about me? It really ripples. It feels like jumping off a cliff. ” Ernst began taking hormones six months before driving country with a friend to study filmmaking at CalArts. They were just starting to pass as men, which meant they were “dealing with the panopticon of stop men’s rooms for the first time. ” The experience was racking, but he learned that men don’t really look at one another in men’s rooms. He also found that people were much kinder to him than when he was a nonconforming woman. “I got the, you know, ’Sup, chief? ’Sup, champ? It was really striking. ” Drucker met Ernst at a party soon after he arrived in Los Angeles. “It was such a revelation when we got together,” Drucker told me. Within a year they were subletting the rundown house of Ron Athey, a performance artist and mentor (they call him “Pops”). They collaborated on several projects, including “She Gone Rogue,” a dreamy experimental short featuring several “ feminine” legends from Drucker’s “chosen family” (Flawless Sabrina, Holly Woodlawn, Vaginal Davis) which debuted at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2012. They also took thousands of pictures of themselves and each other. The photographs that make up “Relationship” were never meant for a mass audience Drucker and Ernst didn’t even share them with friends. They feel like small, private gifts for each other. One shows them topless and tenderly touching each other in bed, their faces flushed with the thrill of discovery. Another finds them nuzzling in the dark corner of what looks like a party, their eyes closed. Often Drucker or Ernst seem to be posing for the other, preening before a mirror or gazing directly at the camera. These photos capture them as they figure out how to present their evolving selves. Ernst is often seen gazing in the distance, steely and remote, his face sprouting new facial hair. Drucker drapes herself across the bed, feline, hither and increasingly curvy. Their disdain for the “prurience” of public curiosity about trans bodies mean there are no full nudes in the book. Both lament that trans people are regularly asked about their genitals. “Cis people are not asked about their genitals, so it’s a bit of a double standard,” Drucker says. But the photos include some comic nods. One shows Ernst with two brown eggs between his legs another has him eating a long link of sausage impaled on a fork. Drucker is seen holding a peeled grapefruit in her lap. As a series, these photos trace a period in Drucker’s and Ernst’s lives when they were both undergoing profound personal changes. Yet they found something still and stable in each other. “That body of work really speaks to how much love and support can still be at the core of something that might seem unstable or uncertain or unfamiliar,” says Stuart Comer, a curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Comer is largely responsible for making these images public. Impressed by their film “She Gone Rogue” and excited by the energy and identity politics of many trans artists, he visited Drucker and Ernst in their Los Angeles studio in 2013. Over margaritas, they shared some of their personal snapshots. Comer was so moved by them that he asked to include a selection in the Biennial. “The formula is so simple, but the cumulative effect of the series is extremely powerful,” says Comer, who is now the chief curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Unlike Drucker and Ernst’s other collaborations, which tend to be more layered and complex, “Relationship” speaks to audiences because it is so direct. It is about love between two humans who happen to be trans. “It’s an shattering book,” says Kate Bornstein, a trans activist and queer theorist. “You can’t read this book and not understand that trans is an identity that is desirable and filled with desire. There are going to be people writing to Zackary and Rhys saying, ‘Oh, my God, thank you!’ Because right now, being attracted to a trans person is seen as a perversion. ” Drucker and Ernst understand why people are curious about them. “Trans people are basically asking everyone to evaluate their notions of gender,” Drucker says. This involves more than changing a few names and pronouns. It means upending our rules about who gets to be a man or a woman, and how we expect everyone to behave. The effects can be disorienting. As someone who has occasionally chafed against the ways women are expected to perform femininity, I found myself marveling at Drucker’s girlishness, including her perfectly painted fingernails (against my own nailed nubs). What, I asked her, inspires these choices? Were they not burdensome? Drucker patiently explained that she does what makes her feel confident, and she likes the look of manicured nails. It was an answer that could have come from my mother. Recognizing the difference between how gender is felt and how it is enforced can also be liberating. “Modern masculinity is so confining,” Jerid Bartow, Drucker’s boyfriend, told me one evening. “We’re trained to swallow our emotions, to not seem like a sissy. But those expectations don’t exist in our relationship, which is such a relief. ” Bartow recalled a night I was with him and Drucker while they were getting ready for a party, when he declared, “I’m having a clothing crisis!” next to a bed of discarded outfits. “That’s something men are trained not to say. ” Ernst points out that maleness does indeed come with privileges, like being able to ask for things unapologetically and say things authoritatively without being judged. But, he says, “effeminate men, gay men, smaller men, people who are perceived as younger men,” don’t enjoy quite the same benefits. As a sparsely bearded trans man who now identifies as gay, he says he has found it harder to secure a strong place in this “incredible pecking order. ” He adds that men who believe they are in only spaces will say “repulsive things about women. ” He suspects that this misogynistic posturing is largely about earning the respect of other men. “It’s this male obsession with each other that results in a kind of weird, sort of insecure sniffing. ” Both Drucker and Ernst have made a commitment — separately and together — to live their lives as openly and proudly as possible. “As an artist, I’ve always believed in having a fully integrated self and not omitting parts of who you are or what your history is,” Drucker says. “And being a woman named Zackary makes me very visible. ” Being out is not always easy. Like most trans men, Ernst passes as a cis male, so telling people he’s trans means “rocking that boat every day. ” He recalls his discomfort during the Q. A. sessions after screenings of his CalArts thesis short, “The Thing,” at Sundance in 2012. The film is about a heterosexual couple on a fraught road trip. The man is trans. Audience members naturally asked him why he made that choice. “I realized I had to come out as trans every time on the stage,” Ernst remembers. “You have to muster all this bravery and courage to transition and tell the whole world, and then you think, ‘O. K. good, that’s over.’ But then you realize you have to continue that every day — forever. ” | 0fake |
Saudi king sacks top ministers, gives more power to crown prince | RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi King Salman appointed two new ministers on Saturday to key security and economic posts, removing one of the royal family s most prominent members as head of the National Guard and boosting the kingdom s young crown prince. The king also announced the creation of a new anti-corruption committee chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman which Al Arabiya TV said had already detained 11 princes, four current ministers and tens of former ministers. The suspects were not named. The cabinet reshuffle saw Prince Miteb bin Abdullah replaced as minister of the National Guard by Khaled bin Ayyaf, while Economy Minister Adel Fakieh was removed in favor of his deputy Mohammed al-Tuwaijri, according to a royal decree carried by state-run media. Prince Miteb, the preferred son of the late King Abdullah, was once thought to be a leading contender for the throne before the unexpected rise of Prince Mohammed two years ago. He had inherited control of the National Guard, an elite internal security force built out of traditional tribal units, from his father, who ran it for five decades. Prince Miteb was the last remaining member of Abdullah s branch of the family to hold a position in the upper echelons of the Saudi power structure. The move consolidates Crown Prince Mohammed s control of the kingdom s security institutions, which had long been headed by separate powerful branches of the ruling family. Prince Mohammed, the king s 32-year-old son, already serves as defense minister and was named heir to the throne in a June reshuffle that sidelined his older cousin, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef who had also served as interior minister. He has been responsible at the same time for running Saudi Arabia s war in Yemen, dictating an energy policy with global implications and behind the plans for the kingdom to build a future after oil. Prince Mohammed, who has pledged to go after graft at the highest levels, will now also head up the new anti-corruption body, which was given broad powers to investigate cases, issue arrest warrants and travel restrictions, and freeze assets. The homeland will not exist unless corruption is uprooted and the corrupt are held accountable, the royal decree said. The country s new economy minister, Tuwaijri, is a former Saudi air force pilot and former chief executive of HSBC s Middle East operations who has led the economy ministry s program to privatize some $200 billion of government assets. He replaces Fakieh, who served as the point man for the kingdom s wide-ranging economic reforms since his appointment as economy and planning minister in 2015. A former food executive with a reputation for pushing through politically sensitive reforms, Fakieh had previously served as labor minister, health minister and mayor of Jeddah. Fakieh faced down fierce opposition from the business community as labor minister when he established quotas for foreign workers to boost jobs for Saudis. Under Prince Mohammed, Fakieh led the development of a national transformation plan and privatization drive launched last year to end the kingdom s vulnerability to an unpredictable oil market. His replacement comes as the kingdom makes adjustments to that plan, a process dubbed NTP 2.0. The royal decree did not say whether Fakieh would hold any other government position. Former ministers often serve in advisory roles after leaving their posts. | 0fake |
Woman CORNERS GOP Senator Trapped On Flight, DEMANDS Explanation To Trumpcare (DETAILS) | A Republican Senator found himself in a tough position when he was trapped on a flight with an American citizen who wanted answers about the disgusting repeal and replacement of Obamacare.Oklahoma resident Kendall Brown noticed that she was on the same flight as Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) on Thursday evening, and decided to take him up on his claim that he would listen to all voices if anyone had questions about the GOP s new health care bill. Brown had previously sent letters, emails, and tweets to Lankford, but so far she had been unable to get a response to her questions. However, now that she realized Lankford was trapped on the same airplane with her, she decided this was a great opportunity to get some answers.Once Brown noticed Lankford, she posted a photo of him to her Facebook page, and soon people were begging her to ask him questions. Brown first tried to get Lankford s attention on Twitter, asking him to chat with her about Trump s disastrous plan to repeal and replace Obamacare: However, Brown still didn t get a response. Twitter users even began to suggest that Brown try to approach him in person. Brown opted to write him a note, and by the time she was finished she must have gotten Lankford s attention because he actually approached her!Lankford asked Brown specifically what her question was and she said: I want to share my story with you and I want to have my voice heard on why the ACA is important to me. The conversation ended with an agreement to speak sometime in the near future about the GOP s bill at length.UPDATE: I spoke with @SenatorLankford and gave him this. I m very hopeful we ll be able to get coffee this week & look forward to chatting! pic.twitter.com/AtbRwkJm6P Kendally Brown ? (@kendallybrown) March 24, 2017While Brown doesn t think Lankford will meet her in person, she hopes they might chat on the phone. She is passionate about addressing her concerns with Lankford, because earlier that day Lankford said in an interview that he would listen to all voices something that Brown doesn t think he truly means, considering he hasn t held a town hall on the topic yet. She said: He pretty specifically isn t listening to all voices right now and that s why I approached him. I know there are a lot of people out there that have just as compelling stories about why they need the ACA. So, I had an obligation to approach him, not just for me but for everyone. As Brown s story has gotten more attention, her social media accounts are now full of stories from Americans stating how Obamacare helped them. Brown says she is going to print these stories out and give them to Lankford so he can see how disastrous the repeal and replacement of Obamacare might be.Featured image via Kendally Brown Facebook | 1real |
Somalis defy police to protest against deadly truck bombings | MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Thousands of Somalis demonstrated on Wednesday against those behind bombings that killed more than 300 people, defying police who opened fire to keep them away from the site where their loved-ones were killed. The twin blasts in the heart of Mogadishu on Saturday also injured more than 400 in what were the country s deadliest truck bombings. Police initially opened fire to prevent people from accessing the rubble-strewn scene of the attack, injuring at least two people, the emergency response service said. But, overwhelmed by the number of people, they eventually let thousands of protesters gather at the site. Residents said they had never seen such a big protest in the city. We are demonstrating against the terrorists that massacred our people. We entered the road by force, said Halima Abdullahi, a mother who lost six of her relatives in the attacks. The Islamist militant group al Shabaab, which began an insurgency in 2007, has not claimed responsibility, but the method and type of attack - a large truck bomb - is increasingly used by the al Qaeda-linked organization. Mohamed Ali, a police captain at the scene, said it was fine for protesters to access the site to express their grief. For some who could not see their relatives alive or dead, the only chance they have is to at least see the spot where their beloved were killed, he told Reuters. Later President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed addressed demonstrators at a football field in the city and called on Somalis to join the national army. Take your guns and let s liberate our country. Come forward for recruitment (into) government forces in order to fight and eliminate al Shabaab, he said. The government buried at least 160 of those killed because they could not be identified after the blast. Masked security officers kept an eye on the protest on foot and on motorbikes. Some protesters sat on police trucks waving sticks and chanting: We do not want al Shabaab . The militants were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 and have been steadily losing territory. But they retain the capacity to mount large bomb attacks. Over the past three years, the number of civilians killed by insurgent bombings has steadily climbed as al Shabaab increases the size of its bombs. In the central town of Dusamareb, residents also marched for several hours to protest against the bombings in Mogadishu and clerics called for the war on the militants to be stepped up. Abdikadir Abdirahman, the director of Aamin Ambulances, said one pregnant demonstrator was evacuated from the Mogadishu protest after she developed complications. The other two were also demonstrating. They were injured by bullets which the police fired to disperse the demonstrators who wanted to enter the blast scene by force, he said. | 0fake |
HOLLYWOOD BLVD: PRO-TRUMP #Oscar Rally Gets Ugly When Punches Start Flying…Trump Hating Female Picks On WRONG Woman! [VIDEO] | Dozens of supporters of US President Donald Trump rallied on the Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, Saturday, a day ahead of the Academy Awards ceremony, in order to defend the president and protect his star on the Walk of Fame.One arrest was made after clashes erupted as some by-passers confronted the protesters, breaking one of their placards. Protesters campaigned for Trump to build the wall at the southern US border with Mexico and displayed signs such as Mexicans for Trump, California for Trump and women for Trump. Watch:The organizer of the rally Matthew Woods stressed that Trump supporters are boycotting many actors and film directors who have an anti-America agenda. A few of the pro-Trump supporters who were present at the rally explained why they supported him: I m Latino and I say, build that wall. These illegal immigrants. I actually have a friend whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant. They re losing and it s the price they re going to pay. They re losing support of the arts and the films. We re boycotting many actors and film that have an anti-American agenda, a globalist agenda or an anti-Trump agenda. | 1real |
HAPPENING: FBI Reopens Case Against Aggro Granny After New Emails Discovered! | Emails discovered during investigation of Jew Anthony Wiener sending dick pics to jailbait!
HA!
New York Times :
Newly discovered emails from Hillary Clintonâs private server were found after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices once shared by Anthony D. Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said Friday.
The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case â one federal official said they numbered in the thousands â potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.
In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they âappear to be pertinent to the investigation.â
…
âDirector Comeyâs letter refers to emails that have come to light in an unrelated case, but we have no idea what those emails are and the director himself notes they may not even be significant,â said John D. Podesta, chairman of Mrs. Clintonâs campaign.
He added: âIt is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.â
Mrs. Clinton, arriving Friday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, waved at members of the media gathered on the tarmac but ignored shouted questions.
HA!
She won’t even take questions!
There was no damage control plan again – just like when she collapsed on 911!
I’m not really sure how it makes sense that Weiner would have these on his phone, or why the FBI would seize the phone of his wife because he was sending dick pics to jailbait (unless he was using her phone to send them, lel) – but I’ve always said, Weiner is a funny Jew!
I never thought he would turn-out to be this funny!
Original article follows. tfw you just lost the game
OH YES YOU READ THAT HEADLINE RIGHT, SIR.
YESSIREE DOG.
I knew James Comey was a pretty cool guy when a Negro in Congress asked him to investigate me and he was like “Yeah, dat nigga hot as a muffuggah. Watchoo want ah invesegate how much azz he be kickin in dem toobs? Get the fug outta here with that shit, dawg.”
And now: total bro confirmed.
RT :
The FBI has learned of more emails involving Hillary Clintonâs private email server while she headed the State Department, FBI Director James Comey told several members of Congress, telling them he is reopening the investigation.
â In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of email that appear to be pertinent â to Clintonâs investigation, Comey wrote to the chairs of several relevant congressional committees, adding that he was briefed about the messages on Thursday. â I agree that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation. â
The FBI director cautioned, however, that the bureau has yet to assess the importance of the material, and that he doesnât know how long that will take.
Stocks fell after Comeyâs announcement, CNBC reported.
More like the sky just fell.
And underneath it we see Jesus Christ himself wearing a MAGA hat, smiling like a smug Pepe and whispering “lock her up.” Yo dawg, we heard you like America. So we sent Jesus Christ himself to make sure Donald Trump gets elected.
Seriously, people. Even if you don’t necessarily believe in Christianity, you have to admit that this is some kind of divine miracle that just happened here.
Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, praised the decision to reopen the case.
âNow that the FBI has reopened the matter, it must conduct the investigation with impartiality and thoroughness,â he said in a statement. âThe American people deserve no less and no one should be above the law.â
Almost 15,000 new Clinton emails were discovered in September.
In mid-October, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, promised at least âfour new hearingsâ after Congress returns from recess in November based on the new emails, which lawmakers received but have not been made public.
“This is a flashing red light of potential criminality,” Chaffetz said.
The new evidence points to a âquid pro quoâ arrangement between the FBI and the State Department, he noted.
Welp.
That’s it.
It’s over.
There is just no way with an open investigation hanging over her head, and the FBI openly stating that it is so severe they have to act immediately, that she can possibly be elected.
I do understand that there is no evidence that Hillary’s own people care if she is a criminal or not when it comes to polling, but this seriously demoralizes them, making them much less likely to vote. At the same time, it is a massive morale boost to the Republicans who aren’t necessarily on the Trump Train but hate Hillary, ensuring that they’ll go out and vote.
Seriously guys. I did have my doubts. But this clears them up. We are 11 days away from the election.
And this drops.
And I guarantee Team Trump has something to drop next week. The Russian conspiracy might even be memed into reality and Putin might drop the hidden server. Assange still has something big.
We won, guys.
Honestly, I’ve got tears in my eyes right now.
