title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
Trump to Accept Inauguration Funds From Corporations and Big Donors - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump will allow corporations and wealthy individuals to make large donations to fund the activities surrounding his inauguration, complicating his promise to eliminate special interests from influencing his government. Mr. Trump plans to ban money from registered lobbyists, whom he has purged from his transition team and barred from working for his administration. But the restrictions will be lighter on corporations and individuals — the groups that have traditionally provided a vast majority of funding for the festivities surrounding the transfer of power. The restrictions, which members of the Presidential Inaugural Committee cautioned have yet to be finalized, represent a continued march back from standards set in 2009, when Barack Obama banned gifts from lobbyists, political action committees and corporations, and put a cap of $50, 000 on individuals. Mr. Obama relaxed his own rules in 2012, after what was then the most expensive presidential campaign in history had depleted his donor base, lifting the ban on corporate gifts and restrictions on the size of those from individuals. Mr. Trump, who like Mr. Obama campaigned on reducing the influence of money in politics, appears poised to relax them further. Officials planning the inauguration said Mr. Trump would solicit corporate donations up to $1 million and allow money to be transferred from political action committees on a basis. The inaugural committee has not reached a decision on where to cap gifts from individuals, if at all. All told, Mr. Trump hopes to raise roughly $65 million to $75 million to fund the parade, balls and other festivities surrounding his as president, according to several people involved in the planning efforts. Such a total, if it materializes, would easily surpass the $43 million Mr. Obama’s team raised for his 2013 inauguration and the $53 million, a record, that it raised for his first inauguration in 2009. Thomas Barrack Jr. a private equity investor who is heading the committee responsible for planning the events surrounding Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, said the decision to limit donations from certain groups was “in line with the ’s thoughts on ethics reform. ” But campaign finance experts said the restrictions left much to be desired, targeting groups that traditionally provide little funding for the occasion while seemingly letting bigger donors — including corporate interests that Mr. Trump took aim at on the campaign trail — off the hook. “For the most part, they are illusory, because they are restricting money that doesn’t really play any significant role in funding the inauguration,” said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate of campaign finance overhaul, referring to the restrictions on lobbyists and foreign interests. The corporate and individual money that does traditionally play a significant role, he added, would be allowed to flow more or less unabated, leaving the potential of undue influence in place. “You can’t have a more ideal opportunity to buy influence and ingratiate yourself with a new administration than by giving a huge contribution to pay for their inauguration,” Mr. Wertheimer said. Bob Biersack, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics, was more forgiving toward Mr. Trump, but he said it would take a fundamental change in the way inaugurations were funded to meaningfully root out special interests. “I don’t find it fundamentally inconsistent with what he is saying,” he said. “I just think the rhetoric and the reality are different. ” Presidential transition committees, which coordinate and finance most of the festivities that surround the federally funded ceremony, face few of the restrictions campaigns do, and their practices vary from president to president. President George W. Bush did not restrict who could support his inaugural festivities, but he put caps on gifts. The committee is still in the early stages of assembling what will be an operation employing hundreds of people responsible for planning dozens of events. As of Wednesday morning, the packages that are typically used to solicit donations were still being vetted by lawyers, and subcommittees were still taking shape to handle issues like security and entertainment. “It’s like putting on the Olympics in 61 days,” Mr. Barrack said, adding that the committee was racing to finalize plans by the end of the week. Two people working with the committee said it planned to roll out tiered giving packages next week, most likely ranging from $25, 000 to $1 million, that will reward donors with progressively more access to more intimate events with Mr. Trump and his team. The committee is planning to hold two official balls, according to two people involved in the planning. By comparison, Mr. Obama attended 10 official balls in 2009. Mr. Trump is not expected to donate to the festivities himself, as he did to the campaign, according to members of the committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been finalized. Sara Armstrong, a longtime Republican National Committee official who helped plan the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer, has been appointed chief executive and is leading the team that Mr. Barrack said would eventually total 350 people out of an office building just off the National Mall. As of Wednesday, the committee had hired about 100 people, he said. The committee includes generous donors to Mr. Trump’s campaign, like Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets Gail Icahn, the wife of the investor Carl Icahn and the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. Several stalwart backers of Republican causes, like Stephen A. Wynn and Lewis M. Eisenberg, are on the committee, as is Brian Ballard, Mr. Trump’s longtime Florida lobbyist. The overall cost of the inauguration and related festivities is likely to run to as much as $200 million. Most of that burden will fall on taxpayers, though, who fund everything from security to the ceremony and inaugural luncheon organized by a joint committee of Congress. Mr. Trump’s team said it was expecting two million to three million people to flood Washington for the ceremony, a crowd that could surpass the 1. 8 million estimated to have been on hand for Mr. Obama’s first inauguration, which was a record. Planners are also expecting more protesters than usual around the event. Mr. Barrack said Mr. Trump had instructed him to plan events tailored to the political moment. “It’s one of the greatest opportunities that this president has to put his fingerprints on bridging the divide,” Mr. Barrack said on Wednesday. Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service, which controls the Mall and other public spaces where the inauguration will take place, said on Monday that the Park Service did not expect to meet with officials from the group until after Thanksgiving. But across Washington, the physical preparations for Jan. 20 are well underway, even as the city’s political establishment is struggling to come to terms with the election outcome. Capitol architects have been hammering away since September on the more than inaugural platform overlooking the Mall. And outside the White House, Park Service staff members are at work on the presidential reviewing stand where Mr. Trump will review his inaugural parade. | 0fake |
Clinton's Web Of Deception | The unraveling of Hillary's corrupt sphere of influence. November 4, 2016 Michael Cutler
The 2016 elections are in the final stretch and were shaken to the core by the latest revelations from FBI Director James Comey on Friday, October 28, 2016 as reported by NBC News on October 30 th , “ FBI Obtains Warrant for Newly Discovered Emails in Clinton Probe — as Reid Accuses Comey of Hatch Act Violation .” Once again the Clinton scandal is creating turmoil in a presidential election that has gone way beyond “unconventional.” Indeed, Tom Clancy could not have scripted this year's presidential election and intrigues.
While Comey's recent remarks regarding the Clinton investigation have been extremely vague, the issue to focus on is how Hillary's use of a private computer server, private e-mail account and non-secure digital devices to store, send and receive classified materials may have drawn others into her tangled web of deception.
The current focus of the Clinton quagmire is on whether or not the laptop computer shared by Weiner and his estranged wife contains sensitive information. If that laptop had been hacked both Weiner and Abedin could have been vulnerable to blackmail. This was an issue raised by Congressman Louie Gohmert, Texan Republican and former judge in a Fox News Business interview on October 31, 2016 in a segment that was posted under the title, “ Rep. Gohmert: Clinton is a potential victim of blackmail .”
Additional individuals may also have been drawn into this web of deception through these e-mails as well. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. The weak links begin with Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin and may now include Anthony Weiner and perhaps others. Meanwhile, there is no way to yet determine how many other weak links are “out there” petrified that WikiLeaks or perhaps, a hacker may yet disclose their improper dealings with the Clintons or their foundation.
Could not these additional individuals be subject to blackmail as well?
Let's take a moment to understand how all of this began.
Just months earlier Hillary Clinton had been let off the hook by an FBI Director who, in his official statement on July 5, 2016 , included this excerpt: To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
By Comey's own words, anyone else might have had their security clearance lifted permanently. This raises the issue about such an individual demonstrating fitness for duty as president and raises the question as to why Comey did not see fit to take comparable action with Ms Clinton.
Comey's ultimate decision to not present the case to a Grand Jury was frustrating to those who have had security clearances and fully understand just how profound an impact these transgressions might have on national security.
However, perhaps Comey's hard to comprehend decision can be traced to a meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch less than one week before the FBI Director conducted that press conference. On June 29, 2015 ABC News-15 reported, “ US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton meet privately in Phoenix before Benghazi report .”
That article served as a predication for my article, “ Loretta Lynch's Private Meeting With Bill Clinton Prior to Release of Benghazi Report : Why would the Attorney General, who sets the tone for law enforcement, do this?”
As Attorney General, Lynch is FBI Director Comey's boss.
At the time of this meeting the Justice Department was not only investigating Hillary's illegal use of a private e-mail server, non-secure personal digital devices but was also, conducting an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
In fact, on October 30, 2016 Breitbart reported, “ Clinton Foundation FBI Investigation Confirmed By Former Assistant FBI Director .” Therefore Bill Clinton, was likely the target of an ongoing criminal investigation yet he had a totally inappropriate private meeting with the Attorney General to supposedly discuss golfing and grandchildren.
However, just days after that meeting, news organizations reported that Hillary was contemplating keeping Lynch on as Attorney General if she won the election.
On July 4, 2016 Newsmax reported, “ NY Times: Clinton Weighs Keeping Lynch as Attorney General if She Wins .” Hillary's statement that she might keep Lynch on as Attorney General could have provided the incentive for Lynch to “Go along to get along.”
Indeed, Lynch did precisely that during her confirmation hearing as I described in my commentary, “ Loretta Lynch: Same as the Old Boss : The Attorney General nominee's disturbing views on U.S. immigration law.”
My article included an excerpt from a Yahoo/AP news report, "Attorney General nominee defends Obama immigration changes." Here is the exchange in which Lynch discussed the administration's immigration's policies: Lynch said she had no involvement in drafting the measures but called them "a reasonable way to marshal limited resources to deal with the problem" of illegal immigration. She said the Homeland Security Department was focusing on removals of "the most dangerous of the undocumented immigrants among us." Pressed by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a leading immigration hard-liner, she said citizenship was not a right for people in the country illegally but rather a privilege that must be earned. However, when Sessions asked whether individuals in the country legally or those who are here unlawfully have more of a right to a job, Lynch replied, "The right and the obligation to work is one that's shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here." Sessions quickly issued a news release to highlight that response. Under later questioning by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, Lynch clarified it, stating there is no right to work for an immigrant who has no lawful status.
This was disturbing and telling, clearly Ms Lynch's views on immigration and likely, therefore on other issues are malleable and subject to revision if modifying her position is consistent with her personal goals.
As Attorney General Lynch directs the operations of the entire Justice Department and all those who work for that department. Ms. Lynch must understand true democracy can only exist when justice is blind and totally objective.
However, Lynch and the others who have fallen under Hillary Clinton's corrupt sphere of influence are trapped in Hillary's web of deception, having fallen victim to the Hillary Virus. Throughout Clinton's many decades in American politics, this highly contagious and virulent malady has proven to be virtually ineradicable. It is not likely to change no matter the outcome of the next election. | 1real |
ANGRY LIBERAL STORE OWNER Gets Slammed For Using Billboard To Display Image of Trump as Hitler…Asks Liberals To Attack Billboard Owner For Taking It Down [VIDEO] | Things didn t go as well as Nicholle had hoped and now, she s lashing out at the owner of the billboard company who was inundated with calls from angry residents.Rouse & Revolt owner Nicholle Lewis told Newsweek that she didn t sleep much last night. Her phone wouldn t stop going off with the persistent buzzing of death threats for her sign, which stylizes the number 45 into a swastika and features Trump posed in a Hitler-esque stance. I m living in a small, podunk red town and I m already getting death threats, said Lewis, whose store is in right-leaning Chico, population 90,000. My business has completely floundered. Overnight I had more one-star reviews than all the reviews I ve received in a year. The sign was up for less than 24 hours before Stott Outdoor Advertising took it down amid a backlash that featured online attacks.But Lewis said she s standing behind her beliefs. I don t necessarily think that just because I m a business doesn t mean I can t mix my beliefs, Lewis said. That s a common misconception that you can t mix politics and business. I have a platform and I m going to use it. Lewis has used the billboard at the corner of Third Avenue and Mangrove Avenue all year, though this is the first time she s made it political. He is not presidential, he is not a president, Lewis said. He is a celebrity who was born into money. And he s a Nazi sympathizer. I am going to stand behind my beliefs regardless. Lewis said she has been getting some support, too.Lewis got slammed by bad reviews on her store, Rouse and Revolt Facebook page, as well as her personal Facebook page, where she posted this video. In the video, Lewis pleas with liberals to make false claims against the sign company, as a payback because she s been hit with bad reviews. That s called liberal logic, in case you re not familiar with how liberal operate.Watch, as angry liberal Nicholle Haber Lewis threatens the sign company with a lawsuit while simultaneously asking libs to help her destroy his business.(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));Posted by Nicholle Haber Lewis on Friday, October 6, 2017The general manager of Stott Outdoor Advertising replied to Newsweek:Jim Moravec, the general manager of Stott Outdoor Advertising, told Newsweek that the company took it down because a lot of people misinterpreted the billboard and who the speaker was. I should have not accepted the ad in the first place, Moravec said, adding that the sign looked more like a call for action than an ad for the clothing store. Newsweek | 1real |
Trump touts Charter hiring that was in works for two years | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday touted Charter Communications Inc’s decision to invest $25 billion in the United States and a plan the company announced before he was elected to hire 20,000 workers over four years. At a White House event with the second-largest U.S. cable company’s Chief Executive Thomas Rutledge and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Trump praised Charter for planning to close its offshore call centers and move them to the United States. Much of the announcement was not new. Charter said last May that it planned to add 20,000 jobs as part of its merger with Time Warner Cable and acquisition of Bright House Networks. As early as June 2015, Rutledge said Charter would need an additional 20,000 employees after those deals. On a number of occasions, Trump has touted job announcements at the White House that had been previously planned or announced The company said more than a year ago in February 2016 that it planned to close foreign Time Warner Cable call centers and move the jobs to the United States. On Friday, Trump said, “We’re embracing a new economic model - the American Model. We’re going to massively eliminate job-killing regulations - that has started already, big league - reduce government burdens, and lower taxes that are crushing American businesses and American workers. “You’re going to see thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs, of companies, and everything coming back into our country.” Charter, which has 24 million residential and business customers in 41 states, said on Friday it had committed to Trump to hiring those workers within four years. It plans to invest $25 billion in broadband infrastructure and technology in the next four years. In May 2016 Rutledge said in a recorded interview there would be some overlap in management positions (after the TWC merger) but said the company would hire about 20,000 people over four years. Rutledge said the broadband investment was being made “in the right regulatory climate and right tax climate ... We’re committed to spending that predicated on the kind of regulatory consistency and efficiency that we expect as a country.” Charter agreed in May 2016 to make significant broadband investment under a deal with the Federal Communications Commission that was part of winning approval to acquire the cable networks. At that time Charter agreed to extend high-speed internet access to another two million customers within five years, with one million served by a broadband competitor. Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement on Friday that the commission was “working to set rules of the road that encourage companies to build and upgrade broadband networks across the country.” He credited the FCC’s “investment-friendly policies” in part for Charter’s commitments. The agency is considering a petition by the American Cable Association to strike the requirement Charter extend service to areas already served by companies because it could harm smaller competitors. Charter also touted its plans to open a new bilingual call center in McAllen, Texas and said it expects to employ 600 there by the end of 2018. Plans to open a call center in Texas were announced last October. In December, Trump announced that telecommunications group Sprint Corp and U.S. satellite company OneWeb would bring 8,000 jobs to the United States, and the companies said the positions were part of a previously disclosed pledge by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. In January, Sprint Chief Executive Marcelo Claure said of its decision to shift 5,000 call center jobs to the United States that the company “had plans to do this for a while.” | 0fake |
Monsanto Desperately Hoping to Hide New Food Safety Test Results | Waking Times
Mainstream media is completely silent on this story, so it is up to you to share the findings of this important research with everyone you know.
New testing conducted by an FDA-registered food safety lab found alarming levels of the chemical glyphosate (known as Monsanto’s Roundup weed-killer) in several very common foods. This independent research reveals that many popular foods have over 1000 times the glyphosate levels that have been established to be harmful.
“With the widespread increase in glyphosate use over the past 20 years and the fact that independent science has confirmed low level exposure to Roundup causes liver and kidney damage at only 0.05 ppb glyphosate equivalent, as reflected by changes in function of over 4000 genes, the American public should be concerned about glyphosate residues on their food.
Additional research points to harmful impacts at levels between 10 ppb and 700 ppb. Considering these shocking new scientific test results, regulators must take the below findings into account during any reauthorization of glyphosate.” ~ Glyphosate: Unsafe on Any Plate
Below are two images that show food testing results published by Food Democracy Now! and The Detox Project, which commissioned the research.
Full laboratory reports for this food testing can be found here . A searchable database of results can be found here .
It is no surprise that Monsanto does not want the public to know about these food safety test results. They pay-off mainstream media outlets and regulatory agencies, keeping the media silent when independent research such as this is published, so they can continue making billions from selling glyphosate.
This new research is only supplement to numerous other independent studies that basically show that Monsanto is poisoning us with glyphosate and the government is doing nothing to stop it. Read: Dramatic Increase in Kidney Disease in the US and Abroad Linked To Roundup (Glyphosate) ‘Weedkiller’ ; and Glyphosate (Roundup) Carcinogenic In the Parts Per Trillion Range .
It is up to each person who sees this story to share it and help others realize that Monsanto is poisoning our food. Anna Hunt . About the Author
Anna Hunt is co-owner an online store offering GMO-free healthy storable food and emergency kits . She is also the staff writer for WakingTimes.com . Anna is a certified Hatha yoga instructor and founder of Atenas Yoga Center. She enjoys raising her children and being a voice for optimal human health and wellness. Visit her essential oils store here . Visit Offgrid Outpost on Facebook . Like Waking Times on Facebook . Follow Waking Times on Twitter . This article ( Monsanto Desperately Hoping to Hide New Food Safety Test Results Anna Hunt Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of WakingTimes or its staff.
| 1real |
Trial against Guatemalan president's brother, son begins | GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A fraud trial against the brother and son of Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales began on Wednesday amid a scandal touched off by the president s attempt to expel the leader of a U.N.-backed anti-corruption unit investigating the case. Guatemala s top tribunal, the Constitutional Court, ruled definitively on Tuesday against Morales internationally criticized push to expel from the country Ivan Velasquez, the Colombian who leads the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).[nL8N1LF4RY] The CICIG and the prosecutor s office accuse Samuel Sammy Morales, the president s brother and one of his closest advisers, and Jose Manuel Morales, one of the leader s four sons, of facilitating false receipts that defrauded the national property registry in 2013, two years before Morales was elected. They deny any wrongdoing. Neither of the two gave a declaration before a judge on Wednesday, where they appeared together with another 20 other defendants. The scandal has hurt the popularity of Jimmy Morales, a former comedian, who won election in late 2015 after riding a wave of public discontent over the corruption scandals that brought down his predecessor Otto Perez Molina. The president has said the investigation into his family was not related to his controversial decision to declare Velasquez persona non grata. Last week, Velasquez and Guatemalan Attorney General Thelma Aldana asked to remove Morales immunity, in order to investigate him for accusations of illegal campaign financing. The case involves payments linked to the mother of Jose Manuel Morales then-girlfriend in 2013. She allegedly sent the national property registry a $12,000 bill made out in the name of a local restaurant for 564 breakfasts, according to the attorney general. The breakfasts were never delivered. Samuel Morales recognized the acts as a favor to his nephew, but he denied that he had benefited or been implicated in the network of fraud that deprived the institution of thousands of dollars. Both were detained in January, then put under house arrest and barred from leaving the country. | 0fake |
Tillerson: No preconditions for North Korea talks | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday said the United States would not accept any preconditions for diplomatic talks with North Korea, saying the Trump administration and the international community would continue to pressure Pyongyang We are not going to accept preconditions, Tillerson told reporters after earlier remarks at the United Nations Security Council meeting on Pyongyang s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. | 0fake |
Dallas Gunman Had Plans for Wider Attack, Police Say - The New York Times | DALLAS — The gunman who killed five police officers in Dallas had enough materials in his home to lead the authorities to believe he was planning a larger attack, the city’s police chief said on Sunday. He provided new details of how, during two hours of negotiations, the gunman sang, laughed and asked how many officers he had killed before he was killed by a robot. David O. Brown, the police chief, said evidence showed that Micah Johnson, 25, an Army Reserve veteran who told the police that he wanted to kill white officers, had been practicing detonations and that the explosive material had the potential “to have devastating effects throughout our city and our North Texas area. ” “We’re convinced this suspect had other plans and thought that what he was doing was righteous,” Chief Brown said on CNN’s “State of the Union. ” Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas, in an interview near the shooting site, described Mr. Johnson as having employed tactics designed to cause as much harm to people as possible. “He was really well trained in becoming a killing machine, O. K.?” he said. “Shooting low, fighting at that one point, going high, shooting down another street. This guy trained himself not for that exact location, but he knew how to elicit pain on people. ” The details emerged as the nation was immersed in protests, vigils and calls for peace from many pulpits after a week of unsettling violence that began with the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling, in Baton Rouge, La. and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn. The attack on officers on Thursday night in Dallas turned a peaceful demonstration against the earlier shootings into a scene of bloodshed and chaos. President Obama cut short an overseas trip and planned to travel on Tuesday to Dallas, where he, along with former President George W. Bush, will address a memorial service. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Laura Bush will also attend, the White House said. Mr. Obama, speaking in Spain, urged protesters to avoid inflammatory words and actions, but also defended the right to demonstrate, saying that one of the nation’s great virtues is its openness to protest and efforts to speak truth to power. He said Black Lives Matter had grown out of a long protest tradition that dated to the abolitionist movement. In such movements, Mr. Obama said, “there’s always going to be some folks who say things that are stupid or imprudent, or overgeneralize, or are harsh. ” Demonstrators gathered again on Sunday in cities as scattered as Dallas, Falcon Heights, Memphis, Baton Rouge, Atlanta and New York City, where 300 people marched silently, fists raised in the air, from Times Square to Union Square, with signs proclaiming “Stop police terror!” and “Stand together. ” In Baton Rouge, police officers in riot gear and flanked by SWAT trucks were trying on Sunday evening to turn back protesters who had come from a peaceful rally earlier and were trying to march to the Police Headquarters a few miles away. A Baton Rouge police spokesman said 48 arrests had been made by about 10 p. m. most for obstructing a roadway. No weapons had been confiscated, he said. News outlets in Memphis reported that protesters there had blocked traffic on the Interstate 40 bridge spanning the Mississippi River after a rally downtown. Some activists began circulating text messages asking around the country to boycott major retailers and to deposit $100 into a bank as a means of economically stopping the “slaughtering of black lives. ” Hundreds of demonstrators had been arrested Saturday night and into early Sunday in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, St. Paul and Baton Rouge, including DeRay Mckesson, a prominent activist in the Black Lives Matter movement who was released Sunday afternoon. In Phoenix, officers used pepper spray to disperse crowds. In St. Paul and Baton Rouge, the mood had been tense overnight Saturday into Sunday morning. In St. Paul, protesters had shut down an interstate highway for hours. At least 20 officers were injured as people threw rocks, bottles and bricks, the police said. The authorities in Baton Rouge, where Mr. Sterling was fatally shot early Tuesday, said they had arrested more than 100 people, charging most with obstructing the road. Among them were three members of the news media and Mr. Mckesson, who filmed his encounter with the police using the app Periscope. John Bel Edwards, Louisiana’s governor, said Sunday that the vast majority of protesters had behaved lawfully and that the police response had been moderate. He said some of the disturbances had been caused by demonstrators from outside Louisiana, but pledged that “they will not be allowed to incite hate and violence. ” Pastors across the nation called for reconciliation and compassion. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan spoke of a country “worried, frustrated and fatigued over senseless violence. ” “From Minnesota to Louisiana and Texas, one nation under God examines its soul,” he said. “Sadness and heaviness is especially present in our and law enforcement communities. ” He added, “We pray with and for them. ” In his television appearance, Chief Brown provided new details of the two hours of negotiations that the police conducted with Mr. Johnson, saying he had demanded to speak to a black negotiator, had sung and laughed, and had asked how many officers he had killed. Mr. Johnson also wrote the letters “R. B. ” in blood on the walls of the parking garage where he had hidden, Chief Brown said, an indication that he may have been wounded. It was not clear what those letters referred to, the chief said. Chief Brown said Mr. Johnson “obviously had some delusion. ” He described the gunman as doing “quite a bit of rambling at the scene. ” The police chief said investigators were examining Mr. Johnson’s laptop, journal and cellphone and had not completely ruled out the possibility that others were involved. He said he believed Mr. Johnson’s aim was to “make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement’s efforts to punish people of color,” including the fatal police shootings of in Louisiana and Minnesota in the days before the ambush. Those deaths, Chief Brown said, prompted Mr. Johnson to “fast track” plans to kill police officers. Describing the moments that occurred just before Thursday’s shootings, Chief Brown said that once the protesters had started to march through downtown Dallas, Mr. Johnson had driven his vehicle, a black Chevrolet Tahoe, well ahead of the group to prepare for the attack on police officers escorting the demonstrators. “You could easily see the march coming down the street they were walking, and saw an opportunity with some positions, a couple of buildings in the pathway of the marchers, and decided to take the high ground and start shooting right away,” Chief Brown said. “And we had to scramble to block intersections, which did expose our officers to this attack. And this suspect took advantage of that. And once he was in a position, officers did not know where the shots was coming from. ” Officials in recent days have revealed that Mr. Johnson, who served in the Army Reserve from 2009 to 2015, had materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a journal of combat tactics in his home. His journal described a method of attack in which a gunman can keep moving to confuse the enemy. The chief and Mr. Rawlings, the Dallas mayor, defended the Police Department’s use of the robot bomb that killed Mr. Johnson. Critics have raised questions about the episode, which may have been the first time a local law enforcement agency in the United States had used such a device to kill a suspect. Chief Brown said that the suspect had hidden in a corner in the garage and that deploying a sniper would have exposed the police to “great danger. ” “We believe that we saved lives by making this decision,” he said. Mr. Rawlings, in the interview Sunday, described Mr. Johnson as having employed tactics designed to cause as much harm to people as possible. The mayor, who heard portions of Mr. Johnson’s discussions with police negotiators, said the gunman was “just talking about how he was just upset with the whole world and upset with police, upset with white police. ” He added, “I believe he was mentally ill. ” Mr. Rawlings added: “I believed he wanted to kill officers. He did it, and a person like that would never be satisfied usually until they were taken down. ” In a separate interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” he said that he supported the department’s use of the bomb, and that the authorities had opted to use it only after negotiators had been unable to persuade Mr. Johnson to surrender. “It was a difficult decision because the safety of our police officers were in our mind,” Mr. Rawlings said. “The chief had two options, and he went with this one. I supported him completely because it was the safest way to approach it, and we talked to this man a long time and he threatened to blow up our police officers. We went to his home, we saw that there was equipment later, so it was very important that we realize that he may not be bluffing. ” The Dallas Morning News published a editorial urging the city to emerge as an example of how to bring the nation together. “Today our country seems capable of pulling apart in ways that have not seemed possible in many decades,” the editorial said. “Dallas, again, has been bathed in blood and grief. How we respond will help show a path forward to a divided, reeling nation. ” Chief Brown called for Americans to support police officers, but acknowledged that “we’re not perfect. There’s cops that don’t need to be cops. ” And he had a message for the protesters: “We’re sworn to protect you and your right to protest. And we will give our lives for it. ” | 0fake |
Tech employees vow not to help Trump surveil Muslims, deport immigrants | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 200 employees of technology companies including Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google, Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) and Salesforce pledged on Tuesday to not help U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration build a data registry to track people based on their religion or assist in mass deportations. Drawing comparisons to the Holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the employees signed an open letter at neveragain.tech rebuking ideas floated by Trump during the campaign trail. The protest, which began with about 60 signatures but had more than tripled within hours of publication, comes a day before several technology company executives are due to meet with the real-estate developer in New York City. “We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies,” reads the letter, signed by a mix of engineers, designers and business executives. It continues: “We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.” The letter vows to not participate in creating databases of identifying information for the U.S. government on the basis of race, religion or national origin, to minimize the collection or retention of data that could facilitate such targeting and to oppose any misuse of data at their respective organizations considered illegal or unethical. Trump clashed with Silicon Valley on several issues during the campaign, including immigration, government surveillance and encryption, and his victory last month alarmed many companies who feared he might follow through on his pledges. [nL1N1DA3VL] Those concerns have not been assuaged in recent weeks, as Trump has said he intends to nominate individuals to senior posts in his administration who favor expanding surveillance programs. Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Larry Page, Apple Inc (AAPL.O) CEO Tim Cook, Facebook Inc (FB.O) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) CEO Jeff Bezos and Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) CEO Safra Catz are among those expected to attend the summit with Trump’s transition team, according to two technology industry sources. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment regarding the open letter. | 0fake |
Somalia releases jailed ex-minister and government critic | MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A court in Somalia on Thursday released without charge a former minister and government critic who spent two days in jail after being arrested for alleged treason, an arrest which ignited a smoldering political crisis for the fragile government. Abdirahman Abdishakur was released after the attorney general, who had ordered his arrest, had failed to bring evidence against him, Judge Aweys Sheikh Abdullahi told a courtroom. He was released at midnight after reconciliation efforts between the government and traditional leaders before Thursday s court ruling, Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman said. Somali attorney general Ahmed Ali Dahir said he planned to appeal the ruling and criticized the court for not granting him five extra days to investigate as he had requested. The case is in its first phase, he told reporters. The attorney general s office was not given the investigation period it asked for. Earlier this week, Dahir had described Abdishakur s house as a hub for the opposition and a gathering point for people who wanted to replace the government. The arrest of Abdishakur, who ran in the February election won by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, followed mounting pressure on the president and his U.N.-backed government to end an Islamist insurgency. On Wednesday, some Somali lawmakers said they planned to impeach the president. [L4N1OK3Z0] Parliament adjourned last week until the end of February, but some legislators want it to reconvene on an emergency basis, lawmaker Mahad Salad told Reuters. The political turmoil endangers fragile gains against the Islamist al Shabaab insurgency. Islamist militants al Shabaab have been stepping up pressure on Mohamed s government by staging frequent and increasingly large-scale bombings against both civilian and military targets in recent months in the capital Mogadishu and elsewhere. The group is fighting to expel African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM from Somalia, topple the federal government and impose rule based on its strict interpretation of Islam s sharia law. More than 500 people were killed in twin bomb blasts in Mogadishu in October while this month a suicide bomber killed at least 18 people at a Mogadishu police academy. Early on Thursday, al Shabaab militants ambushed three vehicles belonging to the military s U.S.-trained special forces unit Danab on a road between Mogadishu and the town of Wanlaweyn. The group said it seized the three cars while residents said they saw two burning cars. Police Major Ahmed Nur told Reuters al Shabaab had targeted the convoy with a roadside bomb before ambushing it. We sent reinforcement to the area but we believe many died from both sides, he said. We ambushed the so-called military commandos and took their pickups, Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab s military operation spokesman, said. Somalia has been locked in lawlessness and violence since the early 1990s, following the ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. | 0fake |
What Could Unite a Larger Peace Movement? Oh, This! | Posted on November 4, 2016 by DavidSwanson
In a time of division and disagreement, when people who all agree on something important sometimes spend more time bickering with each other than working on their collective cause, is it possible to craft an agenda that brings them together and adds to their numbers?
It turns out, somewhat to my surprise, the answer is yes.
I discovered this by creating a petition that has very quickly been endorsed by RootsAction, the Future of Freedom Foundation, World Beyond War, the Libertarian Institute, DailyKos, Black Vietnam Veterans of Atlanta, Progressive Democrats of America, Veterans For Peace Chicago Chapter, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Code Pink, Massachusetts Peace Action, Maryland United for Peace & Justice, Upstate Ground the Drones and End the Wars, Pax Christi Seed Planters, The War and Law League, Environmentalists Against War, the PDA Reno Chapter, Voters Occupy, Bryn Mawr Peace Coalition, Vietnam Echos, Spokane Veterans for Peace, Benedictines for Peace of Erie PA, Tyneside East Timor Solidarity, Palouse Peace Coalition, Helfenstein Soup Council, Timothy Dawkins El Project, Green Party of Collin County, Brian Boortz Public Relations, A Green Road, We The People for Democracy, Peaceworkers of San Francisco CA, Green Party of Spokane County, Montrose Peace Vigil, Ecumenical Peace Institute, Pax Christi Southern California, Veteran for Peace 72, Peaceful Skies, Granny Peace Brigade Philadelphia, The Clueit Foundation, Office of the Americas, Veterans For Peace of Western Pennsylvania, Presentation Sisters Justice Commission, Women Against War, Farmington Maine Friends Meeting, Secular Student Alliance at LaGuardia Community College, Faith & Social Justice Alliance Dayton Ohio, The Oracle Institute & Peace Pentagon HUB, Peace Action Maine, Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center, Northeast Philly for Peace & Justice, Citizens International, National Department of Peacebuilding Committee through the Peace, White Rabbit Grove RDNA, North American Climate Conservation and Environment, The Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, Colonie des Pionniers de Developpement, Malu ‘Aina Center for Nonviolent Education & Action, the Carpe Diem Voice, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Corvallis, Mindfulness in Education, Brandywine Peace Community, Article V Convention for Our Children’s Future, and the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution.
Yes, some of those groups I’ve never heard of. A few of them may consist of three guys with misspelled signs who’ve been standing on a lonely street corner so long their town has planted bushes around them. But that’s sort of the point. A unifying effort should revive old organizations and give birth to new ones. It should also be uncomfortably large, bringing together people who want completely different policies on other issues but agree on this one.
So, what is it that the above organizations and 17,241 individuals thus far agree on? This:
Tell the next president: No more war!
Please sign this petition to the 45th President of the United States:
We call on you to end perpetual war by the United States Government. As signers of this petition, we commit ourselves to building nonviolent pressure to end continual U.S. warfare. We also reject our country’s bloated military spending and massive arms sales that make the USA the world’s leading arms trafficker by a huge margin.
Sign as organization for which you are authorized to sign .
Importantly, this is a statement to whoever becomes U.S. president next year. It might be someone you considered a lesser evil or a wonderful national leader. It might be someone you believed would adopt a peaceful policy without any public pressure required. Or it might be someone you recognized would require a massive movement to restrain them from destroying the earth. It doesn’t matter. You believe that representative government requires that people communicate how they want to be represented. You believe that peace is possible and preferable. You are in that strong majority of the U.S. public that believes the wars of the past 15 years have made us less safe, and you want to end them.
Also importantly — for both better and worse — this petition avoids the details of any particular war. Once a particular war is mentioned, many people expect a petition to be fairly lengthy, to list all the causes of the war, to mention all the criminals and profiteers on every side of the war, to stipulate exact relative levels of blame for each party involved, and to advocate for particular policies aimed at establishing justice. Yes, some of that will be necessary work. But it is also critical that we confront the problem illustrated by the sheer number of U.S. wars now raging and by the evil industry of weapons dealing that fuels so many sides of so many wars around the world.
If the U.S. and lesser arms dealers can be brought to abandon their deadly trade, if the wars can be ended and resisted, each in its turn, opportunities and resources will open up for positive approaches. But clearly the first two steps are (1) recognizing we have a problem, and (2) ceasing to make it worse. The panicked cries of two years ago to “Do something!” about ISIS (where “something” meant: bomb people) has predictably (and many of us did predict it) made everything worse. And the general public, not just the full-time activists, knows it .
There will be new opportunities to expand this coalition post-election and post-inauguration. But we should not miss the opportunity to spread it and expand it and make it known now as a movement of nonpartisan principled advocacy for peace. This entry was posted in General . Bookmark the permalink . | 1real |
Comey GOING PUBLIC With Russia/Trump Investigation After Pressure From Congress | FBI Director James Comey could very likely be the reason we have a President Trump. Just shy of two weeks prior to the 2016 election, Comey sent a letter to Congress that essentially said that his investigation into then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton s private email server could potentially be re-opened. Despite his open condemnation of Hillary s activities, Comey kept mum on the investigations the much more SERIOUS inquires on the other side, which would be those into the possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign into the election s eventual outcome.Well, all of that is now coming to a head. Trump s team has been repeatedly caught being linked to Russia and lying about it. His national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign for his lies to Mike Pence about his Russia ties, and has since registered with the United States government as a foreign agent. It has also been found that the newly confirmed Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has been forced to recuse himself from any Russia-Trump investigations due to his lying to Senator Al Franken during his confirmation hearings regarding his own conversations with the Ambassador to Russia.Now, it seems that there is a firm way to bring this to an end. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) seem to have had a meeting with FBI Director Comey on March 2. According to Whitehouse, during that meeting, Comey promised him and his GOP counterpart that they would have the answer we ve all been waiting for by this coming Wednesday which is whether or not the Federal Bureau of Investigation is actively probing the activities of the Trump campaign with regards to Russia and the 2016 election.Whitehouse says that not only will Comey tell them whether or not he and his agency are investigating Trump s Russia ties, but he will also go into the scope of their Russia/Trump investigation because he had not been able to at that point say that there was one. Well, this should definitely be interesting. After all, Comey was more than willing to throw the election to Trump by screwing Hillary Clinton with nonsense that amounted to nothing, while Vladimir Putin installed a Russian agent and his cronies as head of the United States government. Hopefully, once Comey is under oath, whatever is revealed will take Trump down once and for all.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1real |
Theresa Maybe? PM refuses to say how she'd vote in another Brexit referendum | LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May refused to say whether she would vote for Brexit if there was another referendum, repeatedly avoiding giving an answer on an issue that will define Britain s fate for generations to come. Although May has talked up the promise of Brexit since gaining power last year, she had, in the run-up to the June 2016 referendum, quietly backed staying in the European Union. She won the top job after David Cameron, who had also campaigned to remain, resigned in the chaos following the shock result of the vote. She has ruled out holding a second referendum on the final deal of the terms of Brexit, despite calls for one from some pro-EU lawmakers. Asked three times in an interview if she had changed her mind since then, she did not answer directly, saying she wouldn t engage with hypothetical questions and said her job was now to deliver what the people had voted for. I voted remain for good reasons at the time, but circumstances move on and I think the important thing now is that I think we should all be focused on delivering Brexit and delivering the best deal, she said on British radio station LBC on Tuesday. The United Kingdom remains deeply divided over Brexit which most senior politicians view as the most important decision Britain has taken since World War Two. In the June 23, 2016 referendum, 17.4 million voters, or 51.9 percent of votes cast, backed leaving the EU while 16.1 million voters, or 48.1 percent of votes cast, backed staying. Britain has just over one year to negotiate the terms of the divorce and the outlines of the future relationship before it is due to leave in late March 2019. Both sides need an agreement to keep trade flowing between the world s biggest trading bloc and the fifth largest global economy. But the other 27 members of the EU combined have about five times the economic might of Britain. They also have a strong incentive to deny the UK a deal so attractive it might encourage others to follow the British example. May, who said she voted to remain, called a general election earlier this year in a bid to unite the country around her vision for Brexit. However, she lost her parliamentary majority, jeopardizing her premiership. Pressed on whether she would now vote leave, she said she would look at everything and come to a judgment, but stressed that there would not be another referendum. Minister Damian Green, who is effectively May s deputy, was asked on BBC Newsnight the same question. He said that it would have been better had the public voted to remain, but there would not be another referendum and it was his job as a democrat to work towards making Brexit a success. Under the headline Theresa Maybe , The Sun, Britain s most read newspaper, said Brexiteers were offended by May s response. | 0fake |
Trump plays down post-Brexit market turmoil on Aberdeen visit | ABERDEEN, Scotland (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump played down market turmoil in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union on a visit to his Trump International golf course in Aberdeen on Saturday. Wearing an open-necked shirt, a suit and a white baseball cap with his slogan “Make America great again”, Trump was asked if he was worried about the volatility in financial markets following Britain’s vote to leave the EU on Thursday. “There’s always turmoil no matter where you go, no matter what you do,” he said. Global stock markets lost about $2 trillion in value on Friday after the vote, while sterling fell to a 31-year low. Trump, whose mother was Scottish, was greeted by around a dozen protesters at the course waving Mexican flags, rainbow flags for Gay Pride day and signs that read “Donald stop the hating” and “Shame on you for ruining a beautiful landscape.” Trump last year proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States as a response to Islamist attacks in Paris and California, causing a furor in Europe. In an article in a Scottish newspaper earlier this year, Trump pointed to his determination to overcome local opposition to his golf course projects as an example of the leadership skills that Americans would get if he were to become president. He also met with News Corporation media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his wife Jerry Hall, giving them a tour of the course in a golf cart. | 0fake |
Trump administration's NAFTA demands make sense: Union Pacific CEO | DETROIT (Reuters) - The list of priorities U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer released this week for the renegotiation of NAFTA with Mexico and Canada is reasonable and in line with what the Trump administration has promised to focus on, the head of America’s largest railroad said on Thursday. “It was a very reasonable document,” Union Pacific Corp (UNP.N) Chief Executive Lance Fritz said in an interview about a list of priorities released this week by Lighthizer. “From our perspective, he (Lighthizer) hit all of the elements that we’ve heard from the administration and they make sense.” Republican U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to exit the North American Free Trade Agreement if it is not renegotiated in favor of the United States. Talks with Mexico and Canada on revisions to the treaty, which came into effect in 1994, are due to start in mid-August. The top priority for the talks listed by Lighthizer’s office was shrinking the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico. Union Pacific’s Fritz said that Lighthizer’s focus on intellectual property, labor laws and dispute resolution mechanisms all make sense. “What makes most sense to us is elements (of Lighthizer’s priorities) focusing on the streamlining of freight across the border,” he added. About 40 percent of Union Pacific’s freight volume is based on international trade and about 12 percent is based on cross-border trade with Mexico. Fritz said that Mexico should continue to be a “good driver” for Union Pacific’s growth. The CEO spoke to Reuters after Union Pacific posted a better-than-expected second-quarter profit that was lifted in part by a 25-percent jump in coal revenue. Major U.S. railroads have seen a resurgence in coal volumes this year, following two years of precipitous declines as many utilities switched to burning cheaper natural gas and as unseasonable weather resulted in large stockpiles of unburned coal. Union Pacific said on Thursday that coal volumes in the third quarter should be relatively flat versus the same period in 2016. “We expect coal to be a bit more stable moving forward and that’s dependent on natural gas pricing and to some degree weather,” Fritz said. “The large inventory overhang has largely been consumed and that’s the good news.” | 0fake |
Saudi-Led Airstrikes Blamed for Massacre at Funeral in Yemen - The New York Times | SANA, Yemen — Fighter jets from a military coalition repeatedly bombed a crowded reception hall in Sana where mourners were gathered after a funeral on Saturday, killing more than 100 people and wounding hundreds of others, according to Yemeni health officials and witnesses. The strikes destroyed the hall and so overwhelmed the city’s hospitals that the Health Ministry broadcast pleas on radio stations to summon doctors to help tend to the wounded, and families beseeched outside hospitals to donate blood. Yemeni officials said the scale of the carnage made it hard to quickly compile a complete death toll. Tamim a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said at least 104 people had been killed and 550 wounded. He added that the death toll was likely to rise, as rescuers were still working to remove bodies from the rubble. “There are charred bodies, and some were cut to shreds and couldn’t be identified,” Mr. Shami said, adding that children were among the victims. “Some of the people who were carried out of the hall were headless,” said Muhammad who lives near the hall and rushed there soon after the strikes. Others had “smashed legs,” he said. Mr. Hadrami said two nearly simultaneous strikes hit the hall, followed by a third about a minute later. Some rescue workers gathered outside the hall immediately after, scared to enter for fear of another strike. “It’s a very ugly massacre,” Mr. Hadrami said. Another witness reported four strikes spread over a slightly longer period of time. When asked about the strikes, Brig. Gen. Ahmed a spokesman for the coalition, wrote in a text message that coalition officials were aware of the reports and that it was possible there were other causes for the blasts. The Al Arabiya satellite network later reported that the coalition had not carried out any strikes near the hall. General Asiri confirmed that report. But in a statement, Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, blamed airstrikes for the destruction and said he was “shocked and outraged. ” Others shared videos on social media that appeared to show a strike from the air. The Saudi bombing campaign is more than a year old, but it has been eclipsed by the wars in Syria and Iraq, and has been largely ignored by world powers. If the death toll is confirmed, the strike on Saturday would be one of the deadliest of Yemen’s war. The war began when rebels, known as the Houthis, and their allies stormed into Sana, the capital, and forced the government into exile. Since then, the conflict has fallen into a grinding stalemate, with the Houthis controlling much of the north and forces nominally loyal to the exiled president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in the south. A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia is seeking to restore Mr. Hadi’s government and has been bombing the Houthis. More than 9, 000 people have been killed, and many Yemenis have been pushed toward famine while extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have taken advantage of the chaos to step up their operations. The strikes occurred in one of Sana’s most upscale districts, at a large reception hall that residents rent for weddings and to receive condolences after funerals. The funeral on Saturday was for the father of Galal a Houthi ally who serves as the interior minister. Mr. Rawishan was not killed in the strikes, but other officials were, including Abdulqader Hilal, the mayor of Sana. Videos posted online showed dead bodies strewn about the charred interior of the hall and streets filled with ambulances rushing the wounded to hospitals. Rima Kamal, a media officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Sana, said the group had donated 300 body bags as well as extra medical supplies to three hospitals to help them cope with the influx of dead and wounded. Eric Jeunot, the head of the Doctors Without Borders mission in Yemen, said that at least 400 people had been wounded in the attacks but that he was unsure of the death toll. “Many patients need surgery due to burns and trauma from shrapnel,” Mr. Jeunot wrote in a text message. “Some are still in critical situation in the hospitals. ” | 0fake |
BUCKLE UP: 2008 Was Just A “Warm-Up”…Facts Show The REAL Financial Crisis Is Coming | A fake economy can only sustain itself for so long The Fed is out of control, exclaims David Stockman perhaps best known for architecting Reagan s economic turnaround known as Morning in America adding that people don t want to hear the reality and the truth that we re facing. Well, it s one of the scariest moments I think in our history, but also we need to recognize we re in uncharted waters. No central bank has ever printed this much money this long, kept interest rates at zero, fueled so much speculation. Not just here, but worldwide.-David StockmanFor six years, the world has operated under a complete delusion that Central Banks somehow fixed the 2008 Crisis.All of the arguments claiming this defied common sense. A 5th grader would tell you that you cannot solve a debt problem by issuing more debt. If the below chart was a problem BEFORE 2008 there is no way that things are better now. After all, we ve just added another $10 trillion in debt to the US system.Similarly, anyone with a functioning brain could tell you that a bunch of academics with no real-world experience, none of whom have ever started a business or created a single job can t save the economy.However, there is an AWFUL lot of money at stake in believing these lies. So the media and the banks and the politicians were happy to promote them. Indeed, one could very easily argue that nearly all of the wealth and power held by those at the top of the economy stem from this fiction.So it s little surprise that no one would admit the facts: that the Fed and other Central Banks not only don t have a clue how to fix the problem, but that they actually have almost no incentive to do so.So here are the facts:1) The REAL problem for the financial system is the bond bubble. In 2008 when the crisis hit it was $80 trillion. It has since grown to over $100 trillion.2)The derivatives market that uses this bond bubble as collateral is over $555 trillion in size.3)Many of the large multinational corporations, sovereign governments, and even municipalities have used derivatives to fake earnings and hide debt. NO ONE knows to what degree this has been the case, but given that 20% of corporate CFOs have admitted to faking earnings in the past, it s likely a significant amount.4) Corporations today are more leveraged than they were in 2007. As Stanley Druckenmiller noted recently, in 2007 corporate bonds were $3.5 trillion today they are $7 trillion: an amount equal to nearly 50% of US GDP.5) The Central Banks are now all leveraged at levels greater than or equal to where Lehman Brothers was when it imploded. The Fed is leveraged at 78 to 1. The ECB is leveraged at over 26 to 1. Lehman Brothers was leveraged at 30 to 1.6) The Central Banks have no idea how to exit their strategies. Fed minutes released from 2009 show Janet Yellen was worried about how to exit when the Fed s balance sheet was $1.3 trillion (back in 2009). Today it s over $4.5 trillion.We are heading for a crisis that will be exponentially worse than 2008. The global Central Banks have literally bet the financial system that their theories will work. They haven t. All they ve done is set the stage for an even worse crisis in which entire countries will go bankrupt.The situation is clear: the 2008 Crisis was the warm up. The next Crisis will be THE REAL Crisis. The Crisis in which Central Banking itself will fail. Via: Zero HedgeDavid Stockman:Well, it s one of the scariest moments I think in our history, but also we need to recognize we re in uncharted waters. No central bank has ever printed this much money this long, kept interest rates at zero, fueled so much speculation. Not just here, but worldwide. Not just in the normal stocks and bonds, but the whole shale boom, for instance, in the United States was massively funded by cheap debt based on oil prices that weren t sustainable, and now that s all coming unwound. We have never had deficits of ten percent of GDP back to back, or even still four or five percent four or five years into a recovery.We have a runaway budget where the population is getting older and older, 10,000 people are retiring every day. Nothing is being done about Social Security. It s a festering time bomb, and we re not sure how it will explode, but we know it isn t sustainable. We have a Wall Street that is more addicted to pure overnight gambling and trading and speculation for the ultra short run that is driven by robo traders, the so-called HFT money, like never before. It s unstable. That s why we see things happen like the overnight 40 percent gain with the Swiss Franc when the Swiss National Bank pulled the pay.Forty percent overnight not overnight, but in a couple of minutes or seconds when there were hundreds of billions of short positions in the Swiss Franc. All of these things have never existed simultaneously, not only in the United States, but worldwide. All the central banks are doing it. We re reaching the point where it s unsustainable, things are going to give and break, but the good thing is it s going to be more a disaster in the financial markets in my view, less some kind of Great Depression impact on Main Street. It will be difficult on Main Street, but Wall Street is in the gun sites of this disaster coming. | 1real |
Trump discussed free trade pact with Japan's Abe, U.S. envoy says | TOKYO (Reuters) - President Donald Trump discussed a possible free trade agreement (FTA) with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his trip to Tokyo, the U.S. ambassador to Japan said on Friday, contradicting Japanese officials who had said such talks never took place. Japan has so far shown little interest in pursuing an FTA with the United States, preferring instead to push for a modified version of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) after Trump pulled his country from the pact. On Nov. 6, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters Trump had not mentioned an FTA when he met Abe for talks on relations between the two countries. At a news conference in the Japanese capital on Friday, however, the U.S. envoy, William Hagerty, said, They discussed a full range of trade options including an FTA. Washington may push Tokyo for an FTA to help reduce what it sees as an unfair trading deficit with Japan, Hagerty added. An FTA is one of the tools we may need to address that, he said. Trump returned to Washington this week after his first official visit to Asia, a 12-day tour that started with a two-night stay in Japan. | 0fake |
Putin discusses North Korean missile test with his security council: agencies | MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has discussed North Korea s latest missile launch with Russia s security council, Russian news agencies reported on Friday. Participants exchanged their views about the situation on the Korean Peninsula with regard to the new missile launch, agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying. Pyongyang fired a missile that flew over Japan s northern Hokkaido far out into the Pacific Ocean on Friday, deepening tension after its recent test of its most powerful nuclear bomb. | 0fake |
Iran's Khamenei says Moscow, Tehran cooperation can isolate U.S.: TV | ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Tehran and Moscow needed to step up cooperation to isolate the United States and restore peace in the Middle East, Iranian state TV reported. Full resolution of Syria s crisis needs strong cooperation between Iran and Russia ... Our cooperation can isolate America ... This cooperation will restore stability in the region, Khamenei said during a meeting with Putin, state TV added. | 0fake |
Russia's Lavrov says hopes Syrian congress to happen soon | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday he hoped that an international Syrian peace congress would take place in the near future. The Russian-sponsored Syrian peace congress scheduled for Nov. 18 was postponed after objections by Turkey, President Tayyip Erdogan s spokesman said over the weekend. Asked whether the congress was postponed, Lavrov told a briefing that the date had not been officially announced. He added that he hoped that the United Nations would support holding the congress. | 0fake |
Unarmed Black Man Tortured, Maimed, Then Executed By Mississippi Cop (VIDEO) | On the night of June 18, Tupelo, Mississippi police officer Tyler Cook pulled over a vehicle for what authorities say was a routine traffic stop. Minutes later, Ronnie Shumpert, a 37-year-old Black father of five, was brutalized, maimed and tortured by that officer. Then he was shot dead.It was 9:38 pm when officer Cook pulled over the vehicle Shumpert was driving. The car belonged to his friend, Charles Foster. Foster was with Shumpert in the car. He witnessed much of what happened that night.Shumpert had a felony warrant for his arrest, yet there s no way the officer could have known that at the time of the traffic stop. He was never ID d. The car he was driving was not registered in his name. To officer Cook, he was just another Black man behind the wheel of a car.As soon as Cook pulled the car over Shumpert ran. Officer Cook pursued him with a police canine.According to witnesses, Shumpert was hiding underneath a house when Cook found him.Police say he immediately attacked the officer and the dog. Witnesses say otherwise. Foster and others say Shumpert immediately tried to surrender, but Cook turned the dog loose on the unarmed man. It attacked his groin, ripping off his testicles.Autopsy photos show that there were deep gashes across his body. Several of Shumpert s teeth were knocked out, others were shoved into his gums.By this time Ronnie Shumpert was likely bleeding out from a gash so large you could fit a baseball in it. His testicles had been shredded by a vicious attack dog and he was suffering from devastating facial wounds. Yet Cook claims that the unarmed father was still a threat. That s why he had to execute him.According to Foster, less than five minutes passed before officer Cook shot Shumpert dead. He fired four shots. Three bullets ripped through Ronnie Shumpert s chest. A fourth bullet entered his stomach.Police say it was ten minutes before an ambulance was called. The nearest hospital was less than a minute away. Video from the night of the lynching shows an ambulance arriving one hour after Cook fired his weapon.Officer Cook has had excessive force complaints filed against him before. The most recent complaint was filed less than two months ago.According to Tupelo s white city attorney, Ben Logan, any accusations of racial profiling, police brutality and corruption in connection with the death of Ronnie Shumpert are just ridiculous. During a press conference held on June 27, Logan showed no concern over the nature and extent of Shumpert s injuries. Instead, he accused the dead man s family of being instigators, claiming that their cries for justice are endangering the peace of the community. Rather than being upset over the brutal torture and unjustifiable death of an unarmed Tupelo resident, Logan went on to stress that he is upset about statements made by the Shumpert family attorney, Carlos Moore, saying they shine a bad light on attorneys.Moore is calling on the Department of Justice to investigate the death of Ronnie Shumpert, as well as the entire Tupelo police department. The family is demanding that officer Cook be immediately terminated from the police force. They also want the canine that bit off Ronnie Shumpert s testicles retired immediately.Shumpert s family is also seeking answers from the police department. Some of the questions are about officer Cook s history and length of time on the force. They also want to know why the first ambulance arrived on the scene an hour after Ronnie Shumpert was shot.Aside from these demands, Moore is calling for the establishment of an independent citizen s review board to oversee accusations of police brutality and excessive force in Tupelo.Tupelo police are not equipped with body cameras. That s not acceptable in 2016.As reported by the Atlanta Black Star, New York Daily News and other media outlets, this was a modern day lynching. Out of sight of cameras, Officer Cook allowed his canine to mutilate Ronnie Shumpert in the most brutal way possible.Witness testimony shows that Shumpert was trying to surrender when Officer Cook and the canine attacked him. Autopsy photos demonstrate that after being brutalized by Cook and his attack dog, he was defenseless at the time the officer opened fire on him.Moore, accompanied by Ronnie Shumpert s family, held a press conference on June 27.Here s video from both the Shumpert family s press conference and the press conference held by Tupelo city attorney, Ben Logan, courtesy of Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal on YouTube. Image credit: Shumpert family photo | 1real |
null | my mums fitter than her | 1real |
The Pathologization of Dissent | Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
According to the mainstream media, in a recent speech in West Palm Beach, Donald Trump finally completely lost it. Sawing the air with his tiny hands in a unmistakeably Hitlerian manner, he spat out a series of undeniably hateful anti-Semitic code words … like “political establishment,” “global elites” and, yes, “international banks.” He even went so far as to claim that “corporations” and their (ahem) “lobbyists” have millions of dollars at stake in this election, and are trying to pass the TTP, not to benefit the American people, but simply to enrich themselves. He then went on to accuse the media of collaborating with “the Clinton machine,” presumably to benefit these “global elites” and “international banks” and “lobbyists.”
Now, a lot of folks didn’t immediately recognize the secret meanings of these fascistic code words, and so mistakenly assumed that “global elites” referred to the transnational capitalist ruling classes, and that “lobbyists” referred to actual lobbyists, and that “banks” meant … well … you know, banks. As it turned out, this was completely wrong. None of these words actually meant what they meant, not in anti-Semitic CodeSpeak. So the mainstream media translated for us. “Political establishment” meant “the Jews.” “Global elites” also meant “the Jews.” “Banks” meant “Jews.” “Lobbyists” meant “Jews.” Even “corporate media,” meant “Jews.” Apparently, Trump’s entire speech was a series of secret dog-whistle signals to his legions of neo-Nazi goons, who, immediately following Clinton’s victory, are going to storm out of their hidey holes, frontally attack the US military, overthrow the US government, and, yes, you guessed it … “kill the Jews.”
OK, maybe I’m exaggerating the mainstream media’s reaction just a little bit. Or maybe Trump’s speech really was that fascistic. Judge for yourself. Read the transcript. ( NPR offers a complete version of it here. ) Then compare the reactions of The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , Washington Post , The Inquirer , The Guardian , and other leading broadsheets, and magazines and blogs like Mother Jones , Forward , Slate , Salon , Vox , Alternet , and a host of others, most of which rely on Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League and former Special Assistant to the President, as their authoritative source on Trumpian cryptology. (Mr. Greenblatt, incidentally, should know better, given the treatment he has received from hard-line Zionist publications for refusing to demonize Black Lives Matter, and for “taking sides against” the State of Israel.)
Look, I’m not defending Donald Trump, who I consider a self-aggrandizing idiot and a soulless huckster of the lowest order, and whose supporters include a lot of real anti-Semites, and racists, and misogynists, and other such creeps. I’m simply trying to point out how the corporate media have, for months, been playing the same hysterical tune like an enormous Goebbelsian keyboard instrument, and how millions of Americans are singing along (as they were before the invasion of Iraq, which posed no threat to the USA , but which according to the media had WMDs), and how terribly fucking disturbing that is. In case you didn’t instantly recognize it, the name of the tune is “This guy is Hitler!” and it isn’t the short vulgarian fingers of Donald Trump that are tickling the ivories. And no, it isn’t “the Jews” either. It’s the corporate media, and the corporations that own them, and the rest of the global capitalist ruling classes … in other words, those “global elites.”
The thing I find particularly disturbing is how these rather mundane observations — i.e., (a) that a global ruling class exists, (b) that it’s primarily corporate in character, (c) that this class is pursuing its interests and not the interests of sovereign states — how such observations are being stigmatized as the ravings of unhinged anti-Semites. This stigmatization is not limited to Trumpists. Anyone to the left of Clinton is now, apparently, an anti-Semite. For example, Roger Cohen, in The New York Times , riding the tsunami of condemnation of the insidious verbiage of Trump’s West Palm speech, executed an extended smear-job on Jeremy Corbyn and his “Corbynistas” (they’re fond of coining these epithets, the media), denouncing their virulent “anti-Americanism,” “anti-Capitalism,” “anti-globalism,” and “anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.”
Which, let me hasten to add, and stress, and underscore, and repeatedly emphasize, is not to imply that the Labour Party, or the British Left, or the American Left, or any other Left, is anti-Semitism-free. Of course not. There are anti-Semites everywhere. That isn’t the point. Or it isn’t my point.
My point is that this stigmatization campaign is part of a much larger ideological project, one that has little to do with Trump, or Jeremy Corbyn, or their respective parties. Smearing one’s political opponents is nothing new, of course, it’s as old as the hills. But what we’re witnessing is more than smears. As I proposed in these pages back in July , political dissent is being gradually pathologized (i.e., stigmatized as aberrant or “abnormal” behavior, as opposed to a position meriting discussion). Consider the abnormalization of Sanders, back when he was talking about “banks,” “global elites,” and other things that matter, or the media’s portrayal of British voters as racists in the wake of the Brexit referendum. And, yes, the charges being leveled against Trump, much as we might despise the man. Anti-Semitism, inciting violence, paranoid conspiracy theorizing, insurrection, treason, et cetera — these are not legitimate arguments one needs to counter with superior arguments; they are symptoms of deviations from a norm, signs of criminality or pathology, which is increasingly how the corporate ruling classes are dismissing anyone who attempts to challenge them.
A line is being drawn in the ideological sand. On one side of it are the decent people, the normal people, in their business wear, with their university degrees, and prescriptions, and debts. On the other side are … well, the deplorables, the ignorant, racist, anti-Semitic, neo-nationalist, populist extremists. This line cuts through both the Left and the Right … supersedes both Left and Right, making bedfellows of supposed adversaries like Obama, Clinton, Kagan, Wolfowitz, Scowcroft, and their ilk on the Normal team, and a motley crew of Trumpists, Putinists, European populists, Corbynistas, Sandernistas, socialists, anarchists, Wikileakers, anti-Zionists, anti-capitalists, neo-Nazis, Black Lives Matterers, angry Greek pensioners, environmental activists, religious zealots, the Klu Klux Klan, David Graeber, most of the contributors to CounterPunch, and various other “extremist” types, many of whom detest each other, in the Deplorables’ current starting line-up.
The corporate media is sending a message … a message aimed at a much broader audience than undecided American voters (assuming such creatures really exist). The message is, “get with the fucking program, or get stigmatized as an anti-Semite, or a racist, or a Russian spy, or whatever.” The message is, “drop the populist rhetoric, shut the hell up about the Wall Street banks, and the corporations, and the ‘one percent,’ and … actually … forget about politics completely, except for identity politics, of course. Go ahead and knock yourself out with that.” The message is, “you’re either with us or against us … and it doesn’t matter why you’re against us, or what it is you think you’re for. Right, Left … who gives a shit? It’s one big Basket of Deplorables to us.”
This message, of course, displays many of the hallmarks of the classic authoritarian mentality, the need for nearly total conformity, mindless allegiance to one’s so-called superiors, delegitimization of all opposing viewpoints, and the infantile type of hero-worship figures like Obama and Clinton inspire … not the old-fashioned authoritarianism that would-be despots like Trump represent, but, rather, a more attractive version, a hopey, changey, lovey version, where there are no frightening Hitlerian leaders barking out anti-Semitic code words, and no one is exterminating thousands of people in faraway countries they want to destabilize in order to entirely dominate the region. No, this is the version where Obama sells the TPP on the Jimmy Fallon show, and wars of aggression are not wars of aggression, but “humanitarian interventions.” It’s also the version where universal healthcare is, regrettably, “unrealistic,” but $38 billion for the State of Israel so it can operate its Apartheid State, and weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, so they can bomb the shit out of farmers in Yemen, and cut off people’s heads for blasphemy, is somehow in “America’s vital interests.”
But what do I know? I’m just a satirist. I should probably leave all this complex stuff, like what is and isn’t in my interest, and what words really mean and all that, to the experts in the mainstream media. Since they did so well decoding Trump’s speech, maybe they could translate some of these other code words I’ve been having trouble with, like the ones I put in scare quotes above, or other such code words, like “enemy combatant,” “free trade agreement,” “security barrier,” “indefinite detention,” “targeted killing,” or “troubled asset relief program.”
I could go on, but I probably shouldn’t. Odds are, I’m already on the list of Putin-worshiping, anti-Semitic, racist, misogynist, neo-nationalist, non-standing up for the National Anthem, conspiracy theorizing America-haters. The last thing I need to do at this point is start jabbering about how the United States is an authoritarian corporatist dystopia ruled by a global capitalist elite that couldn’t give less of a shit about Americans (or any other actual people living in any other actual countries), where the corporate media can whip up mass fanatical support for wars of aggression, or corporate puppets, by pointing their fingers at yet another bogeyman and shouting “Hitler” at the top of their lungs. Next thing you know I’d be writing about “banks,” and “global corporations,” and “national sovereignty,” and we all know what that’s about, don’t we?
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (US). He can reached at his website, cjhopkins.com, or at consentfactory.org. (Reprinted from Counterpunch by permission of author or representative) | 1real |
SOUR GRAPES? Whatever happened to the ‘smooth transition of power’ that Obama vowed? | Andrew Malcolm McClatchy News You better stop stealing money from your mother s purse, young man, or I will punish you late this year or perhaps sometime in 2018, said no parent who was serious about punishment.Yet that s pretty much what President Obama did with his old-fashioned expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats over alleged political hacking by Moscow interests going back 18 months.A very strange retro-response from a president who mocked Mitt Romney for suggesting in 2012 that Russia was America s worst strategic threat. Obama said: The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War s been over for 20 years. As has often happened when Obama shoots from the lip sans teleprompter (think his red line in Syria, ISIS is a JV squad), the aloof one is wrong.Obama s been golfing and snorkeling in Hawaii since mid-December. But he left orders for a number of last-minute steps, including more ineffective sanctions against Russia and a stunning historic break with Israel. Indeed, these measures smell more of vengeance than practical policy.Petty political ploys are standard operating procedure back in the Chicago wards that spawned Obama s career. They re less expected at the presidential level. In fact, Russia s president declined to retaliate Continue this story at McClatchy Newspapers READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21WIRE 2016 Files | 1real |
Punishment Is Violent And Counterproductive | Punishment Is Violent And Counterproductive By Robert J Burrowes
Punishment is a popular pastime for humans. Parents punish children. Teachers punish students. Employers punish workers. Courts punish lawbreakers. People punish each other. Governments punish enemies. And, according to some, God punishes evildoers.
What is punishment? Punishment is the infliction of violence as revenge on a person who is judged to have behaved inappropriately. It is a key word we use when we want to obscure from ourselves that we are being violent.
The violence inflicted as punishment can take many forms, depending on the context. It might involve inflicting physical injury and/or pain, withdrawal of approval or love, confinement/imprisonment, a financial penalty, dismissal, withdrawal of rights/privileges, denial of promised rewards, an order to perform a service, banishment, torture or death, among others.
Given the human preoccupation with punishment, it is perhaps surprising that this behaviour is not subjected to more widespread scrutiny. Mind you, I can think of many human behaviours that get less scrutiny than would be useful.
Anyway, because I am committed to facilitating functional human behaviour, I want to explain why using violence to punish people is highly dysfunctional and virtually guarantees an outcome opposite to that intended.
Punishment is usually inflicted by someone who makes a judgment that another person has behaved badly or wrongly. At its most basic, disobedience (that is, failure to comply with elite imposed norms) is often judged in this way, whether by parents, teachers, religious figures, lawmakers or national governments.