God Bless America. | 1real |
Russian Agent Killed Lawmaker in Kiev, Ukraine Officials Say - The New York Times | The assassin who gunned down a prominent Russian opposition figure on a sidewalk in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev was identified by Ukrainian officials on Friday as a Russian agent. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the country’s interior minister, identified the agent as Pavel Parshov, who had undergone “a special course at a school for saboteurs,” he said in a Facebook post. The gunman was himself grievously wounded by a bodyguard for the target, Denis N. Voronenkov, and subsequently died in the hospital. The allegation was immediately dismissed by Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, as “absurd. ” Mr. Voronenkov was a member of the Russian Parliament before defecting to Ukraine last year with his wife, Maria Maksakova, also a politician. He had offered to testify for the prosecution in a criminal case against Viktor F. Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine who was driven from office by street demonstrators in 2014. He promised to deliver an insider’s account of the Kremlin’s deliberations and actions during the annexation of Crimea the same year. A former prosecutor before joining Parliament, Mr. Voronenkov had socialized with people in Mr. Putin’s circle, including Vladislav Surkov, a political adviser to Mr. Putin who attended Mr. Voronenkov’s wedding. The Ukrainian National Guard released a statement saying that Mr. Parshov had enlisted and served from 2015 to 2016, before being dismissed for breach of contract. His exact offense was not specified. Critics and opponents of Mr. Putin and his Kremlin cronies have been assassinated in a variety of ways over the years, often in spectacular fashion so as to send a message, Kremlin watchers say. The most celebrated was the poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko with a rare and deadly radioactive isotope, polonium 210, administered in a drink in the Millennium Hotel in London in 2006. When the prominent opposition figure Boris Y. Nemtsov was murdered in 2015, his body fell on the sidewalk of a bridge with the Kremlin and the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral as a backdrop. Sometimes the killings are more prosaic. Numerous potential witnesses to the death of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer who died of neglect in a Russian prison, have disappeared, been poisoned or suffered “heart attacks” that were later found to be the result of ingesting a rare Chinese herb. | 0fake |
Trump says Manafort charges 'years ago'; indictment includes 2017 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday responded to charges against former campaign manager Paul Manafort by saying the allegations predated his tenure on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, but the indictment states the activities continued into 2017. “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????” Trump wrote, referring to his former Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The indictment says Manafort and associate Rick Gates conspired to defraud the United States “from in or about and between 2006 and 2017.” | 0fake |
Trump aide says U.S. sanctions on Russia may be disproportionate | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top aide to President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday that the White House may have disproportionately punished Russia by ordering the expulsion of 35 suspected Russian spies. Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on ABC’s “This Week” that Trump will be asking questions of U.S. intelligence agencies after President Barack Obama imposed sanctions last week on two Russian intelligence agencies over what he said was their involvement in hacking political groups in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Obama also ordered Russia to vacate two U.S. facilities as part of the tough sanctions on Russia. “One of the questions that we have is why the magnitude of this? I mean you look at 35 people being expelled, two sites being closed down, the question is, is that response in proportion to the actions taken? Maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t but you have to think about that,” Spicer said. Trump is to have briefings with intelligence agencies this week after he returns to New York on Sunday. On Saturday, Trump expressed continued skepticism over whether Russia was responsible for computer hacks of Democratic Party officials. “I think it’s unfair if we don’t know. It could be somebody else. I also know things that other people don’t know so we cannot be sure,” Trump said. He said he would disclose some information on the issue on Tuesday or Wednesday, without elaborating. It is unclear if, upon taking office on Jan. 20, he would seek to roll back Obama’s actions, which mark a post-Cold War low in U.S.-Russian ties. Spicer said that after China in 2015 seized records of U.S. government employees “no action publicly was taken. Nothing, nothing was taken when millions of people had their private information, including information on security clearances that was shared. Not one thing happened.” “So there is a question about whether there’s a political retribution here versus a diplomatic response,” he added. U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia was behind hacks into Democratic Party organizations and operatives before the presidential election. Moscow denies this. U.S. intelligence officials say the Russian cyber attacks aimed to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. Republican John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has scheduled a hearing for Thursday on foreign cyber threats and has said that Russia must be made to pay the price for attacks “on our very fundamentals of democracy. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on the same ABC program that Congress would push for an even harsher reprisal against Russia and warned Trump against undoing Obama’s sanctions. “We think that more has to be done. We don’t think that frankly the steps that have been taken are enough of a deterrent,” said Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat. “And you’re going to see bipartisan support in Congress for stronger sanctions against Russia.” Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, said on “Fox News Sunday” that Obama’s sanctions were not enough. Russian President Vladimir Putin decided not to expel anyone in retaliation, saying he would consider the actions of Trump when deciding on further steps. Trump, who has repeatedly praised Putin, said the Russian leader was “very smart” for holding back. Russian diplomats who were expelled by Obama left Washington on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported, citing Russia’s embassy. | 0fake |
Dim Witted Australian Politicians trying to dump their refugee problem on the Trumphole | Monday, 14 November 2016 Neo-Nazi Immigration Minister denies all association with Nazi Party
It appears as though international communications to Australia from the US is broken. Today Australian PM announces deal to dump all refugees from Nauru onto America .
Commentators are completely befuddled, after the most anti-immigration US election in history the rather slow on the uptake intellectually constipated politicians think this is a great time to shove their problem onto the US?
They asked Neo-Nazi Morrison which part of the US election did you miss? he smugly replied they could "slip this one under the door using a bit of flaccid Aussie spin".
Reporters pointed out that he was simply trying to avoid the UN which had recently indicted him for crimes against humanity for the utterly barbaric conditions refugees are being held in Nauru with some commentators calling it the Australian Guantanamo Bay. The most honourable esteemed minister gruffly replied, "well everyone knows ALL refugees are terrorists, anyway Trumphole is pretty stupid so we should be able to sneak this one in the backdoor while Obama is still there".
When told the repartitions logistics alone would defeat their pubescent opaque scheme and how did they intend to get them past the Mexican wall they replied with the same old surreal spin, "it is our policy to not discuss policy or the details of any operation that may or may not be ongoing at this time, we will not expose any current investigations as when the public find out, terrorists everywhere win and innocent lives are put at risk, and further they were unable to confirm or deny that boat refugees were throwing their democracy overboard, but it sure seemed that way".
When the Trumphole immigration spinner heard the story he had to be assisted back to his chair after he fell off it and rolled on the floor in laughter and quoted a McEnroe "you can't be serious, that sounded like infantile dumb spin for domestic consumption, though he did note it seemed to work down-under". Make Jung in the Jungle's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!) | 1real |
North Carolina governor gets initial win in fight over cabinet | WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - A three-judge panel has sided at least temporarily with North Carolina Democratic Governor Roy Cooper in his fight against a Republican-backed attempt to curtail his powers by requiring legislative confirmation of cabinet appointments. The law was among a series of measures approved by lawmakers in December limiting Cooper’s executive authority after he defeated incumbent Republican Governor Pat McCrory. Cooper sued to block it, arguing that requiring Senate consent to his cabinet secretaries was unprecedented and unconstitutional. In an order Tuesday evening, the trio of state judges said the governor was likely to succeed in his challenge. “The court is absolutely correct in their decision and should not be intimidated by threats from legislative leaders,” Cooper said in a statement on Wednesday. Eight of the 10 cabinet secretaries for the state have been appointed and sworn in. The temporary restraining order halted a hearing set for Wednesday to review Cooper’s appointee for secretary of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. Republican lawmakers vowed they would eventually meet to review the cabinet members’ qualifications and potential conflicts of interests. Republicans have said such confirmation hearings were lawful and would serve as a check on executive power. Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, both Republicans, said the judges were legislating from the bench and called on them to reverse their order. “In a gross misreading of the Constitution and a blatant overstep of their Constitutional authority, three Superior Court judges attempted to dictate to the legislature when it could or could not hold committee meetings and what it could or could not consider in those meetings,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. “If these three men want to make laws, they should hang up their robes and run for a legislative seat.” The judges said they would hear the governor’s motion for a preliminary injunction on Friday. A trial on the issue is scheduled for March 7. | 0fake |
For News Outlets Squeezed From the Middle, It’s Bend or Bust - The New York Times | Earlier this month, a couple of inventive young at BuzzFeed tied enough rubber bands around the center of a watermelon to make it explode. Nearly a million people watched the giant berry burst on Facebook Live. It racked up more than 10 million views in the days that followed. Traditional journalists everywhere saw themselves as the seeds, flying out of the frame. How do we compete with that? And if that’s the future of news and information, what’s next for our democracy? President Kardashian? Grandkids: It was not so long ago — oh, say, five, maybe six years — that traditional news organizations like this one could laugh at BuzzFeed’s gag along with everyone else, smugly secure. An exploding watermelon was just an exploding watermelon. These days, however, news articles — be they about war, voting rights, the arts or immigration policy — increasingly inhabit social media feeds like the frighteningly dominant one that Facebook runs. They are competing for attention against zany kitchen experiments your friend’s daughter’s bat mitzvah and that wild video of a train whipping through a ridiculously narrow alleyway in Thailand. After watching the fruiticide, I noticed a Twitter post by the freelance journalist Erik Malinowski that read, “the watermelon … is us,” and sighed. Seemed about right. The sense of dread was compounded a few hours later, when the website Mashable, which first came to prominence covering Internet businesses and culture, appeared to pare back an ambitious effort to prove that serious world and political news could thrive alongside “Grumpy Cat. ” Mashable announced that as part of a reorganization it was shedding several highly regarded journalists, including its executive editor, Jim Roberts, a former assistant managing editor at The New York Times. Look out, White House, I thought, here comes Kimye. Then, sweet relief (or was it? ): The Financial Times reported that BuzzFeed — which is best known for hits like the watermelon video, though its news team wins awards — missed its financial targets last year and was revising this year’s projections downward. BuzzFeed, which does not disclose its finances, denied the report, saying this year will meet expectations. But traditional newsrooms everywhere were reveling in the schadenfreude just the same. Aha! Perhaps random snapshots of callipygian Corgis do not a business model make news as we know it is safe. Well, not really. We may not yet be the watermelon. But executives who run news organizations almost universally say that we’d all better find our own watermelons — and find them yesterday. It means big changes are coming fast in the way major news institutions present their journalism, what that journalism includes, and how decisions are made about what to include. The goal: to draw big, addicted audiences. A lot of it is being done in the rushed panic that comes with the demands of quarterly earnings. And yet, given the highest calling of the news industry — hold politicians to account, unearth corruption — the importance to our political and civic life could not be greater. A good way to understand the thinking is to check in on people who are trying to build a news and information business from scratch. I did that last week over breakfast with Jim VandeHei, a of Politico, and Mike Allen, one of the site’s journalists. Both are also veterans of The Washington Post. Mr. VandeHei, who stepped down last week as Politico’s chief executive, and Roy Schwartz, the company’s departing chief revenue officer, have been seeking potential investors and video and television partners. Mr. Allen is for the time being continuing to write his vital morning tip sheet at Politico, “Playbook,” seven days a week. When I met with Mr. VandeHei and Mr. Allen, they were about their next venture. They would only describe it in the broadest terms, as “a media company” that will focus on news and information, exist largely on mobile devices and social media, and not directly compete against Politico. But that was O. K. for my purposes. I was more interested in hearing what this venture wouldn’t be doing. Their answers may require a trigger warning for the proudly set. It starts with Mr. VandeHei’s admittedly provocative proposition that “journalists are killing journalism. ” They’re doing this, he says, by “stubbornly clinging to the old ways. ” That’s defined as producing 50 competing but nearly identical stories about a presidential candidate’s latest speech, or updates on the transportation budget negotiations. Survival, Mr. VandeHei says, depends on giving readers what they really want, how they want it, when they want it, and on not spending too much money producing what they don’t want. It’s not only about creating big audiences for advertisers, he and Mr. Allen said. It’s about convincing audiences that they want what you’re producing, and they want it so badly that they will pay for it through subscriptions. That’s essential as advertising revenue drops to levels that will not support robust news gathering. Hooking people on your news product is a lot harder than, say, hooking them on heroin or even coffee. But news organizations have ways they never had before to figure it out. Through analytics, reporters and editors know how many people are reading their work and through which devices and sites, how long those readers are sticking with it, and what they’re ignoring. Screens featuring these analytics are increasingly showing up, prominently, in American newsrooms, including those of The New York Times and The Washington Post. This is the biggest and least talked about development in traditional print media as it converts to digital: It now has ratings, just as television does. The findings from these ratings have been fairly consistent. Videos, podcasts, short items of interest that can be read easily on smartphones, and almost anything with the words “Donald Trump” rate well. Perhaps counterintuitively, deeply reported features and investigative pieces like The Times’s coverage of ISIS’ brutality or its nearly article about one man’s lonely death in Queens can draw readership levels that were never possible in the era. That’s a big deal, and in Mr. VandeHei’s and Mr. Allen’s view — as well as those of the bosses at The Times, The Post and elsewhere — it shows that big, important work will prove more valuable than fun stunts that may or may not draw big online audiences. What do not necessarily rate well, however, are the (often important if sometimes unsexy) articles about yesterday’s doings — or, nondoings — at the Federal Election Commission, or the latest federal budget fight. “We didn’t know if, in a newspaper, people were reading our piece on the transportation markup on A10 — now we do,” Mr. VandeHei said. “I’m not saying you let the audience dictate everything, but a smart, aggressive, media company is going to write what it thinks is important and its audience thinks is important. ” This is talk you hear in newsrooms across the country, and it’s where there is some cause for concern. Those drier articles may not score in the ratings, but they can lead to the bigger ones. Watergate started as a story about a burglary. The sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church that The Boston Globe exposed — captured in the movie “Spotlight” — began as a column about a single priest. Once ratings come into the picture, will reporters still want to pursue those smaller stories? And will their editors, who once called these stories “spinach,” want to publish them? The answer from Mr. VandeHei and news executives is yes, but it’s incumbent upon news organizations to do a better job with them — make them shorter and more distinctive, with data and striking visual presentation. Understood. All I’m asking is that we be careful not to lose too many core values on our way to the future. Otherwise, it’s watermelon flambé at the Kardashian inauguration, and yes, we’re the watermelon. | 0fake |
Stolen Valor: Men In Oregon ‘Militia’ Caught Red-Handed Falsely Posing As Marine Veterans | Two of the men involved in the armed standoff in Oregon have been caught falsely claiming to have served in the Marines. An investigation shows the two have committed stolen valor. One of the men, Brian Cavalier, is the personal bodyguard to Ammon Bundy and has told reporters that he served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Here s the problem: the US Marine Corps has no record of his service. That s because he was never enlisted. The other man, Blaine Cooper, also claimed to be a Marine, but he was only in the Delayed Entry Program. He dropped out before actually going to boot camp.A more in-depth look reveals that Cavalier is just a tattoo artist, and not only that, but the only record he has is a rap sheet full of DUI s and theft nothing even affiliated with the military. That s what police records show, anyhow. It appears he faked his military credentials so he would be more credible to serve in the Oregon gang and get more street cred.Here was the encounter Brian Cavalier had with reporters, who hilariously goes by the nickname Raging Unicorn: I m a retired United States Marine, I can rage. He also tried to sound ex-military when one journalist asked to access the refuge building, stating boldly: No, that s logistical security issues that we can t have happen, head count can t be divulged for security purposes. When he was later confronted about his false claims, and that the US Marine Corps had confirmed that he was in fact never a Marine, he reportedly got very nervous, saying: That s unfortunate that someone would say that. I m not commenting on anything. I told you what it is. Pic via Latest.No service member who served would ever cower away like that. But, his reply wasn t needed. These guys are fakes the evidence already proves that. While claiming to have served in the military isn t technically against the law, it s not respectful to the men and women who actually did risk their lives for their country. The 2013 Stolen Valor Act only makes it unlawful if someone falsely claims to have received an award or commendation to receive some form of compensation. Neither of these men violated that.With that said we have a feeling stolen valor isn t going to be as much of an issue when the FBI presses federal charges against them when this is all over and done with. That much is guaranteed.Featured image via screen capture. | 1real |
France and Germany Unite to Oppose President Trump’s Refugee Ban | PARIS (AP) — France and Germany formed a united front Saturday in the face of President Donald Trump’s halt in the U. S. refugee program, with the German foreign minister noting that loving thy neighbor forms part of America’s Christian traditions. [After meeting Saturday, the foreign ministers of both nations, Ayrault and Germany’s Sigmar Gabriel, said they want to meet with Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state who is still awaiting confirmation. Ayrault said Trump’s order on Friday that bars all refugees from entering the United States for four months — and those from Syria indefinitely — “can only worry us. ” “There are many other issues that worry us,” he added. “That is why Sigmar and I also discussed what we are going to do. When our colleague, Tillerson, is officially appointed, we will both contact him. ” Gabriel — on his first trip abroad since his appointment Friday — said offering refuge to the persecuted and those fleeing death are western values that Europe and the United States share. “Love thy neighbor is part of this tradition, the act of helping others,” he said. “This unites us, we Westerners. And I think that this remains a common foundation that we share with the United States, one we aim to promote. ” Trump declared the ban necessary to prevent “radical Islamic terrorists” from entering the United States. The order immediately suspended a program that last year resettled to the U. S. roughly 85, 000 people displaced by war, political oppression, hunger and religious prejudice. | 0fake |
Clinton raises $68.5 million in June: campaign | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in June raised more than $68.5 million for her campaign and the Democratic Party, the campaign said on Friday. Of the total raised, more than $40.5 million was brought in for her own election warchest and an additional $28 million was raised for the Democratic National Committee and state parties across the country. | 0fake |