But is obedience functional or even appropriate?
Consider this. In order to behave optimally, the human organism requires that all mental functions feelings, thoughts, memory, conscience, sensory perception (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste), truth register, intuition must be developed and readily involved, without interference, in our life. If this happens, then all of these individual functions will play an integrated role in determining our behaviour in any given circumstance. This is a very sophisticated mental apparatus that has evolved over billions of years and if it was allowed to function without interference in each individual, human beings would indeed be highly functional.
So where does obedience fit into all of this? It doesnt. A child is genetically programmed to seek to meet their own needs, not obey the will of another. And they will behave functionally in endeavouring to meet these needs unless terrorized out of doing so. Moreover, they will learn to meet their own needs, by acting individually in some circumstances and by cooperating with others when appropriate, if their social environment models this.
However, if a child is terrorized into being obedient including by being punished when they are not then the child will have no choice but to suppress their awareness of the innate mental capacities that evolved over billions of years to guide their behaviour until they have learned what they must do to avoid being punished. For a fuller explanation of this, see Why Violence? http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice. http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/
Unfortunately, as you can probably readily perceive, this process of terrorizing a child into suppressing their awareness of what they want to do so that they do what someone else directs is highly problematical. And it leads to a virtually infinite variety of dysfunctional behaviours, even for those who appear to have been successfully socialized into performing effectively in their society. This is readily illustrated.
Perhaps the central problem of terrorizing individuals into obedience of conventions, commands, rules and the law is that once the individual has been so terrorized, it is virtually impossible for them to change their behaviour because they are now terrified of doing so. If the obedient behaviours were functional in the circumstances then, apart from the obviously enormous damage suffered by the individual, there would be no other adverse social or environmental consequences.
Unfortunately, when all humans have been terrorized into behaving dysfunctionally on a routine basis (in the Western context, for example, by engaging in over-consumption) then changing their behaviour, even in the direction of functionality, is now unconsciously associated with the fear of violence (in the form of punishment) and so desirable behavioural change (in the direction of reduced consumption, for example) is much more difficult. It is not just that many Western humans are reluctant to reduce their consumption in line with environmental (including climatic) imperatives, they are unconsciously terrified of doing so.
By now you might be able to see the wider ramifications of using violence and threats of violence to force children into being obedient. Apart from terrorizing each child into suppressing their awareness of their innate mental capacities, we create individuals whose entire (unconscious) understanding of human existence is limited to the notion that violence, mislabeled punishment, drives socialization and society.
As just one result, for example, most people consider punishment to be appropriate in the context of the legal system: they expect courts to inflict legally-sanctioned violence on those guilty of disobeying the law. As in the case of the punishment of children, how many people ask Does violence restore functional behaviour? Or does it simply inflict violence as revenge? What do we really want to achieve? And how will we achieve that?
Fundamentally, the flaw with violence as punishment is that violence terrifies people. And you cannot terrorize someone into behaving functionally. At very best, you can terrorize someone into changing their behaviour in an extremely limited context and/or for an extremely limited period of time. But if you want functional and lasting change in an individuals behaviour, then considerable emotional healing will be necessary. This will allow the suppressed fear, anger, sadness and other feelings resulting from childhood terrorization to safely resurface and be expressed so that the individual can perceive their own needs and identify ways of fulfilling them (which does not mean that they will be obedient). For an explanation of what is required, see Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening which is referenced in My Promise to Children. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/constructive-program/my-promise-to-children/
So next time you hear a political leader or corporate executive advocating or using violence (such as war, the curtailment of civil liberties, an economically exploitative and/or ecologically destructive initiative), remember that you are observing a highly dysfunctionalized individual. Moreover, this dysfunctional individual is a logical product of our societys unrelenting use of violence, much of it in the form of what is euphemistically called punishment, against our children in the delusional belief that it will give us obedience and hence social control.
Or next time you hear a public official, judge, terrorist or police officer promising justice (that is, retribution), remember that you are listening to an emotionally damaged individual who suffered enormous violence as a child and internalized the delusional message that punishment works.
You might also ponder how bad it could be if we didnt require obedience and use punishment to get it, but loved and nurtured children, by listening to them deeply, to become the unique, enormously loving and powerful individuals for which evolution genetically programmed them.
I am well aware that what I am suggesting will take an enormous amount of societal rethinking and a profound reallocation of resources away from violent and highly profitable police, legal, prison and military systems. But, as I wrote above, I am committed to facilitating functional human behaviour. I can also think of some useful ways that we could allocate the resources if we didnt waste them on violence.
If you share this commitment and working towards this world appeals to you too, then you are welcome to consider participating in the fifteen-year strategy outlined in The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth http://tinyurl.com/flametree and to consider signing the online pledge of The Peoples Charter to Create a Nonviolent World. http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com
Punishment can sometimes appear to get you the outcome you want in the short term. The cost is that it always moves you further away from any desirable outcome in the long run.
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence? http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com | 1real |
Hillary Clinton celebrates her birthday on Spanish TV show and spins her eyes for our entertainment... | Opinion - Conservative | (Before It's News)
I'm about to be seriously un-PC.
Hillary Clinton appeared yesterday on El Gordo y la Flaca, a Univision TV show. I would never ask my loyal readers to watch these videos in their entirety. However, it is clear Hillary does not have custody of her eye movements. In the first video you can stop at 7s, 15s, and 31s to witness her whacked out eyes.
At the 1:35 mark of the second video, Hillary is introduced by a “little person” who conveniently helps her down the stairs on to the set. Hop up to 4:12, 6:01, 6:10, and 6:21 to see her eyes scramble. It is particularly noticeable at 6:10.
Does the following make me a racist?
If you'd like to know what Hillary is talking about in the second video you'll have to be able to speak Spanish since the translator speaks over Hillary. What happened to immigrants having to speak English to become a citizen? If the people watching this need to have it translated in order to know what Hillary is saying, then why are they allowed to vote? | 1real |
Thai junta sets firm date for election after many false starts | BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand will hold a general election in November 2018, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Tuesday, the most precise date he has given yet for the vote since taking power in a 2014 military coup. Prayuth, head of the ruling junta, said the exact date would be announced in June 2018. The junta has announced election dates at least two times in the past, only to push them back later, citing concerns such as changes to the constitution and security issues. Around June we will announce the date for the next election, Prayuth told reporters at Bangkok s Government House. In November we will have an election. Former army chief Prayuth, who led the May 2014 coup widely criticized by Western nations, said it was necessary to end a decade of political turbulence and root out corruption. In April, King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed into law a military-backed constitution that kickstarts the process for an election the junta has promised will restore democracy. The new charter provides for a proportional voting system likely to reduce the influence of major political parties, which critics say aims to strengthen the role of the military. Analysts expect political activities to resume slowly after the funeral of King Bhumibol Adulyadej this month ends a year of mourning for a monarch many Thais saw as a father figure. Prayuth wants to delay the election but he knows that after the king s cremation, there will be pressure for an election, said Kan Yuenyong of the Siam Intelligence Unit think tank. This announcement for the election in November next year will act to reduce that pressure, because if not, there could be chances for protests, he told Reuters. Thailand s main stock index rose 0.7 percent after the news, having opened Tuesday down 0.3 percent. The government has faced increasing pressure to lift a ban on political activities levied soon after the coup. Prayuth will consider lifting the ban at an appropriate time , he told reporters, without giving details. The junta had initially promised an election in 2015, after seizing power from the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin s governments, or those backed by him, have won every election since 2001, partly because of their overwhelming popularity with politically-powerful rural voters. But the Shinawatras made enemies, including those among the military-backed establishment who accused Thaksin and his allies of corruption. Thaksin was ousted in 2006 and lives abroad in self-imposed exile. Yingluck followed suit in August, when she fled Thailand ahead of the verdict in a criminal case. Some politicians expressed skepticism over the election date. It isn t really believable, because they have changed it many times, said Chaturon Chaisang, a member of Thaksin s Puea Thai Party. Ong-art Klampaiboon, deputy leader of the Democrat Party, Puea Thai s biggest competitor, welcomed the news. The election date creates clarity, Ong-art said. This should be good for the country and the people. | 0fake |
Despite Climate Change Vow, China Pushes to Dig More Coal - The New York Times | JINCHENG, China — America’s uncertain stance toward global warming under the coming administration of Donald J. Trump has given China a leading role in the fight against climate change. It has called on the United States to recognize established science and to work with other countries to reduce dependence on dirty fuels like coal and oil. But there is a problem: Even as it does so, China is scrambling to mine and burn more coal. A lack of stockpiles and worries about electricity blackouts are spurring Chinese officials to reverse curbs that once helped reduce coal production. Mines are reopening. Miners are being lured back with fatter paychecks. China’s response to coal scarcity shows how hard it will be to wean the country off coal. That makes it harder for China and the world to meet emissions targets, as Chinese coal is the world’s largest single source of carbon emissions from human activities. Among China watchers, the turnabout also has contributed to questions about the fate of China’s current crop of economic planners. Here in Jincheng, a smoggy city in China’s coal country, the has led to a steady hum of activity. On a recent afternoon, other trains stopped to make way for two electric locomotives, their horns blowing, pulling more than 50 empty coal hopper cars ready to be filled. Large trucks now form lines. Allan Zhang, an electrician who works at a mine here, said his employer had raised monthly pay by nearly 50 percent since the summer. Two years ago brought “the autumn of coal, and 2015 and earlier this year were the winter of coal,” Mr. Zhang said. “Now is the springtime of coal. ” The revival of coal production shows the flaws in the country’s evolution from central planning to the free market. China’s coal problems stem from a series of official decisions that ramped up activity from industries even as they curbed mining output. Speculators in China’s volatile financial markets, already prone to producing bubbles, ran up the price of coal. Weather and other setbacks haven’t helped. Coal still produces almost of China’s electricity, despite ambitious hydroelectric dam projects and the world’s largest program to install solar panels and build wind turbines. Coal use in China also produces more emissions than all the oil, coal and gas consumed in the United States. “I get a kick out of people in the West who think China is decarbonizing, because I see no sign of it whatsoever,” said Brock Silvers, a Shanghai banker who has previously served on the boards of two Chinese coal companies. Troubled by pollution and worries about rising sea levels, China moved in recent months to rein in coal. Coal production dropped 3 percent last year — a result of that effort, but also a sign of slowing economic growth as well as a gradual shift in the Chinese economy toward consumer spending and away from exports and heavy manufacturing. That prompted the International Energy Agency to offer an optimistic reassessment this autumn: Chinese coal use peaked in 2013 and would now decline. China’s reversal now is prompting skepticism. “There is still a peak coming,” said Xizhou Zhou, the head of Asia and Pacific gas and power analysis at IHS Energy, a global consulting group. “It’s still going to increase. ” IHS Energy forecasts that Chinese coal demand will not peak until 2026. Johannes Trüby, a senior coal and power analyst at the International Energy Agency, said that trends in the Chinese economy meant that China’s coal use would decline over all. But with China stepping up production now, he said, “We cannot exclude the possibility of a transient spike in coal demand in the next couple years that might take demand above 2013. ” The coal situation has put China’s powerful economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, under pressure. Many executives and Chinese political experts predict that coal problems could be the final straw in a long list of difficulties that could lead President Xi Jinping to replace the agency’s director, Xu Shaoshi. Mr. Xu is 65, an age at which Chinese ministers often retire, unless they are kept on to serve their terms or are promoted to vice premier. One of those experts, Christopher K. Johnson, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that such a move “would be consistent with other recent personnel changes” by Mr. Xi, who is chief of the Communist Party, to eliminate officials beholden to other factions. That could clear the way for Mr. Xu to be replaced by Liu He, a deputy director of the agency who is close to Mr. Xi. Agency officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As a matter of policy, China says it is still committed to global efforts to stem climate change. When environmental officials from around the world gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, to discuss climate change this month, Xie Zhenhua, the leader of China’s delegation, took an indirect swipe at Mr. Trump, saying, “a wise leader will follow the global and historical trend. ” Two years ago, cutting emissions looked easier for Beijing to achieve. China’s electricity consumption was stalling, and many power plants began operating only half the time. But coal mining enterprises, flush with loans from banks, kept building more mines, leading to losses and dropping coal prices. China began closing smaller, privately owned mines, cutting production while clamping down on some of the places that have made Chinese coal mining so dangerous. Just last summer, economic planners told mines they were not allowed to operate more than 276 days a year. But developments were coming together to push prices up. Chinese investors piled into Chinese commodities markets, betting prices would rise. This became a prophecy, as more speculators rushed in and bought more coal when prices rose. An unusually hot summer and early autumn added to power demand. China’s banking regulators decided to let banks release a flood of mortgages to home buyers to bolster economic growth. That produced strong demand for electricity from the steel and cement industries. Along the way, China had a run of bad luck. Flooding disrupted mines and rail routes last spring. A government decision to withdraw many trains from service this year for a new safety improvement campaign made it difficult to deliver supplies quickly. As a result, Chinese coal prices almost doubled from the start of this year until early November. “It’s actually quite fascinating, how all of these things have come together,” said Arnoud Balhuizen, the president of marketing and supply at BHP Billiton, the Australian mining giant. In recent weeks, China changed course. It halted most coal trading on commodities markets and encouraged mines to sign contracts at low prices with power stations. This month, the National Development and Reform Commission raised the number of days that mines could operate to 330 days per year. China will most likely be able to avoid blackouts, said Chang Yijun, the president of Shanxi Fenwei Energy, a regional coal consulting firm, who added that remaining output caps like the rule would still limit growth in emissions of greenhouse gases. Residents in mining towns are delighted. An avenue here in Jincheng is lined with huge billboards, each carrying the same cheery message: “Coal prices are going up, and miners are smiling. ” Mr. Zhang, the mine electrician, said that his mine’s work force had shrunk from 300 two years ago to a maintenance crew of eight early this year, but that it had now expanded to 60 and the mine was still hiring. The mine’s stockpile of coal has nearly vanished. As more coal is hauled up from far underground, it is trucked away within two hours. “Last spring, there were no lines of trucks,” he said. “Now there are so many. ” | 0fake |
Abe, Trump agree to raise pressure on North Korea: Japan government | TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to work together to raise pressure on North Korea, Yasutoshi Nishimura, a deputy chief cabinet secretary, said on Monday. Abe and Trump spoke by telephone after the Japanese premier s ruling coalition scored a big win in an election on Sunday. Nishimura told reporters that Abe and Trump were planning to play golf together on Nov. 5, when Trump makes his first visit to Japan. | 0fake |
Tactical Augmented Reality Gives Soldiers a Video Game-Style HUD on the Battlefield - Breitbart | “Tactical Augmented Reality” will provide a video display to soldiers for superior situational awareness in the field. [It looks similar to a pair of night vision goggles but is far more. Tactical Augmented Reality (TAR) replaces both NVGs and GPS while offering visual cues and vital data directly to soldiers. Richard Nabors is an associate for strategic planning at U. S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command’s Research, Development and Engineering Center, or CERDEC. He spoke about TAR at the Pentagon’s most recent Lab Day. Nabors described the GPS system that most soldiers currently employ. It depends on a technology which allows soldiers to approximate their position if they have aligned an image they can observe with a reference image. The TAR system will handle this process automatically, allowing soldiers to more precisely know not only their own position but that of allied and enemy forces. Staff Sgt. Ronald Geer, a counterterrorism officer at CERDEC’s Night Vision and Electronics Sensors Directorate, said soldiers won’t even need an independent GPS device at all. Instead of fiddling with the accessory, they will simply see a map overlaid on the terrain in front of them through a eyepiece. The TAR is connected to a tablet on their belt, as well as the thermal sight on their rifle. This creates a seamless HUD with more similarities to video games than to anything we’ve seen in military tech thus far. The soldier can use the gun as a deadly periscope, lifting it above cover without exposing themselves to danger. The device can split its screen to give feedback from both the eyepiece and the sight, so a soldier can also look in multiple directions simultaneously. In fact, these visuals can be shared with other soldiers, giving the entire squad a level of collective intelligence that could change the entire way in which we approach tactical situations. David Fellowes, an electronics engineer at CERDEC, expects the devices to both save lives and contribute to the success of future missions. It’s not hard to see why. They have been working since 2008 to develop the necessary miniaturization technology to allow for these dynamic visuals to fit on the display. After nearly a decade of development, the U. S. Army is turning Ghost Recon into reality. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both. | 0fake |
’Extreme Vetting’ May Include Ideological Test | A plan by President Donald Trump’s administration to “extreme vet’ foreign refugees entering the U. S. in the hundreds every week could include an ideological test. [The Trump Administration is looking at a number of ways to vet foreigners entering the U. S. through a more rigorous, extensive process that would include asking whether or not an individual has the same values as American citizens, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Officials working on the vetting process also said foreigners could be asked to disclose their social media passwords, past financial records and cell phone data — coupled with questions on ideology. Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Mark Krikorian told Breitbart Texas that he thinks the vetting process being considered is “necessary. ” “The idea is that we shouldn’t just screen people who may commit violence against us, but that we should also be keeping out people who hate our values,” Krikorian said in an interview. “Especially for immigrants, people who are going to be here. It’s less important for foreign tourists. But, we should try to keep people out from our society who hate us. ” Krikorian said that unlike Trump’s twice executive order which halted travel flow into the U. S. from specific countries, the vetting process would need to apply to all newcomers. “It can’t be because you could have people who hate our values coming from any country,” Krikorian said. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Trump’s promise of extreme vetting remained important, predominantly as a national security issue. “If there is any doubt about a person’s intentions coming to the United States, they should have to overcome — really and truly prove to our satisfaction — that they are coming for legitimate reasons,” Senior Counselor to Secretary John Kelly, Gene Hamilton told the Wall Street Journal. Most recently, Breitbart News reported how the State Department is increasing the number of refugees that are admitted into the U. S. pushing that figure to about 900 per week. Refugee resettlement expert Ann Corcoran told Breitbart Texas that major reforms to the refugee program are imperative under the Trump Administration. “This is our only opportunity right now to reform the refugee program,” Corcoran said in an interview. “If it doesn’t happen now, it will never be reformed. ” Corcoran says an executive order to slow the flow of refugees being resettled from primarily nations is not necessary, telling Breitbart Texas that Trump “has enormous power over this issue. ” “I am particularly concerned that the Trump Administration doesn’t understand the program,” Corcoran said. “And I’m afraid they’re being rolled by the bureaucrats. ” John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
BOILER ROOM – EP #54 – America… The End is Nigh | Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST every Wednesday. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Randy J of 21Wire, Andy Nowicki from Alt Right Blogspot and Daniel Spaulding of Soul of the East and Jay Dyer from Jays Analysis. Tonight the Boiler Gang brings the internet show with more twists and turns than a Texas tornado. Spore opens the episode with shocking truths about the treatment of show dolphins and how they are manipulated, the use of Dolphins in MK Ultra backed military programs, we begrudgingly approach the bathroom topic. We pose the question: Can America or any other atlanticist country break free of the globalism goals of the New World Order and can it even be done at a national level when the financial system is already internationally globalized by technocrat oligarchs? We laugh at John Kirby dragging his reputation through the muck while blatantly engaging in Orwellian double speak to the press corp, the death of Pop/Rock Icon, Prince leads to a new radio show idea live on air, Trump gets some choice words in with regard to US failed foreign policy in the Middle East and the unfortunate DEATH of Comedy as PC becomes the way of the youth. If you want to participate, bring something interesting to throw into the boiler Join us in the ALTERNATE CURRENT RADIO chat room.BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! LISTEN TO THE SHOW IN THE PLAYER BELOW ENJOY! REFERENCE LINKS: | 1real |
Syrian army and Iranian proxies demand surrender of rebels near Israel border | AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebels pinned down in a strategic area where the Israeli and Lebanese borders meet with Syria were handed an ultimatum by the Syrian army and its Iranian-backed militia allies to either surrender or face certain military defeat, rebels said on Tuesday. The Syrian army backed by local militias financed and equipped by Iran alongside Druze fighters from the area have been escalating a fierce assault against Sunni rebels in an enclave in the foothills of Mount Hermon, close to both the Israeli and Lebanese borders. They were given 72 hours to surrender with fighters to go to Idlib or those who want to stay have to reach a settlement, said Ibrahim al-Jebawi, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) official familiar with the situation on the ground. Another rebel official who asked not to be named said they were told either to surrender or a military solution. The rebels have now been left encircled in Beit Jin, their main stronghold after losing strategic hills and farms around it this week after over two months of near daily shelling and aerial strikes. Iran-backed Lebanon s Hezbollah s media unit said insurgents had agreed to negotiate surrender terms and said negotiations had already begun over their evacuation in the next few days to rebel-held Idlib. The Syrian army has used similar tactics of pushing opponents to rebel areas further from the Syrian capital after a twin tactic of siege and months of strikes on residential areas. There were also more than 8,000 civilians who have been trapped in the remaining enclaves with their plight worsening, according to rebel spokesman Sohaib Alraheel. Israel, which Syria accuses of helping the rebels, is alarmed at the growing Iranian military influence in the Golan Heights and has stepped up its strikes against pro-Iranian targets inside Syria. Israel has been lobbying both big powers to deny Iran, Lebanon s Hezbollah and other Shi ite militias any permanent bases in Syria, and to keep them away from the Golan, as they gain ground while helping Damascus beat back Sunni-led rebels. Early this month there was an Israeli strike on a base near Kiswah, south of Damascus, that was widely believed to be an Iranian military compound, a Western intelligence source said. Hezbollah s bastion in southern Lebanon is only a few kms from the rebel enclave, and securing a supply line from its stronghold into Syria s Quneitra province was a major strategic gain, rebels and defense analysts say. Now Hezbollah will have a bigger foothold on the Syrian side of the Golan and it is desperate to link this area with southern Lebanon, al-Jebawi added. Israel had warned Hezbollah against trying to open a front in the Golan Heights and was believed to be behind the killing a prominent commander in an air strike in 2015 whom the group later admitted had overseen a local Hezbollah presence in the area. This is an effort by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah to expand the lines of engagement with Israel. The question is will Israel allow that? said Fayez al Dweiri, a retired Jordanian general who follows Syria closely. | 0fake |
Black College Professor: I Was Handcuffed By White Cops For A Parking Ticket | A black college professor from New Jersey is alleging that police officers detained her over a parking ticket, handcuffing her to a table and subjecting her to a search.Dr. Imani Perry, an African-American studies professor at Princeton University, said she was mistreated by two white police officers because of her race.According to a New York Times interview with police Capt. Nicholas K. Sutter, a computer search found that Perry had an outstanding arrest warrant for unpaid parking tickets from 2013, and she was arrested.Dr. Perry wrote about her arrest on Twitter and Facebook, saying it left her humiliated and frightened. She said she was on her way to work when she was pulled over for a single parking ticket three years ago. She said that the male officer conducted a body search on her even though a female officer was present. She said that she was not allowed to make a phone call before she was put into the squad car, and that she was later handcuffed to a table at the station.Writing on Twitter, Perry said she received criticism from conservative observers who insisted she brought her predicament on herself, There are a number of commentators online who have repeated to me an all-too-common formulation: Well, if you hadn t done anything wrong this wouldn t have happened. But this demand for behavioral perfection from Black people in response to disproportionate policing and punishment is a terrible red herring. Perry s case is the most recent in a string of incidents that have received exposure online, in which it appears police officers have put black citizens under extra scrutiny, in some cases leading to their deaths in the case of people like Sandra Bland.In turn, this has led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, in which greater accountability and oversight of police officers is being demanded. By contrast, conservatives have insisted that this accountability is part of a war on cops. Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
Will Lame-duck Obama Implement More Radical Agenda Items Before End of Term? | Email
In American political terminology, “lame duck” refers to a politician whose term is drawing to a close. That of course describes President Barack Obama, who will turn over the keys to the White House to President-elect Donald Trump on January 20, 2017. Several past presidents have used the time between the presidential election and the inauguration of their successors to issue controversial executive orders, make “midnight appointments,” and grant controversial pardons.
After President John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1800, he used this time to make a multitude of political appointments, including filling the post of chief of justice of the Supreme Court with John Marshall. Adams left office in 1801, but Marshall remained on the court until 1835. (This is a dramatic illustration of the importance placed on Supreme Court appointments during the just-past presidential campaign.) The Republican-controlled Senate has already made clear that Obama will not be allowed to make a repeat of that history-changing nomination, opting to not even hold hearings on Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, offered as a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
But Obama still holds the reins of executive power until Trump takes the oath of office, and there are many more radical moves he could make in an effort to extend his influence beyond the end of his term of office.
One area of concern, based on his previous actions, includes his pushing the envelope on the role of the executive branch in the enforcement of federal regulations. For example, Obama has pressured public schools across America to open their showers and restrooms to transgender students. Under this policy, the Obama Department of Education used Title IX statutes to argue that refusal to allow, for example, a male student to walk into a shower with female students, if that student claims to self-identify as a girl, is an act of discrimination not allowed under federal law. And if these schools refuse to follow Obama’s policy, they are threatened with the loss of federal funds. Of course, the federal statutes refer to discrimination on the basis of sex, and no one can seriously contend that those statutes were enacted decades ago with transgender students in mind.
And that was before the 2016 presidential election, when such a policy could hurt Democratic congressional candidates, or even the presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. What will Obama do if he no longer has any such concern? Will he take even bolder action in the time he has left?
Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy with the American Action Forum, has said that five major rule changes in areas such as renewable fuels and methane are still awaiting action by Obama. With Trump unlikely to advance the radical environmental agenda of Obama, there may well be some move by the outgoing president in this area before the inauguration in January.
Obama has regularly demonstrated a disregard for the doctrine of separation of powers. Under this important doctrine, the Constitution explicitly gives to Congress all legislative power enumerated in the Constitution. Yet faced with a Congress that has refused to pass legislation favored by Obama in areas such as immigration, he has not hesitated to use “executive orders” to implement this agenda anyway.
Considering that restricting out-of-control immigration was a major campaign theme of Trump, will Obama issue yet another executive order in this area, believing nothing will happen to change it for the next four years?
“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” Obama said back in 2014. “And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward."
Some of Obama’s previous executive orders have been challenged in court and sometimes blocked by federal judges on the grounds that he exceeded his powers. Yet he has not backed off in using executive orders to, in effect, make law. He has declared, “One of the things that I’m going to be talking to my Cabinet about is how do we use all the tools available to use, not just legislation , in order to advance a mission that I think unifies all Americans.” (Emphasis added.)
Surely Obama does not believe using executive orders to circumvent Congress and the Constitution is somehow “unifying.”
Other presidents have certainly issued executive orders, going all the way back to George Washington. But this misses the point. Executive orders are a legitimate exercise of presidential power — if they are directed to members of the executive branch, to implement an act of Congress, or in some cases, concerning court decisions. Contrary to Obama’s assertions, however, they are not a constitutional method of making law, as the Constitution clearly states that all that power belongs to Congress. All does not leave any such legislative power to the president.
One subject that could be of more immediate concern during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal negotiated by Obama, but with which Congress has yet to take action. With President Trump an ardent opponent of the deal, it will most likely be withdrawn from congressional consideration after January 20 of next year. Knowing that, Obama may make a major effort to push the pact through in the lame-duck session. One might remember that President Bill Clinton did the same thing with NAFTA during his term as president. And since far too many Republican members of Congress, and even leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan favor the TPP, opponents of this globalist trade deal cannot let down their guard.
Finally, it is traditional for presidents to grant pardons in their last days in office, and even up to their very last day. These actions of executive clemency are certainly constitutional, as part of the checks-and-balances concept of the Constitution — powers granted to the president to correct alleged injustices that may have occurred in the federal courts. But some pardons over the years have certainly raised eyebrows.
With Hillary Clinton remaining under a cloud of potential prosecution by a future Justice Department, some have even speculated that Obama may give her a pardon on his way out the door. Also, one Republican lobbyist, Michael McKenna, noted, “I do think a pardon for Huma and Weiner might happen.” McKenna was referring to Clinton’s top confidante, Huma Abedin, and her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner. It appears that Abedin and Weiner may have violated federal laws in their handling of sensitive State Department documents. The discovery of a trove of these e-mails on the laptop of Weiner precipitated the issuance of a statement by FBI Director James Comey that he had reopened the investigation into Clinton.
It is not the first time that Comey has given a Clinton a clean bill of legal health.
Comey also played a role in a controversial pardon issued by Bill Clinton years ago. Marc Rich was a fugitive who fled the country during his prosecution (ironically, by then-federal attorney Rudi Guiliani), and traveled to Switzerland to avoid imprisonment. He owed $48 million in taxes and was charged with 51 counts of tax fraud. Rich was also wanted for trading illegally with Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he purchased around $200 million worth of oil during the time 53 Americans were held hostage in Teheran. He also made illegal deals with Gadhafi in Libya, Kim Il Sung in North Korea, and other communist dictatorships, including the Soviet Union and Cuba.
He fled to Switzerland in 1983, but outgoing President Bill Clinton pardoned him on his last day in office, on January 20, 2001. Even Clinton supporters were repulsed by the pardon, with the New York Times calling it “a shocking abuse of presidential power,” and former President Jimmy Carter declaring it “disgraceful.” Even Democrat Congressman Barney Frank said, “It was a real betrayal of Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous.”
James Comey was later appointed to investigate the circumstances surrounding this pardon, but claimed he found no illegality on Clinton’s part. This investigation occurred as a result of Rich’s wife donating over $200,000 to the Democratic Party in 2000. She later gave $450,000 to the Clinton Library Foundation, and $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign.
With this kind of sordid history of a past president, coupled with Obama’s own track record of disregarding constitutional restrictions, it's no surprise that many are holding their breaths to see just what our outgoing president might do during his last few weeks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
Thank you for joining the discussion at The New American. We value our readers and encourage their participation, but in order to ensure a positive experience for our readership, we have a few guidelines for commenting on articles. If your post does not follow our policy, it will be deleted.
No profanity, racial slurs, direct threats, or threatening language.
No product advertisements.
Please post comments in English.
Please keep your comments on topic with the article. If you wish to comment on another subject, you may search for a relevant article and join or start a discussion there. | 1real |
Lightning Strike in Poughkeepsie Kills One and Injures 4 - The New York Times | A lightning bolt that struck during a storm killed one person and injured four, two critically, at a park in the center of Poughkeepsie, N. Y. on Friday afternoon, the police and the mayor of the Hudson Valley city said. The most severly injured of the three unresponsive victims who had been taken to the trauma center at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie died Saturday around 1 a. m. a hospital spokesman, Tim Massie said. The man, who was not immedietely identified, was 50 years old, Mr. Massie said. The two others remained in the hospital’s intensive care unit. All three were men in their late 40s to early 50s who had been sitting together on the same park bench, he said. The other victims were taken to MidHudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie. Their conditions were not immediately available. The lightning hit at 4:06 p. m. at Mansion Square Park, a popular gathering spot, Mayor Rob Rolison said. The victims were struck on the north side of the park, the police said. The mayor said that there were scorch marks on a nearby tree and that wooden slats on the bench had been knocked off, an indication of where the lightning had struck. Leading up to the episode, the skies darkened quickly in the area over the park and there were several loud thunderclaps, the mayor said. Two witnesses reported seeing a bolt of lightning strike near the group, then smoke and fire, the police said. So far this year, there have been 25 lightning deaths nationally, according to the National Weather Service, not including the death in Poughkeepsie. That number includes Richard Garlock, 34, and Jenea Macleod, 32, who were killed on Wednesday at a cemetery in Batavia, N. Y. according to the service. Based on reported deaths and injuries, the service estimated the odds of any one person being struck by lightning in a given year at 1 in 1. 2 million. | 0fake |
BETTY WON’T BITE! Watch What Happens When Katie Couric Desperately Tries To Goad BETTY WHITE Into Blaming Trump For Obama’s Divided Nation [VIDEO] | Katie Couric asks Betty White: What do you think about the state of our county and how divided it seems to be? Betty White responded, It s very divided, and we re not in the best place we ve ever been. But I think that s the time to buckle down and really work positively as much as you can instead of saying, Oh he s terrible or that s terrible . Katie gives it one more try: It s hard for people to be positive right now because there s so much negativity from the highest office in the land or soon to be to everybody and their brother putting things out on social media. It almost feels toxic, doesn t it? Watch Betty beautifully deflect Katie Couric s best efforts to get her to blame the state of our nation on Donald Trump: | 1real |
Political world's eyes on New Hampshire | The state that hosts the nation's first presidential primary will hold its first can't-miss event for the Republican field of 2016 presidential contenders -- the First-in-the-Nation Republican Leadership Summit -- on Friday and Saturday.
New Hampshire's blend of Rockefeller Republicans and tea party faithful can make it tricky terrain for Republicans, who will play to a more socially conservative base in Iowa than they'll find in the Granite State.
But the wide array of candidates -- which range form libertarian-inclined Rand Paul, to brassy East Coaster Chris Christie to culturally conservative Scott Walker -- have plans to test the waters, fanning out across the state over the weekend for additional speeches, meetings, fundraisers and meet-and-greets of their own.