For Trump's defenders, White House turmoil is politics as usual | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In Washington, the chatter about a deepening, Watergate-style crisis has engulfed the White House - and those conversations are echoed in big cities across the country and in a succession of headlines that seem to suggest almost certain doom for the young Trump administration. But for many Americans, including President Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters, the “crisis in Washington” is not about possible missteps by Trump or questions over whether his campaign colluded with Russia. For them, it’s the latest egregious example of mainstream media bias and of Washington insiders desperate to preserve their status taking revenge on the New York celebrity businessman. In such an intensely polarized political environment that distrust of mainstream media will make it less likely that Trump supporters - and the Republican officeholders who rely on their votes - will abandon the president any time soon. “The more negativity, the more we’re for him. It’s backfiring on them,” Arizona resident Nadia Larsen said of media reports about possible collusion with Russia or Trump’s conversations with then-FBI Director James Comey. Reports from the Washington Post and New York Times that Trump shared classified information with Russia’s foreign minister and pressured Comey to end an inquiry into former national security adviser Michael Flynn have been met with skepticism by Larsen and many other Trump supporters. More credible, they say, is news from prominent conservative media outlets, from the Trump-friendly airwaves of Fox News to websites such as Breitbart. Those outlets have cast the allegations as an ideological attack by Obama administration holdovers or the revenge of the “deep state,” a term used by the far right to refer to what they see as a deeply entrenched bureaucracy opposed to Trump. “The only news I watch is Fox, but the only news I watch and believe is whatever comes out of the president’s mouth and whatever he tweets,” said Larsen, an Israeli-born immigrant who has lived in Tucson, Arizona, for 25 years. Several Trump supporters decried what they described as baseless news from anonymous sources and said they have not seen any concrete evidence to support the allegations against Trump. “This is what I expected,” said Jeff Klusmeier, an insurance agent in Louisville, Kentucky. “I expected the media to attack Trump. I expected the Democrats to attack him and call for impeachment. So it’s par for the course for me.” Conservative media outlets have developed their own theories about the recent spate of negative headlines. The Breitbart News Network, once headed by Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon, reported that some of the recent accusations were driven by associates of Comey, who was fired by Trump last week, in a story headlined “Comey Strikes Back.” Among the headlines on the Drudge Report, a popular conservative news aggregator, were “Media Reach Peak Meltdown” and “Sabotage in DC.” “The anti-Trump press believes it smells blood in the water,” said Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, a staunch Trump supporter who accused the mainstream media of “hyperventilating breathlessness.” Hannity tweeted on Wednesday that five groups were trying to destroy Trump: the media, Democrats, deep state/intelligence operatives, establishment Republicans and “never Trumpers.” “This effort, this plan, this desire to upend and stop the Trump presidency got going probably on election night and certainly within 24 hours. And now we’re seeing it manifest itself,” radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said. On Wednesday, the Justice Department appointed former FBI head Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate possible ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. Trump has fed the theory that the media is out to get him, saying “no politician in history” has been treated more unfairly. On Thursday he tweeted that the probe of Russian collusion was “the single greatest witch hunt” in U.S. history. “The overwhelming majority of conservatives and Republicans believe that whatever you may think of Donald Trump, this is clearly being driven by many quarters of the media that chose sides in the election and were very upfront about it and haven’t changed,” Republican consultant Keith Appell told Reuters. Trump’s approval ratings have been low for a new president, remaining mired in the high 30s to low 40s. But 77 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s performance, according to the most recent Reuters/Ipsos survey, a figure that has stayed relatively steady since his inauguration. Bradd Bostick, a Reynoldsburg, Ohio, resident who started a Bikers for Trump group after the president’s inauguration in January, said he was not concerned about the recent controversies because “most of us do not believe anything we hear in the mainstream media.” “The media thinks it’s about Trump, and it’s not,” said Steve Deace, an Iowa-based commentator for Conservative Review and a former talk-radio host who has been critical of Trump. “It’s not about Trump’s credibility, it’s about the media’s credibility.” | 0fake |
OBAMA BLAMES RUSSIA For Hillary’s Loss, But NEW HARVARD STUDY Exposes Who REALLY Interfered In Outcome Of Our Elections | A new report from Harvard Kennedy School s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzes news coverage during the 2016 general election, and concludes that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received coverage that was overwhelmingly negative in tone and extremely light on policy.This is the final report of a multi-part research series analyzing news coverage of candidates and issues during the 2016 presidential election. The study tracks news coverage from the second week of August 2016 to the day before Election Day.Negative coverage was the order of the day in the general election. Not a week passed where the nominees coverage reached into positive territory. It peaked at 81 percent negative in mid-October, but there was not a single week where it dropped below 64 percent negative.The press s negative bent is not confined to election politics (see Figure 4).[2] In recent years, when immigration has been the subject of news stories, the ratio of negative stories to positive ones has been 5-to-1. In that same period, news reports featuring Muslims have been 6-to-1 negative. News stories about health care policy, most of which centered on the 2010 Affordable Care Act, have been 2-to-1 negative. Although the nation s economy has steadily improved since the financial crisis of 2008, one would not know that from the tone of news coverage. Since 2010, news stories about the nation s economy have been 2-to-1 negative over positive.The real bias of the press is not that it s liberal. Its bias is a decided preference for the negative. As scholar Michael Robinson noted, the news media seem to have taken some motherly advice and turned it upside down. If you don t have anything bad to say about someone, don t say anything at all. [3] A New York Times columnist recently asserted that the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth. [4] There s a degree of accuracy in that claim but the problem goes beyond the internet and the talk shows. The mainstream press highlights what s wrong with politics without also telling us what s right.It s a version of politics that rewards a particular brand of politics. When everything and everybody is portrayed as deeply flawed, there s no sense making distinctions on that score, which works to the advantage of those who are more deeply flawed. Civility and sound proposals are no longer the stuff of headlines, which instead give voice to those who are skilled in the art of destruction. The car wreck that was the 2016 election had many drivers. Journalists were not alone in the car, but their fingerprints were all over the wheel.The research is confined to the election coverage in the print editions of five daily papers (the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Today) and the main newscasts of five television networks (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, CNN s The Situation Room, Fox s Special Report, and NBC Nightly News). In the case of the newspapers, the analysis covers all sections except sports, obituaries, and letters to the editor. Op-eds and editorials are included, but letters from the public are not. For television, the analysis covers the full daily content of each network s major newscast. Network talk shows are not included.Trump s general election news coverage fit the pattern of earlier stages of the campaign in several respects but not all. The major departure was that his general election coverage was overwhelmingly negative in tone. In our earlier reports, we documented the positive coverage Trump received during the nominating stage of the campaign, a pattern largely attributable to the press s tendency to highlight the horserace in the pre-primary and primary periods. As Trump rose from single digits in the polls and then won key primaries, he got favorable press. It was a story of growing momentum, rising poll numbers, ever larger crowds, and electoral success. The fact that the horse race is the most heavily covered aspect of the nominating phase magnified Trump s favorable coverage.Trump s general election coverage was a stark contrast. His coverage was negative from the start, and never came close to entering positive territory (see Figure 8). During his best weeks, the coverage ran 2-to-1 negative over positive. In his worst weeks, the ratio was more than 10-to-1. If there was a silver lining for Trump, it was that his two best weeks were the ones just preceding the November balloting. Trump s coverage was negative in all the news outlets in our study, even those that typically side with the Republican nominee (see Figure 9). Fox provided Trump his most favorable coverage, but it was still nearly 3-to-1 negative over positive. The Wall Street Journal was his next best outlet, but its coverage ran 4-to-1 negative. The most negative coverage was carried by CBS at 9-to-1, but Trump s coverage was nearly as negative in most other outlets.Compare to Hillary s coverage:To be sure, changes in journalism are not the only reason that campaigns have become more negative. The party polarization that has seeped into American politics during the past three decades has been accompanied by rising levels of partisan attack. But to claim that party polarization explains the media s negative bent is to ignore the fact that the press s negativity is not confined to party politics. There s barely an aspect of public life that is not subject to intense criticism.A healthy dose of negativity is unquestionably a good thing. There s a lot of political puffery, ineptitude, and manipulation that needs to be exposed, and journalists would be shirking their duty if they failed to expose it. Yet an incessant stream of criticism has a corrosive effect. It needlessly erodes trust in political leaders and institutions and undermines confidence in government and policy.Negative news has partisan consequences. Given that journalists bash both sides, it might be thought the impact would be neutral. It s not. For one thing, indiscriminate criticism has the effect of blurring important distinctions. Were the allegations surrounding Clinton of the same order of magnitude as those surrounding Trump? It s a question that journalists made no serious effort to answer during the 2016 campaign. They reported all the ugly stuff they could find, and left it to the voters to decide what to make of it. Large numbers of voters concluded that the candidates indiscretions were equally disqualifying and made their choice, not on the candidates fitness for office, but on less tangible criteria in some cases out of a belief that wildly unrealistic promises could actually be kept.For entire story and study: Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy | 1real |
Trump says he wouldn't bail out Puerto Rico | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would not bail out Puerto Rico if he were in the White House. Asked in an interview with CNN what he would do to help the U.S. commonwealth, Trump said “No, I would not bail out Puerto Rico,” saying it had too much debt. Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank on Monday defaulted on a $422 million debt payment. The government faces $70 billion in debt overall, a 45-percent poverty rate and a shrinking population. It owes another $1.9 billion on July 1 that Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla says it cannot pay. | 0fake |
Parsing the Comey Letter with Michel Chossudovsky [Audio] | Leave a reply
James Corbett – FBI Director James Comey threw the 2016 presidential (s)election into (yet more) chaos by delivering an October surprise: the re-opening of the Clinton email investigation. Are the string-pullers abandoning Hillary? Or would they prefer a lame-duck president to be the face of the declining American empire?
Is chaos part of the plan? Today we talk to Michel Chossudovsky of GlobalResearch.ca about the Comey letter and its potential implications on the emerging world (dis)order.’] SF Source The Corbett Report Nov. 2016 Share this: | 1real |
No wikileakes from Kim Dotcom... nothing... zip... zero | No wikileakes from Kim Dotcom... nothing... zip... zero And there never will be from this bankrupt wannabe criminal waiting to be extradited to the US. Page 1 Related Threads 1 Mail with questions or comments about this site. "Godlike Productions" & "GLP" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike™ Website Design Copyright © 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.007s (8 queries) | 1real |
U.S. student held in North Korea died of oxygen starved brain: coroner | (Reuters) - An American student who had been imprisoned in North Korea for 17 months died from lack of oxygen and blood to the brain, an Ohio coroner said on Wednesday. Otto Warmbier s death on June 19 was due to an unknown injury that occurred more than a year before his death, Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco said at a news conference. We don t know what happened to him and that s the bottom line, Sammarco said. Warmbier s parents could not be reached for comment on the coroner s report. The University of Virginia student was held by North Korea from January 2016 until his release on June 15. Warmbier, 22, was returned to the United States in a coma. The coroner and a Sept. 11 report by her office cited complications of chronic deficiency of oxygen and blood supply to the brain in Warmbier s death. Only an external examination of the body rather than a full autopsy was conducted at the request of Warmbier s family. North Korea had blamed botulism and the ingestion of a sleeping pill for Otto Warmbier s problems and dismissed torture claims. Warmbier died days after arriving back in the United States. The native of Wyoming, Ohio, had been arrested at the airport in Pyongyang as he prepared to leave the reclusive communist country. He had been traveling with a tour group. Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to take from his hotel an item bearing a propaganda slogan, North Korea s state media reported. Saying his son had been tortured, Fred Warmbier told Fox News in an interview on Tuesday, As we looked at him and tried to comfort him, it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth. Great interview on @foxandfriends with the parents of Otto Warmbier: 1994 - 2017. Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea, President Donald Trump said on Twitter following the interview s broadcast. In response to a question at the news conference, the coroner said there was no evidence of trauma to Warmbier s teeth nor was there evidence of broken bones. The coroner s report said that Warmbier s body had multiple scars varying in size, including a large irregular one measuring 4.3 by 1.6 inches on the right foot. | 0fake |
Highest glass ceiling remains intact after Clinton's stunning loss | (Reuters) - They wore pantsuits to their polling places, emulating the preferred dress of their White House candidate. Some wept with emotion and others remembered their female ancestors as they cast their vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton. But rather than witness the shattering of the ultimate glass ceiling, women across America watched an historic breakthrough slip away as Clinton failed to become the first woman elected president of the United States. Republican Donald Trump, who had waged a heated campaign painting the former secretary of state as “crooked” and threatening to put her in jail, swept to surprise victory on an anti-establishment platform. “I was looking forward to having a woman president. I really was. I can’t believe people voted for that terrible man,” said Mariana Mejia, 61, sitting at a subdued party at California Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento. Some women defied their own political tradition to vote for the first woman presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party. Republican Cassandra Pye, a pioneering African-American political consultant who advised former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said she felt the pull of history as she cast her ballot for Clinton. “I feel like even though I vote in the booth alone, there are always people in there with me,” Pye said. “My ancestors, my mother, my aunties - there were a lot of people in the booth with me today.” A polarizing figure with a long history in the public eye, Clinton entered the White House as first lady in 1993, after her husband, Bill Clinton, defeated incumbent George H. W. Bush. Her ambition immediately clashed with the public’s image of a first lady, and Clinton won enemies as swiftly as she earned the adoration of many progressive women. When she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008, Clinton conceded that “although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it,” referring to the number of votes she had won. Women who had pinned their hopes on Clinton gave a nod to their political history on Tuesday, forming a long line to leave “I Voted Today” stickers on the gravestone of women’s suffrage activist Susan B. Anthony. Others, dressed in white like the suffragettes who campaigned for a woman’s right to vote and wearing pantsuits like those favored by Clinton, posed for photos at state Capitol buildings and other iconic locations. Several bemoaned the fact that U.S. women won the right to vote in 1920 and nearly a century later the country has yet to elect a woman president. “It’s been such a hard struggle for women, a very hard struggle,” said U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, who in 1992 made history along with Senator Dianne Feinstein as the first women elected from California to the U.S. Senate. “It’s a very emotional moment.” Trump, a wealthy real estate developer and former reality TV star, defied political correctness with comments that angered women, minorities and the disabled. He denied allegations by several women that he groped them after the emergence of a video where he boasted about making unwanted sexual advances on women. At the Sacramento Democratic party gathering, some women lamented his victory and the long, difficult trek for women to win positions of power. “I thought by the time I hit 61 it would be different for women and minorities,” said Chris Cage, 61, a former journalist and labor organizer. “I see a victory for Trump as a vote against both.” | 0fake |
Atlantic’s Goldberg: I’m ‘Not Confident’ Trump Can Handle ‘Matters of Life and Death’ - Breitbart | Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” while discussing the Trump administration’s position on North Korea, The Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg said he was “not confident yet” that the administration could handle a crisis. Goldberg said, “I come back to this general conversation about the way the Trump administration does things. On some levels, on Gorsuch, it is smooth, on healthcare they are having a reasonable debate, but the question is, on matters of life and death I am not confident yet that these guys can and a crisis because remember nothing really has happened yet in the Trump administration. There has been no terror attacks, nothing of North Korean magnitude so remains to be seen. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Senate panel rescinds subpoena for Trump's ex-campaign head: sources | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate panel has rescinded a subpoena that would have forced Paul Manafort, a former campaign manager of President Donald Trump, to appear at a hearing on Wednesday as part of its probe into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election. Manafort is going to “continue discussions” with Senate investigators, a source familiar with the issue told Reuters. Another source said the subpoena was rescinded because the Senate Judiciary Committee was still negotiating with Manafort on document production and a later appearance. | 0fake |
KELLYANNE CONWAY Tells “Haters” Reason She Looks So “Haggard”…SLAMS Fake “Pro-Women” Nancy Pelosi [VIDEO] | Kellyanne Conway responded to a New York Times article that actually claimed Conway is being unfairly attacked by the media because she s a woman. During the interview with Howard Kurtz of FOX News, Kellyanne Conway blasted the fake pro-women feminists like Nancy Pelosi: She and I went to the same small Catholic women s Catholic college, the nation s oldest all women s Catholic college, Trinity in Washington DC. And that small women s Catholic college can boast the first female Speaker Of The House, Nancy Pelosi, and the first successful female presidential campaign manager, and the way they treat the two of us, the president of the college is unbelievable. And you would think some of the alumni that went to an all women s Catholic college would maybe be pro-life, or at maybe object to Nancy s abortion anyone, anytime anywhere stance. In my view, you have to be pro-abortion. You have to be anti-male. Look at all of these commercials on TV about men, they can t open a garbage bag unless their wife shows them how. I mean we treat men like they re fools. I don t look at my husband, my son, my cousins, my colleagues that way. | 1real |
Hawks Double Down, Dig-in and Refuse to Give Up Failed ‘Assad Must Go’ Foreign Policy | 21st Century Wire says Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul institute, joins RT s Anya Parampil to discuss the US s failed policy of regime change and how nation-building adventurism, no matter how high minded, tends to galvanize people in those countries around the very same regimes.Foreign policy hawks are eager to retain their influence in government and critics of interventionism are wary of their attempts to retain power by infiltrating a Trump administration, even though the president-elect suggested a non-interventionist foreign policy in his campaign. Watch:READ MORE FOREIGN POLICY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files | 1real |
Can the great nuclear war be prevented ? | «Current Concerns», n°23, October 22th, 2016
Can the great nuclear war be prevented ? Can the great war be prevented … Russia and China are preparing for war – right in front of America’s doorstep, by Niki Vogt / Alert Memorandum for Obama warned to defuse tensions with Russia, by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity VIPS / US-Mayors warn against increasing danger of war / “We are beaten to war”, Interview with Willy Wimmer / “Let us say with conviction: No to war!” / Popular initiative for nuclear phase-out in Switzerland, by Ernst Pauli / A nuclear power plant in Bolivia using lithium instead of uranium? / Prima i nostri! Ticino population tackles ruling of immigration themselves, by Marianne Wüthrich / “Defending the identity of France means saving our dairy farmers”, by Natacha Polony / The absurdity of today’s credit system, by Myret Zaki / In Great Britain, things are moving after the Brexit, by Karl Müller / Language teaching: Avoiding unnecessary quarrels, by Pierre-Gabriel Bieri.