And once they've left, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton will be in town. A week after kicking off her presidential campaign and on the heels of a three-day swing through Iowa, Clinton will be in New Hampshire on Monday and Tuesday. She is scheduled for similarly small-scale events as her Iowa trip: roundtables with students, educators and business leaders, as well as private meetings with Democratic activists and officials, a campaign aide said. Though Republicans can face challenges in New Hampshire, it's a place that's treated the Clintons well. Bill Clinton found his political resurrection in the Granite State during his 1992 campaign, and it's where Hillary salvaged her cratering 2008 campaign as well. She eventually succumbed to eventual Democratic nominee Barack Obama, but not until after many more months of campaigning thanks in large part to her surprise win in the New England primary. New Hampshire voters are proud -- and protective -- of their first-in-the-nation primary status. Iowa voters weigh in first, but they attend caucuses, rather than casting ballots like they would in a general election. Though the primary date hasn't been set yet, it will likely be in late January or early February 2016. From now until then, though, New Hampshire voters are sure to see plenty of 2016 candidates, particularly from the broad Republican field as the candidates jockey for momentum. The entire GOP field -- declared and undeclared candidates -- gets their first taste of the "Live free or die" state at the First-in-the-Nation Republican Leadership Summit hosted by the New Hampshire Republican Party on Friday and Saturday in Nashua. Candidates are scheduled to deliver speeches throughout both days. Leading up to and following the summit, presidential hopefuls have packed their schedules. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was on hand for town halls; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush scheduled several meetings with voters and the press; and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will hold a meet-and-greet on Sunday. | 0fake |
WATCH: PRESIDENT TRUMP’S Beautiful Video Honoring The Life Of Rosa Parks Reminds Everyone Of DISGUSTING Way President Obama Made Anniversary of Parks’ Brave Act About Him | Yesterday, President Trump took to Twitter to honor the 62-year anniversary of civil rights icon, Rosa Parks. President Trump tweeted, 62 years ago this week, a brave seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama uttered one word that changed history His message was accompanied by a beautiful video narrated by the President that featured the courageous act of defiance against a bigoted bus driver who attempted to make her sit at the back of the bus, simply because she was black. President Trump s video is a beautiful tribute to a woman who, much like Donald Trump, was a fighter. She wasn t looking for someone else to fight for her, she wasn t organizing a mob to fight back against injustice, she stood alone, she fought back, and because of her, America won. (Sound familiar?)62 years ago this week, a brave seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama uttered one word that changed history pic.twitter.com/eOvCBcMIKX Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017Five years ago, President Obama also honored the legacy of Rosa Parks. Obama, however, took a much different approach. Instead of focusing on Rosa Parks, and her contribution to the civil rights movement, Barack Obama posted a narcissistic photo of himself sitting on the bus, that s parked at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, MI. Apparently, Barack Obama felt that he deserved the spotlight on the 57th and again on the 58th anniversary of Rosa Parks brave act of defiance.Here s how the former President Barack Obama honored Rosa Parks on her 57th anniversary:Today is the 57th Anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Pic: President Obama on Rosa Parks bus pic.twitter.com/cFaKOYDt White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) December 1, 2012Here s how President Barack Obama honored Rosa Parks again, on her 58th anniversary:Michelle was so impressed by her husband s arrogance, that she too, tweeted a picture of her husband to honor the life of Rosa Parks:For the record, there are plenty of photos of Rosa Parks that were available for the President and First Lady to use in their tweets.But somehow, the Obama s always seemed to take a moment that should belong to someone else, and make it about them.It s not the first time Barack Obama honored himself instead of the person he claimed to be honoring. We ve posted several images of Barack Obama honoring himself instead of the activist, hero or legend he was supposed to honoring.Here are just a few examples:Although he never mentions him by name or even bothers to circle him in this photo, where Barack Obama is clearly the center of attention, this tweet was supposed to be honoring the late golf icon, Arnold Palmer:Here's to The King who was as extraordinary on the links as he was generous to others. Thanks for the memories, Arnold. pic.twitter.com/UlyfpIBOL2 President Obama (@POTUS44) September 26, 2016In this tweet, Barack Obama says, He shook up the world, and the world s a better place for it. Fortunately, he added Rest in Peace , otherwise, his social media followers would have no reason to believe that this tweet was supposed to be a tribute to the deceased boxing legend, Muhammad Ali, as once again, Obama appears to be the focus of the image with a photo of Ali in the background.He shook up the world, and the world's better for it. Rest in peace, Champ. pic.twitter.com/z1yM3sSLH3 President Obama (@POTUS44) June 4, 2016The former President honored Nelson Mandela by posting a picture of himself in the jail cell where Mandela was imprisoned:Compassion, understanding, and reconciliation on #MandelaDay, we are reminded of the promise for a better world. pic.twitter.com/vOpRlM4gwf White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) July 18, 2016And finally, on Pearl Harbor Day in Barack Obama honored the dead, by posting a picture of himself on Facebook walking down the stairs next to the Pearl Harbor Memorial. | 1real |
Trump's go-to man Bannon takes hardline view on immigration | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Donald Trump’s administration put together its controversial executive order on immigration, it was Steve Bannon – the populist firebrand fast emerging as the president’s right-hand man – pushing a hard line. Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) interpreted the order to mean that lawful permanent residents - green card holders – who hailed from the seven Muslim-majority countries targeted in the immigration order would not face additional screening when they entered the country. But they were quickly overruled by Bannon, who is Trump’s chief strategist and oversaw the drafting of the executive order along with White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a close ally of Bannon’s, the officials said. “They were in charge of this operation,” one senior DHS official said, adding that the experts were “almost immediately overruled by the White House, which means by Bannon and Miller.” A senior national security official described the pair as a “tag team” pushing Trump’s key policies, including the immigration order which bars the entry of refugees and places a temporary hold on people from seven countries - Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia and Libya. The inclusion of green card holders from those countries intensified opposition to an executive order that sparked legal challenges, protests at airports and sharp criticism from inside the Republican Party, including from some Trump allies. DHS officials say there was little or no White House consultation with immigration, customs and border security agencies on the immigration policy change, causing widespread confusion over how to implement Trump’s order. A senior administration official said the order went through a review by “key people” at DHS and the White House National Security Council, and that several immigration staff on Capitol Hill were involved in drafting the order. But officials said Bannon was the driving force throughout. The White House declined to comment on his role. Critics have accused Bannon of harboring anti-Semitic and white nationalist sentiments. Under Bannon’s leadership, his Breitbart website presented a number of conspiracy theories about Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, as well as Republicans deemed to be lacking in conservative bona fides. Bannon has ascribed his interest in populism and American nationalism to a desire to curb what he views as the corrosive effects of globalization. He has rejected what he called the “ethno-nationalist” tendencies of some in the movement. After becoming chief executive of Trump’s election campaign in August, the former Goldman Sachs banker and Navy veteran helped lead him to victory over Clinton. He was then appointed by Trump as senior counselor and chief strategist - jobs not subject to U.S. Senate confirmation. He has been an almost constant presence by Trump’s side in the first 10 days of the administration - in the White House for a meeting with American manufacturers, at CIA headquarters the day after Trump was sworn in, and in the Oval Office during British Prime Minister Theresa May’s visit. He appears to have greatly expanded his power in the first 10 days of Trump’s presidency. Trump gave him an unprecedented seat in the NSC’s top-level meetings and potentially narrowed the role played by the director of national intelligence (DNI) and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bannon has also asserted authority over almost all written statements from the White House and the NSC and has sent back documents for rewrites as he sees fit, one NSC official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Critics, including four senior U.S. intelligence officers, called the decision to formalize Bannon’s role at the NSC meetings a mistake, saying it risks politicizing decisions on national security. White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday defended Bannon’s inclusion in the NSC. Susan Rice, the former national security adviser in former President Barack Obama’s administration, tweeted on Sunday: “This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy.” Bannon and Miller are drowning out the opinions of more moderate advisers like White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, said a senior DHS official and two people in Washington who work closely with the White House on immigration and a range of other issues. One of those people and the DHS official said Priebus felt he had placed enough of his fellow moderate Republicans in key positions at the White House as a counterbalance to Bannon and Miller, but he has been frustrated at their outsized influence so far, especially on issues of immigration and national security. The White House dismissed the views of the officials as gossip. | 0fake |
CHARLES BARKLEY DROPS TRUTH-BOMB: Blacks, Not White People Or Cops Are Keeping Blacks Down | It s a dirty, dark secret; I m glad it s coming out WOW I guess we won t be seeing Charles Barkley sitting for the national anthem because he s resents the White man or neighborhood cop for keeping him down NBA legend and all around awesome person, Charles Barkley, was recently interviewed by a local Philadelphia radio station about the current racial issues plaguing America. During the interview, Barkley stated that unintelligent, brainwashed African-Americans are the ones keeping successful ones down, not white people, or cops.What prompted Charles Barkley s response was a question posed to him on the radio show, Afternoons with Anthony Gargano and Rob Ellis; he was asked about a rumor that Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was being accused by his fellow teammates of not being black enough. Colin Kaepernick s and Chris Brown s most recent debacles are prefect examples of Charles logic.Charles Barkley finished out his interview by stating:Via: Blue Lives Matter | 1real |
Kremlin says Trump's Jerusalem decision is splitting international community | MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has complicated the situation in the Middle East and is causing a split in the international community, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday. | 0fake |
Former Trump campaign staffer files discrimination complaint: NYT | NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 26-year-old former campaign staffer for Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has accused the campaign of sex discrimination, the New York Times reported on Sunday. Elizabeth Mae Davidson, who worked as an organizer in Iowa for the New York businessman, filed a complaint with the Davenport, Iowa, Civil Rights Commission, claiming female staffers were paid less than male staffers, according to the report. She claimed her requests to plan and speak at Trump’s campaign rallies were ignored while her male peers were allowed to do so, it said. Davidson also claimed that Trump had addressed her and a young female volunteer with a remark that referred to the women’s appearances, saying “you guys could do a lot of damage,” the Times report said. According to the Times, Trump, in an interview on Sunday, denied having made the remark to the two women. He did not address the other two allegations, the Times said, and he said he did not remember Davidson but had been told she had done “a terrible job” while working on the campaign. Davidson, who was fired on Jan. 14, and her lawyer Dorothy O’Brien did not respond to requests for comment. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, said the campaign had not been notified that a complaint had been filed. “These claims from a disgruntled former part-time employee are without merit,” Hicks said. “She is in violation of her contract and continues to disparage the campaign with falsehoods, which, in addition to doing a terrible job, is why she was terminated weeks ago.” (Reporting By Emily Flitter; Editing by Dan Grebler) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0fake |
Israel is Becoming Pivotal to China’s Mid-Eastern Calculus http://journal-neo.org/2016/11/07/israel-is-becoming-pivotal-to-china-s-mid-eastern-calculus/ | Country: Israel While China is silently playing an important role in the mitigation of the conflict in the Middle East, which is an important market for the Chinese goods, continuously deteriorating security situation, marred by the presence of numerous jihadi groups in the region, the necessity for China to have a strong anchor in the region has become all the more evident today than it was few years ago. The so-called “Arab spring” has brought many changes in its wake. However, war being one of the most important outcomes of this “spring”, certain changes in the erstwhile foreign policy orientation of many countries, big and small alike, was expected. To this particular outcome owes the growth of China-Israel relations that continue to develop stronger and deeper every year. Facts speak for themselves: China’s total capital investment in Israeli high-tech deals involving Chinese businesses is expected to reach around $500 million by the end of 2016, compared to $467 million in 2014 and $118 million in 2012. And as Times of Israel reported recently, Chinese acquisitions in Israel have dramatically increased in the last few years. In March 2015, China’s Bright Food acquired Tnuva , one of Israel’s largest dairy companies for approximately $2.1 billion. Similarly, in July 2016, a Chinese consortium that included private equity firm Yunfeng Capital — founded by Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma – acquired Israeli social games company Playtika from Caesars Interactive Entertainment online games unit for $4.4 billion in cash. In August 2016, ChemChina completed its takeover of Adama — considered one of the world’s leading crop protection companies — for approximately $1.4 billion. The high level of growth is—and it is not a coincidence—running parallel to the intensification and geographical spread of the conflict in the Mid-East region, particularly in and around the Suez canal region. While Syria and Iraq are direct victims of terrorism, many important countries such as Egypt (read: Egypt’s Sisi is building ties with Syria because of the fears of being the next target of jihadist militias) are only inches away from breaking down into shatters, pushing China to find an alternative route and construct an alternative geography of trade to steer its own business in the region. Israel, as such, happens to be the best country in the region. Not only is it politically and militarily stable, but its geographical location also makes it an apt candidate to qualify for partnership in China’s ‘Silk Road’ on its southern corridor, which is China’s route to Europe. Before the emergence of ‘jihadi’ groups in the Middle East, China depended on the Suez Canal to reach its largest export destination: Europe. With its trade volume standing roughly at €521 billion in 2015, and the volume of their bi-lateral trade crossing well over €1 billion a day , Europe undoubtedly remains one of the most important markets for the Chinese business, and with it remains the Mid-East the only geographical entity to facilitate this trade. However, the presence of ISIS, Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups in the Sinai are threatening China’s maritime trade. With over 95% of global trade being seaborne and China now as the world’s largest trading state, this is a serious challenge for Beijing’s continued economic development. The crisis in the Middle East is, therefore, directly threatening China’s economic interest. And, while China has already stepped in the crisis (read: China’s Rear Adm Guan Youfei recently visited Syria to boost co-operation with the Syrian army), this is not the only way it is following to protect its vital interests. This is where Israel becomes important for China. The growing economic alliance between Israel and China is moving forward with a $2 billion, 300 kilometre freight rail link connecting Eilat, on the Red Sea, with Ashdod Port, on the Mediterranean. The project, nicknamed the ‘Red-Med,’ was greenlit by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, and construction, which is expected to take five years, will begin within the year. About the link, Netanyahu said, “It’s the first time we’d be able to assist the countries in Europe and Asia to make sure they always have an open connection between Europe and Asia and between Asia and Europe.” While Israel is clearly poised to play a pivotal role in providing an unhindered and a secure trade route for European and Asia countries, China’s primary motivation is not to merely to build a network of allies in the Middle East. For China, the primary concern remains, apart from its trade with the Mid-Eastern countries, access to Europe and the African continent via the Middle East. However, both of these concerns cannot be effectively satisfied when the entire region remains under crisis. China, due to its fairly balanced approach to the crisis and the fact that it is perhaps the only global player that continues to enjoy equally good relations with such arch rivals as, for instance, Israel and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Iran, is an important country for the regional countries to look up to as a conflict mediator. This assumption about China playing this role owes its existence to the geography of trade China is eyeing to build through the Mid-East. As an alternative to shipping through the crowded Suez Canal, China sees value in sending goods into the Persian Gulf, and shipping them overland to the Mediterranean via several lines that could cross through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar or even southern Iraq before finally continuing through Jordan and Israel. Will China eventually built this geography or not is a moot question. However, it is quite obvious that regional countries are open to it and know the potential benefits it can yield. Speaking at to the inaugural SIGNAL conference on Israel’s China policy at the IDC in Herzliya in the last week of September, Capt. Yigal Maor, director general of the Israel’s Transportation Ministry’s Administration of Shipping and Ports, said that If China invests in building those paths, which he dubbed IGEC – the Israel Gulf Economic Corridor – it could push Gulf countries into more formal ties with Israel. “Maybe with the help of China there will be peace in that area,” he said. Whereas such prospects signal Israel’s own elevation from the position of a US “protected” state to an important power, integrating the region, as also continents, the potential entry of the “dragon” in the region, connecting various countries into a whole, is likely to yield important results for the whole region. While we may have to wait a little to see what impact it leaves exactly, it is quite obvious that China is poised to become an important player in the Mideast security scene, and is already asserting its role economically, diplomatically and, to some extent, militarily. Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook ”. Popular Articles | 1real |
Fox News Despicably Blames THIS For The Belgium Attacks Instead Of The Terrorists (VIDEO) | Rather than placing the blame for the terrorist attacks in Brussels with the terrorists where it belongs, Fox News focused on blaming something totally unrelated instead.On multiple occasions during their coverage of the bombings that took the lives of over 30 people in Brussels on Tuesday morning, Fox News hosts and contributors all made sure to blame political correctness for the attacks, even though acting like a decent human being had nothing to do with the evil acts committed by a group of extremists.In a video compilation put together by Mediaite, several Fox hosts and contributors are shown citing political correctness as the cause of the attacks and urging Americans to disregard any consideration of the feelings of people who are discriminated against. As long as political correctness and fear of being called a bigot dominate we can t have the conversation, said one Fox contributor at the beginning of the video. Another alluded to Donald Trump and how he is leading the Republican primary because he isn t politically correct, because that s somehow something to be proud of.Yet another Fox talking head called for dropping political correctness because that the only way to protect the homeland. There was even a suggestion that the only way to fix the threat of terrorism in our world is end political correctness. One Fox nut even claimed that political correctness is literally killing us in this country. Laura Ingraham even repeated that being PC can kill. Fox also complained about how they are hit with charges of Islamophobia whenever they cover ISIS and terrorist attacks.Here s the video via YouTube.But the problem is not that Fox is covering ISIS and terrorist attacks, it s that they usually always attack ALL Muslims as if the entire Muslim population is guilty of the attacks committed by a few religious extremists who do not represent the Muslim world, just like the KKK doesn t represent all Christians here in America.Being politically correct does not cause terrorist attacks. Hate and intolerance does and you won t hear Fox News talk about that at all. They d rather waste their time whining about how they can t be hateful and intolerant of Muslims without being called out for being the racists they are.It s important that we treat innocent Muslims with respect and dignity during this tragic time. Discriminating against them also makes things worse and gives ISIS new potential recruits to target.For a news outlet that constantly claims to be aligned with Christianity, Fox News sure does like war, hate, and bigotry when what we need right now is love and unity.Also, how much more despicable can Fox News get using yet another terrible deadly act of violence to push their own political agenda instead of simply reporting the news and showing sympathy to the dead?Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
Wall St. tax break once blasted by Trump preserved in Republican bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As a candidate, U.S. President Donald Trump promised to close the “carried interest” tax break that benefits some of Wall Street’s wealthiest financiers - but the Republican tax bill released on Thursday makes no mention of it. Carried interest is a share of an investment fund’s profits - typically about 20 percent beyond the return guaranteed to investors - that is paid out to the general partners of private equity, venture capital, real estate and hedge funds. Under current law, carried interest income is taxed at the capital gains rate of 20 percent. That is well below the 39.6 percent rate that high earners pay on ordinary wages and salary. Trump pledged during his populist presidential campaign to close the carried-interest loophole, saying hedge fund managers were “paper pushers” who were “getting away with murder.” Carried interest represents a large portion of many fund managers’ incomes. For years they have employed Washington lobbyists to help defend the lucrative tax break. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in August that the Trump administration still planned to close the loophole for hedge funds, but there might be an exemption to allow financial firms that “create jobs” to continue taking advantage of the tax break. The 429-page tax bill released by Republicans in the House of Representatives on Thursday has no language changing how financial firms can take advantage of the lower carried-interest rate. “The introduced text does not modify current policy related to carried interest,” a spokesman for the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee said. The bill is expected to undergo revisions before it is brought up for a vote in the House. Trump has said he would like to see the House and the Senate pass tax legislation before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 23. “We fully expected months ago that the one thing that they would do to close loopholes would be the one thing that Trump talked about during the campaign,” said Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress and a former economic adviser to Democratic President Barack Obama. Obama targeted the carried interest loophole but never closed it. Government estimates show it will cost the federal budget at least $20 billion over the next decade. | 0fake |
Pentagon confirms rare, three aircraft carrier drill November 11-14 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Wednesday it would soon carry out the first exercise in a decade involving three aircraft carrier strike groups in the Western Pacific, confirming a Reuters report published on Monday. It is a rare opportunity to train with two aircraft carriers together, and even rarer to be able to train with three, Admiral Scott Swift, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, said in a statement, adding the drills would take place from Saturday to Tuesday. U.S. President Donald Trump will be traveling in Asia during the initial days of the drills. Multiple carrier strike force operations are very complex, and this exercise in the Western Pacific is a strong testament to the U.S. Pacific Fleet s unique ability and ironclad commitment to the continued security and stability of the region, Swift said. | 0fake |
Candidate Trump retweets 'White Genocide' account, drawing outrage | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump retweeted an account called "@WhiteGenocideTM" on Friday, prompting a backlash on social media over the real estate billionaire's sharing of an apparent neo-Nazi's depiction of rival candidate Jeb Bush. Trump, who is campaigning for the first contests on Feb. 1 in Iowa and Feb. 9 in New Hampshire, is known for attacking other candidates competing for the party’s nomination to run for the White House in November’s general election. Trump retweeted Donald Trumpovitz, who uses the handle “@WhiteGenocideTM,” gives the location of the account as “Jewmerica” and features an image that references George Lincoln Rockwell, a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement in the United States. The tweet read, “@realDonaldTrump Poor Jeb. I could’ve sworn I saw him outside Trump Tower the other day!” and included a photoshopped image of Bush holding a “Vote Trump” sign. Tim Miller, communications director for Bush, tweeted in response on @Timodc: "The Godwin's Double: Trump's anti-Jeb retweets now include one from a Nazi's account and another calling Jeb a Nazi." The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In November, Trump retweeted and then deleted a collage attacking former Florida governor Bush that featured a swastika. Some on Twitter were appalled and perplexed by Friday’s retweet by Trump, who has not sought the backing of white supremacist groups but several say his success has helped them win new supporters. Kris Hammond (@KrisHammond), who identifies himself as a civil rights attorney on Twitter, said: “#Trump retweets account with the words “white genocide” in the handle. Plays to #whitenationalism base.” Natalie Borden (@Natalie_Borden) tweeted: “Guy, who likely will be a POTUS, retweeting a Twitter user named “White Genocide” who says he lives in “Jewmerica.” What a day...” A week ago, a white supremacist group said it had placed thousands of automated phone calls in Iowa urging voters to support Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination because “we don’t need Muslims.” The telephone campaign is led by the American Freedom Party, which on its website says it “shares the customs and heritage of the European American people.” (Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus; editing by Grant McCool) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0fake |
FORSAKEN SULTAN: Erdogan Isolated Ahead Trump Meeting in Washington | Erdogan has very little to offer Trump in Syria. But the question should not be whether Trump could even turn his back on the Kurds in his fight against ISIS. It is more, whether Trump can trust the Turkish leader to not shift the goalposts at the last minute Martin Jay 21st Century WireTurkey s authoritarian leader, who recently brilliantly played a central role in both brokering the recent safe zones deal backed by Iran and Russia and signing off a new trade deal with Russia, seemed to be rising above the parapet as a regional leader. For a fleeting moment, this autocratic figure, who just scraped in by a whisker through a referendum to usher in new laws which would hurl Turkey truly into the depths of a third world country, shone for a moment. Coming out of the Astana talks, you watched the newsreel footage and almost forgot about the human rights apocalypse which the country is undergoing from thousands of teachers, judges and civil servants being rounded up on charges linked to an attempted coup in the summer of 2016, right through to the worrying number of journalists locked up in jails, which is constantly compared to North Korea by many rights groups. There are currently over 250 journalists in jail in Turkey in a country where journalism has been pronounced dead under Erdogan s brutal crackdown.No matter. That won t bother Trump. But Erdogan s luck is still about to run out when he visits the US president who will bring him down to earth and show him exactly how much the Turkish leader is worth as a regional ally. We should all expect a bump, followed by a tantrum.Birds of the same feather? Could it be about personalities? When we look at both Erdogan and Trump, there are an alarming number of similarities which one might have thought would have played a role in bringing them closer. Both are nationalist leaders, frothing over their daily ratings, both extraordinarily thin-skinned and more importantly, equal in their colossal contempt for democracy and freedom of speech. Both leaders absolutely hate genuine journalists and what journalism, as an empirical, feature of democracy stands for: the absolute truth.But they are not twins. Erdogan is a political animal whereas Trump came into politics late and is driven by corporate power. Both though understand and resort to very short-term political churlishness and buffoonery. And here s where the worries lie, with Erdogan s plea for Trump to stop backing the Kurds in Northern Syria. When Trump sent 59 Tomahawk missiles into an Shayrat airbase in Syria, he was proving a point: that he, and America, is ultimately a super power. And super powers can do capricious, illogical things like that and still come out a winner. Trump needed to prove to regional leaders that he is capable of exulting military might after nearly all of his Middle East plans seemed to wane since taking office. And it worked. We may all be scratching our heads about the wisdom of hitting the Syrian Army s military infrastructure when the real target in Syria is ISIS, but it generated the media coverage and his popularity lifted back home. When Erdogan however bombed a number of Kurdish installations a few days later almost following the example of the US president it didn t have the same effect. Turkey aspires to be a super power but in reality is a fledgling compared to Saudi Arabia and Iran, or even Israel.Back home it was met with mixed reaction, while in Washington it backfired spectacularly. The Pentagon was shocked at how stupid the move was, given that US soldiers were only about 6 miles from the bombing and if they had been wounded or killed, then anything that Erdogan would have hoped to have achieved would have been dashed.Erdogan got the attention he wanted but he just made himself look like a loser in negotiations over how much power and support he demands in northern Syria as a new plan to take Raqqa unfolds; and how the US should now consider no longer arming the only fighting group on the ground in Syria which is fighting ISIS to any real degree, the YPG.Erdogan is beginning to come across as a jilted girlfriend who keeps making the moves to get the attention of Trump, but who just keeps on getting the cold shoulder though.He has been hoping since January that the so-called architect of the attempted coup in Turkey, Fethullah G len, could be extradited by Trump. He has been also hoping for the Kurds to be left out of the push for Raqqa; and he has been suggesting that Turkey and the US should take the city together in the final push for the epicentre of Islamic extremism.Ultimate threat and unsavoury alliancesErdogan has misjudged Trump though, which might explain why none of the three plans have unfolded. This is not a US leader who will be intimidated with threats, like the Kurd bombing. Quite the contrary. The result is that US officials and Donald Trump himself have started to humour Erdogan, for two chief reasons. Trump has investments in Turkey and Erdogan s ultimate threat would be to kick US soldiers and airman out of Incirlik airbase and to sell it to the highest bidder on the geopolitical circuit. The problem with Erdogan, Trump advisers will no doubt be telling him, is not that he has so little to offer militarily in the region. It s that he can t be trusted. They will point to his irrational relations he courts, then rejects, then restores again which makes him look erratic and untrustworthy whether its erratic relations with Israel, Russia or even NATO and the EU. There are just too many u-turns. Erdogan sees Russia as the new trading partner and this is where his real interests and loyalties lie. And then there s Iran, considered by the Trump camp to be the very crux of America s problems in the region and vehemently hated by most of his advisers who are planning to bomb it at some point which Turkey desperately wants to develop relations with both with trade and energy deals. But it s not just Iran and Russia which will irk Trump when he considers Erdogan s last chance gambit to save the Turkish leader s neck as he has to convince voters in two years that he and his new anti-democratic grasp on the country s judges, media and other key institutions is the winning ticket for Turkey. No, it s more about the relations that Erdogan has had with groups in Syria like ISIS and Jabat al Nusra, which few doubt were being supported by Turkey at some point. Let s not forget that ISIS managed to swell its numbers dramatically by foreign jihadists crossing its southern border; for a long time, extremists were seen as a way to destabilize the Assad government in Syria, hence allies of Turkey.Erdogan has left it too long to come into the anti-ISIS theatre to be taken seriously. And so Erdogan s point of view that the US should not be backing the YPG and PYD in Syria due to their links to the PKK is actually a triumph of futility, as arguments go. Washington, certainly the Pentagon which Trump takes seriously, doesn t take Erdogan s offer to take Raqqa together seriously. It would probably involve too many US soldiers (whereas the Kurd plan won t) and the Turks would probably shift the goalposts at the last moment.Russia s foreign minister s meeting with Trump is a different matter. Super powers meet super powers and important decisions are thrashed out. When Erdogan arrives, he will be treated like an annoying neighbour who has arrived at the party late, on the pretext of complaining about the noise but really wanting to just worm his way in for a free drink. Small people, small issues.Adversaries of Erdogan close to Trump will also no doubt be raising the obvious question of how far can the US trust a regional leader, who, just days before a referendum which would give him more power, changed the voting rules which gave him the critical few percent at the polls?Erdogan s people have no confidence in their own leader in DCMoreover, the unspoken but very real threat that he may attack the Kurds on a grander scale is also not a point which Trump will appreciate. Even from a political dimension, it would make him look isolated and petulant as sour grapes never won anyone any votes at the polls. But it s also the lack of confidence Erdogan and his people have in their own arguments. Senior advisors to Erdogan have told me that the Washington trip is so important that they don t want to risk anything ruining the event. Yet how much credibility in the first place can you give to Erdogan s visit when paranoia and a shocking lack of confidence in Erdogan s ploy are so patently evident?Recently, an Oped article I wrote for a newspaper I have since discovered is Erdogan s english language propaganda sheet, was rejected because its criticism of Trump might scupper the talks. Hilariously, it was explained to me by one of the journalists on The Daily Sabah that the talks are so important that we can t publish anything which is critical of Trump hardly a sterling mark of confidence from an Erdogan fake news journal whose entire role is to promote the Turkish leader. If an innocuous Oped from a British journalist in a propaganda sheet is all it takes to ruin the talks, one could only assume that even Erdogan s own people have no faith in their leader s arguments or charisma, let alone his geopolitical edge. Where will the deluded Erdogan go after this inevitable climb down? I m expecting a grand tantrum and an even closer relationship with Russia. I m expecting some bombing of Kurds. And I m also expecting Erdogan to play the Incirlik card. What I am not expecting is my Turkish editors to keep their word and pay me what I am due for work which was commissioned by them. Erdogan s people just can t be trusted.Journalist Martin Jay recently won the U.N. s prestigious Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize (UNCA) in New York in 2016, for his journalism work in the Middle East. He is based in Beirut and can be followed on Twitter at @MartinRJay. READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SYRIA FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
US Supreme Court justice groped female lawyer in 1999: Report | Society US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
A female lawyer has accused US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexually assaulting her in 1999, a report says.
Moira Smith, who works as a corporate lawyer with an Alaska energy company, said the judge made unwanted sexual advances on her during a dinner party when she was 23-year-old, the National Law Journal reported on Thursday.
She said Thomas grabbed and squeezed her buttocks several times during the party in Falls Church, Virginia.
“Justice Thomas touched me inappropriately and without my consent,” Smith said.
“He groped me while I was setting the table, suggesting I should sit ‘right next to him,’” Smith said.
“He was 5 or 6 inches down and he got a good handful and he kept squeezing me and pulling me close to him,” she stated, according to the journal.
In a statement to the National Law Journal, Thomas, 68, dismissed the allegation as “preposterous”, saying that the incident “never happened."
Smith, currently vice president and general counsel at Enstar Natural Gas Co in Alaska, said she decided to speak out after hearing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's lewd comments about women.
A 2005 video was released earlier this month by The Washington Post, in which Trump can be heard making lewd comments about women and bragging about groping them.
A number of women have since come forward claiming that the business mogul has sexually assaulted them.
Trump has called the allegations “slander and libel” and part of a “concerted, coordinated and vicious attack” by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the news media to undercut his campaign. Moira Smith said Justice Clarence Thomas groped her at her boss' dinner party when she was 23.
"That willingness by men in power to take advantage of vulnerable women relies on an unspoken pact that the women will not speak up about it," Smith, now 41, told the journal.
"Why? Because they are vulnerable. Because they are star-struck. Because they don't want to be whiners. Because they worry about their career if they do speak out. But silence no longer feels defensible; it feels complicit,” she stated.
"As the mother of a young daughter and son, I am coming forward to show that it is important to stand up for yourself and tell the truth," Smith said.