Partners | Zurich (Switzerland) | 27 October 2016 français Source
Current Concerns (Switzerland) | 1real |
Cruz’s Desperate Last Minute Attempt To Win Iowa Is So Vile State Officials Just NAILED Him For It | In the closing days before the Iowa caucus, the very first primary of the 2016 election, Ted Cruz is having a bit of a panic moment. Having enjoyed high polls in Iowa for months, his disastrous last debate performance and general unlikability have him falling fast. In his desperation to win, his campaign decided to try to lie and shame voters into showing up for him and absolutely NOBODY is happy about it.This week, Iowans began waking up to find a scary looking note in their mail. On yellow paper made to look like a ticket, the letter reads VOTING VIOLATION and creepily names the homeowner and their neighbors. The instructions are even more pathetic.You are recieving this election notice because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors are public record. Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. Caucus on monday to improve your score and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday s caucuses.In other words, Cruz s campaign is trying to scare unknowing Iowans into voting (preferably for him) by threatening to make them look bad in front of their community. What s more, Cruz s name only appears in small print at the top of the envelope (and no where on the ticket at all). It would be easy to open this up and see VOTING VIOLATION blaring at you in read and think you were actually in trouble.How scummy is this tactic? So scummy, in fact, that one of Cruz s biggest endorsers actually swore Cruz would never do something as low as this. He didn t know it at the time, but Cruz s campaign had already confirmed that it had. Yes, they really are that desperate.It now appears that Cruz s underhanded tactics have even caught the eye of Iowa s state government and they weren t amused. Iowa s Republican secretary of state, Paul Pate, released a statement strongly rebuking Cruz s campaign for trying to pull something like this. He has a personal beef with it too, because Cruz s campaign in all of its hubris decided to name his office in the mailer. It implied that Iowa s state government was complicit. Today I was shown a piece of literature from the Cruz for President campaign that misrepresents the role of my office, and worse, misrepresents Iowa election law. Accusing citizens of Iowa of a voting violation based on Iowa Caucus participation, or lack thereof, is false representation of an official act. There is no such thing as an election violation related to frequency of voting. Any insinuation or statement to the contrary is wrong and I believe it is not in keeping in the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses. It is, of course, important in a democracy that people vote. (Ironically, Cruz has been instrumental in preventing people from voting. But only the ones he doesn t like.) However, there are any number of reasons why a person would have a low score in these ridiculous fliers and still have contributed to the voting process. Some may have been out of state residents who vote by mail. Others may have simply decided to not participate in a Republican primary in which all candidates don t seem to represent their values. In any case, it s not up to Ted Cruz and his desperate campaign to shame a person for not doing what he would like. Worse, making it appear as if the mail recipient is in violation of a law, can make people even more fearful of the voting process.Cruz s campaign has long been built on lies and smears, but it s becoming clear that in his frenzy to catch up with Donald Trump, he s lost all sense of perspective.Feature image via Jamelle Bouie/Flickr | 1real |
Pentagon wants 12 month procurement time for major weapons programs, official | (Reuters) - The Pentagon’s acquisition chief said on Wednesday she wants to cut the time for major procurements to 12 months from an average of 2.5 years, speaking during a congressional hearing on the reorganization of the Defense Department’s procurement system. The Pentagon typically takes months and often years to make procurement decisions, especially for major weapons programs. A more rapid procurement process could accelerate the pace of orders for weapons makers like Lockheed Martin Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp. During the hearing of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, panel chairman Senator John McCain called the Pentagon’s buying program a “system of organized irresponsibility.” The Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Ellen Lord, was asked her goal for cutting back time for weapons procurement and she responded “12 months for major programs.” Lord, who began working at the Pentagon in August, was formerly chief executive of defense contractor Textron Systems, an aerospace and defense company that makes drones and missiles. If the acquisition process is shortened it would be good for larger weapons makers because time is money, Byron Callan, a defense analyst at Capital Alpha Partners, said in an interview. The move could also increase competition from smaller companies that often lack the financial resources to wait out lengthy Pentagon procurements, he said. The Pentagon’s weapons procurement process generally begins by soliciting proposals from industry, often includes a competitive process to find a vendor, as well as product testing before delivery and final payment. Critics say the decision-making part of the current procurement process takes too long and could be reduced. Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army, said his office was examining a way to reduce the requirements development process, where the military articulates the concept of what it needs, to 12 months from five years. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) changed the structure of the Pentagon’s Office of Acquisition by splitting it into two new positions, an undersecretary for research and engineering focusing on innovation, and an undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment focusing on program management. That process is still unfolding, but during the hearing testimony showed the initial effect was that decision making for some procurement processes had moved to individual branches of the U.S. military. | 0fake |
Pence reassures Japan of U.S. resolve on North Korea, to work with China | TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reassured Japan of American commitment to reining in North Korea’s nuclear and missile ambitions on Tuesday, after warning that U.S. strikes in Syria and Afghanistan showed the strength of its resolve. Pence arrived in Tokyo from South Korea, where he assured leaders of an “iron-clad” alliance with the United States in the face of the reclusive North, which has conducted a series of missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions. “The era of strategic patience is over and while all options are on the table, President (Donald) Trump is determined to work closely with Japan, with South Korea, with all our allies in the region and with China to achieve a peaceable resolution and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Pence said in Tokyo before lunch with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Pence and Abe agreed that they needed to persuade China to play a larger role in dealing with North Korea, a Japanese government spokesman said. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy Japan, South Korea and the United States and it showed no let-up in its belligerence after a failed missile test on Sunday, a day after putting on a huge display of missiles at a parade in Pyongyang. North Korea’s deputy representative to the United Nations, Kim In Ryong, accused the United States on Monday of creating “a situation where nuclear war could break out an any time” and said the North’s next nuclear test would take place “at a time and at a place where our headquarters deems necessary”. North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-Ryol told the BBC that missiles would be tested on “a weekly, monthly and yearly basis”. The North has warned of a nuclear strike against the United States if provoked. It has said it has developed a missile that can strike the mainland United States, but officials and experts believe it is some time away from mastering the necessary technology, including miniaturizing a nuclear warhead. Pence said on Monday the world had seen Trump’s resolve in the past two weeks, with a U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airfield and the dropping of a powerful non-nuclear bomb on Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan. The Trump administration has said military action remains an option for dealing with North Korea. But, mindful that this would likely trigger massive retaliation and casualties in South Korea and Japan, U.S. officials say Trump’s main focus is on tougher economic sanctions. U.S. officials say tougher sanctions could include an oil embargo, a global ban on North Korea’s airline, intercepting cargo ships and punishing Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang. They also say greater Chinese cooperation is vital. Susan Thornton, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, agreed in a phone call on Sunday on the need for strict enforcement of U.N. resolutions. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi repeated China’s line that the crisis could only be resolved by diplomacy. “I’ve seen that the United States has reiterated it is willing to use political and diplomatic means to resolve this, as this is their first choice,” he told reporters in Beijing. “Of course I think that any country will feel that political diplomatic means are of course the first choice,” Wang said. Pence’s economic discussions in Tokyo will be closely watched to see how hard a line Washington is prepared to take on trade. Trump campaigned on an “America first” platform, and has vowed to narrow big trade deficits with nations such as China and Japan. However, Trump has also shown willingness to link trade to other issues, saying he would cut a better trade deal with China if it exerts influence on North Korea. China banned imports of North Korean coal, its most important export, in February, and Chinese media have raised the possibility of restricting oil shipments to the North. But North Korea used Chinese-made trucks to display missiles at the military parade on Saturday, according to photographs, underlining the difficulty in enforcing U.N. sanctions. China and North Korea maintain “normal contacts, including normal business contacts”, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, when asked about the trucks. “At the same time, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China strictly adheres to its international responsibilities, including those from Security Council resolutions,” Lu told a daily briefing. Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-1953 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. South Korea hosts 28,500 U.S. troops to counter the threat from the North. Trump’s decision to launch a missile strike against Syria, a Russian ally, drop a giant bomb on Afghanistan and stick with Obama-era policies on Crimea mean Russian hopes of him befriending the Kremlin have been on the slide. Russian state media, which hailed his election win, have made a U-turn. On Sunday, media said he was scarier than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. For a graphic on nuclear North Korea, click here For a graphic on Carl Vinson strike group, click here | 0fake |
HANDS ON! DHS SECRETARY JOHN KELLY TOURS BORDER: “Stunned” that local officials harboring criminal illegals [VIDEO] | 1real | |
Shame to waste Corbyn on a snap election, says May | Shame to waste Corbyn on a snap election, says May 04-11-16
THERESA May does not want a snap general election because it would be a waste of Jeremy Corbyn, she has confirmed.
The Conservative leader still has lots of policies she wants to pursue while she has an entirely ineffectual opposition and has no intention of rushing anything.
She said: “You don’t throw away your Get Out of Jail Free card at the first opportunity. You save it for when you really need it.
“And when it’s cast-iron bolted-on that you’ll win the next election at a walk, no matter what you do to the NHS or the public finances or whatever, then you take your time.
“The Brexit court thing is annoying – I have dinner plans for April 2019 I don’t want to change – but the last thing I need is the Labour party coming to their senses and getting in my way.
“I’ve got free licence to do whatever I want to Britain for the next nine years and I can’t do any of it without Jeremy. He’s not going anywhere until 2020.”
Corbyn said: “Thank Christ for that, I thought I was going to be out of a job.”
Share: | 1real |
To grow the economy, grow small businesses: Bloomberg & Buffett | Meeting small business capital, technology and labor needs and relieving their regulatory burden could drive new boom.
The economy has experienced 75 straight months — more than six years — of private sector job growth. Yet some areas still have not recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, and nationally, under-employment exceeds pre-recession levels. How can we increase the speed of job creation?
A critical part of the answer lies with America’s small businesses, which create over 60% of net new private-sector jobs and employ nearly half of America’s workforce. Helping them expand — to get their ideas off the ground — is one of the best ways to support economic growth and needs the continued focus of both elected officials and the private sector.
Political debates on economic growth tend to focus on taxes. But taxes are just one big issue facing small businesses. A report released by Babson College — “The State of Small Business in America” — underscores that fact. It provides a window into small businesses’ most pressing needs, and it can serve as a blueprint for addressing them.
As we’ve seen through Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, entrepreneurs across the country are facing barriers to growth. Based on a survey of over 1,800 small businesses, the report pinpoints four major challenges that cut across industries: the need for better access to capital, less burdensome regulations, more qualified workers and ability to better assimilate information technology. Let’s consider each.
Capital. Securing financing remains a major barrier to growth. The net result is that, across all sources, while the median funding request is $100,000, businesses typically secure just $40,500. Small business owners overwhelmingly rely on banks for funding, but banks face more stringent regulatory requirements that have restricted lending and made loans harder to obtain. Closing the gap between what businesses seek and receive would lead to more hiring, investment, and growth. It would also reduce the common practice of credit card borrowing, where high interest rates can lead to financial difficulties. Business owners suggest a reconsideration of terms, loan size and paperwork, and more than one in four call for increased transparency in the borrowing process. Policy discussions around credit access must recognize the need to balance the needs for both regulatory protection and economic growth.
Regulation. Nearly 60% of respondents have difficulty understanding and managing government regulations and laws. Companies spend about 200 hours annually on compliance. Governments should lessen this burden without compromising consumer and environmental protections. Streamlining agencies’ approval processes, for instance, can help small businesses open their doors sooner and expand more rapidly. In addition, simplifying the tax code would be a boon to small businesses, allowing them to spend less time and money on compliance.
Skills. Overwhelmingly, a major hiring challenge was finding employees with the right skillsets — a challenge even greater than salary requirements and competition for candidates. Small businesses are increasingly looking for tech-savvy workers who also have the required licenses and certifications. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey identifies 5.8 million openings — the second-highest level on record — reflecting a mismatch between company needs and applicants’ skills.
More collaboration between state and local workforce development programs and the private sector can help address this skills gap, and community colleges have an important role to play, too. Programs and curriculum need to align with job needs in growing industries to ensure that graduates leave with the skills necessary to get hired. Some governments have begun subsidizing internships, recognizing there is no substitute for on-the-job training. Cooperative programs among small businesses in each industry can also share in the costs of professional development.
Technology. Small businesses recognize technology as essential to productivity and success. But accessing modern technology is perceived as costly and requires skills that many businesses lack. Better technology is also urgently needed to protect against the increasing threat of cybercrime, which 40% of respondents are not prepared to handle. In fact, one in five have been victims of cybercrimes, part of a disturbing global trend in which businesses are becoming hackers' preferred target. Given advances in the affordability of technology, technological literacy can be improved through increased access to resources, enhanced training and clearer government cyber-security standards.
Small businesses face other challenges, but progress in these four areas would provide a significant boost to local hiring — and to national economic growth. More than six years into a sluggish recovery, we must do more to help small businesses drive a new generation of growth — and put the next generation of Americans to work.
Lloyd Blankfein is chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. Michael Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor, is founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Warren Buffett is chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Michael E. Porter is a professor at Harvard Business School.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns, go to the Opinion front page, follow us on Twitter @USATOpinion and sign up for our dailyOpinion newsletter. | 0fake |
ANOTHER KNOWN WOLF? NYC Bombing Suspect Probed by FBI, Leading to Bigger Questions | Shawn Helton 21st Century WireThe New York bombing attack has a list of details that don t add up.When examining what transpired this past week in New York and New Jersey, we must consider a deeper social engineering agenda that may be at play as part of a larger geopolitical drama continues unfold in Syria.While August ushered in a hyper-propagandized war image that went viral in the West, September delivered an alleged active-shooter false alarm played out at both JFK airport and LAX as well as the apparent bombings in New York City and New Jersey this past week.As bombs go off outside, Obama sails through the UNGA.You have to wonder, were the events in New York and New Jersey also a weapon of mass distraction, following a major international embarrassment for the United States both at home and abroad the brutal airstrike campaign in Syria that killed over 70 Syrian troops? This unlikely bombing incident just happened to also coincide with the UN General Assembly in NYC, where President Obama was delivering among other speeches, his War on Terror addresses to the international community. No surprise then, with the city suddenly on high terror alert that Obama quickly and confidently and comfortably used his center stage spotlight at the UN, shifting into national security mode boasting how quickly his police forces solved the case. It was almost if he was ready for events that weekend.The alleged NYC bombing suspect was named as 28 year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, who managed the family Chicken Kebab Shop. He has been charged with using weapons of mass destruction in addition to other criminal charges. Similar to what was described in the apparent Boston Marathon Bombing of 2013, Rahami is alleged to have created a homemade pressure cooker bomb which exploded in Chelsea, an affluent neighborhood of Manhattan. Oddly missing are scenes depicting the transport of 31 injured individuals after the explosion in New York. BOMBER OR PATSY? Ahmad Khan Rahami was known to both US officials and Pakistani officials (Image Source: BBC)NYC s Known Wolf After the mainstream media and officials floated the idea that a Wireless Emergency Alert system helped to locate and find Rahami with an electronic wanted poster, it turns out the FBI already knew him.According to The Washington Post, the FBI had already known Rahami since 2014, making this latest known wolf attack a strongly suspicious event: The FBI s probe into Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old named as the only suspect in the bombings, was launched based on comments his father had made. An official said his father later recanted his comments. Agents conducted interviews, checked with other agencies and looked at internal databases, none of which revealed ties to terrorism, the bureau said in a statement.But why then, was Rahami on the radar of Pakistani intelligence in recent years?During the San Bernardino caper last December, we were told that supposedly Pakistani-born Tashfeen Malik, had ties to The Red Mosque in Pakistan, a well-known Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) linked mosque: Sources have told Daily Mail Online that US officials handed over information to their Pakistani counterparts about links between Tashfeen Malik and the Red Mosque in Islamabad. The mosque is infamous for its links to violence and authorities in Pakistan are now considering taking action against its preacher, Maulana Abdul Aziz, after the disclosures by US officials. If Malik was inspired by ISIS, as claimed by authorities (via social media) then why did her background suggest a Pakistani/ISI/CIA/Al-Qaeda connection, if she was in fact radicalized as US plot writers insist?The UK s Telegraph stated that the part of Pakistan where Malik was staying is known as a recruiting ground for Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist groups, including Lashkar al-Taiba, responsible for a bloody attack in Mumbai, India s financial capital, in 2008. If true, this was a new twist in the media hyped San Bernardino shooting, displaying a startling link between the Al Qaeda/ISI affiliated Red Mosque and other Western-backed black ops in Pakistan.In May of 2011, The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) outlined the ISI s material support for various militant groups, including the formation of Al-Qaeda giving historical context to recent events: The ISI s first major involvement in Afghanistan came after the Soviet invasion in 1979, when itpartnered with the CIA to provide weapons, money, intelligence, and training to the mujahadeen fighting the Red Army. The CFR further stated, Pakistan s government has repeatedly denied allegations of supporting terrorism, citing as evidence its cooperation in the U.S.-led battle against extremists. The CIA and ISI, have had a long, sometimes contentious relationship on the surface but the reality is that their collective footprint, is all over many tribal areas in Pakistan and places like Afghanistan where extremism continues to grow to this day.Malik s affiliations suggested that she could have been involved with one of the intelligence agencies active in the exact location she resided in Pakistan was this also the case with Rahami, given his link to a Pakistani seminary with ties to the Taliban?The UK s Guardian reported the following: The 28-year-old, who was born in Afghanistan but became a US citizen, spent time at the Kaan Kuwa Naqshbandi madrasa on his two visits to Pakistan, a security official working for the government of Balochistan province told the Guardian. Cointinuing, the article discussed how Pakistani officials have limited the information they have about Rahami: US officials have revealed basic details about Rahami s two visits to Pakistan, the first in 2011 when he spent a couple of months in Quetta and got married and almost a year in 2013 when he also made a car journey to Afghanistan.But very little information has emerged from inside Pakistan about what Rahami did during his visits.The government official, who did not wish to be named because he was speaking about a highly sensitive subject, said Pakistani security agencies have tried to hide all the details of his visits to Quetta and keep as much information as possible out of the media. It s also worth noting the similarities of this case to that of another known wolf who traveled overseas before a major domestic event, the alleged Boston Bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who had previously been recruited by the FBI, most likely as an informant. This might help to explain why Tamerlan traveled overseas to attend the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus in Dagestan, during the summer of 2012 an event organised by the Jamestown Foundation itself another known CIA front, and part of a vast network controlled by Freedom House (George Soros) and linked to the CIA , as reported by the Voltaire Network. INFORMANT OR TERRORIST? What was Rahami s real role in the New York and New Jersey bombings and bomb attempts? (Image Source: nbcnews) Sturm und Drang During a hotly contested US presidential election cycle, multiple overlapping narratives continue to contribute to an environment of confusion, fear and uncertainty in the War On Terror era.Mass media has worked out their own formula for laying out a familiar series of polarizing political points in the aftermath of any tragic event, as they have with many others. Appearing once again, to purposefully redirect the public to look at a ready-made laundry list of hateful rhetoric and random writings as an ironclad motive for a crime. The aftermath in the case of New York is no different, as it rapidly descended into an overindulgent barrage of media speculation and theorizing.All too often we ve seen the stage persona of any alleged attacker or killer being touted as hard evidence, despite the fact that even strong circumstantial evidence of any apparent crime would likely result in many hours of analysis and debate, potentially without a definitive conclusion, even if the evidence eventually reached a court room setting.As 21WIRE has covered in recent years, very often there is much more involved behind-the-scenes when it comes to sensationalized attacks in America, particularly of those said to be lone wolf events. The incidents themselves are quickly taken out of the political and forensic realm, giving way to a hyper-realized account, often defying logic and reason.Drills, Patsies & DupesIn May of 2015, the NY Post stated the following, after the city s largest ever terror drill involved mock explosions: Officials said the event was the largest active-shooter operation ever, involving more than 200 NYPD and FDNY officers.It was the ninth full-scale exercise of its kind since the beginning of 2014. Chief of NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau James Waters explained that the drill replicated portions of events that occurred in San Bernadino, in the Bataclan in Paris and in Australia. Continuing, the article described the intricate mass exercise: On the third and the fourth floors we had additional explosions go off, replicating things that happened at the Bataclan nightclub, and that pushed the ESU officers up to the third floor, and finally the fourth floor, where they encountered a barricade with a hostage situation, he said, explaining that the cops again were able to stop the shooters. For the average person, its hard to differentiate from a drill or a real event, causing one to scrutinize the legitimacy of such an operation.In recent years, the investigative tactics of various intelligence agencies have come into question, none perhaps more dubious then the Newburgh FBI sting that involved entrapping four men to participate in a fabricated event created by the bureau. Here s a 2011 passage from The Guardian describing how an FBI informant named Shahed Hussain coerced four others into a fake terror plot: The Newburgh Four now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals.Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh s grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed Florida was a foreign country.Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot including $250,000 to one man and free holidays and expensive cars.As defence lawyers poured through the evidence, the Newburgh Four came to represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented terrorist plots to lure targets. There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars? said Professor Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University. The whole episode seemed born out WTC 1993 bombing case, which involved yet another informant working alongside officials.More below regarding the purported NYC bombing from ZeroHedge NYC UNDER ATTACK? In less than 48 hours law enforcement nabbed the man purportedly behind the recent NYC bombings. (Image Source: observer)9 Weird Things About The NYC And NJ Bombs That Will Make You Say Hmmmm Zero HedgeZero Hedge continues READ MORE WAR ON TERROR NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire W.O.T Files | 1real |
Protests called after Porto court agrees woman's adultery was factor in attack | LISBON (Reuters) - A women s rights group has called a rally to protest against a Portuguese court ruling that upheld a light sentence for a woman s attackers on the grounds they may have been driven to it by her adultery, an offence punishable with death in the Bible. Judges Neto de Moura and Maria Luisa Arantes rejected the prosecutors appeal to toughen the suspended sentence and fine, saying the depressive state of the two defendants - the woman s former husband and her former lover - was a mitigating factor. We read in the Bible that an adulteress should be punished with death, the judges in the Porto Court of Appeal wrote. They also referenced the symbolic sentences given to men who murdered adulterous wives in the late 19th century in Portugal. These references are merely intended to stress that the society has always strongly condemned adultery by a woman and therefore sees the violence by a betrayed, humiliated man with some understanding, they wrote in their Oct. 11 verdict. The UMAR Women s Union for Alternative and Response called the verdict in Portugal s second-largest city revolting and said it perpetuated the ideology of victim-blaming . Evoking the Bible does not combine with the rule of law in our country and discredits the judicial norms, UMAR said in a statement. In the 2015 attack, one of the men assaulted and held the victim while the other attacked her with a nail-spiked club. Her injuries were not life-threatening. Both were convicted and sentenced to pay large fines in addition to suspended time in prison of about a year each. UMAR and the feminist movement Por Todas Nos (For all of Us Women) called a protest rally in downtown Lisbon for Friday. Protests were also called in Porto under the slogan Male chauvinism is not justice, but crime . Ultra-orthodox patriarchy - one of the cornerstones of the fascist dictatorship of Antonio Salazar up until the 1974 revolution - still survives in parts of Portugal. | 0fake |
Anonymous hacker Deric Lostutter faces 16 years in prison, while Steubenville rapists walk free | Anonymous hacker Deric Lostutter faces 16 years in prison, while Steubenville rapists walk free Please scroll down for video
Deric Lostutter was part of the group affiliated with Anonymous who exposed the rapists of an underage girl in Steubenville, Ohio. While his actions eventually helped to highlight the terrible crime against the young woman and helped to bring the perpetrators to justice, he has received no thanks from law enforcement who have instead elected to put him on trial for felony hacking. If he is found guilty, he will face up to sixteen years in prison. Incidentally, the rapists who were also found guilty at trial have already completed their exceptionally short detention sentences. Steubenville hacker indicted for bringing rapists to justice
The sobering details of the Steubenville rape case were detailed heavily in 2013 when the perpetrators came to trial. Members of a local football team gang raped a high school girl and posted pictures, and social media posts are bragging about they had done to her. Only two of the perpetrators were ever arrested on charges of rape and kidnap, Trent May and Ma’Lik Richmond, both of whom received far more local support then their victim.
Initially, local authorities showed a reluctance to prosecute any of the perpetrators of this senseless and violent act owing to their privileged place in local society. This led to international outrage and eventually a group called KnightSec, which is affiliated to Anonymous decided to step in. They hacked into the Steubenville High School sports fan website and exposed the cover-up by school administrators and the identities of the girl’s attackers. They also posted a video of several students making light of the rape victim. They threatened to expose more individuals associated with the cover-up if the rapists did not come forward and confess. Eventually, two young men did come forward and were convicted of the rape of a minor. Ma’Lik Richmond served a paltry ten-month spell at the juvenile detention facility, and Trent May served two years .
According to Tor Ekeland, a lawyer speaking for Lostutter, he and his client were both incredibly surprised that he had been targeted by the FBI about this hacking. He said; “I don’t understand why they are prosecuting somebody who helped expose the rape of a minor… This is not a situation where somebody, you know, hacked a hospital or took down a nuclear power plant. This was an act of political protest against the rape of a 16-year-old girl.”
Now Lostutter must wait and see whether he will face the full sixteen years in prison that his ‘crime’ can carry. Naturally, his supporters are appalled. “You get 16 years for forcibly entering your way into a computer, but you get one year for forcibly entering your way into a woman. I think that’s the precedent the government is setting here, ” said Ekeland.
This article (Anonymous hacker Deric Lostutter faces 16 years in prison, while Steubenville rapists walk free) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with full attribution and a link to the original source on Disclose.tv Related Articles | 1real |
FORMER MEXICAN PREZ Sends “Middle Finger” To TRUMP Days Before “Apology”: “Don’t play around with us…We can jump walls…We can swim rivers…And we can defend ourselves” | Wow these sound exactly like the type of people we want living next door to us. It s not so hard to see why so many Americans are enthusiastic about Trump s promise to build the wall BUILD THE WALL!The Huffington Post has published a photograph (above) of former Mexican president Vicente Fox giving Donald Trump the finger, taken a day before Fox apologized to Trump in an interview with Breitbart News.The photograph was originally shared on social media by Ben Mathis, host of the KickAss Politics podcast, which interviewed Fox last Tuesday. Breitbart News interviewed Fox the following day in Santa Monica, California.Mathis posted the photograph with the message: Vicente Fox & I have a message for Donald Trump. Listen to a preview of his most controversial interview yet, recorded just one day before his apology to Trump aired on Breitbart. On Twitter, KickAss politics teased the interview as Fox responding to Trump though the two had already responded to each other, with Fox apologizing via Breitbart and Trump accepting the apology the following day.KickAss politics also added the NeverTrump hashtag.In most controversial interview yet @VicenteFoxQue responds to @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/9AYIuVmJoo #NeverTrump pic.twitter.com/jFRkw5o8I7 Kickass News (@KickassNewsPod) May 9, 2016According to Huffington Post overnight editor Ed Mazza, Fox told Mathis that Trump is an ugly American and hated gringo, and reiterated that he would not pay for the fucking wall on the border, adding: And please don t take out the fucking full word. Mazza adds:In the Kickass Politics conversation, Fox was anything but apologetic. He called the presumptive Republican presidential nominee crazy and a false prophet, and compared him to Latin American demagogues who destroy economies. He also said some of Trump s proposals could lead to war. Don t play around with us, Fox said. We can jump walls. We can swim rivers. And we can defend ourselves. The following day, Fox told Breitbart: I apologize. Forgiveness is one of the greatest qualities that human beings have, is the quality of a compassionate leader. You have to be humble. You have to be compassionate. You have to love thy neighbor. Update: The Huffington Post has attached its mandatory disclaimer on all Trump stories:Editor s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims 1.6 billion members of an entire religion from entering the U.S.For entire story: Breitbart News | 1real |
Here’s Why Conservatives Are Silent About 2016 Cop Killer Data | Police in this country had a great run. Let s face it if you remember the 1970s, 1980s anytime before 600 million cameras went online nationwide, a policeman s word was gold. Now, with an increasing number of people filming nonstop and the introduction of mandatory body cams for more conscientious departments, police can t simply corroborate with each other, sign a report and move on with their day. They re beginning to be held accountable for their actions. Ironically it all began with the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, which wasn t recorded. Multiple witnesses said they saw Brown shot while he was standing a safe distance away and unarmed. A grand jury failed to indict Officer Darren Wilson for Brown s death.Thus sparked the #BlackLivesMatter movement, as more and more it became evident that the narrative, pretty much nationwide, plays out differently for black men than for anyone else in society. They are killed more often. Murdered in cold blood in many cases, black men are routinely beaten after they submit if they aren t shot for looking scary and black first. Conservatives fired back with #BlueLivesMatter and started talking about all of the cops killed by black people ever.And so here we are. Politics has managed to take yet another issue all Americans should be behind and turned into a political circus. Conservatives, who are the political ideology that inspires standoffs with federal agents and wildlife refuge occupations, suddenly believe that if you don t conform with the law and do whatever a police officer tells you, you should be executed on the street. Why? Because the issue is black people. Make it about white people and all of a sudden they re holed up in their bunker with 24,000 rounds of ammunition and a pallet of canned peaches.Conservatives have been awfully quiet this year about cop killings, however, even though they are up substantially. At this time last year there were ten police officers killed in the line of duty, this year there have been 17. Certainly we should hearing about the thugs who murdered these public servants? No? 71 percent of the cops killed this year were killed by white men. Not scary black guys wearing bandanas, shooting at them with Uzis from the blacked out windows of an Escalade on 24-inch rims. White guys. Nutjobs, psychopaths, career criminals; come to find out white men are pretty darned dangerous and they don t need Uzis.So where s the news coverage of the major increase in cop killings? Where s the outrage? Where is #BlueLivesMatter? Do blue lives only matter when they re killed by black men or do they matter all the time? The double standard is so easy to see it s ridiculous. #BlackLivesMatter isn t about cops or all lives. It s not about being an equal part of something when you re not treated as equal. Black men are routinely treated as dangerous, often at the end of a young, hair-trigger finger.Featured image by WP/Getty Images | 1real |
BORDER PATROL AGENT Tells Of Shocking Obama Border Policy: “They are released with a bus ticket and a work permit” [Video] | 1real | |
U.S. budget deficit to reach $600 billion in 2016: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. budget deficit is projected to rise to $600 billion in 2016, $16 billion less than previously expected, the White House Office of Management and Budget said on Friday. In a mid-session review, the administration said the 2016 deficit is now projected to be 3.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). | 0fake |
Mexico Grapples With a Surge in Violence - The New York Times | CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Five men shot dead in a barbershop, their bodies slumped near the doorway. A decapitated body dumped next to a housing development. Three others killed behind a pool hall and several more in a bar called Tres Mentiras, or Three Lies. By the end of October, at least 96 people had been killed in the border city of Ciudad Juárez. It was the highest monthly tally since 2012, sowing fears of a return to the gangland mayhem that once earned this city the title of the most violent place in the world. Back then, the bloodshed in this city was in a class of its own. But now it has company, with other Mexican cities that are as bad or worse. In the last year, the number of homicides around Mexico has soared to levels not seen in several years. In the first 10 months of this year, there were 17, 063 homicide cases in Mexico, already more than last year’s total and the highest tally since 2012. The relapse in security has unnerved Mexico and led many to wonder whether the country is on the brink of a bloody, war between criminal groups. “It’s a trauma, it’s a kind of fear, among all of us who saw a killing, who heard gunshots,” said Carlos Nájera, an activist in Juárez. “Everyone’s worried about a slide to the past. ” The surge in violence around Mexico reflects an increasingly volatile criminal landscape and the limitations of North America’s counternarcotics strategy, and it has contributed to the plummeting approval ratings of President Enrique Peña Nieto. A longstanding cornerstone of the Mexican government’s fight against organized crime — backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid — has been to aim at the kingpins, on the theory that cutting off the head will wither the body. But the tactic has helped to fragment monolithic, hierarchical criminal enterprises into an array of groups that are more violent and uncontrollable, analysts said. The rising insecurity poses a problem for Donald J. Trump, who has offered few insights into how he intends to approach the battle against and crime in the hemisphere. His campaign language suggested a strategy of containment, its centerpiece being the construction of a wall along the American border to thwart drugs and illegal immigration. Some analysts worry that, as part of this approach, Mr. Trump may withdraw the limited American support for initiatives in Mexico that seek to strengthen the rule of law, fortify state institutions and repair communities damaged by crime. But a American approach may only give more space to violent criminal groups in Mexico and elsewhere, destabilizing the region, analysts said. “A fortress America response is probably going to prove insufficient very quickly,” said Alejandro Hope, a leading security analyst in Mexico. He noted that all the heroin consumed annually in the United States, most of which comes from Mexico, “would fit into 1, 800 to 2, 000 pieces of luggage. ” “You don’t stop that with a wall,” he said. The Mexican government has been battling drug traffickers for decades, but the fight acquired new intensity in 2006 when the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, declared “war” on organized crime. The Mexican military was partly successful in that approach, capturing or killing many of the drug traffickers in the country. Monthly tallies of homicide cases, after climbing to a peak of 2, 131 in May 2011, eventually began to fall. Juárez saw some of the worst of the violence, becoming a symbol of Mexican dysfunction and tragedy: At the peak of the bloodshed, in October 2010, the city suffered 359 homicides, according to the Security and Justice Working Group in Juárez, an independent task force that includes representatives of civil society and government. But an intensive response — including the saturation of the city by government security forces and a robust engagement by civil society — helped turn things around. The national kingpin strategy, however, fell short in one important respect: Drug trafficking continued to flourish. And as leaders fell, the large drug organizations splintered into smaller criminal gangs, which waged battles of succession that led to greater violence. “These groups, if you just kind of leave them alone, they’re very powerful,” said Steven Dudley, of InSight Crime, a foundation that studies organized crime in the Americas. “And if you mess with them and they fragment, they’re multiple, unwieldy beasts. ” Since late 2014, the homicide numbers have trended upward, an increase that Eduardo Guerrero, a security consultant in Mexico City, has named “the second wave of violence. ” September — with 1, 976 homicide cases around the country — was the deadliest month in Mexico since May 2012, and one of the deadliest on record, according to Mexico’s Interior Ministry. And while the violence that was a part of Mr. Calderón’s presidency was mostly concentrated in a few places, like Juárez, the recent rise in homicides has been dispersed. Violence has erupted in places that had experienced relatively little of it until recently, including Colima, a Pacific Coast state, and the state of Guanajuato, a growing hub of the automotive industry and the location of San Miguel de Allende, a popular tourist destination for foreigners. In September 2015, for instance, only two states had more than 100 homicide victims over the course of the month. In September 2016, 11 states suffered more than 100. Though the clashes between remnant drug groups are widely thought to be a significant cause in the rising violence, analysts and government officials also point to other factors, including changes in political control of state and municipal governments after recent elections. As old political power structures make way for new ones, cooperation between the corrupt authorities and criminal groups fall apart, analysts said. “Groups try to mobilize themselves to have a better position to negotiate with the incoming government,” Mr. Guerrero said. “The uncertainty of the criminals is very high, so their best weapon in the negotiations is to ‘heat up the plaza. ’” In addition, criminal organizations have diversified their business models, branching out into extortion, theft, kidnapping, prostitution, illegal gambling, intellectual property piracy and fuel theft, analysts said. “What you have is a transition in the criminal underworld that is from relatively identifiable, hierarchically structured criminal organizations whose business was mainly about smuggling drugs to the United States, to diversified, smaller gangs, more local in scope, more predatory in nature,” Mr. Hope said. But while the nature of Mexico’s criminal operations has shifted, the government response has not, he said. “They’re great at capturing El Chapo but not so good at addressing the extortion of mom and pop stores in Guerrero,” he said, referring to the captured drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera. In August, the administration of Mr. Peña Nieto announced a plan to reinforce security in 50 municipalities that account for 40 percent of the country’s homicides. The government has yet to name the municipalities and for months offered few details about the strategy. But in response to written questions this week, the Interior Ministry said the plan involved the coordination of local, state and federal authorities and included the deployment of forces in each of the 50 municipalities, among other measures. Even while acknowledging the increase in homicides, officials have apparently sought to play it down. At a news conference last month, Renato Sales Heredia, the national security commissioner, dismissed the increase as “not substantial. ” His office later clarified in an interview that he had not been referring to this year’s surging violence, but to the smaller increase from 2014 to 2015. Officials have also denied that the problem is widespread. In its responses to questions this week, the Interior Ministry said that 42 percent of homicides in Mexico were concentrated in 2 percent of the nation’s municipalities, though it did not provide a time frame for that statistic. The responses have left many analysts to conclude that the administration lacks a coherent strategy to address the problem. “The only thing they do is to confront the consequences but not the causes, and they do so in a very marginal way,” said Francisco Rivas, director of the Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano, a group that studies security and justice issues in Mexico. Still, administration officials privately express deep concern about the rising numbers and even the possibility of a return to an drug war. In Juárez, that possibility is palpable. This year’s increase in homicides has aggravated a kind of communal stress disorder, even if the numbers are still well off the peak of the violence that engulfed this city several years ago — dropping to 33 in November from 96 in October, according to El Diario de Ciudad Juárez. “They say Juárez is reborn, it’s new. Horrible lies!” said Sergio Meza de Anda, director of Plan Estratégico de Juárez, a organization. “The underlying causes persist. ” He rattled off problems as much national as local, including corruption, impunity, weak public institutions, poverty, income inequality and insufficient development. “The state is an accomplice to the disorder,” he said. The Rev. Mario Manríquez, a prominent priest in Juárez, has seen the cost of neglect on the streets and in the homes of his parish in a southern neighborhood of the city — the broken families, the lives cut short. “The violence never went away,” he said. On the edge of the park in front of his church, he has built a monument to the victims of the city’s drug war. It is covered with plaques bearing the names of some of those who have been killed. The memorial is only three years old, but he is already running out of space for new names. | 0fake |
President Obama Confirms He Will Refuse To Leave Office If Trump Is Elected
| Barack Obama has sensationally told CNNs Wolf Blitzer that he will NOT vacate the Oval office if Donald J. Trump is elected the 45th President of the United States.
The current president claims he is fully prepared to ignore the popular vote if it means stopping Trump, having found what he believes is a little known loophole that would allow him to remain in charge until a re-election is called.
As president, I must do what I feel is in the best interests of our nation, he explained. If the American people elected the Donald then I will be forced to take whatever actions I deem necessary.
When asked by the CNN anchor if he would remain in charge, Obamas response was firm. I am not standing down as president if it means four years of President Trump, he said categorically.
The president was asked what exact lengths he would go to, to prevent the billionaire from being sworn in on January, 20th, 2017. I am prepared to file a motion of no confidence in our citizens thereby taking their vote away from them, he confessed.
Wait, youre willing to impeach the American people as voters? a possibly stunned Blitzer asked. Yes, if necessary, the President responded. I cannot allow him into this chair, with his finger so close to the button. The power would go to his head immediately.
Trump Claims Not Deporting Obamas Under Muslim Ban Would Be Discriminatory | Obama refusing to leave
BREAKING: Trump Claims Not Deporting Obamas Under Muslim Ban Would Be Discriminatory | Obama refusing to leave
Obama even suggested he will barricade himself and his family inside the White House if it means stopping the Trump family from taking up residency there. Ive instructed the Secret Service to use full force in defending the White House from the Trump family. Joe has already expressed his willingness to die multiple times in order to keep them out of here.