Thomas was nominated to the top court in 1991 by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Loading ... | 1real |
Spicer Giggles Like An Idiot After Admitting Trump Only Believes News When It Favors Him (VIDEO) | In a deeply disturbing moment during Press Secretary Sean Spicer s latest bonkers press briefing, he read verbatim a quote given to him by Trump that admitted the sitting President of the United States only believes facts when they make him look good. Everything else is fake news. Spicer was asked during the briefing about the latest jobs report which showed America gaining a very healthy number of jobs. (There is no evidence to suggest this is due to Donald Trump, and in fact, it merely fits with the pattern of unrelenting job growth that came to define Obama s presidency. Trump has thus far done little to help the economy and nothing to help middle class workers, again suggesting this economic growth isn t the result of his presidency but merely his good fortune for having inherited a booming economy from his Democratic predecessor.)Despite the fact that there is little evidence of Trump s influence, his administration has been taking victory laps over the economic news. A reporter correctly noted that it s a bit odd that Trump would be so willing to trust the jobs report this time when he has previously gone on record to suggest that jobs reports under Obama were fabricated and false a claim which, in 2015, earned him a pants on fire Politifact rating. Why the sudden change?The answer is so obvious that even Trump had no problem admitting it: He only believes the news when it benefits him. They may have been phony in the past, but it s very real now. Q: Trump has said jobs rpts are "phony", what about now?SPICER: "They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now." via @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/PDt1Q8hrbp Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 10, 2017Rather than find that mindset pathological and terrifying, Spicer thought it was hilarious. Even more troubling, the reporters in the room burst into laughter too. Everyone laughing should be ashamed. It wasn t a joke. Trump is signaling the fact that his administration will be run on the premise that he defines what is real and what is fake. If it s pro-Trump, it s legitimate. If it s inconvenient, it s fake news created by the Deep State and the liberal media out to get him.That s the kind of paranoid delusions that quickly spiral into fascism. And Spicer is giggling about it.Featured image via Twitter | 1real |
It Sure Looks Like Donald Trump Would Be Putin’s Puppet If He Is Elected President | The Republican Party has been wishing that America would be more like Russia in recent years and they may very well get their wish with Donald Trump.As it turns out, Donald Trump is connected on many levels with Russian dictator Vladamir Putin, the most alarming of which are the financial connections that are keeping him afloat as his liquid assets decrease and his debt continues to rise into the hundreds of millions of dollars.According to Bloomberg, while Trump brags about being a billionaire, he still has major debts that he owes:Trump s debt almost doubled, to an estimated $630 million from $350 million, as he drew down on a $170 million line of credit from Deutsche Bank AG for a hotel project in Washington At the same time, Trump s liquid assets shrank to about $170 million from $225 million, based on the high end of value ranges for those assets listed in his financial disclosure form.And because US banks are smart enough to deny Trump any loans, the Republican nominee has had to rely of outside support for capital, and that has mostly come from wealthy Russians who are close to Putin.The Washington Post reports:Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world. Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets, Trump s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. Indeed, Trump has been desperate to build a Trump Tower in Moscow for over 30 years now and if he is able to become president and do some favors for Russia and Putin he would get closer to achieving his business goal.In fact, even some of Trump s top advisers have close ties to Russia.Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort has done multimillion-dollar business deals with pro-Russian oligarchs and worked for recently ousted Putin-backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych s downfall sparked the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine in which they seized the Crimean Peninsula.Two of Trump s advisers, Carter Page and Michael Caputo, worked with Gazprom, which is the government-controlled natural gas corporation. As Talking Points Memo described it, imagine if most or all of the US energy industry were rolled up into a single company and it were personally controlled by the US President who used it as a source of revenue and patronage. And there s Trump s foreign policy adviser former General Michael Flynn. He cozied up to Putin at a dinner in Moscow in 2015.With all of that being said, Trump s foreign policy ideas would strongly favor Russia at a time when Putin has never been more dangerous, especially to Europe.Not only has Trump been talking about fundamentally weakening NATO by pulling US support, which would give Russia an opportunity to flex its military muscles to take over some Eastern European countries, Page suggested earlier this year that Trump could lift economic sanctions placed on Russia since 2014, which would help some of his Russian business buddies. And in what has clearly been under-reported on by the media, Trump and his team successfully strong-armed the GOP into ditching the party platform condemning Russia s aggression toward Ukraine the GOP s support of assisting Ukraine against Putin.And Trump has been rewarded handsomely for this treachery as Putin has directed Russian state media to blare out support for Trump s campaign. Russian hackers also hacked into the DNC to give Trump information to use against the Democrats.In short, Trump would be nothing more than a puppet of Vladamir Putin should he be placed in the White House. It would the first time in American history that the leader of the free world is controlled, especially by a Russian ruler who disregards human rights and subverts democracy. Ronald Reagan would be spinning in his grave. What was the point of the Cold War if the United States is just going to become a Russian satellite state anyway?If Republicans think that President Obama is similar to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, they haven t seen nothing yet. Because at least Chamberlain wasn t Hitler s puppet.Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
BUSTED! GUESS WHO DEFENDED The Senate’s Role In Supreme Court Confirmations…Until Now | THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA CHOOSES to ignore the facts about many of the statements made by key Senators, Obama and Biden in the past regarding Supreme Court confirmations in an election year. The key players who re now crying racism and partisanship were once staunch defenders of NOT confirming a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. Please spread this very important information around so that ALL Americans can see what hypocrites these men are. It s all about politics and power The five highest-ranking Democrats in the nation once staunchly defended the Senate s constitutional role in the Supreme Court confirmation process. Or at least they did, until now.Now, President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Chuck Schumer, and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy are suddenly ignoring the constitutional role that the Senate is mandated in the Supreme Court confirmation process.President Obama is demanding a rushed confirmation of his eventual nominee. He along with Vice President Biden, and Senators Reid, Schumer, and Leahy are not only ignoring the Constitution but also historic precedent that since at least 1880 stands firmly on the side to giving the American people a voice in choosing who the next Supreme Court justice will be when a vacancy arises in a Presidential election year.But let s look at what each of these men did and said when they were in the Senate faced with confirming Supreme Court nominees (not in an election year, where historic precedent favors delaying confirmation until the next officeholder, but in the middle of a President s term in office).President Obama:Then-Senator Obama actually voted against Justice Alito s confirmation to the Supreme Court, taking a leading role in an attempted filibuster against his nomination, something the White House now mysteriously says he regrets. Regret was hardly the word to describe his position at the time. He eloquently described his view of the significant role played by the Senate in the Supreme Court confirmation process: It would appear that President Obama is one of the some who believe that the president, having won the election, should have complete authority to appoint his nominee and that the Senate s role is merely a rubber stamp. Though his position has changed, I don t believe the words of the Constitution have.Vice President Joe Biden:When then-Senator Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, he nearly invented the filibuster of Supreme Court nominees. It was he who created the concept of Borking a nominee as he prevented President Reagan s pick of Judge Robert Bork from being confirmed to the bench. Then-Senator Biden proclaimed: The framers clearly intended the Senate to serve as a check on the president and guarantee the independence of the judiciary, Mr. Biden said in August 1987 in defense of his newfound opposition to Judge Bork. The Senate has an undisputed right to consider judicial philosophy. Under Mr. Biden s leadership, holding up nominations to the nation s appeals courts also became a routine exercise. In 1988, the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed 17 months before refusing to confirm law professor and scholar Bernard Siegan to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because of his libertarian positions on economic issues. . . . By 1992, 64 judicial nominees were stuck in the senatorial muck waiting for the Judiciary Committee to give them a yea or nay.A once judicial obstructionist of legend is now mostly forgotten by today s mainstream media.In 2005, Senator Biden explained his philosophy at length: At its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a nominee or a bill, it s about compromise and moderation. The nuclear option extinguishes the power of independents and moderates in the Senate. That s it, they re done. Moderates are important if you need to get to 60 votes to satisfy cloture; they are much less so if you only need 50 votes. Let s set the historical record straight. Never has the Senate provided for a certainty that 51 votes could put someone on the bench or pass legislation. A year later, Senator Biden quipped, I think a filibuster makes sense when you have a prospect of actually succeeding. When Justice Alito s nomination came before his committee, he declared, If he really believes that reapportionment is a questionable decision . . . then clearly, clearly, you ll find a lot of people, including me, willing to do whatever they can to keep him off the court . . . . That would include a filibuster, if need be. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:As Senate Majority Leader, Reid slashed much of the Senate s historic role in confirming judges by invoking the nuclear option removing the filibuster from the confirmation process of many judgeships, but notably not the Supreme Court.Of course Senator Reid has been the leader of political partisanship, flip-flopping on the judicial confirmation process more than anyone else in the Senate. After leading the filibuster against President Bush s nominee to a circuit court judgeship, Miguel Estrada, and vehemently opposing the nuclear option, he then invoked the nuclear option to remove the filibuster when his party took the Senate and the White House.But one thing Senator Reid has said stands out. Judicial nominations are so important that the Senate s constitutional role is at best, we move slowly in the confirmation process. And in regard to its constitutionally prescribed advice and consent on Supreme Court nominations, he chided, The Senate will enact its will. Senate Democrat Conference Vice Chairman Chuck SchumerSenator Schumer has been one of the most outspoken promoters of the Senate s power in the nomination process, taking that position to the extreme.In 2007, he declared that the Senate should not confirm a [Bush] Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances. He continued: We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito. Of course, he too quickly abandoned this position this week.Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy:Senator Leahy is probably the clearest supporter of the historic precedent against Supreme Court justices being confirmed in an election year.December 2006: The Thurmond Rule, in memory of Strom Thurmond he put this in when the Republicans were in the minority, which said that in a presidential election year, after spring, no judges would go through except by the consent of both the Republican and Democratic [leaders]. I want to be bipartisan. We will institute the Thurmond Rule, yes. Read more: Red State | 1real |
Police and Protesters Clash in Minnesota Capital - The New York Times | ST. PAUL — Police officers in riot gear clashed with protesters who blocked a major highway here for hours on Saturday night, marking a tense turn for the demonstrations that have continued almost nonstop since a black man, Philando Castile, was fatally shot by a suburban police officer during a traffic stop on Wednesday. The protesters marched from the Minnesota governor’s mansion onto Interstate 94, chanting refrains such as “We’re peaceful, y’all violent” as the police urged them to leave. Officers struggled for more than four hours to disperse the crowd, at times deploying smoke and marking rounds in a standoff that stretched into early Sunday before snowplows cleared debris and the highway was reopened to traffic. The police in St. Paul said at least five officers were injured by fireworks, rocks, bricks and glass bottles that they said were thrown by protesters. None of their injuries were believed to be serious. Officers said they made arrests, but did not provide information about the number of people in custody or the charges they might be facing. The Minnesota protest was among several sizable demonstrations across the country on Saturday expressing outrage at the deaths of Mr. Castile and of Alton Sterling, another black man, who was killed by the police in Baton Rouge, La. DeRay Mckesson, a activist with a large Twitter following, was among more than 30 people arrested on Saturday outside the Baton Rouge Police Headquarters. A live stream via Twitter’s Periscope service captured his arrest after a verbal confrontation with an officer who ordered him not to walk onto a street. Protesters also blocked traffic on Saturday in New York, the local NBC station reported, and The Chicago Tribune said that a series of demonstrations in that city turned tense at times and led to arrests. In Minnesota, the contentious highway shutdown marked a change in tack for the protesters who had occupied the area outside the governor’s mansion for days but had remained almost entirely peaceful. On Friday night, the protest group had been stationary for the most part, listening to music and taking turns at the microphone outside the governor’s residence discussing state laws and calling for changes to police tactics. Earlier on Saturday, a separate group of peaceful protesters had gathered at a park in downtown Minneapolis and prepared to walk through the streets. Nekima president of the Minneapolis NAACP, said organizers scheduled that march because “people are experiencing trauma after trauma after trauma as a result of what happened. ” Ms. said many here had still been coming to terms with the fatal shooting of Jamar Clark by the Minneapolis police in 2015 and the decision not to charge the officers involved. Protesters also blocked traffic on a Minnesota highway after Mr. Clark’s death, and after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a Missouri police officer in 2014. As protests continue here, much remains unknown about Mr. Castile’s death. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating, has not said why he was pulled over or what happened during the traffic stop. A Facebook Live video of the shooting’s aftermath prompted widespread attention and outrage, with Mr. Castile’s girlfriend suggesting that he had been reaching for his identification when shot by Officer Jeronimo Yanez of the St. Anthony Police. Thomas Kelly, a lawyer for Officer Yanez, said his client had been “reacting to the presence of a gun,” though Mr. Castile’s girlfriend said in the Facebook video that he was licensed to carry a weapon. | 0fake |
Top Democrats in Congress accept Trump offer to meet on year-end priorities | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders in Congress said on Monday they had accepted an invitation from President Donald Trump to meet with him and Republican leaders to discuss year-end legislative priorities, including efforts to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who canceled a previous meeting with Trump after he issued a disparaging note on Twitter, said in a statement they hoped the president would remain open-minded about reaching a deal with Democrats. “We need to reach a budget agreement that equally boosts funds for our military and key priorities here at home,” they said, listing a series of political priorities. “There is a bipartisan path forward on all of these items.” | 0fake |
Rep. Gowdy on the impact of the FBI’s new Clinton inquiry | ‹ › Debbie Menon is an independent writer based in Dubai. She is Editor-in-Chief of VeteransNewsNow.com Her main focus are the US-Mid-East Conflicts. Her writing has been featured in several print and online publications in the Middle East. She is committed to exposing (AIPAC) the Israel Lobby's control of American policy for the Middle East. Control which amounts to treason by the Zionist Lobbies in America and its stooges in Congress, and that guarantees there can never be a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflicts, only catastrophe for all, in the region and the world. Her focus is Israel’s drift towards greater oppression of the Palestinian people; the political deceptions and crisis in Syria and Ukraine; the cold hard facts about America’s so-called ‘war on terror’ and grim future; countering the propaganda war towards Iran & Russia and calling attention to, the new, developing, promising, strategic alliances as a consequence. Her mission is to inform and educate the public on issues of the US/Middle East conflicts that are unreported, underreported, or distorted in the Zionist owned American Media. Her writing reflects the incredible resilience, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, who are now facing the prospect of a final round of ethnic cleansing. Her mission is to inform and educate internet viewers seeking unfiltered information about real events on issues of the US/Middle East conflicts that are unreported, underreported, or distorted in the American media. Her purpose is to look at the current reality from a different and critical perspective, not to simply rehash the pro-US/Israel perspective, smoke and mirrors that has been allowed to utterly and completely dominate Mainstream discourse. PS: For those of her detractors that think she is being selective and even “one sided,” tough, that is the point of her work, to present an alternative view and interpretation of the US-Israel-Middle East conflict, that has been completely ignored in mainstream discourse and denied the US public. Oh, and she is not Muslim or Palestinian and not married to one either! She is practicing Roman catholic. Rep. Gowdy on the impact of the FBI’s new Clinton inquiry By Debbie Menon on October 31, 2016 BRAVO! Rep. Gowdy. Senator Trey Gowdy is an American attorney, politician and former prosecutor. He currently serves as the U.S. Representative for South Carolina’s 4th congressional district.
Senator Trey Gowdy is right, timing is consequence of decisions Hillary made period. Jim Comey’s obligation is to the public.
Senator (Harry) Reid is simply “just another” one of the political hacks who populate that massive brothel we call Capitol Hill. Senator Reid and others are aware of the treasonous and criminal nature of the Clintons.
Hillary Clinton is probably guilty of many things which have not surfaced as openly or as clearly, so lets not scapegoat Huma Abedine and her husband. Hillary is obviously guilty as sin of malfeasance of office and negligence, for the very fact that she exposed her country’s secrets to hackers, knowingly using a private server to conduct State Department business with the outside world and should be called to account for it. Period.
It is people like Bill & Hillary who have become to Big to Fall and the basic problems and causes of the fundamental failures in US Government. Two of the major rotten apples in the barrel, and these are probably two of the most obvious who should be prosecuted not only as examples to the others, but for delivery of the justice which they have earned… and which the citizens of America deserve!
Instead of rewarding them by returning them to the Oval office, they should be investigated, and they should be held accountable. Americans can live in a State of Law and Justice, or a State of suppression, injustice, corruption and subjugation to powerful politicians. It is their choice!
Published on Oct 30, 2016 Chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Rep. Gowdy, weighs in on ‘Special Report’ | 1real |
What? First Graders Asked Not to Use the Words ‘God’, ‘Jesus’ or ‘Devil’ in Class [Video] | What the heck happened to our freedom of speech? First graders were asked not to use the words God , Jesus or devil in an Indiana classroom Why? Political correctness in action Parents aren t happy about this!First graders asked not to use the words God or devil in Indiana classroom pic.twitter.com/35l4xgPv6O FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) August 31, 2017MCCORDSVILLE, Ind. (FOX59) Parents of students at an Indiana elementary school are not happy after a first grade teacher sent home a note asking children not to talk about God, Jesus, or the Devil, FOX 59 reports.According to a statement from McCordsville Elementary School, a debate about God happened in the first grade classroom earlier in the week, so the teacher sent the letter about her expectations to parents. The section of the letter reportedly asked parents to have a talk with their children about the time and place to discuss faith.A parent submitted the letter to FOX 59, which in part reads: With Mccordsville Elementary being a public school, we have many different religions and beliefs, and I do not want to upset a child or parent because of these words being used. A letter from the superintendent said it is okay for students to speak about their religion as long as it does not interrupt class: Trying to limit a student s view on religion is a violation of a student s first amendment rights. However, if the discussion becomes an academic disruption, then as a district, we can intervene to maintain the integrity of the educational process while at the same time being sure to not violate a student s constitutional rights. | 1real |
UFO Close Up Footage | Weird News THANKS FOR SHARING... LIKED US?! Disclose.tv uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on the website. Read our privacy policy for more. Agree BEFORE YOU GO, CHECK THIS OUT ON DISCLOSE.TV | 1real |
DNC CHAIR PEREZ Says Trump ‘Didn’t Win’…Decides To Rewrite Constitution Without Electoral College… | DNC chairman Tom Perez decided to create his own reality during a speech on Tuesday. This is such a Democrat thing they love to make up a false narrative and push it over and over to the sheeple who follow them. It s really pitiful that after so many months that all the Democrats have is this lie The electoral college is a brilliant creation because it gives balance to voters Would you want California and New York deciding our elections? That s what would happen without the electoral college. We bet that Perez already knows this but is counting on the uneducated voters to buy into it .Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez incorrectly stated the Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution during a Tuesday night speech.(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));DNC Chair Tom Perez incorrectly claims the Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution Posted by Fox & Friends on Friday, October 27, 2017 The Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution, Perez said during a lecture at Indiana University Law School. It doesn t have to be there. The Electoral College, a mechanism for indirect election of the president created by the Founding Fathers as a compromise between smaller states and larger states, is clearly laid out in Article II of the Constitution: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. Perez has previously stated that President Donald Trump didn t win last November s election because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote:Following his comment, Perez went on to explain his hopes that states agree to a national popular vote compact, in which states agree to give their allocated electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. There s a national popular vote compact in which a number of states have passed a bill that says, we will allocate our vote, our electoral votes, to the person who wins the national popular vote once other states totaling 170 electoral votes do the same, Perez said. I m frankly proud to tell you that the first state to pass such a law was Maryland. The main supporters of the plan put forward by Perez seem to understand it is a plan to circumvent the system created by the Constitution, not an argument that the system doesn t exist.The comment from Perez came during a lecture honoring former Indiana Democratic Sen. Birch Bayh, who was accused last year of sexual assault by a writer who said Bayh groped her in the backseat of a limousine. VIA: WFBOUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE:PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH THE CLUELESS LEFT! If the president were elected by unfiltered national vote, small and rural states would become irrelevant, and campaigns would spend their time in large, populous districts. The Electoral College remains in place over two centuries after the framers of the Constitution empowered it to select presidents. Though occasionally maligned, this system of electing a chief executive has been incredibly successful for the American people.The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College after much debate and compromise, but it has provided stability to the process of picking presidents. Though the winner of the national popular vote typically takes the presidency, that vote failed to determine the winner in four elections: 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.Some see the Electoral College as a peculiar and mystifying institution that ensures only a few, select individuals will ever cast a direct vote for president in the United States. Others complain that the system rewards smaller states with more proportional power than the large ones.Every four years, around election time, there are murmurs about revamping the system and moving toward a direct, national popular vote.The Founders CollegeAs one of The Heritage Foundations legal experts, Hans von Spakovsky, noted in a paper on the Electoral College: In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule. Some elements of the Electoral College, such as the indirect vote through intermediaries, were hotly debated at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It was eventually justified in part as a stopgap to potentially reverse the vote if the people elected a criminal, traitor, or similar kind of heinous person. The Founders wanted to empower democratic elements in the American system, but they feared a kind of pure, unrestrained democracy that had brought down great republics of the past.The product of the Founders compromise has been well balanced and enduring, and we would be wise to leave it intact.Alexander Hamilton defended the Electoral College in Federalist 68. He argued that it was important for the people as a whole to have a great deal of power in choosing their president, but it was also desirable that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. Hamilton also wrote that this system of intermediaries would produce a greater amount of stability, and that an intermediate body of electors will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of one who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. As students of ancient history, the Founders feared the destructive passions of direct democracy, and as recent subjects of an overreaching monarch, they equally feared the rule of an elite unresponsive to the will of the people. The Electoral College was a compromise, neither fully democratic nor aristocratic.The Constitution states:Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress.In addition to balancing the protection of individual rights and majority rule, the Founding Fathers attempted to create a federalist system that would keep most of policymaking power reserved to states and localities. America s presidential election system also was designed to empower the states, not just the American people as an undifferentiated mass.The total number of electors and thus electoral votes across all states and the District of Columbia included after the passage of the 23rd Amendment adds up to 538. The winner must receive a majority, or 270, of these votes to become president.The system empowers states, especially smaller ones, because it incentivizes presidential candidates to appeal to places that may be far away from population centers. Farmers in Iowa may have very different concerns than bankers in New York. A more federalist system of electing presidents takes that into account.The states are free to select the method in which they choose their electors. In the early days of the republic, most states chose to have their legislatures pick electors, rather than the people. But, over time, the states shifted to choosing electors via the state s popular vote instead. Every state has opted for popular election at least since the Civil War.Calls to AbolishModern opponents of the Electoral College argue against what they call antidemocratic aspects of the institution, criticizing both the intermediary electors and the state-by-state system of voting.Calls to fundamentally change the Electoral College reached a peak after Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore in the tightly contested 2000 election. Gore narrowly won the national popular vote, and many of his supporters howled that the system even without the Supreme Court stepping in was unfair.One organization, National Popular Vote, has worked toward eliminating the Electoral College through an amendment to the Constitution or a state compact. National Popular Vote argues that the current system encourages presidential candidates to spend most of their time in swing states rather than campaigning for votes across the entire country.This plan for a national popular vote has received a moderate level of support, but Heritage s von Spakovsky has called it bad policy, based on mistaken assumptions. Swing states, he wrote, can change from election to election, and many states that are today considered to be reliably blue or red in the presidential race were recently unpredictable. Many states have signed on to a bill that essentially would tie a state s electoral votes to the national popular vote. Those states will pledge to swing all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national vote.But this is because the incentives would be to appeal only to the biggest population centers. Swing states change over time, and the 2016 election could be a prime example of swing-state unpredictability and erosion of the traditional partisan political map.Additionally, if the president were elected by unfiltered national vote, small and rural states would become irrelevant, and campaigns would spend their time in large, populous districts.FINALLY ARE THE DEMOCRATS PROUD OF THIS DISGUSTING MAN WHO CURSES AND LIES?Read more: Daily Signal | 1real |
UPDATE ON MONSTER MOM Who Kicked Little Boy Out Of Home For Voting Trump At School…”We don’t do Donald Trump here!” [VIDEO] | JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN WITHOUT VOICES: We have spoken to Detective Luerra with Arcola Police Department and confirmed that the children seen in the video are safe and a case now has been opened. Arcola Police Department is diligently working with CPS and the District Attorney s Office. We want to send a HUGE thank you to Deputy Fisherhill and Detective Luerra for the fast response in making sure these children are safe. And a huge thank you to all of our members who gave this child a voice and helped us get the info to the correct investigating department. We look forward to working with this department, and with all of you, in the future as we advocate for our children and ensure them a voice! Thank you! When in the course of raising awareness, alarmism occurs, we would do well, as a civilized society, to acknowledge those alarming statistics and act accordingly. We should never allow ourselves to believe falsely that awareness is enough when action is required. ~Quote By: Justice For Children Without Voices You wanna hmmmm vote for him? Imma show you! Evan get your suitcase and get out! We don t do Donald Trump here. Bye! https://twitter.com/realVivaEuropa/status/797066325030014977 | 1real |
Trump will announce new U.S. security strategy on Monday: adviser | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will announce a new security strategy on Monday, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said on Tuesday. The new security blueprint will focus on protecting the U.S. homeland, advancing U.S. prosperity, preserving “peace through strength” and advancing American Influence, McMaster said at an appearance with his British counterpart, Mark Sedwill. McMaster condemned what he said was Russian involvement in a new generation of warfare, including internal political subversion, as well as economic aggression by China. | 0fake |
BOOM! PRESIDENT TRUMP’S National Park Service CANCELS Taxpayer Funding For Project Honoring Violent Black Panther’s Group That Killed Park Ranger | Beyonce made an attempt to glorify the violent Black Panther s group during her NFL Superbowl halftime show in 2015. Former President Barack Obama once marched with the New Black Panthers while campaigning for president in Selma, AL in March, 2007. The photographs, captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before it was scrubbed, are the latest evidence of the mainstream media s failure to examine Obama s extremist ties and radical roots.The National Park Service told the Washington Free Beacon it is no longer providing funding for a controversial project honoring the legacy of the Black Panther Party after outrage that the agency would spend taxpayer dollars to memorialize a group that murdered a park ranger in the 1970s.The Free Beacon revealed last month that the Park Service gave roughly $100,000 to the University of California, Berkeley for a research project on the Marxist extremist group to memorialize a history that brought meaning to lives far beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. A captain in the Black Panther Party murdered National Park Service ranger Kenneth Patrick while he was on patrol near San Francisco in 1973. Patrick was shot three times by Veronza Leon Curtis Bowers Jr., who is currently serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Patrick left behind a widow and three children.The Fraternal Order of Police, the largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers with over 330,000 members, sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week expressing outrage and shock that the National Park Service would fund a project honoring the legacy of the Black Panther Party. Mr. President, as far as we are concerned the only meaning they brought to any lives was grief to the families of their victims, wrote Chuck Canterbury, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police. According to our research, members of this militant anti-American group murdered 16 law enforcement officers over the course of their history. Among their victims was U.S. Park Ranger Kenneth C. Patrick. He was murdered in cold blood by three members of the Black Panther Party on 5 August 1973. His killer, who remains behind bars, still considers himself a Black Panther and a political prisoner.' It is appalling that the National Park Service, Ranger Patrick s own agency, now proposes to partner with [Berkeley] and two active members of this violent and repugnant organization, Canterbury said.The FBI labels the Black Panther Party as advocates for the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government. At a time when many in our nation feel strongly that memorials to aspects of the darker times in our history be removed from public lands, why would the NPS seek to commemorate the activities of an extremist separatist group that advocated the use of violence against our country a country they perceived as their enemy? Canterbury asked. This is a despicable irony and we hope you can bring it to an end by halting [the grant] immediately. | 1real |
Secretary of Labor Tom Perez on how to fight for social change | In 2015, Vox talked to Secretary Perez about how social change happens — and the role played not just by government and activists, but by individual interactions between people, and by the slow, relentless force of demographics and history. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Perez's track record has made him something of a lightning rod for the right: when he was nominated for labor secretary, then–Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called him "a crusading ideologue whose convictions lead him to believe that the law simply doesn't apply to him."
His office reflects the importance of both insiders and outsiders: the picture behind his desk is of former Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, the namesake of the building where the department is headquartered, but the picture in the anteroom outside his office is of labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez.
At the same time, he's a close ally of Democratic politicians; he's spent time campaigning for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 primary, and is sometimes mentioned as a possible VP pick if Clinton wins the nomination.
Perez has spent the majority of his career inside government, from the staff of Senator Ted Kennedy to the council of Montgomery County, Maryland. But he's always been closely aligned with activists and movements outside of the government. For a time, he was president of the board of directors of CASA de Maryland, a leading immigration advocacy group; even when he hasn't had an official title, he's worked closely with LGBT organizations, civil rights groups, and labor unions.
Progressive activists haven't always loved Democratic presidents, and they certainly haven't always loved President Obama. At times they've been deeply frustrated with the president and his White House. But at least one senior administration official has remained a progressive hero throughout the entirety of Obama's presidency: Thomas Perez, who ran the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division during the president's first term and has served as secretary of labor since 2013.
What role does government play in social change? Dara Lind: I think progressives feel a lot of ownership in having you here in the Perkins Building. Tom Perez: That's why her portrait is right behind my back — because she's the gold standard. Dara Lind: Over the course of your career, you've been working very closely with a lot of movements, but mostly from the inside. The big question I want an answer to is what role you think government plays in social change. Do you see this role as primarily leading public opinion and instituting things that people can then catch up to? Or is it mostly responsive to people who are already organizing on the ground and demanding that government respond? When you look at the history of any successful movement, it's always been a partnership. By partnership, I mean there are external forces at work. Also in the anatomy of every successful movement that has resulted in change, whether it's the Civil Rights Act of '64 or the Voting Rights Act of '65 or movements before that — the Fair Labor Standards Act, under FDR, for example. You look at the work of Frances Perkins leading up to the Fair Labor Standards Act, and you look at the work of the external labor movement at that point. And I talk about civil rights and labor rights; I mean, the March on Washington was a march for civil rights and a march for labor rights. Each one of those forces is indispensable to the movement. They’re all really links on a chain. And when you break a link, the chain can be broken. Dara Lind: How have you seen these kinds of partnerships play out over the course of your career? Tom Perez: We had a living-wage movement in Montgomery County, and it would not have been successful without progressive businesses, without grass-roots leadership and faith leaders, and without folks inside Montgomery County government who said, "This is the right thing to do." Or moving the needle on the Hate Crimes Bill, for instance — which was, for me, a 15-year odyssey. I can tell you a lot about that one, because I really did had a front-row seat on that. Who is more responsible? I'll let historians judge that. But I think I can say, fairly, that it was all of us working together. And if you didn't have the inside-government person, you wouldn't have gotten it done. What happens when activists are frustrated with their allies inside government? Dara Lind: In hindsight, throughout history, it often seems there's a partnership between inside and outside. In the moment, there can be tensions. I think both of us have seen this recently, with the immigrant rights movement and the administration leading up to the executive actions in November. Tom Perez: Oh, sure. And there were tensions in the hate-crimes bill. There was tension during the drafting: there are existing death penalty provisions, and what do you do about that? Those are fair questions. Those are important questions. The immigrant-rights movement — believe me, these are my very, very good friends. … That doesn't mean, even when you know you have shared values and shared vision, that we haven't had pitched battles. And it doesn't mean that at the end of the day we don't come out with a very clear vision of where to go forward, and sometimes you don't agree at the end. But I think we’re in a good place right now. Dara Lind: In cases where there is direct pressure on the people who are friends of the movement, when have you seen that kind of pressure be effective in spurring them to do better? When have you seen it entrench attitudes and make people feel underappreciated? Tom Perez: I consider myself a pretty passionate person, but I have always tried hard not to personalize things. In the heat of the moment, at times, that's easier said than done, so I think it's really important to keep that in mind. In every debate I had when I was at the County Council, I saw folks on the left and folks on the right who'd do this: when they disagree with you, they also disagree with who you are. They add, "You're morally bankrupt," or something like that. And, you know, we just have different visions of America at times when we see things differently. One thing I learned from Senator Kennedy, and from Senator Paul Simon, and others whom I watched firsthand as a staffer, was that you can disagree without being disagreeable. You can be passionate in your views, but you've got to remember that you have got to work with folks. If you're attacking their integrity as opposed to attacking their point of view on an issue, it just makes it harder to get to the finish line. I think people understand that. But people are human. And as a result, sometimes we do things that perhaps don't move the ball forward.
Dara Lind: The president’s made some substantial changes recently through executive action — on immigration, for example, or raising the minimum wage for federal contractors. There’s often a belief in DC that changing policy through the executive branch isn’t as permanent as getting it done through legislation or waiting for public opinion to come around. Do you feel that's a concern? Or do you feel that changes like this set a standard that society will then rise to meet? Tom Perez: I see them as both. When I look back on the most important civil rights developments in the last hundred years, in the top three for me would be President Truman's executive order integrating the Armed Forces. And I couldn't help but note the parallels in rhetoric with some opponents when he did that, and when we were talking about "Don't ask, don't tell," — "military readiness," and this and that. I had a trial down in Texas when I was prosecuting hate crimes. It was a horrible hate-crime case. I got to be good friends with the attorney for one of the defendants, and he's a World War II veteran. He said once that he grew up in the segregated South, he grew up with attitudes about African Americans, and the singular thing that changed his life was when he fought side by side with them. So I think executive action can be transformational. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, has been in place since 2012. The program applies to many of the "DREAMers": young unauthorized immigrants who would have qualified for legalization under the DREAM Act. Under the current DACA program, young unauthorized immigrants who meet certain criteria apply for two years of protection from deportation (it's going to be extended to three years under the new set of orders), and can get work permits once they've been "DACAmented." An estimated 1.2 million immigrants were initially eligible for the program, and about half of them have actually applied. Read this Vox feature for more about how well DACA has worked so far. There's no substitute for comprehensive immigration reform. DACA was transformational, but not sufficiently so. I met a DACA kid [see sidebar] yesterday down in Carolina when I was there, and she inspires me. She absolutely inspires me. But she can't get in-state tuition, and, you know, there's a ceiling for her, even though she's better off now than before. So I look at executive action and legislative action as two tools in our toolbox of expanding opportunity. How can progressives organize people who don’t have the time for political activism? Dara Lind: What are the lessons you learned while working and serving on the CASA board that you took with you when you went back to working for the government? Tom Perez: It was something that I understood intuitively as a student in the civil rights movement, but then when you live it, you see firsthand: that change happens from the bottom up. You build things from the bottom up, you organize, and that's how you effect change. And so I'm trying to bring that operating principle to our paid-leave discussion; to our skills movement; to the working families, businesses, nonprofits, faith leaders, and educators working side by side. I just talked to 400 community college presidents and trustees this morning. And we have tremendous opportunities. The wind is at our back economically. But we've got to make sure we have shared prosperity, and the long-term key to that is we need to upskill America. We need to equip Americans, workers, with the skills to compete. And the community I hear the most about this issue from is the business community. And I said to them, "We need to build a movement around this. I dream of a day when I hear — and, more importantly, Congress hears — as often from the business community about skills as they do about trade or other issues." If you were to commission a poll of 500 employers right now, skills would be in the top three of their priorities. But we haven't built a movement around it. We're building a movement right now around paid leave and childcare. We live in a Modern Family world, but we have these Leave It to Beaver principles that are still all too frequently in place. I mean, Rebecca, the woman who sat in the box with the first lady at the State of the Union — to put a finer point on their situation, they have two kids under the age of five, their mortgage is $1,400 a month, and their child-care bill is $1,900 a month. You can't survive like that for any long period of time. Dara Lind: The question that raises is: what happens when you have someone who's working to support a family and doesn't benefit from paid leave, or needs to work two jobs because he or she isn't being paid minimum wage — who might not have the energy to be the forces on the ground? How does it affect the ability to build a movement when the people who are most likely to benefit may not be able, or just may not be terribly motivated, to make change happen, because they’re focused on their daily lives? Tom Perez: That’s a huge question. When you look at where we were 100 years ago and you look at where we are now, there was a lot more attachment to institutions — your union, the Elks, the Eagles, bowling, your church or other place of worship. Today, there is more bowling alone. In that context, how do we build movements? I'm inspired by people like Sarita Gupta [executive director of the workers-rights advocacy group Jobs With Justice], and others, who have recognized that we can organize low-wage workers and we can partner with businesses. She's doing the same thing you and I are talking about. And she's working on behalf of exactly the cohort you described: people who understand at a basic level that their life is a struggle, that the playing field isn't level, but they don't have time to go to the rally or go to the union hall, and they may not necessarily have the wherewithal. They need help. That's the voice we have to give. That's why our work is so important. Because there are folks out there with a lot money to spend who are saying, "I wake up every day figuring out how I can screw unions." We’ve got to understand this: that there are folks who wake up every day who believe we get ahead in America by squelching workers’ voices, by making it harder for workers to organize and creating more top-down stuff. And I just refuse. The Gilded Age was not a golden age in America. That’s why we do what we're doing here: to service that voice. That's what gets the president out of bed every morning. These are hard battles, because the people we're fighting on behalf of are working two and three jobs. It's not realistic, oftentimes, to ask them to come down to Capitol Hill to do Hill visits.