When questioned by Howard Stern, Trump seemed unconcerned by the Presidents stance. Dont worry, well get some of the second amendment people to sort him out pretty quickly. | 1real |
Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton ~ RAP SONG (The Oligarchy) | Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton ~ RAP SONG (The Oligarchy) Share on Facebook
Sure there are differences between Trump & Hillary. But don't you see all the similarities? [watch video below] Caitlin Moran's Posthumous Advice for Her Daughter Caitlin Moran · 2,738 views today · My daughter is about to turn 13 and I’ve been smoking a lot recently, and so – in the wee small hours, when my lungs feel like there’s a small mouse inside them, scratching to... | 1real |
THIRD DEGREE “BERN!” Why Denmark Is Telling Marxist, Bernie Sanders To Stop LYING To Voters | Lying? If Bernie can successfully convince tens of thousands of college students to believe in unicorns, and pots of gold at the end of rainbows, why not convince them how well stealing from hard working Americans utopian forms of government work in other countries? Who needs facts when Bernie s got unicorns?The Danes apparently have grown weary of Sen. Bernie Sanders insulting their country. Denmark is not a socialist nation, says its prime minister. It has a market economy. Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate who calls himself a socialist, has used Denmark as the example of the socialist utopia he wants to create in America. During the Democrats first debate last month, he said we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people. While appearing in New Hampshire in September, Sanders said that he had talked to a guy from Denmark who told him that in Denmark, it is very hard to become very, very rich, but it s pretty hard to be very, very poor. And that makes a lot of sense to me. So because something makes sense to him, he has the right to force that system on people who don t want it? Isn t that what he s saying?But we digress. This is about Danes being offending by Sanders using the word socialist to describe their form of government. And who can blame them, especially when the free world has had enough of national socialists and Soviet socialists and North Korean socialists and Cuban socialists?While speaking at Harvard s Kennedy School of Government, the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he was aware that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, he said, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. Rasmussen acknowledged that the Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens, but he also noted that it is a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish. To that we ll add that Sweden, another of Sanders inspirations, has for decades quietly moved away from its cradle-to-grave form of government welfare. And the Swedes are better off for having done so, just as the Danes will continue to be better off as their government overhauls its welfare state.If Sanders is going to continue to use these nations to guide his governing philosophy, he should base his policy positions on what they really are, not what he thinks they are or wants them to be. These countries have learned a harsh lesson. They don t deserve to be Berned again. Via: IBD | 1real |
U.S. House may vote within days on tighter North Korea sanctions | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives could vote as soon as next week on legislation to toughen sanctions on North Korea by targeting its shipping industry and companies that do business with the reclusive state, congressional aides said on Thursday. The legislation, approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month, is intended to cut off supplies of cash that help fund North Korea’s nuclear program, and increase pressure to stop human rights abuses such as the use of slave labor, the bill’s sponsor, Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, said. It also calls on President Donald Trump’s administration to decide whether North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism. Amid international concern over the escalation of North Korea’s nuclear program, top Trump administration officials held briefings on the issue on Wednesday for the entire U.S. Congress, busing the 100 senators to the White House and meeting with members of the 435-person House at the Capitol complex. As he left the House briefing, Royce said he expected the legislation to move quickly, as part of what he hoped would be a strong international effort to use every method possible to pressure Pyongyang to curb its nuclear ambitions. “In particular, it will focus on financial institutions as well as what you might call ‘slave labor.’ These are cases where the North Koreans send out work crews to do work, and instead of being paid, the money comes back to the North Korean regime, and is spent on their nuclear program,” Royce told reporters. The Trump administration said it wanted to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure, and remained open to negotiations to bring that about. Officials also said on Wednesday they wanted to return the country to the U.S. list of terrorism sponsors. A spokesman for Royce declined to comment on when there might be a vote, referring questions to House leadership, whose aides did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the timing. Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is due to meet with the U.N. Security Council on Friday to press for tougher international sanctions on North Korea. | 0fake |
DISGUSTING: BARACK OBAMA WISHES MUSLIMS HAPPY END OF RAMADAN Following Murder Of 4 Marines By Muslim Terrorist | First things first The following statement is the first to come out of the White house. It was emailed out and makes no reference to today s terror attack.See Below statement: Michelle and I would like to extend our warmest wishes to Muslims in the United States and around the world celebrating Eid-ul-Fitr. As Muslims mark the end of the month, they are reminded that Ramadan is a time to reflect spiritually, build communally, and aid those in need. While Eid marks the end of Ramadan, it marks a new beginning for each individual a reason to celebrate and express gratitude on this holiday.For millions of Muslims, the morning of Eid is marked with the call to prayer echoing through cities and towns across the globe. Millions of people head to local mosques for special Eid prayers followed by festive gatherings, gift exchanges, and feasts among friends, neighbors and families. The diversity of traditions paint the vibrant images we see from around the world capturing the spirit and excitement of Eid colorful dresses or white garments decorating the masses of people standing in lines for prayer, lanterns and ornaments lighting up bazaars and neighborhoods, intricate henna designs painted on hands of young girls and women, and an abundance of delectable foods and aromatic cuisines. As Muslim Americans celebrate Eid across America, the holiday is a reminder to every American of the importance of respecting those of all faiths and beliefs. This past year New York City Public Schools announced adding Eid to their official school calendars alongside Christmas, Hanukkah and other holidays an acknowledgement of the great diversity and inclusiveness that adds to the richness of our nation. During this year s White House Iftar, I had the opportunity to meet inspiring young Muslim Americans who are leading efforts for greater understanding and unity across diverse communities. Following the Iftar, one of the young attendees helped spearhead an effort that raised more than $75,000 for the churches burned in the wake of the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Americans of all faiths and beliefs must stand together to protect our democracy and strengthen our country as a whole. Michelle and I hope today brings joy to all of your homes, both here in the U.S. and around the world. From my family to yours, Eid Mubarak!Via: Breaking 911 | 1real |
Young White America Is Dying of Despair - Breitbart | The death of the American Dream may be killing many young white Americans. [The death rates for young Americans increased substantially from 1999 to 2014, according to a recent report in The Lancet. Much of that increase was driven by the increase in mortality of white women aged 25 to 35. On average, old white women experienced an increased death rate of 3% per year from 1999 to 2014, according to the report. men had an increase annual mortality increase of 1. 9%. All other ethnic groups, apart from Native Americans, experienced a decline in mortality rates. Bloomberg News has a long feature look at this disturbing trend. The fates of the and those who graduate from universities diverge in dire ways. white Americans without degrees are at increasing risk of dying, a trend driven not only by drug use but also by alcoholism, suicide, and slowing progress against heart disease and cancer. Outcomes may worsen further as millennials — Johnson’s generation — grow older. “America is not a great place for people with only a high school degree, and I don’t think that’s going to get better anytime soon,” said Angus Deaton, a Nobel Princeton University economist. It’s too soon to tell whether millennials will die at higher rates in middle age than today’s to said Anne Case, a Princeton economist who identified the “deaths of despair” trend with Deaton, her spouse and . But in stories like Johnson’s, there are reasons to worry. In other words, there’s reason to suspect that this is just the beginning. A recent survey of millennials found that white millennials are far less likely to believe in some of the basic features of the American Dream. Only 46 percent of younger whites agree with the statement that “I believe that everyone can achieve their dreams if they try hard. ” For black millennials, the figure is 59% for hispanics 56% for asians 55%. White millennials are also more likely to agree with the statement that “the American Dream is no longer a possibility for most Americans no matter how hard they work. ” It is not surprising, then, that the increase in death rates of young white Americans is driven by suicides and accidents — which are largely deaths due to . The Lancet report points out that there are few precedents for such large increases in mortality in developed countries. “The magnitude of such increases is as large as those in two public health emergencies in the past: the substantial mortality increases in Russia during the 1990s and increases in mortality in individuals aged years at the height of the AIDS epidemic,” the report concludes. To paraphrase a groundbreaking article by Masha Gessen on the Russian death crisis, if this is correct — that white Americans are dying of despair, as they seem to be — then the question is: why have young white Americans been so overcome with despair in the 21st century? Bloomberg quotes researchers Case and Deaton: Case and Deaton have a theory for why mortality has risen for whites. For all the debate over whether college is worthwhile, high school graduates who go straight into the workforce have higher unemployment, weaker wage growth, and less chance of marrying than their predecessors and educated peers. Community supports have broken down, and as disadvantage snowballs, premature deaths rise. This, however, only raises more questions. Why have the economic and social conditions of young whites, particularly those without a college degree, become so dire? And why isn’t more of an alarm being raised about what appears to be the greatest public health emergency in the U. S. since the AIDS crisis? The Lancet study calls for “a rapid public health response” to avert further premature deaths. But what, if anything, can be done about people dying of broken hearts and shattered dreams? | 0fake |
Trump Campaign Manager Was In Debt To Shady Russian Interests, Obviously Compromised | Recently, there have been an avalanche of revelations regarding just how close Donald Trump s 2016 presidential campaign was to Russia. In the past couple of weeks, that story has centered on Donald Trump, Jr. and his meeting with a bunch of Russians in Trump Tower in an effort to get dirt on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Now, however, we turn our attentions more closely to another person who was in that meeting: Former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort.According to the New York Times, Manafort could have been compromised by the Russians due to an amazing amount of money he owed them to the tune of $17 million. This information comes via financial documents from Cyprus, a place for rich people to hide lots of money to avoid paying American taxes. According to those records which have been verified Manafort came by this debt when he was working for pro-Putin entities in Ukraine. He was apparently using shell companies to conduct business over there. Said companies owe Russian oligarchs a bunch of money, and they also owed said money during the time when Manafort was running Trump s campaign. The New York Times explains:The records, which include details for numerous loans, were certified as accurate by an accounting firm as of December 2015, several months before Mr. Manafort joined the Trump campaign, and were filed with Cyprus government authorities in 2016. The notion of indebtedness on the part of Mr. Manafort also aligns with assertions made in a court complaint filed in Virginia in 2015 by the Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, who claimed Mr. Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million related to a failed investment in a Ukrainian cable television business.In other words, Paul Manafort is in deep sh*t with a some really dangerous Russians, and he was in that same kind of trouble while he was running an American presidential campaign. This revelation is just another in a long and complex line of Trump associates who somehow have ties to very dangerous Russians some of which reach all the way up to the Kremlin and even Vladimir Putin himself.Make no mistake, folks we have Russian agents in the White House. The Russians helped hand Donald Trump the presidency so that they could compromise him and those around him. It s dangerous for the nation and for the world, and we must make sure to elect a Congress in 2018 that will be a check on this corrupt administration full of Russian stooges.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
Trump believes Roy Moore should step aside if allegations are true -White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump believes Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore should step aside if sexual misconduct allegations against him are true, the White House said on Thursday. “The president believes that these allegations are very troubling and should be taken seriously, and he thinks that the people of Alabama should make the decision on who their next senator should be,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said at a news briefing. “The president said in his statement earlier this week that if the allegations are true then Roy Moore should step aside. He still firmly believes that,” she said. | 0fake |
North Korea says naval blockade would be 'act of war', vows action | SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Thursday warned it would take merciless self-defensive measures should the United States enforce a naval blockade, which Pyongyang sees as an act of war , the isolated nation s state media said. Citing a foreign ministry spokesman, the North s KCNA news agency said a naval blockade would be a wanton violation of the country s sovereignty and dignity. U.S. President Donald Trump was taking an extremely dangerous and big step towards the nuclear war by seeking such a blockade, it added. It was not immediately clear what U.S. proposal the agency was referring to. Should the United States and its followers try to enforce the naval blockade against our country, we will see it as an act of war and respond with merciless self-defensive counter-measures as we have warned repeatedly, the agency said. | 0fake |
House Republicans Unveil Plan to Replace Health Law - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — House Republicans unveiled on Monday their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, scrapping the mandate for most Americans to have health insurance in favor of a new system of tax credits to induce people to buy insurance on the open market. The bill sets the stage for a bitter debate over the possible dismantling of the most significant health care law in a . In its place would be a health law that would be far more oriented to the free market and would make changes to a vast part of the American economy. The House Republican bill would roll back the expansion of Medicaid that has provided coverage to more than 10 million people in 31 states, reducing federal payments for many new beneficiaries. It also would effectively scrap the unpopular requirement that people have insurance and eliminate tax penalties for those who go without. The requirement for larger employers to offer coverage to their employees would also be eliminated. People who let their insurance coverage lapse, however, would face a significant penalty. Insurers could increase their premiums by 30 percent, and in that sense, Republicans would replace a penalty for not having insurance with a new penalty for allowing insurance to lapse. House Republican leaders said they would keep three popular provisions in the Affordable Care Act: the prohibition on denying coverage to people with conditions, the ban on lifetime coverage caps and the rule allowing young people to remain on their parents’ health plans until age 26. Republicans hope to undo other major parts of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement, including tax credits that help millions of Americans buy insurance, taxes on people with high incomes and the penalty for people who do not have health coverage. Medicaid recipients’ entitlement to health care would be replaced by a allotment to the states. And people with medical conditions would face new uncertainties in a more deregulated insurance market. The bill would also cut off federal funds to Planned Parenthood clinics through Medicaid and other government programs for one year. “Obamacare is a sinking ship, and the legislation introduced today will rescue people from the mistakes of the past,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader. Democrats denounced the effort as a cruel attempt to strip Americans of their health care. “Republicans will force tens of millions of families to pay more for worse coverage — and push millions of Americans off of health coverage entirely,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader. Two House committees — Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce — plan to take up the legislation on Wednesday. House Republicans hope the committees will approve the measure this week, clearing the way for the full House to act on it before a spring break scheduled to begin on April 7. The outlook in the Senate is less clear. Democrats want to preserve the Affordable Care Act, and a handful of Republican senators expressed serious concerns about the House plan as it was being developed. Under the House Republican plan, the tax credits provided under the Affordable Care Act would be replaced with credits that would rise with age as older people generally require more health care. In a late change, the plan reduces the tax credits for individuals with annual incomes over $75, 000 and married couples with incomes over $150, 000. Republicans did not offer any estimate of how much their plan would cost, or how many people would gain or lose insurance. The two House committees plan to vote on the legislation without having estimates of its cost from the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper on Capitol Hill. But they did get the support from President Trump that they badly need to win House passage. “Obamacare has proven to be a disaster with fewer options, inferior care and skyrocketing costs that are crushing small business and families across America,” said the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer. “Today marks an important step toward restoring health care choices and affordability back to the American people. ” The release of the legislation is a step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge — repeal and replace — that has animated Republicans since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. But it is far from certain Republican lawmakers will be able to get on the same page and repeal the health measure. On Monday, four Republican senators — Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — signed a letter saying a House draft that they had reviewed did not adequately protect people in states like theirs that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Three conservative Republicans in the Senate — Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas — had already expressed reservations about the House’s approach. In the House, Republican leaders will have to contend with conservative members who have already been vocal about their misgivings about the legislation being drawn up. “Obamacare 2. 0,” Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, posted on Twitter on Monday. Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, also offered a warning on Monday, joining with Mr. Paul to urge that Republican leaders pursue a “clean repeal” of the health care law. “Conservatives don’t want new taxes, new entitlements and an ‘ObamaCare Lite’ bill,” they wrote on the website of Fox News. “If leadership insists on replacing ObamaCare with no repeal will pass. ” The move to strip Planned Parenthood of funding and the plan’s provisions to reverse tax increases on the taxpayers will also expose Republicans in more moderate districts to Democratic attacks. The bill would provide each state with a fixed allotment of federal money for each person on Medicaid, the program for more than 70 million people. The federal government would pay different amounts for different categories of beneficiaries, including children, older Americans and people with disabilities. The bill would also repeal subsidies that the government provides under the Affordable Care Act to help people pay deductibles and other costs for insurance purchased through the public marketplaces. Eliminating these subsidies would cause turmoil in insurance markets, insurers and consumer advocates say. However, the House Republicans would provide states with $100 billion over nine years, which states could use to help people pay for health care and insurance. The tax credits proposed by House Republicans would start at $2, 000 a year for a person under 30 and would rise to a maximum of $4, 000 for a person 60 or older. A family could receive up to $14, 000 in credits. Even with those credits, Democrats say, many people would find insurance unaffordable. But Republicans would allow insurers to sell a leaner, less expensive package of benefits and would allow people to use the tax credits for insurance policies covering only catastrophic costs. While Republicans have argued over how to proceed, Mr. Trump has expressed only vague goals for how to repeal the Affordable Care Act and improve the nation’s health care system. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers and their aides are waiting to see whether he uses his platform, Twitter account and all, to press reluctant Republicans to get behind the House plan. The new version of the House Republican bill makes several changes to earlier drafts of the legislation. It drops a proposal to require employees with health insurance to pay income and payroll taxes on some of the value of that coverage. In addition, it would delay a provision of the Affordable Care Act that imposed an excise tax on insurance plans provided by employers to workers. Congress had already delayed this “Cadillac tax” — despised by employers and labor unions alike — by two years, to 2020. The new legislation would suspend the tax from 2020 through 2024. House Republicans would offer tax credits to help people buy insurance if they did not have coverage available from an employer or a government program. Under earlier versions of the bill, the tax credits increased with a person’s age, but would not have been tied to income. Backbench Republicans said the government should not be providing financial assistance to people with high incomes. Accordingly, under the new version of the bill, the tax credits would be reduced and eventually phased out. | 0fake |
Trump orders review of national monuments to allow development | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to allow national monument designations to be rescinded or reduce the size of sites as the administration pushes to open up more federal land to drilling, mining and other development. Trump’s order is part of an effort to reverse many of the environmental protections implemented by his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama that Trump said were hobbling economic growth. Trump’s agenda is being cheered by industry but enraging conservationists. Legal challenges are expected because no president has ever rescinded a monument designation. In announcing the order on Wednesday Republican Trump said Obama’s use of the 1906 Antiquities Act to create monuments was an “egregious abuse of federal power” that allowed the federal government to “lock up” millions of acres of land and water. The Antiquities Act gives a president the authority to create national monuments from federal lands to protect significant natural, cultural, or scientific features. “Today we’re putting the states back in charge,” Trump said, adding that they should decide which land is protected and which is open for development. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters late Tuesday the order requires him to review about 30 national monuments created over the past two decades, and recommend which designations should be lifted or altered. The monuments covered under the review will range from the Grand Staircase created by President Bill Clinton in 1996 to the Bears Ears created by Obama in December 2016, both in Utah. Zinke said he will seek local feedback before making recommendations, adding that reversing a monument designation could be tricky. “It is untested, as you know, whether the president can do that,” Zinke said. President Woodrow Wilson reduced the size of Washington state’s Mount Olympus National Monument in 1915, arguing there was an urgent need for timber at the time. Zinke said he will review the Bears Ears monument first and make a recommendation to the president in 45 days. He has 120 days to issue a full report on all monuments to the president. Bears Ears protects Native American cultural heritage and sacred sites. Obama created the Bears Ears monument in the final days of his administration. Utah’s governor and the state’s congressional delegation opposed the designation, saying it was done against the wishes of citizens eager for development. Utah Governor Gary Herbert, and Senators Mike Lee and Orin Hatch, all Republicans, stood beside Trump as he signed the order. Trump said the lawmakers lobbied him for the order. Bears Ears is near where Texas-based EOG Resources Inc has been approved to drill. Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan praised the order. “I commend the Trump administration for stopping this cycle of executive abuse and beginning a review of past designations,” he said. Conservation and tribal groups were critical. “With this review, the Trump Administration is walking into a legal, political and moral mine field,” said Kate Kelly, public lands director for the Center for American Progress. Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva of Arizona, ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, warned Zinke not to make an “ideological” decision. He said previous monuments were decided “after years of close federal consultation with multiple local stakeholders.” The five Native American tribes that pushed to create the Bears Ears monument to protect ancestral land said they will fight to protect it. The Outdoor Industry Association, the trade group of the recreation industry, also attacked the order. The group has estimated the outdoor recreation economy generates over $887 billion in consumer spending and creates 7.6 million jobs. “Less than 24 hours after joining with our industry to celebrate the economic power of outdoor recreation, in a hypocritical move, the Trump administration took unprecedented steps that could result in the removal of protections for treasured public lands,” said Rose Marcario, chief executive of outdoor gear retailer Patagonia. On Friday, before the close of Trump’s first 100 days in office, he is expected to sign an executive order that would review offshore areas available for offshore oil and gas exploration that have been restricted by previous presidents. (This version of the story has been refiled to delete extraneous text in paragraph 17) | 0fake |
Email Reveals What Progressive Think Tank Gained By Hosting Netanyahu | When a prominent, progressive establishment think tank, the Center for American Progress, hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on November 10, 2015, it was widely criticized among the left. However, in an email sent by Neera Tanden, the think tank’s president, she defends the decision to welcome Netanyahu with open arms.
The email was published in the latest batch of “Podesta Emails” from WikiLeaks. It offers a glimpse at how Tanden, an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and moderator of CAP’s Netanyahu event, dealt with the controversy.
John Podesta, Clinton campaign chairman, sent her an email the day after the event. “As a bloodied Jack Nicholson said in Hoffa, ‘What has been gained and what has been lost?’ How did the Bibi event score on that scale?”
In Tanden’s reply, she clearly outlined the pros and cons of hosting Netanyahu.
“Things gained: We will never be called anti-Semitic again. No matter what anyone writes,” Tanden asserted. “Mainstream press and people think we handled it just right – tough questions. I think for any dismissers, not that I think there were a lot, but we have definitely proven we’re a think tank. And it may have sealed the deal with a new board member.”
Tanden continued, “Things lost: Staff is riven. On both sides. We are holding a lot of meetings on that. Worse thing – someone leaked staff statement. That kind of thing really changes the culture.”
“How to keep that culture with that kind of leaking is going to be hard, but need to navigate. And far left hates me. We do have a broader issue of expectations in the organization. I had an intern tell me that she was upset we did not tell her ahead of time.”
What was lost and gained is expressed purely in institutional terms. Tanden writes nothing about what CAP may have done to give Netanyahu cover for the crimes the Israeli government commits against Palestinians through its occupation. She has no words for what this may mean for the people of Gaza, who endure poverty and face humanitarian disaster as a result of an economic blockade.
Overall, Tanden concludes, “Nothing we have done has pitted being a think tank and being ideologically action oriented against each other more harshly. At the end of the day, we had to choose.”
“So answer is complicated. If I could have the whole thing not happen, would definitely have it not happen. But it happened to us.”
Inviting a world leader is not something that just happens , like a branch breaking a car’s windshield when it falls out of a tree. Tanden and other leaders of CAP actively sought to host Netanyahu, and they were proud of the prestige it could garner for them.
When she introduced Netanyahu, Tanden said, “Thank you for taking questions because the choices you make matter profoundly to Israel’s future and the future of the region. And we believe that matters profoundly to America.” Notably, she said nothing about the future of Palestinians.
Journalist Rania Khalek pointed out that Tanden let Netanyahu lie repeatedly during the event about the construction of new settlements, settler violence, land theft, and ethnic cleansing.
Tanden and other Clinton appointees served on the Democratic Platform Committee, and during the process, they blocked language that would have acknowledged there is, in fact, an Israeli occupation. They also refused to remove language suggesting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement “delegitimizes” Israel.
A coalition of Clinton Democrats and other liberal Democrats blocked a resolution to support the rebuilding of Gaza during the full Democratic platform committee meeting in July.
Clinton has distinguished herself as a pro-Israel Democrat and will aggressively challenge the BDS movement as president. With the support of Democratic mega-donor Haim Saban, who has pledged to invest billions to fight BDS, Clinton celebrated college students on the “front lines of the battle to oppose the alarming boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement known as BDS” during her speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference.
Additionally, emails previously published by WikiLeaks already have shown that the letter Clinton wrote to Saban, where she pledged to fight BDS, was written to help the campaign attract more pro-Israel donors.
Returning to the CAP event for Netanyahu, in the week before the event, The Intercept published a story on leaked emails showing the lengths to which CAP was willing to go to “placate AIPAC.” The think tank censored “its own writers on the topic of Israel.”
Tanden may seem exasperated in the email. “I need to clear my head on this and then would love to get your advice on a few things in the coming days,” she shared in the email. However, it is not as if there was any kind of an about-face or open display of regret in the aftermath. Tanden and CAP served the interests of AIPAC, also known as the Israel lobby, and if called upon to hold a similar event as a service to a Clinton White House, they will be loyal soldiers and help whitewash the policies of Israel again.
The post Email Reveals What Progressive Think Tank Gained By Hosting Netanyahu appeared first on Shadowproof . | 1real |
Kenya to hold new presidential vote on Oct. 17: electoral commission | NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya will hold a new presidential election on Oct. 17, a senior official at the election commission said on Monday, days after the Supreme Court nullified the vote held in August. | 0fake |
Trump’s ‘Condolences’ To Grieving Star Were ALL About Wanting To F*ck Her | Trump has no compassion, and he has no empathy. He only focuses on himself, which is proven with a blog post of supposed condolences, to Hollywood star Kelly Preston after her son died from a seizure in 2009. His mind is so warped he couldn t even say, I m sorry for your loss, without first going into detail about how he tried to get Preston into his bed, along with bragging about his outstanding record on bedding beautiful women: A long time ago, before I was married, I met Kelly Preston at a club and worked like hell to try and pick her up. She was beautiful, personable, and definitely had allure. At the time I had no idea she was married to John Travolta.In any event, my track record on this subject has always been outstanding, but Kelly wouldn t give me the time of day. She was very nice, very elegant, but I didn t have a chance with her, and that was that. Seriously. That was the first thing he said in the he dedicated to her on Trump U. s site. Only when he was done talking about trying to have sex with her, and how great he is at getting women to have sex with him, did he finally get around to actually saying what ought to be said in such letters: When I later found out she was married to John, I liked and respected her even more. Some people have values that matter to them, and she is one of them. Her loyalty was unwavering and I have always remembered that about her.Being true to someone is very close to being true to yourself. That s a valuable attribute in today s world. I m sure she was a wonderful mother to Jett and my thoughts are with her and her family after their terrible loss. He could have left When I later found out she was married to John, out, along with the sheer insensitivity that was the first two paragraphs, but his ego wouldn t let him. He should have simply said that he knew, liked and respected her as someone who was true to her values, and he was sorry for her terrible loss. The fact that he couldn t is yet another a clear window into the way he thinks about women.Of course, ever since the Access Hollywood tape came out, we ve all been more acutely aware than ever that Trump is nothing more than a womanizing sexual predator who believes he s entitled to the, ahem, company of beautiful women. Any remaining delusion any sane person had that this man-boy actually has a heart, though, is now destroyed.This man-child is a piece of primordial slime through to his core.Featured image by Joe Raedle via Getty Images | 1real |
North Korea says successfully launches new ICBM that can reach all of U.S | SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea successfully launched a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15 that can reach all of the United States, the isolated country s state media said on Wednesday. The missile is the North s most powerful ever, and it flew 950 km (590 miles) for 53 minutes while reaching an altitude of 4,475 km (2,781 miles), according to a statement read by a television presenter. | 0fake |
AIR FORCE Whistleblower Makes EXPLOSIVE Claim About Benghazi That Could DESTROY Hillary: ‘We could have been there’ [Video] | A United States Air Force squadron leader whistleblower is speaking out and telling the truth about how they could have reached Benghazi to help on the night of the attack that killed four Americans. Unfortunately, he s been afraid of being screwed over, so he s kept his mouth shut until now.An Air Force whistleblower says his team could have provided reinforcements to the Americans under attack in Benghazi in September 2012, contrary to the Obama administration s claims that the military provided the maximum possible support for the embattled diplomatic staff. I definitely believe that our aircraft could have taken off and got there in a timely manner, maybe three hours at the most, in order to basically at least stop that second mortar attack and have those guys running for the hills, a man purportedly stationed at Aviano Air Force base in Italy told Fox News on the condition of anonymity.That s a particularly explosive claim, given that two of the four Americans who died in the attacks were killed in the second wave of attacks, which targeted a CIA annex the morning of Sept. 12. But the whistleblower has not spoken to Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who is chairman of the select committee investigating the attacks, because there are so many ways you can get screwed over for cooperating with lawmakers.That frustrates Gowdy, who accused the Obama administration of preventing him from talking to all the relevant witnesses. As a former federal prosecutor, I find it deeply troubling there are individuals who would like to share their stories, but have not because they are afraid of retaliation from their superiors, he said in a Wednesday evening response to the Fox report. No one should be afraid of talking to their elected representatives in Congress. Via: Washington ExaminerWatch: | 1real |
Mexican President Tells Trump One More Time That Mexico Isn’t Paying For His Stupid Wall (VIDEO) | Donald Trump gave his first press conference since being elected today. He stood on that stage and told the American people yet again that Mexico was going to pay for the wall he wants to build along our southern border. But at the same time, the president of Mexico was insisting once more that they aren t paying for Trump s stupid wall.Speaking to a group of Mexico s ambassadors and consuls on Wednesday, Mexican President Enrique Pe a Nieto said that Mexico has some differences with the next government of the United States, like the topic of the wall that Mexico of course will not pay for. Pe a Nieto said that no matter what Trump may say, Mexico isn t going to foot the bill for the wall. He also said in no uncertain terms that Mexico s basic principles and sovereignty are simply not negotiable. In addition, Pe a Nieto added that if there are to be any negotiations between the United States and Mexico there has to be a concerted effort to stop the illegal arms and money that are flowing into Mexico from the United States.Meanwhile, Trump was saying this on live television: We re going to build a wall. I could wait about a year and a half until we start our negotiations with Mexico, he said, but I don t feel like waiting a year and a half. I want to get the wall started. I don t want wait a year and half to make a deal with Mexico. Trump now says that the American taxpayers are going to be the ones who will actually fund the building of the wall. But he says he has a great plan, the best plan, to bully Mexico into paying us back.Trump has been told repeatedly that Mexico is not going to pay for his wall, but he just can t seem to get that through his thick orange skull. He thinks he can bully anyone into anything. But it doesn t look like Mexico is planning to bow down to Trump anytime soon, and in case you didn t catch it, they most certainly aren t going to pay for that damn wall.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1real |
Watchdog sues Trump EPA pick to disclose contact with companies | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A media watchdog group filed suit on Tuesday to force U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency to release records detailing his communications with energy companies ahead of a Senate vote to confirm his nomination. The lawsuit was filed in Oklahoma court by the Center for Media and Democracy and accuses Scott Pruitt, who is Oklahoma’s attorney general as well as Trump’s nominee to become the top U.S. environmental regulator, of violating the state’s Open Records Act by failing to release those emails to the public. It also seeks to force him to respond to nine open-records requests dating to January 2015 to publish emails between his office and energy companies. Pruitt’s office has received more than four dozen similar requests from other groups. “His inaction denies the public ‘prompt and reasonable’ access to public documents and violates Oklahoma’s Open Records Act,” said Robert Nelon, a first amendment lawyer with Hall Estill, the law firm representing the Center for Media and Democracy along with the American Civil Liberties Union. The media watchdog’s first request sought access to more than 3,000 emails. Pruitt’s office has not told the group how many records it has identified for the other eight requests it has pending. “We are doing this because these emails should be released so that people can properly vet his record before the Senate votes to confirm him,” said Nick Surgey, the center’s director of research. Pruitt, 48, sued the agency he intends to run 14 times on behalf of Oklahoma to weaken or gut its key regulations, earning him strong support from energy companies and Republican lawmakers who have accused the Obama administration’s EPA of regulatory overreach. On Thursday, the Senate environment committee approved Pruitt despite a boycott of his nomination by the panel’s Democratic members. The full Senate, which is under Republican control, is expected to confirm him but has not set a date for the vote. The lawsuit submitted on Tuesday calls on the court to stop Pruitt from denying access to requested public records and to prevent his office from destroying any documents relevant to the requests. Surgey said Pruitt was seemingly unapologetic during the confirmation hearings about his “strong relationships with Oklahoma’s oil and gas companies” and that the public should be aware his ties to the types of companies he would need to regulate as EPA administrator. Pruitt’s office said it had contacted the Center for Media and Democracy last week to inform the group that “release of their request was imminent.” “The fact that they have now filed suit despite our ongoing communications demonstrates that this is nothing more than political theater,” Lincoln Ferguson, the attorney general’s press secretary said in a statement. “The office of attorney general remains committed to fulfilling both the letter and spirit of the Open Records Act.” Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a member of the Senate panel that held Pruitt’s hearing, accused the nominee of stonewalling the request for information about his relationships with industry. “I hope this lawsuit forces Attorney General Pruitt to stop the cover-up and disclose these emails immediately so the American people know what conflicts of interest this nominee has,” Whitehouse said in a statement to Reuters. | 0fake |
[VIDEO] OUR RACIST PRESIDENT INVITES MUSLIMS To Join Blacks In Victim Pool While Celebrating Ramadan at White House | As Americans we insist that no one should be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, who they love, what they worship. (Unless of course, you re a cop or a person who enjoys white privilege ).Doesn t Mooch target privileged white people every time she has a microphone placed in front of her? Whether speaking at a commencement speech or museum opening, Mooch doesn t miss an opportunity to point out how mistreated she and her husband, (the two-term elected President of the United States) are by dragging race into every speech. Why is that okay?Barack Obama hosted an Iftar dinner at the White House on June 22, 2015. He paid tribute to three Muslim students (victims killed by a white man) who were murdered in Chapel Hill, NC. He managed to tie the recent hateful act by another young white man who killed 9 innocent black church members in Charleston, SC into his speech. The Koran teaches that God s children should tread lightly above the earth and that when confronted with ignorance, reply peace. Where was your peaceful muslim speech following the attempt by two muslims in Texas to commit mass murder during Pamela Gellar s free speech event? | 1real |
West covering up crimes of Bahraini regime: Analyst | Interviews A protester throws a glass bottle containing paint at a police armored personnel carrier during anti-regime demos in the village of Sitra, south of Manama, February 14, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)
The Fourth High Criminal Court of Bahrain has sentenced 15 political opponents to long jail terms and also revoked the citizenship of all of them. While several international rights groups have criticized the Al Khalifa regime’s harsh crackdown on the Bahraini opposition, the Western powers turn a blind eye to the Arab state’s violations of human rights.
Edward Corrigan, an international human rights lawyer, told Press TV’s Top 5 program that the Western powers are trying to whitewash the crimes committed by the Arab dictatorships in the Persian Gulf region because such regimes are considered the West’s “lap dogs.”
“There is a double standard,” Corrigan said, explaining that Western powers say, “‘If you are a friend of ours and do what we want and give us oil and invest your money into European or American economy, we won’t question your human rights violations.’”
According to the analyst, “There is hypocrisy, double standards and this is really a big political game. Our dictatorships and allies are OK but somebody else that we don’t like for whatever reason, we magnify their crimes and even create false flags and do other things to try to discredit them.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, Corrigan said the definition of terrorism in Bahrain covers any kind of opposition, because the regime does “not want to allow any sort of political movements there to try to reform the system, to redress this massive discrimination against the Shia population, and to have any sort of voice for democracy; so, all of that is ‘terrorism.’”
He added, “It is against the international law to remove people’s nationality from them and this is an extreme sort of punishment, very draconian, as they’re condemned by the international human rights organizations and other organizations.”