Dara Lind: On the one hand, you're saying there are people who are working against the ones you are working for. But on a historical scale, attitudes change: people who would have been opposed to integrating the Armed Forces 70 years ago aren’t opposed today. Do you think that kind of change of winning hearts and minds is inevitable? Tom Perez: Usually, I'm optimistic. I believe the moral arc of the universe bends not only toward justice but also toward those who seek to expand opportunity, rather than contract opportunity. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a big debate about whether to have free access to public education K–12. "You're going to give out free high school degrees? You don't need that. Come on." I suspect some of the descendants of those folks are the ones who fought Medicare 50 years later. "Medicare," you know? "You don’t need that." There's an album you should look at: Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine. There's actually an album. I think I still have the album cover. I gave it to Diane Rehm one day because I was on her show. Not only did Reagan say Medicare would lead to socialized medicine, he said Medicare would lead to socialism in America. That's what he said in the album. And 50 years later I've met all these people. I met a guy, Ward, in Nashville who got his ACA coverage March 1 and got his liver transplant two weeks later. I met a guy, Victor, two weeks ago in Salt Lake; kidney cancer. And what they both wanted more than anything — "You know what I want to do most now?" they say. I'm like, "No, what?" I don't know what they're going to say. "I want to work, I want to get a job again, because I was so sick I couldn't work." It just makes me ask the question: what's in it for opponents of the ACA for Ward and Victor not to be able to work? And then they have to become a ward of the state. How is that good for the economy? How is it good for health-care delivery to have the ER be their primary care physician? How is that good on any metric of success, putting aside the moral and ethical aspects of that? So I have optimism. Because we are on the right of the facts and we are on the right side of history, and that's how the moral arc has historically bent. It doesn't bend on its own. We are talking about movements and movement building. Dara Lind: Over the course of your career, do you think there are any issues that have suffered setbacks — where you’re now fighting just to get back to where things were when you started out? Tom Perez: I'm going to Selma in a couple of weeks to commemorate Bloody Sunday and 50 years after Bloody Sunday and almost 50 years as we come up. [He looks toward a corner of his office.] I'm looking over there right now because it's John Lewis, one of my favorite people, in the photo. I find it impossible to believe that 50 years after folks fought, struggled so hard, and gave their lives in some cases, the biggest problem in the voting space is in-person voter ID fraud. That is, as Colin Powell said, "How can a problem be so widespread and yet so undetected?" I firmly believe we should have a pitched battle about policies. Democracy is all about having passionate debate — respectful but passionate debate. And then at the end of the day, what we should be doing is making sure everybody gets the opportunity to vote. That's why I had some friends on the left who asked me when I was in the civil rights division, "Why do you spend so much time making sure that veterans, service members, can vote? Because don't you know they vote Republican?" And I said, "First of all, I don't know how they vote. Second, I don't care how they vote. And third, I'm offended by that. Because these folks are serving our country and we need to make sure everyone gets access to the ballot. I'm just thoroughly offended by that suggestion." So we should be having this debate, and then at the end of the day we should all be working together to make it as easy as possible for eligible voters to vote. As opposed to a world in which the strategy is, "I’ve got to make it harder for my perceived ideological foe to exercise his franchise." By the way, you might win a short-term victory here and there, but you are swimming into an un-winnable headwind of demographics that will be a tidal wave. And it's totally inconsistent with our values as a nation. | 0fake |
Kelly confirms he's been asked to be U.S. homeland security secretary: Fox News | (Reuters) - Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, reached while traveling in Australia, has confirmed that he has been asked to serve as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Fox News reported on Wednesday. Fox quoted Kelly as saying he had been asked to be homeland security secretary and would consider it an honor. | 0fake |
Watch Cruz Insanely Admit He’ll Still Back Trump Until He ‘Shoots Somebody’ (VIDEO) | The Republican race towards the White House is getting more terrifying by the day. We have the front-runner, Donald Trump, saying at his rallies that not only does he want his crowd of supporters to be violent towards protesters, but he s also saying that he ll pay their legal fees. Now, we have Ted Cruz, who s currently in second place, saying that he ll back Trump unless he were to shoot someone.Cruz, while being interviewed Monday and asked if he s still sticking to his loyalty pledge to back the Republican nominee, said: Well, I can give you one example where I would no longer support Donald Trump. If, for example, he were to go out on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, I would not be willing to support Donald Trump. Cruz is referring to when Trump said that his supporters love him so much, he could even shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and they would still love him.When pressed on the subject of violence at Trump rallies by a reporter and if he has reconsidered his pledge due to recent developments, Cruz insisted that he ll still back Trump. Cruz said: I know it is a shocking concept to member of the media. A shocking concept that an elected official actually does what he said. At the outset of this campaign I committed, I will support the Republican nominee, and I honor my word. This clearly shows Cruz s inflexibility on evolving situations, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he does not belong in the White House. Being president includes being able to gather and process to information and intelligence and make the best decision for the nation depending on that information.Honestly, if people are still voting Republican at this point we should question their sanity. We literally have the top Republican presidential candidate encouraging violence against others, and the next in line saying he ll back that sort of behavior, unless, of course, he were to actually shoot somebody. We, as Americans, should not only be ashamed, we should be terrified that one of these men has a very real shot at being leader of the free world.Here s the video via Raw Story:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Energised challenge by Tokyo governor exposes risk of PM Abe's snap poll decision | TOKYO (Reuters) - A fast-growing challenge by Tokyo s governor, often floated as Japan s first possible female premier, to Shinzo Abe s ruling bloc has highlighted the risk of his gamble on a snap poll as she tries to replicate a historic defeat of his party. Abe called the Oct. 22 election in the hope his improved ratings and a struggling opposition would help his Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition keep its majority in the lower house, where it now holds a two-thirds super majority . But Abe s bet now looks increasingly shaky, given growing support for Yuriko Koike s fledgling Party of Hope - launched this week - and the opposition Democratic Party s move to have its candidates leave the party and run on her ticket. No general election needed to be held until late 2018. Abe s decision has evoked comparison s to British Prime Minister Theresa May s move to call a snap election in June, only to see her Conservative Party lose its overall majority, although analysts noted Koike might have become an even bigger threat had Abe waited. Abe thought the risk worth taking. Maybe he didn t anticipate what Koike would do, said Daniel Sneider, a Stanford University scholar currently doing research in Japan. The growing momentum of Koike s party has also revived memories of a 1993 political drama when a coalition led by another reformist governor, Morihiro Hosokawa, ousted the LDP for the first time since its founding four decades earlier. Clearly, the historical parallels are weighing on Abe s mind. Abe, Koike and Democratic Party leader Seiji Maehara were elected to the lower house for the first time that year, Koike and Maehara from Hosokawa s Japan New Party and Abe from the LDP. There was a new party boom in the 1990s and the result was political confusion and a long period of economic stagnation, Abe said in a campaign speech on Thursday. Hosokawa s fractious alliance fractured after less than one year. Abe also cited the 2009-12 rule of the Democratic Party, whose policy flip-flops and infighting many voters recall. What would be born of a (new party) boom is confusion, not hope, Abe said. Another key player in 1993, Ichiro Ozawa, who bolted the LDP and helped engineer Hosokawa s coalition as well as the Democratic Party s 2009 surge to power, is also playing a role now. His tiny Liberal Party may also merge with Koike s party. Like anti-LDP forces in 1993 and the Democrats in 2009, Koike is promising to shed the shackles of vested interests - a slogan appealing to voters seeking an alternative to the LDP. Former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi - who mentored Koike after she later joined the LDP - also skilfully painted the old guard in his own party as obstacles to reform in a 2005 election, winning a massive victory. To succeed, however, Koike may have to take a big gamble of her own by running in the election herself, risking a backlash for quitting as governor and ending up an opposition leader.Koike, who compares herself to French President Emmanuel Macron and his meteoric rise, has repeatedly said she ll stay on as governor, but her carefully parsed comments have failed to dampen speculation. Ms. Koike is saying she won t run, but ... I think she will run, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Friday, one day after Abe called the lower house poll. It would be great if she announced that boldly and debated policies head on, he added, in an apparent challenge. Despite Koike s efforts to broaden her party base by absorbing many Democratic Party candidates, fielding a big enough slate to take a majority in the 465-member lower house could be tough. Candidates must register on Oct. 10. She said on Friday she won t accept all Democrats who want to run on her ticket, and liberals will probably be left out. Even if Koike, who defied the LDP to run for governor last year and whose local party trounced it in a July Tokyo assembly election, decides not to run herself, her party s challenge can still weaken Abe if the LDP fares badly. If the LDP loses 40 seats or more, she looks good, said Columbia University professor emeritus Gerry Curtis. | 0fake |
Two Days Ago, Trump Asked Russia To Hack Clinton And Today They Did Just That | It s time the American people wake up to the dangers and the treasonous nature that is Donald J. Trump. Two days ago, at a press conference that made national news for being absolutely ridiculous, Trump had asked the Russians (either government or non government) to hack into the United States cyberspace to gather Clinton emails. The reason? He wants WikiLeaks, at the behest of Russia, to undermine Clinton and help him get elected.Well today, it s been confirmed that the Clinton campaign s computer system have been hacked and the Russians were probably the ones who did it.U.S. intelligence officials have found evidence clearly linking state-sponsored Russian hackers to breaches in multiple Democratic affiliated organizations, including the fundraising Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign has now been added to the triangle of breaches.Reuters broke the story Friday afternoon, receiving no comment from the Department of Justice nor any Russian officials. When reaching out for comment, Reuters wrote:The Clinton campaign, based in Brooklyn, had no immediate comment and referred Reuters to a comment from earlier this week by campaign senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan criticizing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and calling the hacking a national security issue. Reuters has also no knowledge of what specifically had been breached in the Clinton computer system.Maybe it s the emails Trump and his buddies at the Kremlin have been hoping for. Given Trump s public ignorance of knowing Putin even though he has acknowledged in the past he does in fact know him very well it seems the timing of this new hack against Clinton is very coincidental.Also given Trump s strange admiration for Putin and apparently for individuals that hack, a lopsided influence in the United States Presidential election in favor of him also seems very coincidental given the circumstances just now coming to light.By saying he hoped Russians hacked Hillary Clinton which he tweeted and said on camera so it really isn t a joke to him Trump has made clear that he is perfectly A-OK with victory based on cheating an treasonous associations.It s one thing to joke it s another to have your Motherland thugs (who clearly support you) spring into action on your behalf.Whether or not Trump and his campaign clowns are involved (directly) in this remains to be seen. Whether or not Trump and his campaign clowns are involved indirectly remains to be seen. But thing is for certain: state sponsored Russian hackers are unfairly influencing this election, and like the KKK and David Duke, Trump and his campaign (save Mike Pence) have disavowed.That should scare everybody.Featured image via Joshua Lott/Getty Images | 1real |
Disrespectful Prick Ted Cruz Will Snub President Obama By Skipping Final State Of The Union Address | Instead of respectfully attending President Obama s final State of the Union Address like other Republican nominees, Ted Cruz is skipping it.The Texas Tea Party Senator made the decision to campaign in New Hampshire on January 12th rather than spending a couple hours respectfully listening to what our current commander-in-chief has to say during one of his last major speeches as president.Of course, it s not like Cruz couldn t fly in and fly back out after the speech is over, which is why this definitely feels like a snub of President Obama, especially when you consider that Senators Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Bernie Sanders are all putting their campaigns on pause for the evening to hear what President Obama has to say.But Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler insists that this isn t a snub at all. Cruz is simply working hard to win New Hampshire, he says, even though Cruz is in third place in the Granite State 16-points behind leader Donald Trump. It s not a snub. He s going to be in New Hampshire, working hard to win New Hampshire. No disrespect. It just is going to work out this way. Tyler also added that Cruz will be be disappointed with the speech no matter where he is at the time it is delivered. It won t matter because he ll be just as disappointed in New Hampshire as he will be in the chamber, he said.Adding further insult and disrespect toward President Obama, Cruz intends to hold his own State of the Union hours before the real one in what the Dallas Morning News reports is being billed as the State of Our Union Town Hall Meeting with Senator Ted Cruz. Basically, Cruz is snubbing the State of the Union Address to run off and pretend he is already president.And his disrespectful actions could come back to haunt him come Election Day in November.James Madison University professor of media and politics Dan Schill told The Hill that while Cruz s stunt won t necessarily harm him among Republican primary voters who already cheer anybody who disrespects President Obama, it may cost him voters who see this as being disrespectful. I don t think it will necessarily turn off too many primary voters in New Hampshire and Iowa, but there is that risk, he said. The choice to stiff the speech can send a message it s time for change. It may also backfire for people who see it as not respecting office of the presidency. In short, Ted Cruz is being a disrespectful little prick who believes he can fire up New Hampshire Republicans to vote for him if he snubs President Obama.It s one thing to dislike the man who is president, but disrespecting the office is totally unacceptable and proves once again that Ted Cruz isn t qualified to be president, whether he is a natural born citizen or not.Featured Image: Wikimedia | 1real |
Workplace Violence or Terrorism? CA Massacre Probe Unfolds | A day after a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, authorities are trying to figure out why a couple would embark on a deadly killing spree.
Was it workplace violence or Islamic-inspired terrorism or both that left 14 people dead and more than a dozen injured?
Late Wednesday night, police announced that 28-year-old Syed Rizwan Farook and 27-year-old Tashfeen Malik were the two lone assailants in the mass shooting.
The husband and wife team were clearly ready for a battle with police. An ATF spokesman said the couple was wearing military tactical-style clothing loaded with ammunition for a gunfight.
So far, the FBI has not ruled out terrorism as a motive in these tragic shootings. CBN News Terrorism Analyst Erick Stakelbeck shares his perspective. Click play to watch.
"We are pretty comfortable that the two shooters that we believe went into the building are the two shooters that are deceased up on San Bernardino Avenue," San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said.
Farook, an American citizen, had been a San Bernardino County employee for five years. His father told the Daily News that "he was very religious."
"He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He's a Muslim," Farook's father said.
On Wednesday morning, Farook and his wife reportedly dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with grandparents. Farook then went to a Christmas party for employees of the Public Health Department at the Inland Regional Center.
"He did leave the party early under some circumstances that were described as angry or something of that nature," Burguan said.
Around 11 a.m. local time, Farook returned to the celebrations with his wife Malik dressed in matching assault-style military fatigues and body armor and started shooting.
"Based upon what we have seen, and based upon how they were equipped, there had to be some degree of planning that went into this," Burguan speculated.
"So I don't think they just ran home, put on these types of tactical clothes, grabbed guns and came back on a spur-of-the-moment thing," he said.
Police Chief Burguan said the attack lasted "only minutes." But in that short period of time, the couple managed to kill 14 people and injured 17 others.
Fox News says authorities found multiple pipe bombs and other explosive devices at various locations, including three devices at the scene of the attack.
The couple was later killed by police in a shoot-out several hours after the incident.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Farook reportedly took a trip to Saudi Arabia and returned with his new wife that he apparently met online.
Speaking to reporters late Wednesday night, Farook's brother-in-law Farhan Khan expressed his grief over the tragedy.
"I just cannot express how sad I am for what happened today. I mean, my condolences to the people that lost their lives," he said.
Wednesday's attack was the deadliest mass shooting since Sandy Hook. President Barack Obama and some Democratic leaders immediately called for stricter gun controls.
Meanwhile, the New York Daily News ran with the controversial title "God Isn't Fixing This" on their front page.
The story criticized Republican presidential candidates for "preaching about prayer" while being silent about gun control. The paper's front page quickly became a hot item on Twitter. California already has strict gun control laws.
Meanwhile, the search for a motive continues. | 0fake |
Arise President Trump (or Why it's not the End of the World as We Know it) | 10 Shares
4 5 0 1
"USA! USA! USA!" they chanted together in the Hilton Ballroom as the results came in. Who needs polls? They never gave him a chance but now we have it: President Donald Trump. Not only were the polls spectacularly wrong (who will ever trust this particularly bankrupt form of moralising presumptive analysis and telling us how we do and should feel?) but also the pundits who were not just arrogant about the fact that Trump had no chance but also were hopelessly out of touch with what America was thinking across its societal spectrum, what it wanted, what was felt deep in its blood.
It is a rejection of the liberal consensus the entire West has wallowed in since the 90's and a rejection of Obama and the false hope he decried, the impotent nature of US political leverage around the world and the rejection of brazen corruption and questionable ethics as typified by "Crooked Hillary".
The world must live with it; democracy has spoken and they're going to have to get over the words President Trump. Some will head for the hills, some will run to Canada, others will continue to cry but as Obama said yesterday, regardless of the result "tomorrow the sun will still shine."
This is a cry for American exceptionalism and like him or not Trump typifies that. He is committed to education, and demands high performance. Selling well is an admirable skill for a President to have. Negotiating with Congress, internationally, etc., is exceptionally useful. Trump has taken beatings financially and come out smelling like a rose.
Trump's business experience involves negotiations with business leaders and even governments around the world, and he likely has connections behind the scenes that surpass those of simply purely political candidates -- this gives him keen, realistic insights into economics in different parts of the world, as well as additional avenues to pursue trade agreements, and even perhaps some nuanced insights of particular financial weaknesses of possible global competitors, not to mention experience and insight into the partnerships and/or antagonism between different industries and particular governments.
MORE... Trump's sexual predator characteristics - His Grandfather was a pimp, but at least he paid the women he hired The significance of the GOP's attempted purge of Donald Trump Trump, Turkey, and police tyranny: The crisis of Imperialism finds political expression An America in denial This vote comes down to the reckoning that for too long, politicians have sold the American people out to foreign nations and global industry. What Donald Trump is doing is representing the absolute heartbreak and anger and frustration at a government gone mad and it seems the Left completely underestimated that in their vitriol in crying #NeverTrump and portraying him as the devil incarnate.
Although it is entirely true that Trump is ostentatious and has his mistakes, he brings something to the Presidential table no other candidate had before; he speaks his mind.
America clearly is sick of weasel politicians who are too afraid to say what people want to hear, they want the facts straight.
President Trump isn't cut from the political class, that class which is entrenched in its self-interest and has let the country down time and time again. Ross Perot once said that we need somebody to clean out the stables, a corrupted, ethically questionable President is therefore not the answer in order to accomplish that and I'm not talking about Donald Trump.
Trump is a pragmatist in an era of rapidly approaching chaos, he is not a social engineer, a think tanker who wants to please those lining his bank accounts. The liberal Democratic policies of Obama, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and their company created a climate that has led to this decision today.
So what if his language is intemperate and insulting? Even lacking in nobility from time to time? How can a true changemaker be straitjacketed by politically correct chains if he or she must express the will of the people, uncomfortable concerns that lie dormant for far too long?
Obama won because conservative voters stayed home. He had promise and he let so many down, what did Clinton have? And that is why conservative voters had to get out and vote.
Trump prefers isolationism on a world scale, Clinton voted to take us to war in Iraq and to overthrow Libya's Gaddafi, all in the guise of being "muscular."
Perhaps today's landmark and historic decision is not so much about Trump's strengths and power but more about the crippled weakness of the country in 2016 and you simply cannot blame him for that. | 1real |
BOOM! The Truth About “FAKE NEWS” Websites: “The butt-hurt and the rigged media is desperate to salvage some scrap of credibility” [VIDEO] | 1real | |
Mattis looking to see if changes need to be made after Niger ambush | TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday that the military was looking into what changes, if any, should be made after an ambush in Niger killed four U.S. soldiers last week. The incident, which U.S. officials suspect was carried out by a local Islamic State affiliate, has thrown a spotlight on the U.S. counterterrorism mission in the West African country. Mattis, addressing the incident for the first time publicly, said the ambush had taken place in an area where the enemy has not operated before and that the patrol had been hit hard. He said French aircraft were overhead within 30 minutes and that he did not believe there was a delay in evacuating those wounded and killed, although he did not say how long it took to move them. We will look at this and say was there something we have to adapt to now, should we have been in a better stance, you know, autopsy, you always find a lot out in them, Mattis told reporters on board a military plane. We re not complacent, we re going to do better, he added. From initial accounts, the 40-member patrol, which included about a dozen U.S. troops, came under a swift attack by militants riding in a dozen vehicles and on about 20 motorcycles. At least four Nigeriens were also killed and, according to one Niger security source, militants seized four vehicles in the ambush. A diplomat with knowledge of the incident said French officials were frustrated by the U.S. troops actions, saying they had acted on only limited intelligence and without contingency plans in place. U.S. forces do not have a direct combat mission in Niger, but their assistance to its army includes intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in their efforts to target violent extremist organizations. | 0fake |
Kushners, Trump In-Laws, Weigh $400 Million Deal With Chinese Firm - The New York Times | A New York real estate company owned by the family of President Trump’s has been negotiating to sell a $400 million stake in its Fifth Avenue flagship skyscraper to a Chinese insurance company with ties to leading families of the Communist Party. The Chinese company, Anbang Insurance Group, would pay to get a piece of Manhattan real estate and would commit to spending billions more to completely transform the tower into a chic condominium and retail citadel. If signed, the potential agreement would create a financial marriage of two politically powerful families in the world’s two biggest economies, but it would also present the possibility of glaring conflicts of interest. The Kushner family, owners of the tower, would reap a financial windfall courtesy of a Chinese company, even as Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump as well as his helps oversee American foreign policy. News of the negotiations surfaced as President Trump and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, were preparing for their first meeting, to be held next month. Jared Kushner has emerged as a moderating voice in China policy among Mr. Trump’s inner circle, and he has been heavily involved in planning for the visit. Asked about a deal at a news conference on Tuesday, the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, referred questions back to the Kushner Companies. “Jared went through extraordinary lengths” to comply with rules, he said. A spokesman for Anbang said in a statement that there was no agreement and that “there is no investment from Anbang for this deal. ” In his presentation to prospective investors, Charles Kushner, the leader of the family company and Jared’s father, has said that once renovated, the property would be worth more than $7 billion, according to a real estate broker and two investors who have heard the pitch and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they want to do further business with the companies. That would make it the most valuable property in Manhattan. The chairman of Anbang, Wu Xiaohui, who wined and dined Jared Kushner at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in November, serving $ Château Lafite Rothschild, married the granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who transformed China’s economy. Mr. Wu also counts the son of a top army marshal as a longtime business partner. The Waldorf Astoria is one of a string of trophy properties that Anbang has bought in the United States in recent years, spending billions of dollars for it and a collection of luxury properties that the company acquired last year from the Blackstone Group. But the company’s murky shareholding structure has caused federal regulators to put the brakes on other planned acquisitions. Anbang, a huge Chinese conglomerate with almost $300 billion in assets, is owned by 39 companies, many of them shell companies that, when traced, lead to empty offices or government registration bureaus, according to Chinese government records. At least 35 of the companies, which collectively control more than 92 percent of Anbang, trace all or part of their ownership to relatives of Mr. Wu, to Deng’s granddaughter or to Chen Xiaolu, the marshal’s son, though the three no longer show up as owners in company records, The New York Times reported in September. Should an agreement be reached, going into business with the family of the of the American president would buy Mr. Wu an immense amount of credibility within China because he is seen as having influence at the apex of power in the United States, said Minxin Pei, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College in California, who focuses on Chinese politics and corruption. “He is purchasing political prestige, and that is a priceless asset for somebody like him,” Mr. Pei said by telephone. A deal, however, could face scrutiny by the American and Chinese governments before it is completed. The Chinese government has been eager to stanch the flow of overseas investments as the economy slows. A White House press officer said that “these negotiations will not affect the Trump administration’s policies or approach with China in any way. ” Details of the negotiations with Anbang were first reported by Bloomberg on Monday. Talks were underway between Anbang and the Kushners, including Jared, as early as last year, and were first reported by The Times in January. The deal would value the office tower at $2. 8 billion, a high value for a building that has never been considered a New York trophy. Anbang would eventually take a controlling stake in the property and obtain a $4 billion construction loan, Bloomberg said, for a makeover of the tower, which would have luxury apartments at the top, a multifloor retail mall at the base, and a hotel in the middle. The proposed development comes at an odd time in New York. For years, foreign investors have poured billions of dollars into New York apartments, hotels, office buildings and developments based on a perception that this is one of the most stable markets in a tumultuous world. But luxury hotel rates in New York have started to fall, and developers who rushed to build supertowers with $100 million penthouses have seen a drastic slowdown in sales. A similar plan to convert the Sony office building at 550 Madison Avenue into a condominium, hotel and mall was abandoned last year because of the slowdown in the luxury residential market. The Kushner family declined to discuss details of the deal. “Kushner Companies is in active discussions around 666 Fifth,” a spokesman said in a brief statement Monday, “and nothing has been finalized. ” A spokeswoman for Kushner Companies had said previously that Jared Kushner recused himself in November, not long after Mr. Trump’s election, to avoid conflicts of interest. Mr. Kushner has also since stepped away from the business of the company and placed some of his assets in a trust. Hope Hicks, a White House spokeswoman, said on Monday that Mr. Kushner had sold his interest in 666 Fifth Avenue to a trust in which neither he, nor his wife, Ivanka Trump, nor their children are beneficiaries at a price “based on appraisals. ” The amount paid has not been revealed. Ms. Hicks, in an email, also said that Mr. Kushner “has not communicated with anyone regarding this matter since the president took office. ” The Kushners bought 666 Fifth for $1. 8 billion on Jared’s birthday in January 2007, as part of a plan to reposition the family company as a major Manhattan developer. Until then, the Kushners were based in New Jersey, where they owned a huge portfolio of suburban garden apartments and donated heavily to the Democratic Party. But the deal at 666 Fifth came with a big price, $1, 200 per square foot. As the family struggled to make its mortgage payments amid the recession, it slowly sold segments to Vornado Realty Trust, which owns 49. 5 percent of the building’s office space and a slice of the retail, and others. They would have to be bought out for the deal to close. A spokesman for Vornado declined to comment. The proposed deal would be a form of political risk insurance for Mr. Wu, said Mr. Pei, the political science professor. China is in the middle of a widespread crackdown on corruption, and billionaires are not immune. In January, one of the country’s richest financiers was apparently abducted from an apartment in Hong Kong’s Four Seasons hotel and whisked across the border into Chinese custody. By doing business with the Kushners, Mr. Wu may buy himself safety. “Now he has extra protection, because Chinese authorities who want to come after him will now have to think twice about the political fallout,” said Mr. Pei, who wrote “China’s Crony Capitalism. ” “For him, it is a brilliant move. ” | 0fake |
Top House Intelligence Democrat says chairman should step aside from Russia probe | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said on Monday that the committee’s chairman should recuse himself from any further involvement in the panel’s investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election. | 0fake |
Migrants in Serbia's north brave winter to cross to EU | SID, Serbia (Reuters) - Mudassir, 18, from Pakistan s city of Peshawar has tried to enter the European Union 30 times but was always caught and sent back to his starting point in Serbia. Now, he and dozens of other migrants are braving near-freezing temperatures in shrubs and fields near Sid, a northwestern Serbian town just outside European Union s member Croatia, hoping to make another border run. They spend nights in tents and makeshift shelters in a shrub they call - the jungle. I have tried 30 times, I am in Serbia for 16 months, ... I am tired of sleeping in the jungle , said Mudassir, dressed in a black hooded jacket. Meanwhile, other migrants, all young males, huddled outside an abandoned printing factory in the outskirts of Sid, waiting for a meal delivered by an international volunteer group, the No Name Kitchen. The so-called Balkan route for migrants was shut last year when Turkey agreed to stop the flow in return for EU aid and a promise of visa-free travel for its own citizens. But people mainly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia continued to arrive in Serbia, mainly from Turkey, via neighboring Bulgaria, attempting to enter Croatia and the EU. According to official data there are as many as 4,500 migrants in government-operated camps in Serbia. Rights activists say that hundreds are scattered in the capital Belgrade and towns along the Croatian border. Muhammad, 22 from the Moroccan town of Oujda, said he has tried to reach the EU 26 times. Three times he made it to Slovenia, but was caught and deported back to Serbia. I will try again ... my family is in France and my girlfriend is in Italy, Muhammad said. Bruno Alvares of the No Name Kitchen said migrants are given two meals a day, water, clothes, footwear and tents. Even if it is cold, it doesn t matter, they will keep on trying because there s ... no evolution in their lives in camps, Alvares said. Migrants who cannot afford to pay smugglers, often hide in passing trucks and freight trains or ride on the top of them. Recently an Afghan girl was killed by a train as she and her family attempted to cross into Croatia. | 0fake |
Obama to seek 1.6 percent pay raise for federal government workers | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration next week will propose a 1.6 percent pay increase for federal employees, an administration official said on Wednesday. The proposal will be included in President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2017, which is set to be unveiled on Tuesday. The pay raise would apply to military and civilian personnel, the official said in a statement. Federal government workers received a 1.3 percent pay raise this fiscal year as a part of the government funding package that was passed into law in December. | 0fake |
WATCH: TRUMP PUTS TOGETHER HILARIOUS Montage Of Democrats, RINO’s And Talking Heads Saying He’d NEVER Get 1237 Delegates | So much for the wisdom of Obama, the know-it-all RINO s, Democrats and political pundits Enjoy:A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on May 26, 2016 at 3:55pm PDTHere s another montage of #NeverTrump losers: | 1real |
CIA leak shows lack of progress in combating 'insider threats' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The disclosure this week of documents describing secret CIA hacking tools shows that intensified U.S. government efforts to prevent leaks by intelligence agency employees and contractors have largely failed, cyber security professionals and intelligence officials say. If the Central Intelligence Agency disclosures are confirmed to be the work of an intelligence agency contractor, as government investigators currently suspect, it would be at least the third public case in recent years in which special software and human resources programs intended to catch so-called insider threats have not worked. The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which published the CIA documents Tuesday, said it obtained the archive after it circulated among former U.S. government contractors in “an unauthorized manner.” Part of the problem in combating leaks is that the number of government employees and contractors with access to highly sensitive information has exploded in recent years, due in part to greater information-sharing across the government that was mandated in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Budget constraints that force agencies to rely on contractors rather than permanent staff have also contributed to the problem, intelligence officials say. Government estimates of how many people have been granted Top Secret clearances range from the high hundreds of thousands to more than a million across thousands of public agencies and private companies. Government agencies estimate that there is one insider threat for every 6,000 to 8,000 employees, an intelligence agency contractor said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting his employer. The contractor said there is too much sharing of information internally, with many workers having access to material they do not need. Recognizing the dangers, former President Barack Obama signed an executive order creating the National Insider Threat Task Force in 2011, following the disclosures of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables that were stolen by former Army private Chelsea Manning and provided to WikiLeaks. The order covered virtually every federal department and agency, including the Department of Education, the Peace Corps and other offices not directly involved in national security. The program requires federal employees to monitor co-workers for suspicious actions based on behavioral profiling. Those who fail to report high-risk people or behaviors could face penalties, including criminal charges. Insider threat investigations can also be launched when computer network monitoring detects “suspicious user behavior,” according to government documents. Monitoring of prospective and current government employees has only increased in recent years. Under a directive issued in May 2016 by James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, U.S. officials evaluating whether employees should continue to have access to classified information can collect publicly available social media posts of those workers. Despite the new initiatives and a raft of innovative employee monitoring technologies developed by the NSA and private-sector tech companies, insider threats remain “the greatest worry across government and industry,” said Curtis Dukes, the former head of cyber defense at the National Security Agency who now works at the Center for Internet Security, a non-profit organization committed to protecting against cyber threats. Tuesday’s leaks came at a time when U.S. intelligence agencies were already reeling from the discovery that former contractor Harold Martin had allegedly spent 20 years stealing secrets from the NSA and three other intelligence agencies before finally being caught last summer. Martin worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, the same consulting firm that employed Edward Snowden, who in 2013 exposed details about U.S. spying programs. This week’s dump of CIA files is especially alarming because the spy agency is considered the “gold standard” for monitoring and tracking insiders, according to Larry Pfeiffer, chief of staff to then-CIA director Michael Hayden. Leo Taddeo, chief security officer at Cryptzone and a former special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s cyber crime division in New York, said the Sept. 11 attacks prompted a significant expansion in the number of facilities and government contractors who had access to sensitive information. A 2003 report on the attacks concluded the plot could have been disrupted if not for lapses of communication between the CIA and FBI. That finding and others forced a restructuring of how U.S. intelligence agencies share information, overcoming resistance by some officials who worried the new arrangement could create new problems. “We need for the right people to see the right dots, so they can connect them, but the counter argument is you increase the insider risk and that compromise has a greater impact,” Taddeo said. Chris Inglis, former deputy director of the NSA, gave a presentation entitled “How to Catch a Snowden” to a jam-packed room last month at the RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco. The talk was so popular that conference organizers had Inglis present twice. Inglis said companies, as well as governments, need to embrace continuous monitoring of employees and the use of behavioral analytics to spot potential leakers, and to directly involve human resources departments in detection efforts. Some companies have been hesitant to adopt such strategies, Inglis said, but a raft of breaches in recent years has led to a growing embrace of more aggressive approaches. “The unfortunate truth is you’re only going to suffer this one in a million times, but that one in a million can kill you,” he said. | 0fake |
Campaign Over: Gary Johnson Glad ‘Nobody Got Hurt’ In NYC Explosion (VIDEO) | Gay Johnson appeared on CNN s Reliable Sources Sunday morning where he made a gaffe that might just end his campaign. During an interview, Johnson said that he is just grateful that nobody got hurt during a bomb explosion in New York City Saturday night. Johnson appeared to be unaware that 29 people were injured in the blast. First of all, [I m] just grateful that nobody got hurt, Johnson said. Secondly, law enforcement is on the scene, responders are on the scene. If there s anything I learned having been governor of New Mexico for eight years is that these people really do care, they are really qualified. Look, we re going to find out who is responsible, Johnson continued. Whether it s an individual or a group, they will be brought to justice. And that is something that all of us demand. All of us! This is the second time that Johnson made an egregious error during a media appearance. Earlier in September, Johnson was questioned on how he would deal with the refugee crisis in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Johnson responded by asking What is Aleppo? The gaffe was pretty bad but it didn t appear to hurt him in the polls.While I would prefer (marginally so) a Johnson administration to the nightmare that a Trump administration would be, this is not the type of mistake that a serious political candidate should ever make. Leaders need to be informed about a situation in order to respond accordingly. This is information that Johnson should have been aware of.Johnson did not reach the threshold needed to in the polls to take a podium in the upcoming presidential debates. That fact made Johnson s already incredibly slim chance of actually winning the election to an impossibility.As others have noted Johnson may very well end up being the determining factor in this year s presidential election. This gaffe may very well take some of his influence away he has in determining the outcome, should it be enough for his supporters to defect to either major candidate s campaign.You can watch the video below.Featured image from video screenshot | 1real |
Colombia and ELN rebels begin first-ever ceasefire | BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia and the Marxist ELN rebels began a ceasefire on Sunday aimed at generating goodwill during complicated talks to end a half-century war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The truce, the first with the National Liberation Army (ELN), will run through Jan. 9 and may be extended if it is respected. This is a very important step, a step that I hope will be the first in a process that will also lead the ELN to hand in their weapons, President Juan Manuel Santos said ahead of the armistice. The ELN is in talks in Ecuador to end its part in the conflict. Since negotiations began in February, the ELN has continued to take hostages for ransom and in recent weeks stepped up bomb attacks on oil companies. Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas warned that, although Colombia s military would avoid confrontations with the ELN during the ceasefire, it would go after the group if it engaged in criminal activities such as illegal mining and drug trafficking. We ll respect the ceasefire in the sense that we won t confront the ELN, looking for contact and combat. We hope they do the same, Villegas told Reuters in a recent interview. Our mission to pursue crime will be maintained throughout the nation without exception. Despite the ceasefire, the road to a definitive peace accord will be long and complex. The ELN is considered hard-line in its ideology and was not known for compromise during past attempts at peace. Inspired by the Cuban revolution and the Liberation Theology beliefs of the Catholic priests who founded it in 1964, the 2,000-strong ELN has sought an end to the war before, holding talks in Cuba and Venezuela between 2002 and 2007. Both attempts collapsed with little progress. The ELN is considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union for engaging in kidnapping, assassinations, drug trafficking, attacks on economic infrastructure and extortion of oil and mining multi-nationals. During the ceasefire, the insurgent group has pledged to suspend hostage taking, attacks on roads and oil installations, the use of landmines and the recruitment of minors. In turn, the government agreed to improve protection for community leaders and conditions for about 450 jailed rebels. Santos s government signed a peace deal with the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016 after negotiations in Havana, Cuba that lasted four years. | 0fake |
Anti-Muhammad cartoon contest: Free speech or deliberately provocative? (+video) | Sponsors say that the shootings in Garland, Texas, confirm their view of Islam as violence-prone. But critics say the event was designed to be incendiary and to poison relations at a volatile time.
When Pamela Geller and her controversial organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, announced it would hold a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, their plan to satirize and lampoon the founder of Islam was intended to have both a defiant and provocative free-speech edge.
Sunday’s contest and its $10,000 prize were prompted in part by the Paris Charlie Hebdo massacre in January, Ms. Geller said in March, as well as the riots in Muslim countries sparked by the publication of satirical anti-Muhammad cartoons by a Danish newspaper in 2005. And indeed, as if on cue, two gunmen with apparent ties to Islamic militants overseas tried to storm the heavily secured event in a similar fashion, before being shot dead by a local police officer Sunday night.
The incident comes at a time when tensions between some segments of American society and Muslims appear to be becoming more fraught – with protests against Muslims in Texas and anti-Muslim social-media attacks after the release of the film "American Sniper." In that context, Geller's actions raise questions about speech seen by many as motivated to incite anger and hatred.
It is an issue Geller has faced before. Two weeks ago, she won a federal free-speech case against New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which had refused to put up one of her ads: “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah” – a quote the ad attributes to “Hamas MTV.”
Geller’s organization has often clashed with officials in other cities, including Philadelphia and Washington, over their incendiary ads, some of which compare Islam to Nazism. In 2012, another federal judge ruled that cities could not refuse to post her subway poster that read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”
Many supporters of Geller and her organization view the violence on Sunday as a vindication of their views of Islam as an inherently violence-prone religion. But for others, her relentless campaign to push the boundaries of free speech with intentionally incendiary messages is only poisoning public discourse at a particularly volatile time.
“And coming as it did right when we, the United States of America, are really facing a time when we have to question what it is that holds us together, I can see this potentially aggravating the already-challenging times for dealing with some of these questions about cultural difference, diversity, and what kind of society we want to be,” says Gordon Coonfield, director of graduate studies in communication at Villanova University near Philadelphia.
After analyzing some of the submissions to the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest,” Professor Coonfield pointed out the similarities of some of the depictions of the prophet Muhammad to posters for “Der Ewige Jude,” or “The Eternal Jew,” a notorious Nazi propaganda “documentary.”
In one of the cartoons, the prophet is depicted as contorted and snarling and as a hook-nosed man in a turban holding a bloody knife. The caption reads, “When it comes to religion ... I’ve got the edge.” The face, Coonfield notes, is nearly identical to the contorted face of “The Eternal Jew” poster.
“That strategy for creating a sense of ‘unity’ by lifting up this internal enemy is as old as human civilization and culture,” he says. “It’s ironic that the kind of thinking that Hitler used, and the Nazis have become famous for using – propaganda to try to create this sense of a collective by creating a strong unquestionably evil Other who is right here in our midst ... so it’s kind of ironic that she’s trying to link some of these things together, when that is in fact her message.”
Despite the fact that images depicting the prophet Muhammad cut deeply to the heart of Muslim identity, Muslim leaders in Texas told their followers not to picket or protest the event on Sunday.
“Her words are not just free speech,” says Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. “They are inciteful; they incite hate against our whole community. I was very dismayed by the shooting in Garland, Texas, but at the same time, Pamela Geller is not the victim in this situation that we’re in right now.”
“She intentionally put that event together in hopes that she’d get the response that she received,” Ms. Sarsour says.
“We prayed, but not one Muslim from the state of Texas went out to protest her,” she added. “Muslim leaders specifically told people, do not go anywhere near her. Let her do whatever she does. We don’t care. And there was no protesting outside – unfortunately, except for these two guys from Arizona, who were already on the radar of the FBI anyway.”
Advocates have tried to counter Geller’s free political expressions with ad campaigns of a different tone. In 2012, a coalition called Rabbis for Human Rights responded to her “support the civilized man” poster with an opposing message that read, “In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.”
And last week, the makers of the satirical film “The Muslims Are Coming!” launched a humorous series of subway and bus ads to counter Geller's. “The Muslims are coming, and they shall strike with hugs so fierce, you’ll end up calling your grandmother and telling her that you love her.”
But in an era in which the Islamic State, the Tsarnaev trial, and the lingering aftermath of 9/11 still inflame fears about Islam, many worry that Sunday’s violence will exacerbate the current tensions.
“Free speech is about being open to listening to the ideas you hate the most, that you disagree with the most, and I feel this group in particular is hiding behind this free speech rhetoric,” Coonfield says. “This can’t become the poster child for Christianity versus Islam or the West versus the Middle East. We have to maintain a space where groups that have very different ways of thinking and viewing the world can still come together to talk about it, without resorting to this kind of craziness.” | 0fake |
South Korean military fires warning shots at North Korean troops searching for defector: Yonhap | SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean guards fired around 20 warning shots at North Korean troops searching for a defector who fled across the heavily militarized border between the two countries on Thursday, South Korea s Yonhap news agency reported. | 0fake |
Finnish police rap deputy minister for hiding in car boot in government crisis | HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finnish police reprimanded a man for traveling in a car boot to hide his meeting with Prime Minister Juha Sipila during a government crisis last summer, saying this was breach of the traffic code. A police statement did not name the man in the boot, but in effect indicated the traveler was State Secretary Samuli Virtanen, who is also the deputy to Foreign Minister Timo Soini. The meeting took place in June, a day after Virtanen s co-ruling Finns party had elected anti-immigration hardliners as its new leaders. The government was close to collapse until a group of politicians, including Virtanen and Soini, in the following week walked out of the Finns party and announced they would form a new group. The Finns party was thrown out of the government and the new Blue Reform group kept its cabinet seat. Virtanen has not commented on the case, but lawmaker Tiina Elovaara from Blue Reform said in a blog that Virtanen climbed into the boot to keep the meeting secret at a critical moment. He avoided media attention when the situation was most serious, and the risk of leakage about the parliamentarians transition was too big, Elovaara said. Police said that the man had traveled a few tens of meters in the back of the car, failing to use a safety belt. He had admitted the act to the police. The road from the Prime Minister s residency has little traffic, and only the man was at risk of harm, the police said. The given notification is considered as a sufficient sanction, Inspector Pekka Seppala said. He added that the police had been asked to investigate the case based on information in media reports. | 0fake |
The Jerusalem Decision: From Creative Chaos to Effective Turmoil | Dr Can Erimtan 21st Century WireDid Donald J. Trump have any idea about the impact his words would have across the world?!? Did he have any idea that the whole wide world, including the United Nations, would turn against him?On Wednesday, 6 December 2017, in the White House s Diplomatic Reception Room the President of the United States proceeded to make history, or, proceeded to leave his personal mark on the flow of world events as his words set a whole chain of global events in motion: I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering. In his preamble to this potentially explosive and arguably rather disconcerting statement, Trump explained that [i]n 1995, [under Bill Clinton s watch, that is] Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city and so importantly is Israel s capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago. In this way, the 45th U.S. President showed himself to have been cut from a completely different cloth indeed, as he uttered words that neither Bill Clinton, nor George W. Bush or, more importantly perhaps, Barack Obama had dared speak.Yes, Trump openly came out and made plain the deep love that dare not speak its name in spite of the vehemently pro-Israel stance taken by the U.S. ever since the time of President Eisenhower (1953-61) and particularly, ever since the Six Day War (5-10 June 1967), in spite of the ceaseless activities of AIPAC and J Street, no previous incumbent had dared bestow a bona fide U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem as a physical token of the deep and ardent bonds between the New World and the Promised Land. Only, Donald J. Trump had the gall to deliver, doing what Clinton had promised yet none of his successors had been able to realise . . . until now, that is.In true Aristotelian fashion Trump took the potentiality that was Jerusalem (known as Al Quds or the Sacred City in the Muslim world) and turned it into an actuality by means of pledging full ambassadorial honours for the ancient city. Following these presidential words, outspoken Israeli voices did not take long to heap praise on the White House. Mark Regev, the erstwhile spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem (2004-7) and frequent Israeli apologist appearing on various mainstream media, and currently even active as Israeli Ambassador in London (since 2015) blurted out that he think[s] this was a just move and a good move for peace. His boss, Bibi or Benjamin Netanyahu (fourth premiership, 2015 present) was equally forthcoming, talking to the press on the same day the U.S. President made his performance in the Diplomatic Reception Room: Thank you President Trump for today s historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Jewish people and the Jewish state will be forever grateful. The PM in the next instance also echoed his ambassador s words, declaring that [t]here is no peace that doesn t include Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The idea that Jerusalem should be at the heart of the Jewish people s land and nation namely has its roots in the Bible, in 2 Chronicles 6:5-6, to be precise: Since the day I brought my people out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city in any tribe of Israel to have a temple built so that my Name might be there, nor have I chosen anyone to be ruler over my people Israel. But now I have chosen Jerusalem for my Name to be there, and I have chosen David to rule my people Israel, as worded in the New International Version. And Bibi knows that too.Bibi even took his words of praise abroad. First to Paris, where he met with President Emmanuel Macron, who had urged his U.S. counterpart to preserve the city s status quo prior to Trump s Diplomatic Reception Room performance (10 December 2017). Bibi disagreed volubly with the Frenchman, characterising as absurd anyone not willing to recognise the millennial connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem. Next, even proceeding to refer to God s word that had elevated Jerusalem to its lofty position as site for his temple: [y]ou can read it in a very fine book it s called the Bible. The following day he went to Brussels, where he attended a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers (11 December 2017). The Israeli PM told the gathered EU FM as well as the assembled press corps that Trump s Jerusalem declaration makes peace possible because recognizing reality is the substance of peace, the foundation of peace. The Invention of the Jewish People and the Position of Jerusalem in IslamThe state of Israel, as a Jewish nation state implanted on Middle Eastern soil in 1948, employs nationalist myth and religious tradition as credible arguments justifying its mere existence. The Israeli journalist and author Daniel Gavron, for example, states that most Israelis [regard it as] axiomatic that the celebrations for the 3,000th anniversary of the conquest of Jerusalem by King David [in 1995] mark[ed] a real and tangible event, even though he himself doubts its authenticity. In other words, the Jewish people, as a shorthand for the Israeli citzenry, have apparently already been following the political and ideological leanings currently exhorted by Bibi for quite a while. But, as I explained at length some time ago, the mere mention of the term nation or even just people is a problematic issue in its own right the point that I am trying to get across is that nations or people cannot be perceived as natural or even organic phenomena, but rather as contrived and constructed social units consisting of individuals who willingly become part of a larger artificial whole through the manipulation and management of larger forces and structures leaders of men and their organisations. It has been nearly ten years now that the historian Schlomo Sand published his groundbreaking text The Invention of the Jewish People, which attempted to popularise the theoretical constructs of writers and thinkers like Benedict Anderson and Ernst Gellner, amongst others, but, as seems blatantly apparent from looking at Bibi s recent proclamations, his message has clearly failed to penetrate the academic bubble, in spite of having topped Israeli bestseller list for nineteen weeks. With regard to the city of Jerusalem, on the other hand, archeological evidence appears to prove conclusivedly that the site has been continuously occupied for some 5,000 years, signalling the urban centre s pre-Jewish roots. But the notion that King David conquered the place to establish the one true god s temple seems rather shaky. Gavron explains that the biblical account of the capture of the city is the only one we have, and in the opinion of most modern scholars, the Bible is not an entirely reliable historical document. Still, archeological excavations carried out in the summer of 1993 appear to have produced evidence that a certain David indeed founded a dynastic live in the 10th century BCE namely, a small triangular piece of basalt rock . . . subsequently identified as part of a victory pillar erected by the king of Syria and later smashed by an Israelite ruler carrying an Aramaic inscription talking about a Beit David ( House or Dynasty of David ). But the Jewish conquest of Jerusalem did not mark the end of the city s story of military takeover and/or occupation: remaining in ancient times, the Assyrian King Sennacherib laid siege to the city in the year 701 BCE, whereas the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar captured the city in the seventh year of his reign (598 BCE), but of greater importance is the sack and destruction of the city and its temple at the hands of Titus, son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian (70 CE), in response to the Jews Great Revolt against Rome that had sprung up in 66 CE. The ultimate outcome of Rome s harsh response was the Diaspora, as explained by the American rabbi, lecturer, and author Joseph Telushkin, who estimates that as many as one million Jews died as a result, while carrying in its wake the almost two-thousand-year span of Jewish homelessness and exile. With the majority of Jews apparently dispersed from the land and city, Jerusalem was eventually conquered by the Caliph Umar (reign 634-44) in the year 638, an event which seems to have taken place following a peaceful siege, no blood was shed, in the words of Zia H Shah, a New York-based physician and the Chief Editor of the Muslim Times. The addition of Jerusalem to the Dar al-Islam (or, the abode of Islam) was important. Though the city s name does not appear specifically in the Quran (containing only a reference to al-Masjid al- Aqsa or the Furthest Mosque, 17:1), it is the locus of the Prophet s miraculous Night Journey (or Mi raj). The story, as related in various prophetic traditions (or hadith), tells how the figure of the Prophet travelled from Makkah to the Furthest Mosque (in Jerusalem), from whence he ascended Heaven, so that Allah might show him of Our signs. As a result, the Masjid al- Aqsa, arguably built by the Caliph Umar though no historical records exist to this effect, is regarded as the third most sacred mosque in Islam, following the Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah, and Al Masjid An-Nabawi in Madinah.A Pseudo-Ottoman Gambit: Diverting Attention for a PurposeAs a result, Donald Trump s Diplomatic Reception Room stunt far supersedes the thorny Palestinian issue, the life-and-death matter of peace in the Middle East, or even the real estate division between East and West Jerusalem. The English-language pan-Arab television channel Al Jazeera English matter-of-factly point out on its website that [v]iolence, protests and arrests have followed US President Donald Trump s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. All across the globe Muslims have taken to the street to voice their disapproval of Trump s latest attempt to act like a real president, a president unlike any of his predecessors: [r]allies against Trump s decision also took place in the Indian city of Mumbai, the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and the Japanese capital, Tokyo. But also in Turkey where President Recept Tayyip Erdo an (aka the Prez) has been at pains for years to appear as a rightful heir to the Ottoman sultans of old after all, Sultan Selim I (1512-20) took hold of the city of Jerusalem in 1517, remaining part of the Ottoman fold till the onset of the British Mandate (1917-48). On Thursday and Friday, (7-8 December 2017), spontaneous meetings took place throughout the whole of the country, from Istanbul over Bursa, Ankara, and Mersin, to Hatay, Gaziantep, Tatvan, Adana, Van, and Kahramanmara . More importantly, the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held a meeting in Istanbul on 13 December 2017, and the Prez employed this platform to portray himself as the ultimate champion of Islam, defying not just the United States of America and Israel, but also the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the nominal Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. As I have written quite some time ago, the Prez is more than determined to challenge his erstwhile friend and ally King Salman and see himself as the rightful Calip of the world of Islam, in true pseudo-Ottoman fashion.The OIC meeting dutifully released its Istanbul Declaration on Freedom for Al Quds' : [a]ppreciating the Republic of Turkey and the Turkish people for hosting the Extraordinary Islamic Summit regarding this important cause of Ummah, especially the call for this Extraordinary Summit made by His Excellency Recep Tayyip Erdo an (image, left), President of the Republic of Turkey . . . We reject and condemn the US Administration s unlawful statement regarding the status of Al Quds . . . Just like the fact that Israel s decision to annex Al Quds and its actions and practices therewith are never accepted, we declare that this statement is identically null and void from the point of view of conscience, justice and history. We invite all members of the UN, the EU and the international community to remain committed to the status of Al Quds and all related UN Resolutions. Rather than accomplishing anything much at all, the extraordinary OIC meeting primarily served to heighten Tayyip Erdo an s prestige, at home as well as abroad. As such, a cynic would say that Trump s timing was impeccable, as 17/25 December marks the anniversary of the scandal variously known as #AKPgate that erupted in 2013, and that presently was very much on people s minds in Turkey given that the Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab (or R za Sarraf, in Turkish) was appearing in court in New York. The court case investigates breaches of the sanctions placed upon Iran and many Turks eagerly followed the proceedings on Twitter. One Istanbul-based writer Kareem Shaheen described the accusations as follows: [i]n a case that has strained relations between Turkey and the US, Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, described a sprawling money laundering network that allowed Iran access to international markets from 2010 to 2015 in violation of sanctions over its nuclear programme. He told jurors in New York on Thursday [30 November 2017] that [Tayyip] Erdo an, who was prime minister of Turkey at the time, had personally authorised a transaction on behalf of Iran. Zarrab said he had [also] bribed the then Turkish economy minister Zafer a layan and the former head of the state-owned Halkbank. As a result, given that the Zarrab case all but exacerbated the dire Turco-American relationship, Trump s Jerusalem declaration must have come as a welcome bolt from the blue for Erdogan. The decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital finally absolved the Erdogan from any attempts to salvage the cross-Atlantic relationship, and instead emboldened him to announce publicly that the Republic of Turkey is now the rightful heir to the Ottoman Empire and the only hope left for Muslims across the world, Muslims that have been victimised by years and years of oppressive U.S. foreign policy. And, putting a cherry on top of the proverbial cake of discontent, Erdo an announced on Thursday, 17 December 2017, that he would establish a Turkish Embassy in Jerusalem, representing Ankara in Palestine, to be clear. Speaking to an audience of faithful followers in the city of Karaman, the Prez declared God willing, the day is close when officially, with God s permission, we will open our embassy there, in Jerusalem.All the while, the Palestinian people continue to suffer and Israel employs any and every pretext available to stage military assaults on the Gaza strip and crack down on Palestinian protesters But, Trump has done his deed, leaving his indelible mark on the Middle East, while the Prez, in turn, can now rightfully claim that he alone is able to represent the Muslim world on the international arena.*** 21WIRE special contributor Dr. Can Erimtan is an independent scholar who was living in Istanbul for some time, with a wide interest in the politics, history and culture of the Balkans and the Greater Middle East. He attended the VUB in Brussels and did his graduate work at the universities of Essex and Oxford. In Oxford, Erimtan was a member of Lady Margaret Hall and he obtained his doctorate in Modern History in 2002. His publications include the book Ottomans Looking West? as well as numerous scholarly articles. In the period 2010-11, he wrote op-eds for Today s Zaman and in the further course of 2011 he also published a number of pieces in H rriyet Daily News. In 2013, he was the Turkey Editor of the stanbul Gazette. He is on Twitter at @theerimtanangleREAD MORE PALESTINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Palestine FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
DREAMers Arrested in Nationwide Gang Crackdown | Federal immigration officials arrested nearly 1, 400 gang members in a nationwide operation, including illegal immigrants gang members who had protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. [Altogether, 1, 378 gang members were arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, 1, 098 of which already have federal or state criminal charges against them, according to a news release. of the members had pending murder charges against them, while another seven were facing rape allegations. The other 280 were arrested for being in the U. S. illegally. Three of the gang members arrested in the ICE operation had protected status as illegal immigrants under the DACA program. Since DACA’s inception, more than 1, 500 illegal immigrants have had their protected status revoked after they were found to be involved with a gang or committed a crime. DACA recipients are given protection by the federal government and since the Trump Administration has not ended the program, experts like Mark Krikorian have previously said that 800 new permits for protected DACA status can be granted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) every day. “They’re still processing these work permits,” Krikorian told Breitbart Texas at the time. “That’s got to end at the absolute minimum. ” Additionally, of the 1, 478 gang members arrested, 10 of them had crossed the U. S. Brder as unaccompanied minors. Of those 10, nine were confirmed gang members and eight of those 10 were specifically. Most recently, Breitbart Texas reported on the continued resettlement of foreign unaccompanied minors into regions of the U. S. despite experts pointing to evidence that this process allows foreign crime syndicates to flourish. Since the beginning of the Fiscal Year, October 1, 2016, 651 unaccompanied minors were placed in Nassau County, which is home to one of the largest growing gang population’s in the U. S. In neighboring Suffolk County, which has a widespread gang problem in Brentwood and Central Islip, approximately 915 have been resettled in the region. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
Mladic will appeal conviction, sentence | THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic will appeal his conviction and life sentence, his legal team said on Wednesday after a U.N. war crimes tribunal found him guilty of genocide. It is certain we will file an appeal and the appeal will be successful, attorney Dragan Ivetic told journalists. | 0fake |
Demonic Possession Today (Part 1) | Part 1 : The Six Stages of the Exorcism Process By LOBRO VAN HELSING PART 1 of this article is authored entirely by Lobro van Helsing and consists largely of graphic details about the exorcism process as described by Malachi Martin in his controversial book, Hostage to the Devil . PART 2 of the article, entitled ‘The Deceiver of the World’, is by Lasha Darkmoon and continues where Part 1 leaves off. This reflects on various apocalyptic issues, such as Armageddon and the Last Days, the problem of good and evil, and the role of the Jews in human history.
“The Devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.” — Charles Baudelaire
Why is it so hard to accept, at least hypothetically, that in the words of observant thinkers like Baudelaire, the Devil’s finest trick is to convince us that he does not exist?
It is generally accepted that the Devil preys on human souls. And what do predators do in all the settings, natural, political, online? They all use disguise and it shouldn’t be beyond comprehension that the Devil, if he existed, would use whichever cloak of invisibility was the most effective for the occasion. Therefore, not seeing the Devil or sensing his presence, proves absolutely nothing.
For those who are interested, the material here comes from a book, Hostage To The Devil , by Father Malachi Martin, a trained exorcist in the Roman Catholic tradition.
Fr Malachi’s material, featuring several cases of authentic demonic possession and their accompanying exorcisms in modern day America, was carefully vetted through use of tape recorders and reinforced later on by lengthy interviews with the participants in the exorcism process. — § —
In 1906 in South Africa , Clara Germana Cele, age 16, reportedly made a pact with the Devil. As a result, her behavior suddenly took a bizarre turn for the worse. In August of that year, the startled nuns at the convent school where Clara was a student witnessed her tearing at her clothes, growling like an animal, and engaging in conversation with unseen entities.
Nuns reported that the girl’s skin would burn when sprinkled with holy water. She would lash out violently when crosses or other sacred objects entered her presence.She also reportedly developed clairvoyant powers and was able to describe personal details of other people’s lives that she couldn’t possibly have known ab out.
The accounts of several nuns also reported that Clara possessed the ability to speak and understand several different foreign languages to which she had never been exposed, including Polish, German, French, and several others. It was said that Clara had been imbued with superhuman strength as well, easily overpowering authority figures at the school when they attempted to restrain her.
Another seemingly far-fetched assertion from many witnesses was that Clara began levitating up to five feet in the air on a regular basis, her clothes sticking to her body as if they too had managed to defy the laws of gravity. It was claimed that only after being sprinkled with holy water could she be brought back down, during which time she would also temporarily snap out of her possessed state.
Most outlandish of all were the claims that the young woman had the ability to transform into a sort of snakelike creature, her body becoming as flexible as rubber as she slithered across the floor. At one point she was said to have bitten a nun on the arm and left puncture marks like those of a serpent’s fangs.
(See here )
Note. This case history is not to be found in Malachi Martin’s Hostage to the Devil. I have added it to the article as an afterthought, since it contains within it many of the typical features found in demonic possession. Before you read any further, please watch this 2-minute video in Spanish with English subtitles. WARNING. This article contains material that is deeply disturbing. Those of sensitive disposition are advised to refrain from further reading.
Apart from the quoted extracts, randomly chosen among many to illustrate various aspect of possession or exorcism, I wish to make the following points: Although the book deals only with cases in the Catholic community, demonic possession is a universal phenomenon and has been noted and researched in countries all over the world. The Possessor (often referring to itself as “the Kingdom” or in plural as “We”) selects victims gripped in some spiritual, emotional and intellectual conflict with the accepted mores of family, society and church, inserting itself undetected into these fault lines and exploiting them with catastrophic consequences. Loss of self identity, soul, or personality follows as a result. There is invariably an element of guilt on the part of the victim who has initially invited possession by his or her aberrant behavior and life style. In extreme cases, the possessed individual has actually made a formal request for possession in order to gain some advantage, e.g., worldly wealth or fame. The process of expelling the possessing malignancy moves through identifiable stages.
“One of the most experienced exorcists I have known,” Malachi Martin notes, “who was in fact the mentor of the exorcist in the first case related in this book, gave names to the various general stages of an exorcism. These names reflect the general meaning or effect or intent of what is happening, but not the specific means used by the evil spirit or by the exorcist. Conor, as I call him, spoke of six stages: Presence, Pretense, Breakpoint, Voice, Clash, and Expulsion . Exorcism exacts practically intolerable toll on the priest in charge, not infrequently resulting in his death, at which point the junior helper must take over the task. Demonic possession is not an isolated or freak phenomenon. It seems to be on the rise, especially in the United States. Perhaps this has something to do with the demise of religious authority, the proliferation of Satanist covens, child abuse and sacrifice, the prevalence and glorification of Satanist elements in pop culture, and, finally, the wide acceptance and promotion of sexual perversion as a new norm.
“The incidence of Exorcism,” Fr. Martin begins by pointing out, “has been on a steady rise. There has been a 750 percent increase in the number of Exorcisms performed between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s. Over the same period, there has been an alarming increase in the number of requested Possessions – that is, cases in which the Possessed formally request Satan to possess them — in comparison to the cases of incurred Possessions, which result from other sorts of activities of the Possessed that facilitate Possession.
Each year, some 800 to 1,300 major Exorcisms and some thousands of minor Exorcisms are performed. For experts in the field, this is a sobering barometer of the increase in known cases of Possession. But it is still more sobering to realize how many more cases of Possession cannot be addressed at all. The thousands of letters I receive from people who are desperate for help — Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, and unchurched — are eloquent, anguished, and a steadily mounting testimony to the crisis.
Law officers, meanwhile, are increasingly confronted on every side by the incontrovertible signs of crimes committed in the course of ritualistic Satanism, or as a grisly result of an individual’s participation in such rituals. They are very often left out of the shrunken loop of expert advice and assistance. Advice and assistance that was once routinely to be found.
To those who are active in the field of Exorcism, and who therefore acquire a greater than usual ability to uncover and recognize the marks of ritualistic Satanism for what they are, it is clear that in many police precincts the Satanist character of a crime is either relegated to the background or not mentioned at all — at least not in public reports.
By and large, the police have no other choice. They have neither competence nor authority in the rarefied and dangerous field of Satanist behavior.” Most of the above points were made on numerous occasions in mythology and folklore, e.g., vampires, werewolves, and the tale of Dr Faustus adapted by Marlowe and Goethe. Jesus Christ was of course the Grand Exorcist, not only in the Gadarene swine incident but his opus seems to me to have been focused on confronting the Devil in Judaism for which he paid with his life … the tale does not end there in my view but I leave these speculative elements to the reader. — § — THE SIX STAGES OF DEMONIC POSSESSION
From the moment the exorcist enters the room, a peculiar feeling seems to hang in the very air. From that moment in any genuine exorcism and onward through its duration, everyone in the room is aware of some alien Presence . This indubitable sign of possession is as unexplainable and unmistakable as it is inescapable. All the signs of possession, however blatant or grotesque, however subtle or debatable, seem both to pale before and to be marshaled in the face of this Presence.
There is no sure physical trace of the Presence, but everyone feels it. You have to experience it to know it; you cannot locate it spatially- beside or above or within the possessed, or over in the corner or under the bed or hovering in midair.
In one sense, the Presence is nowhere, and this magnifies the terror, because there is a presence, an other present. Not a “he” or a “she” or an “it.” Sometimes, you think that what is present is singular, sometimes plural. When it speaks, as the exorcism goes on, it will sometimes refer to itself as “I” and sometimes as “WE.”
This is reminiscent of the possessing entity in the Gospel who, when asked his name by Jesus, replied: “I am Legion.” ‘I AM LEGION.’
Invisible and intangible, the Presence claws at the humanness of those gathered in the room. You can exercise logic and expel any mental image of it. You can say to yourself: “I am only imagining this. Careful! Don’t panic!” And there may be a momentary relief. But then, after a time lag of bare seconds, the Presence returns as an inaudible hiss in the brain, as a wordless threat to the self you are. Its name and essence seem to be compounded of threat, to be only and intensely baleful, concentratedly intent on hate for hate’s sake and on destruction for destruction’s sake. — § —
In the early stages of an exorcism , the evil spirit will make every attempt to “hide behind” the possessed, so to speak-to appear to be one and the same person and personality with its victim. This is the Pretense .
The first task of the priest is to break that Pretense, to force the spirit to reveal itself openly as separate from the possessed-and to name itself, for all possessing spirits are called by a name that generally (though not always) has to do with the way that spirit works on its victim.