Manama has been cracking down on dissent since February 2011, when an uprising began against the regime. Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of Al Khalifah regime’s harsh crackdown on anti-regime activists. Loading ... | 1real |
TWISTED LIBERAL KINDERGARTEN Teacher Allows Transgender Student To “REVEAL” Her “TRUE GENDER” To Class | Silly parents you don t get to decide if, or when to talk to your kids about the .03% of the population who consider themselves to be transgender. And oh yeah your kids teacher will also inform your child that the gender they re born with doesn t matter, and that they can actually choose the gender they identify with. Because liberal educators know better than you what s best for your child.The Rocklin Academy school board is facing tough questions from parents concerned over a controversial incident involving transgender discussions inside a kindergarten class. These parents feel betrayed by the school district that they were not notified, said Karen England with the Capitol Resource Institute.WATCH:The incident happened earlier this summer during the last few days of the academic school year.At Monday night s board meeting, the teacher at the center of the controversy spoke out. With emotions high, she addressed a packed house. I m so proud of my students, it was never my intent to harm any students but to help them through a difficult situation, she said.The teacher defended her actions to read two children s books about transgenderism including one titled I am Jazz. She says the books were given to her by a transgender child going through a transition. The kindergartners came home very confused, about whether or not you can pick your gender, whether or not they really were a boy or a girl, said England.And many parents say they feel betrayed and blindsided. I want her to hear from me as a parent what her gender identity means to her and our family, not from a book that may be controversial, a parent said. My daughter came home crying and shaking so afraid she could turn into a boy, another parent said.The issue was not on the agenda, so parents spoke out during public comment. It s really about the parents being informed and involved and giving us the choice and rights of what s being introduced to our kids, and at what age, said parent Chelsea McQuistan.Many teachers also spoke out in support of what transpired inside the classroom. They spoke about the importance of teaching students about diversity and having healthy dialogues.Unlike sex education, the topics of gender identity don t require prior parental notice. Sacramento CBS | 1real |
Where Did the Government Jobs Go? - The New York Times | On a muggy afternoon in April, Angelina Iles, 65, folded herself into my passenger seat and took me on a tour of her beloved Pineville, La. a sleepy town smack in the middle of the low, wet state. We drove past houses and businesses — shuttered restaurants, a decrepit gas station — as Iles, an retired lunchroom worker and community activist, guided me toward the muddy banks of the Red River. Near there stands the Art Deco shell of the Huey P. Long hospital, which once served the poorest of the poor in Rapides Parish — and employed more than 300 workers. When employers leave towns like Pineville, they often do it with a deaf ear to the pleading of state and local governments. But in the case of Huey P. Long, the employer was the government itself. Its demise began, arguably, in 2008, when Bobby Jindal was swept into the Louisiana governor’s mansion on a platform, promising to modernize the state and unleash the power of American private industry along the Gulf Coast. At the time, Louisiana was flush with federal funds for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction and running a budget surplus. Jindal and the State Legislature slashed income taxes and started privatizing and cutting. This was a source of great pride for Jindal. During his failed bid for the presidency last year, he boasted that bureaucrats are now an endangered species in Louisiana. “I’ve laid off more of them than Trump has fired people,” he said, “and I’ve cut my state’s budget by more than he’s worth. ” He laid off more than just bureaucrats. Jindal cut appropriations for higher education, shifting the cost burden onto students themselves. (State spending per student was down more than 40 percent between 2008 and 2014 just one state, Arizona, cut more.) And he shuttered or privatized nine charity hospitals that served the state’s uninsured and indigent. They were outdated and costly, Jindal argued, and private management would improve access, care and the bottom line. Huey P. Long was one of those hospitals. Iles, along with dozens of other workers and activists, helped organize a protest against the cuts, she told me. They held a vigil on the hospital’s front lawn. Iles even helped produce an documentary called “Bad Medicine” that was broadcast on local television. But it was all for naught. “The good governor did not want to listen to us,” Iles said, checking her constantly buzzing phone in the car. The hospital closed its doors in 2014, and its patients were redirected to other local medical centers and clinics. All of the hospital’s workers lost their jobs. Driving around Pineville, Iles and I dropped in on a friend of hers from church, Theresa Jardoin, 68, who worked in the hospital for 41 years, most recently as an EKG supervisor. Out of work, she spends most of her days at home, taking care of her family. Earlier, Iles had introduced me to another friend, Linette Richard, whose story was similar. She had been working as an ultrasound technician when the hospital closed. She lost much of what she had been expecting for her retirement, because she had not been there long enough. “Nobody’s jumping to hire a especially in my field,” Richard said. “You can get a job, like McDonald’s or Burger King. But higher up? We don’t have positions available. That’s the way it is. ” That’s the way it is across much of Louisiana. The state has added 80, 000 new jobs since the Great Recession officially ended in 2009. But at the same time, jobs have been shrinking at every level of government, with local offices losing 10, 600 workers, the state government 31, 900 and the federal government 1, 600. Louisiana is an exaggerated case, but the pattern persists when you look at the country as a whole. Since the recession hit, private employers have added five million jobs and the government has lost 323, 000. The country has recovered from the recession. But public employment has not. The public sector has long been home to the sorts of jobs that lift people into the middle class and keep them there. These are jobs that have predictable hours, stable pay and protection from arbitrary layoffs, particularly for those without college or graduate degrees. They’re also more likely to be unionized less than 7 percent of workers are represented by a union, while more than a third of those in the public sector are. In other words, they look like the jobs our middle class was built on during the postwar years. The public sector’s slow decimation is one of the unheralded reasons that the middle class has shrunk as the ranks of the poor and the rich have swollen in the years. This is certainly true in Louisiana, where five of the 10 biggest employers are public institutions, or health centers that in no small part rely on public funds. In Rapides Parish, which includes Pineville, the biggest employer is the school district. Across the country, when workers lose their jobs, the burden disproportionately falls on black workers, and particularly women — people like Theresa Jardoin and Linette Richard. “We felt middle class,” Richard told me. “Now we feel kind of lower. ” In the middle of the last century, a series of legal and legislative decisions — fueled by and fueling the civil rights movement — increased the number of black workers in government employment. F. D. R. ended official discrimination in the federal government and in companies engaged in the war effort Truman desegregated the armed forces Kennedy established the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and Johnson signed an executive order banning discrimination by federal contractors. As a result, black workers gained more than a quarter of new federal jobs created between 1961 and 1965. And the share of government jobs held by women climbed 70 percent between 1964 and 1974, and nearly another 30 percent by the early 1980s. Through the middle of the century, the wage gap between white and black workers narrowed as social forces and political pressure compelled private businesses to open up better jobs to black workers. “ work has been a backbone of the black middle class for many reasons,” says Mary Pattillo, a sociologist at Northwestern who studies race and class. Affirmative action helped bring marginalized groups into the public work force there, they benefited from more public scrutiny of employment practices. “The inability to fire people in a fashion has likely protected who are perhaps likely to be fired in a fashion,” she says. As of 2007, black workers were 30 percent more likely than workers of other races to be employed in the public sector. For any number of reasons, the Great Recession unraveled much of the progress made by the black middle class. Leading up to the mortgage crisis, black families tended to have a higher proportion of their wealth tied up in their homes. And regardless of their income, black families were much more likely to be rejected for conventional mortgages and pushed into subprime loans. All of this meant that when housing prices turned down, the wealth gap yawned. As of 2013, white households were, on average, 13 times wealthier than black households, the biggest gap since 1989, according to Pew Research Center data. Declining tax revenue led to tightened state budgets, which led to tens of thousands of layoffs for employees. And during the recovery, public workers became easy political targets precisely because of their labor protections. rights, pension funds and mandatory raises look like unnecessary drains on state coffers to a work force increasingly unfamiliar with such benefits. And when the layoffs came, black Americans experienced a disproportionate share of the ill effects. A graduate student of sociology at the University of Washington, Jennifer Laird, wrote a widely cited dissertation, examining the effects of layoffs on different races. She found that the unemployment rate climbed more for black men than for white men — and much more for black women than for white women, with the gap between the two groups soaring from less than a percentage point in 2008 to 5. 5 percentage points in 2011. “It may be that black workers are more likely to be laid off when the layoffs are triggered by a sudden and significant reduction in funding,” she wrote. “When the number of layoff decisions increases, managers have more opportunities to discriminate. ” Worse, once unemployed, black women were “the least likely to find employment and the most likely to make a full exit from the labor force. ” As a result of all these economic punishments, a recession that set America back half a decade may have set black families back a whole generation, if not longer. And because the public sector provides so many essential services, cuts to it have a cascading effect. Hospitals close, and people have to drive farther away for medical care. Teachers’ aides lose their positions, and local kids no longer have the same degree of attention. Angelina Iles, the retiree I met in Pineville, cited the loss of dental, and emergency medical services as being a particularly profound problem for her community. Other states and towns are electing to have smaller public work forces. Wisconsin, for instance, has thinned its ranks of government workers by some 5, 000 since its Republican governor, Scott Walker, led a push to abrogate public workers’ organizing rights — a political choice with profound economic and racial ramifications. “They try to say that collective bargaining is a drain on the economy, when it provides the ability and opportunity for folks to have a seat at the table,” Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told me. And the economic evidence does show that a higher concentration of unionized workers increases intergenerational mobility and raises wages for all workers, public and private. With time, government jobs should come back that pathway to the middle class should grow again. “Government jobs are always slower to come back after a recession,” says Roderick Harrison, a former Howard University demographer. It takes time for private businesses to rehire workers. It takes time for tax revenue to rise to a level at which cities and states feel comfortable adding public workers back onto their payrolls. “That means that the portion of the black middle class that was dependent on government jobs — police, schools, emergency workers and so on — is going to take longer to recoup and regain whatever positions they had,” he says. For Pineville, that recovery might come too late for many of its workers, especially those who were looking toward retirement. Because Linette Richard can’t find suitable work, she and her husband get by on what he makes as a car salesman. She has given up trying to find work again around Pineville. So has Theresa Jardoin, who has resigned herself to a tougher retirement than she thought she would enjoy. “All of a sudden, there’s nothing,” she said, sitting in an easy chair in her living room, just blocks from Huey P. Long, playing with her granddaughter’s hair. “You can’t enjoy retirement in this situation. ” “You didn’t even get a pocket watch, did you?” Iles asked. “No,” Jardoin said, with a resigned laugh. “Just aches and pains. ” | 0fake |
Police: Engaged Boston Doctors Murdered in Penthouse - Breitbart | Two Boston doctors were allegedly murdered in their penthouse Friday night, police said on Sunday. The victims were reportedly engaged to be married. [Boston Police Department responded to a call about “a suspect with a gun at a luxury condominium in South Boston” where Dr. Richard Field and Dr. Lina Bolanos lived. Police said the suspect “immediately began firing at the officers,” NBC News reported. The suspect is Bampumim Teixeira, who reportedly missed shooting the police officers however, police fired back at him multiple times, wounding the suspect in the process. Officers took him into custody and took him to Tufts Medical Center where he is undergoing treatment for injuries that are not considered the Daily Mail reported. Officers found the bodies of Field, 49, and Bolanos, 38, with both of their throats slit and their hands bound when they entered the apartment. The Boston Globe reports that police found blood and a “message of retribution” on the walls of the apartment, along with photos of the two doctors cut into pieces. Police say the victims and the killer knew each other, but the police have not yet to pin down a motive for the killings, WCVB reports. CBS Boston reports that the apartment building was not lacking in security either — the building required the use of a special key to get inside and use the elevator. Field worked as a pain management specialist at North Shore Pain Management where his colleagues said he was known for his “tireless devotion. ” “Dr. Field was a guiding vision at North Shore Pain Management and was instrumental in the creation of this practice, in 2010,” the company said in a statement. They also noted that he “was noted for his tireless devotion to his patients, staff, and colleagues. ” Prior to working at North Shore, he worked as an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist at Beverly Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Bolanos worked as a pediatric anesthesiologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary where she was regarded as “outstanding” in her profession and as an anesthesiology instructor at Harvard Medical School. “The entire Mass. Eye and Ear community is deeply saddened by the deaths of Dr. Lina Bolanos and her fiancé,” the hospital’s CEO John Fernandez said in a statement. “Dr. Bolanos was an outstanding pediatric anesthesiologist and a wonderful colleague in the prime of both her career and life. ” NBC Boston reports that Teixeira will undergo arraignment Monday and that police expect he will face multiple charges. Teixeira recently served nine months out of a prison sentence for two counts of larceny that he pleaded guilty to in September 2016. | 0fake |
SHOCKING: Why Our Fed Government Will Grant “Disabled” Status With Benefits To Spanish Speaking Residents Of Puerto Rico | If we didn t know better, we d almost believe our Federal Government was attempting to give special privileges to Spanish speaking citizens. Perhaps they re establishing a precedent for taxpayer funded benefits for millions of illegal immigrants who will soon be American citizens The Social Security Administration (SSA) approved disability benefits for hundreds of Puerto Ricans because they do not speak English, despite the fact that Puerto Rico is a predominantly Spanish-speaking territory.According to a new audit by the Office of Inspector General (OIG), the agency is misapplying rules that are intended to provide financial assistance to individuals who are illiterate or cannot speak English in the United States. Under the rules, Puerto Ricans are allowed to receive disability benefits for their inability to speak English as well. We found the Agency did not make exceptions regarding the English-language grid rules for claimants who reside in Puerto Rico, even though Spanish is the predominant language spoken in the local economy, the OIG said.The audit said a person applying for disability in Puerto Rico who cannot speak English may increase his/her likelihood of receiving disability benefits. The agency does not currently have a system in place to keep track of the number of beneficiaries who receive disability insurance for not being able to speak English.However, the OIG was able to identify 218 cases between 2011 and 2013 where Puerto Ricans were awarded disability due to an inability to communicate in English. Furthermore, 4 percent of disability hearings in Puerto Rico involved looking at the individual s ability to speak, read, write, and understand English.Though 95 percent of Puerto Ricans speak Spanish at home, according to the rules a Spanish-speaking nurse in Puerto Rico would be considered unskilled, the OIG said.The SSA told the OIG that the rules are applied one-size-fits-all. SSA managers at various disability decision levels stated Social Security is a national program, and the grids must be applied to the national economy, regardless of local conditions, the audit said.The SSA takes into account an individual s education level when considering awarding disability benefits if they do not qualify for medical reasons. Part of the education requirement involves looking at a person s ability to speak English, to determine whether it limits his ability to find a job.Last year Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) raised concerns that the Obama administration was broadly applying the education rule under the Social Security Act to allow individuals to receive disability payments solely because they cannot speak English.He noted that the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) rolls swelled 230 percent between 2000 and 2010, while the U.S. population only grew 9.7 percent.Former SSA judges have also testified that individuals have been approved for disability in the United States without having to prove they cannot speak English.The hundreds of Puerto Ricans noted in the OIG s report have received disability insurance despite a 1987 U.S. District Court ruling that appears to contradict the SSA s policy. Benefits were denied on the grounds that it is the ability to communicate in Spanish, not English, that is vocationally important in Puerto Rico. It should be noted, however, that the court explicitly declined to apply this rationale outside of this one case, the OIG said.The SSA agreed with the OIG s recommendations to figure out how many individuals have been awarded disability based on their inability to communicate in English, and to evaluate the appropriateness of applying the English-speaking rules to Puerto Rico.The SSA is currently gathering information for a proposed regulation that could lead to changes to the English-speaking rule, the agency said.Via: Free Beacon | 1real |
Regulars At Pulse Nightclub Say Shooter Was There Often And Used Gay Dating App | Everyone has their own idea about what made Omar Mateen murder 50 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. He was supposedly driven to commit this sick and disgusting act after seeing two men kissing, and he d allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS less than an hour before opening fire. There may be an even darker side to this, though, and it s one that permeates our entire society, whether we want to admit it or not.Witnesses say that Mateen had been a regular at Pulse for at least three years. Ty Smith and Chris Callen, who both performed in a drag show at Pulse, remember him being escorted from the club on numerous occasions, drunk off his gourd. When they saw his picture on TV in connection with the massacre, they were floored: Both professed shock at seeing his face on TV: It s the same guy, said Callen, who performs under the name Kristina McLaughlin. He s been going to this bar for at least three years. They expressed incredulity at the story being told by Mateen s father in the wake of the shooting, that the gunman had once been scandalized during a visit to Miami by the sight of men kissing each other.They say Mateen saw plenty of men kiss and far closer to home than Miami. That s bullcrap, right there. No offence. That s straight-up crap. He s been around us, Smith said Monday in an interview at the GLBT Community Center of Central Florida. Some of those people did a little more than (kiss) outside the bar . He was partying with the people who supposedly drove him to do this?' Another regular at Pulse, Kevin West, told the Los Angeles Times that he and Mateen messaged off and on for a year on a gay chat app. MSNBC s Chris Hayes reported on this, too:Here s what reporting we know: several people on the record saying shooter was on several gay dating apps and messaged with them Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 14, 2016 several regulars at Pulse who recognized the shooter. One saying he d been coming regularly for the past 3 years. Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 14, 2016And a gay classmate of the shooter in the police academy who says he used to go to gay bars w the shooter, who asked him out once. Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 14, 2016It s terrifyingly possible that Mateen himself was gay, which is a very tough and painful pill to swallow in light of what he did. The idea that a gay man could sink to such evil, and perpetrate such a horrific massacre against the very community to which he should have belonged hurts. However, he was Muslim and possibly an extreme Muslim. They have values that mirror the right-wing Christian values that allow for hatred of the LGBTQ community in what s supposedly the freest nation in the world. Eric Biesterfeld, who is a gay man himself, explained this in a Facebook post: [I]f you wondered why we need Gay Pride, it s because Pride is the opposite of shame. If this is true, Shame over an unchangeable, harmless facet of our humanity caused so much pain that he brought 49 lives down with his own.And yes, I blame those who would use religion to cause shame in another for this act. Louis Alemayehu, who wrote the post that Biesterfeld shared, said something similar: Some of us suspected this. Internalized oppression is deadly in so many ways. We must be nurturing and accepting of one another from an early age. Self hatred and/or denial has implications way beyond the individual, the family, the community and ultimately the world. Our interconnections are profound and immediate. They have a point. Not all hateful, bigoted homophobes are straight, cisgender people who think being LGBTQ is so gross it has no place in our society. Some are LGBTQ people who have internalized that bigotry because we have so many hate-filled homophobes who have very loud, influential mouthpieces, and who are trying to enshrine oppression of the LGBTQ community in the laws that govern our land in the name of religious freedom. Despite that, Chris Hayes tweeted that this doesn t excuse Mateen for anything, and he s bang-on right with that. Make no mistake, there is no calling Mateen anything but what he was a murderer: None of this would exculpate the sheer hatred, rage and evil of this murderer. Or even *explain* it in any sense. But it complicates Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 14, 2016But Hayes is right that it does complicate this, because now it s a tragedy with its roots in a societal ill, and that ill is this vile idea that the LGBTQ community is wrong and dirty, that their very identities are wrong and disgusting, and that the only true way to practice a religion is to force it on others through oppression, or worse, violence.There s no way to know what was really going on in Mateen s head. His hate, whatever drove it, was so evident that it made his co-workers uncomfortable:One of Mateen s ex-coworkers at G4S security told me he complained about the man s frequent slurs attacking gays and blacks. David Ovalle (@DavidOvalle305) June 12, 2016 He would never have more than 3 or 4 sentences without using the word n****r or queer or dike. It was always about violence. he told me. David Ovalle (@DavidOvalle305) June 12, 2016Mateen also dalliances at PGA Village neighborhood. All he wanted to do was cheat on his wife. He had very little respect for women. David Ovalle (@DavidOvalle305) June 12, 2016Whether he was driven exclusively by an extreme religious ideology that made him a bigot consumed with hate, or he was filled a self-loathing that was so powerful, and so all-consuming that it came out in a horribly violent pyroclastic eruption, the tragic result is the same.Right-wing Christians need to look in the mirror if they want to discover all the possible causes of this massacre, because when it comes to the LGBTQ community, their values are identical the values of Islam. They re just as guilty as Mateen for all those senseless deaths.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
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