As the exorcist sets about his task, the evil spirit may remain silent altogether; or it may speak with the voice of the possessed, and use past experiences and recollections of the possessed. This is often done skillfully, using details no one but the possessed could know. It can be very disarming, even pitiful. It can make everyone, including the priest, feel that it is the priest who is the villain, subjecting an innocent person to terrible rigors. Even the mannerisms and characteristics of the possessed are used by the spirit as its own camouflage.
Sometimes the exorcist cannot shatter the Pretense for days. But until he does, he cannot bring matters to a head. If he fails to shatter it at all, he has lost. Perhaps another exorcist replacing him will succeed. But he himself has been beaten. Every exorcist learns during Pretense that he is dealing with some force or power that is at times intensely cunning, sometimes supremely intelligent, and at other times capable of crass stupidity (which makes one wonder further about the problem of singular or plural); and it is both highly dangerous and terribly vulnerable.
Oddly, while this spirit or power or force knows some of the most secret and intimate details of the lives of everyone in the room, at the same time it also displays gaps in knowledge of things that may be happening at any given moment of the present.
But the priest must not be lulled by small victories or take chances on hoped-for stupidities. He must be ready to have his own sins and blunders and weaknesses put into his mind or shouted in ugliness for all to hear. He must not make excuses for his past, or wither as even his loveliest memories are fingered by ultimate filth and contempt; he must not be sidetracked in any way from his primary intention of freeing the possessed person before him. And he must at all costs avoid trading abuse or getting into any logical arguments with the possessed. The temptation to do so is more frequent than one might think, and must be regarded as a potentially fatal trap that can shatter not only the exorcism, but quite literally shatter the exorcist as well.
Accordingly, as the Pretense begins to break down, the behavior of the possessed usually increases in violence and repulsiveness. It is as though an invisible manhole opens, and out of it pours the unmentionably inhuman and the humanly unacceptable. There is a stream of filth and unrestrained abuse, accompanied often by physical violence, writhing, gnashing of teeth, jumping around, sometimes physical attacks on the exorcist. — § —
A new hallmark of the proceedings enters as the Breakpoint nears, and ushers in one of the more subtle sufferings the exorcist must undergo: confusion. Complete and dreadful confusion. Rare is the exorcist who does not falter here for at least a moment, enmeshed in the peculiar pain of apparent contradiction of all sense.
His ears seem to smell foul words. His eyes seem to hear offensive sounds and obscene screams. His nose seems to taste a high-decibel cacophony. Each sense seems to be recording what another sense should be recording. Each nerve and sinew of onlookers and participants becomes rigid as they strive for control. Panic-the fear of being dissolved into insanity-runs in quick jabs through everyone there. All present experience this increasingly violent and confusing assault. But the exorcist is the one who rides the storm. He is the direct target of it all.
The Breakpoint is reached at that moment when the Pretense has finally collapsed altogether. The voice of the possessed is no longer used by the spirit, though the new, strange voice may or may not issue from the mouth of the victim. In Thomas Wu’s case, the alien voice did come from the possessed’s mouth; and that was why the police captain was so startled. The sound produced is often not even remotely like any human sound.
At the Breakpoint, for the first time, the spirit speaks of the possessed in the third person, as a separate being. For the first time, the possessing spirit acts personally and speaks of “I” or “we,” usually interchangeably, and of “my” and “our” or “mine” and “ours.”
Another very frequent sign that the Breakpoint has been reached is the appearance of what Father Conor called the Voice .
The Voice is an inordinately disturbing and humanly distressing babel. The first few syllables seem to be those of some word pronounced slowly and thickly-somewhat like a tape recording played at a subnormal speed. You are just straining to pick up the word and a layer of cold fear has already gripped you-you know this sound is alien. But your concentration is shattered and frustrated by an immediate gamut of echoes, of tiny, prickly voices echoing each syllable, screaming it, whispering it, laughing it, sneering it, groaning it, following it. They all hit your ear, while the alien voice is going on unhurriedly to the next syllable, which you then try to catch, while guessing at the first one you lost. By then, the tiny, jabbing voices have caught up with that second syllable; and the voice has proceeded to the third syllable; and so on.
If the exorcism is to proceed, the Voice must be silenced. It takes an enormous effort of will on the part of the exorcist, in direct confrontation with the alien will of evil, to silence the Voice. The priest must get himself under control and challenge the spirit first to silence and then to identify itself intelligibly.
As in all things to do with Exorcism of Evil Spirit, the priest makes this challenge with his own will, but always in the name and by the authority of Jesus and his Church. To do so in his own name or by some fancied authority of his own would be to invite personal disaster. Merely human power unadorned and without aid cannot cope with the preternatural. (It is to be remembered that when we speak of the preternatural, we are not speaking about what are known as poltergeists.)
Usually, at this point and as the Voice dies out, a tremendous pressure of an obscure kind affects the exorcist. This is the first and outermost edge of a direct and personal collision with the “will of the Kingdom,” the Clash .
We all know from our personal experience that there can be no struggle of single personal wills without that felt and intuitive contact between two persons. There is a two-way communication that is as real as a conversation using words. The Clash is the heart of a special and dreadful communication, the nucleus of this singular battle of wills between exorcist and Evil Spirit. — § —
Painful as it will be for him, the priest must look for the Clash. He must provoke it. If he cannot lock wills with the evil thing and force that thing to lock its will in opposition to his own, then again the exorcist is defeated.
The issue between the two, the exorcist and the possessing spirit, is simple. Will the totally antihuman invade and take over? Will it, noisome and merciless, seep over that narrow rim where the exorcist would hold his ground alone, and engulf him? Or will it, unwillingly, protestingly, under a duress greater than its single-track will, stop, identify itself, cede, retire, disappear, and be volatilized back into an unknown pit of being where no man wants to go ever?
Even with all the pressure on him, and in fullest human agony, if the exorcist has got this far, he must press home. He has gained an advantage. He has already forced the evil spirit to come out on its own. If he has not been able to until now, he must finally force it to give its name. And then, some exorcists feel, the exorcist must pursue for as much information as he can. For in some peculiar way, as exorcists find, the more an evil spirit can be forced to reveal in the Clash and its aftermath, the surer and easier will be the Expulsion when that moment comes. To force as complete an identification as possible is perhaps a mark of domination of one will over another.
It is of crucial interest to speculate about the violence provoked by Exorcism-the physical and mental struggles that are so extreme they can bring on death. Why would spirit battle so? Why not leave and waft off invisibly to someone or someplace else? For spirit itself seems to suffer in these battles.
Time and again, in exorcism after exorcism, there occurs that curious thing to do with spirit and place, the strange puzzle mentioned previously in connection with the room chosen for the exorcism. When Jesus expelled the unclean spirits, those spirits showed concern for where they might go. In record after record, as well as in several exorcisms recounted in this book, the possessing spirits wail in lament and questioning pain: “Where shall we go?”“We too have to possess our habitation.”“Even the Anointed One gave us a place with the swine.”“Here . . . we can’t stay here any longer.”
Evil Spirit, having found a home with a consenting host, does not appear to give up its place easily. It claws and fights and deceives and even risks killing its host before it will be expelled. How violent the struggle probably depends on many things; the intelligence of the spirit being dealt with and the degree of possession achieved over the victim are perhaps two one could speculate about.
Whatever determines the actual pitch of violence, once the exorcist has forced the invading spirit to identify itself, and sustained the first wordless bout of the Clash, and then invoked its formal condemnation and expulsion by the Exorcism rite, the immediate result is generally a struggle tortuous beyond/imagining, an open violence that leaves all subtlety behind.
The person possessed is by now obviously aware in one way or another of what possessed him. Frequently he becomes a true battleground for much of the remainder of the exorcism, enduring unbelievable punishment and strain.
It is sometimes possible for the exorcist to appeal directly to the possessed person, urging him to use some part of his own will still free of the spirit’s influence and control, and engage directly in the fight, aiding the exorcist. And at such moments no animal pinned helplessly to the ground struggles more pathetically against the drinking of its life’s blood by a voracious and superior cruelty. The very nauseous character of the possessed person’s appearance and behavior appears to be a sign of his desire for deliverance, a desperate sign of struggle, evidence of a revolt where once he had consented.
Increasingly what had possessed him is being forced into the open, all the while protesting its victim’s revolt and its own expulsion. The violence of the contortions and the physical disfigurement of the possessed can reach a degree one would think he could not possibly withstand.
The exorcist, too, comes in for full attack now. Once cornered, the evil spirit seems able to call on a superior intelligence, and will try to lure the exorcist on to a field boobytrapped and mined with situations from which no human can extricate himself.
Any weakness in the religious faith that alone sustains the exorcist or any fatigue will allow the exorcist’s mind to be flooded with a terrible light he cannot fend off-a light that can burn the very roots of his reason and turn him emotionally into the most servile of slaves desperate to be liberated from all bodily life.
These are only some of the dangers and traps that face every exorcist. His pain is physical, emotional, mental. He has to deal with what is eerie but not enthralling; with something askew, but intelligently so; with a quality that is upside down and inside out, but significantly so. The mordant traits of nightmare are there in full regalia, but this is no dream and permits him no thankful remission.
He is attacked by a stench so powerful that many exorcists start vomiting uncontrollably. He is made to bear physical pain, and he feels anguish over his very soul. He is made to know he is touching the completely unclean, the totally unhuman . “THE TOTALLY UNHUMAN” ( CLICK TO EXPAND )
All sense may suddenly seem nonsense. Hopelessness is confirmed as the only hope. Death and cruelty and contempt are normal. Anything comely or beautiful is an illusion. Nothing, it seems, was ever right in the world of man. Here is an atmosphere as bizarre as Bedlam.
If, in spite of his emotions and his imagination and his body—all trapped at once in pain and anguish—if, in spite of all this, the will of the exorcist holds in the Clash, what he does is to approach his final function in this situation as an authorized human witness for Jesus.
By no power of his, on account of no privilege of his own, he calls finally on the evil spirit TO DESIST, TO BE DISPOSSESSED, TO DEPART! — AND TO LEAVE THE PERSON POSSESSED.
And, if the exorcism is successful, this is what happens. The possession ends.
All present become aware of a change around them. The sense of Presence is totally, suddenly absent.
Sometimes there are receding voices or other noises, sometimes only dead silence.
The recently possessed will wake up as if from a dream, a nightmare, a coma. Sometimes he will remember much of what he has been through; sometimes he will remember nothing at all. — § — Many people could be demonically possessed without knowing it. Here are two individuals who, in my opinion, might benefit from the ministrations of a good exorcist: IS THIS WOMAN DEMONICALLY POSSESSED? Who knows? . . . but many have said so. (Click here for a spooky 2-minute video) IS THIS WOMAN DEMONICALLY POSSESSED? Who knows? . . . but many have thought so. Apart from the demonic expression that disfigures her face, this woman preaches White genocide—the total destruction of the European race. What more do you have to do to qualify for demonic possession? (See HERE for more details on Barbara Spectre’s psychopathy and compare the expression on her face with Figure 1 of this illustration from a medical textbook on demonic possession ) . As I wrote in a recent email to Lasha Darkmoon: “I feel that the entire tribe of Judah is demonically possessed. They always have been for centuries. Jesus made that point over and over again in his homilies. And clearly the Jews’ works bear that out. They are now the Devil’s agents on Earth to promote his policies and spread contagion into the body of the goyim. History bears me out on this.”
I will not quote Dr Darkmoon’s response here. It is too long and would require a separate article of its own. Suffice to say that she disagreed with me on several counts, though she accepted my general premise that demonic possession was an authentic and veridical phenomenon and not just a superstitious relic of the Dark Ages. Continued in Part 2: The Deceiver of the World , by Lasha Darkmoon
LOBRO VAN HELSING is a retired Canadian academic who is constantly on the move and likes visiting strange places; at present he is living in South East Asia. 2 thoughts on “ Demonic Possession Today (Part 1) ” Franklin Ryckaert says: November 19, 2016 at 10:23 am
“…LOBRO VAN HELSING is a retired Canadian academic who is constantly on the move and likes visiting strange places; at present he is living in South East Asia…”
That sounds like “our” Lobro of the commentariat of this website, but I thought he was of Croatian descent and “van Helsing” is a Dutch or Flemish name. | 1real |
Americans UNLOAD On Trump For Threatening North Korea And China On Twitter | Donald Trump is a madman putting our nation on the brink of World War III and he isn t even in office yet.In a pair of tweets on Monday afternoon, Trump threatened North Korea after the country announced that they are nearly finished developig a nuclear missile allegedly capable of reaching the United States.North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won t happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017Yes, let s just antagonize a country that is run by a dictator just as egomaniacal as Trump.But it gets worse.Trump also antagonized China, an ally of North Korea and the largest economy on the planet with the largest population.China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won t help with North Korea. Nice! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017Keep in mind that this China bashing comes from a man who has his clothing line manufactured in China and a man who purchases steel for his buildings from Chinese companies instead of American companies. So Trump is complicit in the very things he is accusing China of doing.Regardless, China is a nuclear power with a strong military, and they will not hesitate to use it if the United States goes after North Korea. Such action could touch off a major war that would cause a horrifying number of casualties.And Trump s tweets are already terrifying Americans, many of whom took to Twitter to tell Trump to go cool off and keep his mouth shut because foreign relations should not be conducted on social media.@realDonaldTrump Was this over dinner with Kim Jong-un? Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump your are hardly fit to deal with this kind of challenge. Unstable. Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump that s why most Americans don t trust you to handle a crisis. We know you are emotionally disturbed, anxious, unwell. Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) January 2, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Sweetie, this is the perfect example of something you save for your Presidenting meetings, not glib little tweets. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump I m sure your public call for allowing South Korea to acquire nukes played no role in this Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump You re just like him. pic.twitter.com/BwrubjUo7p The Socialist Party (@OfficialSPGB) January 2, 2017@ZachHonig @realDonaldTrump he is making the world far more dangerous & not even POTUS yet. SMFH Chris Johnston (@bonsaikc) January 2, 2017.@realDonaldTrump This twitter diplomacy is real classy, you orange moron. Ben Berkon (@BenBerkon) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump you have mere days until you re sworn in as President. Do you really want to avoid it so badly that you ll kill us all now? Alex Zalben (@azalben) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump seriously, I ask you father to father, as a person who wants a future for his children: STOP TAUNTING NUCLEAR SUPERPOWERS. Alex Zalben (@azalben) January 2, 2017@JKendall4Trump @azalben @realDonaldTrump This is inviting them to launch nukes at us, literally. StopTrumpPutin16 (@fluffymnuffy1) January 2, 2017@rolandscahill and this is how it ends by a chump making threats on twitter. JustAGRL (@Clydearoo) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump I ve said it before, I ll say it again. Don t start a nuclear war. Matt Peterson (@mattbpete) January 2, 2017.@realDonaldTrump your goods are made in China and India you hypocrite. You don t care about the American working class. Emanuel Zbeda (@therealezway) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump go to your intelligence briefing and stop tweeting! Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump you re trying so hard to tweet us into WWIII. Nice! Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump I m sure plaintive, bitchy, mean-girl tweets like this will solve the problem. Krister Johnson (@KristerJohnson) January 2, 2017And just think Trump gets full control over the military and our nuclear arsenal in 17 days. Seriously, Trump is far too dangerous to be president.Featured Image: Wikimedia/Flickr | 1real |
WATCH: ANGRY PARENTS WALK OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL’S RACIST, ANTI-COP COMMENCEMENT SPEECH [Video] | Another leftist educator uses the precious time they ve been given to deliver an inspirational speech to high school graduates to instead, deliver a radical, divisive and hateful message. A Missouri high school principal sent some parents toward the exits last week when he made a disparaging remark about police killing young black men during a graduation speech.Belton High School Principal Fred Skretta was talking about why he became a teacher when he suddenly veered off in an unexpected direction. I wanted to be a teacher because I wanted to change the world, I wanted to make it a better place, he told the audience. I m going to be honest with you, in a lot of ways I fear that we are not there yet. If we were there, we wouldn t have conflicts between police killing young black men. https://youtu.be/mQHKFGBPREUNever mind the poor sentence structure. Some parents were so offended by the commentary they got up and walked out of the ceremony, according to Fox 4 News. I found it very inappropriate, I am highly offended, a parent said. You don t use the platform of a child s graduation to push a political agenda or push your personal opinions. Your job is supposed to inspire, educate, inform and not indoctronize one way or the other. Interestingly, Fox4News reported that Skretta posted an apology on social media after the ceremony, but the Twitter account appears to have been deleted since then.The apology, according to the Fox affiliate: TY all at #BHS graduation! I apologize if my remarks were offensive. Our law enforcement have difficult jobs & I meant no disrespect #agape Doc Skretta (@Principal_BHS) May 17, 2015 Belton district deputy superintendent, Steve Morgan, later offered an apology also, Fox4News reported. Comments were made at graduation and they certainly are not reflective of the district, so we sent out an apology in a statement today that went to all patrons reflecting that, Morgan said.Via: BizPac Review | 1real |
A Curious Plan to Fight Climate Change: Buy Mines, Sell Coal - The New York Times | FAIRVIEW, W. Va. — The coal was piled about as high as it could go, spilling down to the railroad tracks and towering over the elevator shaft. A yellow bulldozer pushed the mound to make room for more. From a distance on this rainy day, the black heap looked like a giant whale about to swallow the mine whole. The word underground was that Federal mine No. 2 would soon have to close. It was early April, and the mine was running out of storage space. There were not enough buyers for all the coal. A few months earlier, this problem would have belonged to Patriot Coal, one of the nation’s largest coal companies, which used to operate the Federal mine, built near a meandering mountain stream called Miracle Run. But this was not Patriot’s problem anymore. Nor was it the problem of the hedge funds and other investors that had lent the company millions. When Patriot filed for bankruptcy in 2015 — its second time in three years — environmentalists and regulators were prepared for the company to figure out ways to shunt liabilities and maximize returns. But no one could have envisioned what happened next. Patriot handed over millions of dollars of environmental obligations to a nonprofit company run by a man named Tom Clarke, who owned a chain of nursing homes and a tourist attraction that had fallen behind on its bills. Until that day in April, Mr. Clarke, 61, had never been in a coal mine. Patriot sold not only the troubled Federal mine to Mr. Clarke, but also several other mines that were no longer in operation, including a sprawling surface mine carved from the top of a mountain in southern West Virginia. Mr. Clarke’s new company agreed to clean up the shuttered mines and reclaim the land that had been ravaged. As part of the deal, the miners’ union invested $10 million in the Federal mine operation, which was supposed to keep producing coal for Mr. Clarke to sell. But the mine has struggled from low coal prices. “It was a spectacular deal for Patriot,” said Patrick McGinley, a law professor at West Virginia University who has been involved in cases against coal companies since 1970s. “This company has had complete success in divesting itself of all liabilities of every kind, including environmental liabilities, which are the hardest to shed. ” Why then, would someone like Mr. Clarke want to take over a troubled mine and the environmental obligations that Patriot Coal was seeking to get rid of? As improbable as it may seem, Mr. Clarke said the Patriot deal had played to his advantage — helping start his grand plan to remake coal mining into a greener industry. He is not only reclaiming Patriot’s mines that are no longer in use. He has come up with a model, he said, for how the industry can keep producing coal, while reducing its impact on the climate. The plan involves creating pollution credits by planting or preserving trees around the world to offset the carbon emitted from burning coal. For every ton of coal he sells, Mr. Clarke attaches some of the credits. Mr. Clarke has had trouble, however, persuading buyers of his coal, like utilities and steel companies, to pay extra for the credits. Mr. Clarke hoped electric utilities would be able to count his credits toward the goals that the Obama administration has set for states in its Clean Power Plan, now before a federal court. But administration officials have effectively ruled that out. That hasn’t stopped Mr. Clarke’s company from acquiring more mines. In addition to Patriot, Mr. Clarke has made deals over the last 11 months with several other struggling coal companies, gaining control of multiple underground mines, millions of tons of coal reserves and thousands of acres of surface mines. He has even tried bidding on steel mills to create a captive buyer for his coal bundled with carbon credits. Now he is in the market for utilities, for the same reason. While the Federal mine has cut back on production, some of his other mines are poised for a rebound. Demand for metallurgical coal — which is used for making steel — has roared back in recent months. One of the companies he founded with a longtime coal executive, ERP Compliant Fuels, is now one of the largest producers of metallurgical coal in North America. “I am the guy that is trying to work from within,” Mr. Clarke said. “The goal is to have a big enough footprint to drive our environmental philosophy home. ” If this were a movie about the American coal industry, Mr. Clarke would be the character who goes completely off script. For decades, the battle lines around coal have been clear. The companies are fighting to protect their diminishing business. Many environmentalists, meanwhile, are trying to limit coal production permanently and force the industry to clean up the damage it has inflicted on forests, rivers and lakes. The debate over coal on the campaign trail is also predictable — Donald J. Trump has vowed to bring back lost mining jobs and roll back overzealous environmental regulations, and Hillary Clinton is promising to help mining communities transition out of coal and into new industries. Environmental groups can almost smell victory. Many of the nation’s largest coal companies have filed for bankruptcy. Natural gas is pulling even and may surpass coal as the top power source in the United States. The industry’s decline is forcing states to deal with how to clean up the mines and who should pay for it. In West Virginia alone, 300, 000 acres of forest — an area half the size of Rhode Island — have been damaged by mountaintop mining, by one estimate. After some challenges, Mr. Clarke’s reclamation work has been meeting regulatory standards and even exceeding expectations by some measures, one West Virginia official said. In January, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia lauded Mr. Clarke in his address for helping develop “new and innovative ideas. ” Mr. Clarke is donating a reclaimed former Patriot mountaintop mine to the state to build an industrial park. “Tom is a real visionary,” said Robert McAtee, one of several coal industry veterans who have come to work with Mr. Clarke. “He stepped in when no one else would. ” Mr. Clarke says he relies on the expertise of several seasoned coal executives to run his mining operations. But environmentalists worry that Mr. Clarke is breathing new life into a polluting industry and that he is incapable of handling the huge mess the coal companies have handed him. In August, several environmental groups granted Mr. Clarke an extension on a court order to treat polluted runoff from a former Patriot mine, saying his “ capital was less than expected. ” Should Mr. Clarke’s company run into financial trouble, environmentalists worry that the cost of reclaiming the mines could fall to West Virginia taxpayers. Unlike Patriot, Mr. Clarke has few Wall Street investors that the state could pressure to cover the costs, they say. “These are strange days,” said Peter Morgan, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, who has been challenging the coal industry over water pollution issues for years. “I don’t know what Tom Clarke’s intentions are. But I am skeptical he can pull it off. ” Bankruptcy is like a chess game in which companies seek to minimize liabilities and creditors look to maximize profits. Over the years, Patriot has played like a grandmaster. The company was founded in October 2007 from a spinoff of the coal mining giant Peabody Energy. From the start, Patriot was loaded with liabilities. Peabody gave Patriot 13 percent of its coal reserves but 40 percent of its obligations to pay for health care for thousands of retired miners. In short, Patriot took over many of the company’s unionized mining operations in Appalachia, while Peabody kept its nonunion operations in the West. “The legend in the coal fields is that Patriot was set up as a liability dump,” said Kevin Barrett, a lawyer at Bailey Glasser, who represents the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in the coal bankruptcy cases. “It was destined to fail. ” In a statement, Peabody said: “Patriot Coal was highly successful when it became an independent, publicly traded company nearly a decade ago,” adding that its market capitalization quadrupled in less than a year. But in July 2012, Patriot failed as predicted. A few weeks before it filed for bankruptcy, the company, which is based in St. Louis, took steps to improve its chances in court, according to the union. Patriot created two subsidiaries in New York City, allowing its case to be heard there. The United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan was viewed as favorable to corporations looking to cut their debts. After the coal miners’ union objected, the case was moved to St. Louis. On that first trip through bankruptcy, Patriot was able to deal with its health care obligations after a separate fund was created to administer the benefits. Health care was not Patriot’s only issue, though. The company faced huge costs for cleaning up selenium — a harmful coal byproduct — that was seeping into water sources downstream from its mines. While industries readily used bankruptcy to shed labor and pension obligations, it was unclear whether coal companies could do the same with reclamations and water remediation. In 1986, the Supreme Court blocked a New Jersey company from abandoning its oil waste processing plants in bankruptcy, citing a threat to public health and safety. But it was unclear whether the judges in the coal bankruptcy cases would rule that defunct mines posed the same pressing health threat. In the end, Patriot was able to emerge from its first bankruptcy without dealing with most of its environmental liabilities. By 2015, the American coal market was in a deep slide, as utilities and manufacturers increasingly turned to natural gas and demand from China cooled. One after another, mining companies, including Patriot, declared bankruptcy. “Everybody knew what to expect in Round 2,” Mr. Barrett said. “They would try to sell their best assets and leave their biggest environmental problems behind. ” The Natural Bridge is a rocky arch towering 215 feet above a small creek in southwestern Virginia. Thomas Jefferson bought the property from King George III of England for 20 shillings. Today, it is owned by a nonprofit company started by Mr. Clarke. He bought the bridge in 2014, using a $9. 1 million loan from the State of Virginia. Mr. Clarke planned to revitalize flagging ticket sales to the bridge, then hand over the property as a state park. But his plans ran into trouble early on. Visitors dwindled, and he defaulted on his state loan. He had to use proceeds from selling coal and land to help get caught up on his bills. In September, Mr. Clarke handed over management of Natural Bridge to the state. His nonprofit group, called the Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, will still own the property until it pays back the loan. Some state officials praised Mr. Clarke’s work preserving the property but also had to give him more time to pay back his debt. Mr. Clarke compares his struggles to those of the former president, who also ran into financial trouble at one point. “I sort of felt like I am having my Jeffersonian moment,” Mr. Clarke said. Relentlessly upbeat, with a near permanent smile and the soothing voice of a public radio announcer, Mr. Clarke has spent a career trying to turn around an eclectic assortment of companies. He has bought troubled nursing homes, a forest preserve in Belize and a restaurant in Roanoke, Va. — a “philanthropub” that was supposed to dedicate its profit to Africa until it closed down in March 2015. In the 1990s, he turned one of his companies, Lenox Healthcare, into a $ business — one of the largest nursing home chains in the country. His former business partner at Lenox, Lawrence B. Cummings, called him a master at bolting together impossible business transactions. “He showed again and again an ability to put together deals that other people couldn’t. ” Lenox was a juggernaut, Mr. Clarke said, until it went bankrupt in 1999. Mr. Clarke said he began to rethink his life’s goals. He went hiking in South America, where he met his wife, Ana, a native of Venezuela. They moved to Virginia, converted his remaining nursing homes to nonprofits and placed them under a new company, Kissito (pronounced ) Healthcare. He became interested in poverty issues in Africa and began raising money and building a maternity hospital in Ethiopia. Mr. Clarke said he realized that many of the problems like drought and extreme floods in Africa were caused by climate change. Back in Virginia, Mr. Clarke said, he decided to take aim at the coal industry’s contribution to carbon emissions. Too often, Mr. Clarke said, the debate over the future of coal is infected with what he called tribalism — a conviction that you are either with the mining industry, or against it. He said he was trying to find some middle ground. Mr. Clarke’s first foray into the coal industry came when he took a job in late 2014 with Jim Justice, a wealthy West Virginia businessman who had built a fortune partly on coal. Mr. Clarke’s job was to assist Mr. Justice and his Southern Coal Corporation in dealing with hundreds of environmental violations at mines across Appalachia. While results are difficult to track, some environmental groups acknowledge that Mr. Clarke’s work had an appreciable impact on the Justice properties. A Democrat, Mr. Justice is running to become West Virginia’s next governor. Through a spokesman, he declined to comment. One of Mr. Clarke’s believers is Chandler Van Voorhis, a founder of C2I, a company outside Washington. C2I’s business is planting trees. The trees soak up carbon dioxide, converting it to wood and leaves. An acre of trees can convert 156 tons of carbon over a period, Mr. Van Voorhis said. C2I plans to reforest a million acres in the southern Mississippi River Valley and sell the carbon offsets to companies to reach goals. Together, Mr. Clarke and Mr. Van Voorhis sketched a plan to bundle C2I’s carbon offsets with coal. Their plan faced some steep challenges including this one: There was no natural market for coal bundled with pollution credits because of its higher cost. Undaunted, Mr. Clarke hired an investment banker and lawyers to hatch his idea. “Wall Street’s a pretty cynical place,” said Tim Hess, a real estate developer in Virginia, who introduced Mr. Clarke to his banking contacts. “But when you see somebody with that kind of passion and integrity, if there’s a way to make business sense out of it, I think people lean forward. ” Patriot Coal’s executives and advisers first met Mr. Clarke around the start of the company’s second bankruptcy case in May 2015. For this second bankruptcy filing, Patriot chose to file in Richmond, Va. where restructuring experts say some judges are eager to move large bankruptcy cases through quickly. The choice turned out to be a fortunate one. During the first day of bankruptcy hearings, Mr. Clarke said he happened to be in Richmond for a meeting with state officials when he wandered over to the federal courthouse. “It just amazed me how quickly they rushed through everything,” Mr. Clarke recalled of the proceedings. The best mines would be sold to Blackhawk Mining, a coal company in Kentucky, which would run the properties with financing from some of Patriot’s lenders. The less valuable mines would be placed in a separate “liquidating trust. ” The sole purpose of that trust would be to clean up water pollution and reclaim the mines. West Virginia officials felt comfortable with this arrangement because they could pressure Patriot’s hedge fund lenders to contribute money to the trust for reclamation work, said Mr. Barrett, the lawyer for West Virginia’s environmental protection agency. Equally important, regulators could hold Patriot’s top executives liable for completing the mine cleanup. If they failed, the government could deny them mining permits until the work was completed. “It was incredibly important to them personally, because these liabilities would follow them,” Mr. Barrett said. But Mr. Clarke was proposing something else entirely. His nonprofit company would assume Patriot’s environmental and reclamation obligations. And ultimately, the deal would release former executives from liability. At first, regulators and advisers to Patriot didn’t know what to make of Mr. Clarke. He had no experience. He had no traditional bank financing. When he came to meet Patriot’s management for the first time, he brought his young daughter with him. A company secretary watched her while he met with the executives for hours at the Charleston airport. Many people involved in the negotiations assumed that Mr. Clarke had the financial backing of Mr. Justice, but that wasn’t the case. Initially, state regulators did not consider Mr. Clarke a realistic option. So when Patriot signaled last summer that it was going to make a deal with Mr. Clarke, Mr. Barrett said, “we were floored. ” Shortly before a crucial court hearing, a major piece of Mr. Clarke’s financing fell through. Patriot’s lawyer and investment bankers scrambled to keep the deal from falling apart. In the end, Patriot agreed to effectively lend Mr. Clarke $5 million, and the coal miners’ union also stepped in with money. Surety companies that had insured Patriot’s reclamation obligations agreed to release millions in cash so Mr. Clarke could start the work. Regulators and environmental groups worried that if the state held up the deal, Patriot could threaten to liquidate its properties, leaving no money for reclamations. “It was the least bad outcome,” Mr. Morgan of the Sierra Club said. Even if Mr. Clarke’s venture proves Mr. Morgan said, he has already completed a good deal of reclamation work. Mr. Clarke said his fund has spent about $28 million on the work to date. As insurance, Patriot’s lenders contributed $12. 5 million to backstop the reclamation work in case Mr. Clarke failed. The state also has some control over the account that Mr. Clarke uses to pay for reclamation work. For Mr. Clarke, the Patriot agreement opened the door to other deals. He took over reclamation obligations from Walter Energy, another mining company that had declared bankruptcy. He also picked up more viable mines and a coke processing plant from Walter. This spring, his company vied to take over an entire coal company, Alpha Natural Resources, but the bid was not accepted in the bankruptcy case. “For someone with zero experience to come into this complex and troubled industry proposing the sort of things he is proposing is astonishing,” said Mr. McGinley, the law professor. “I give him the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t see where it is going. ” It was raining when Mr. Clarke and a clutch of miners rode a cavernous elevator 734 feet down to the dank shafts of Federal mine No. 2 last spring. At the bottom, the men boarded trains that clanked and jerked along wooden tracks through a maze of silent tunnels, empty except for the occasional mouse scurrying. The trains passed emergency shelters and ventilation shafts pumping cool air from above. This is the miners’ commute to the coal seam, where they shave off thousands of tons of black rock each week. “I am proud of you,” Mr. Clarke told some of the miners. As part of the deal with Patriot, the coal miners’ union invested $10 million and took a 20 percent stake in the Federal mine, which Mr. Clarke says he is doing everything he can to keep open even though it doesn’t break even. When he bought the Federal mine from Patriot, Mr. Clarke said he expected to sell its coal for at least $50 a ton. Recent shipments have sold for just above $40 a ton, he said. On some weeks, the mine has had to operate on a schedule because of the low demand for thermal coal, which is used to produce electric power. Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, said the union expected production to improve at the mine when the broader coal market recovered. Still, Mr. Clarke’s company has shifted away from thermal coal and is hunting for mines that produce the much more valuable metallurgical coal used in steel production. Last month, an company acquired a set of huge surface mines in British Columbia out of bankruptcy. Unlike many of the Patriot mines that Mr. Clarke acquired to clean up, these new mines are capable of pumping millions of tons of new coal onto the market each year and he’s projecting big profits next year. Ultimately, Mr. Clarke hopes to offset all of the expected emissions from the coal he is producing with pollution credits. But right now, he is offsetting only 10 percent. That worries environmentalists. “It’s all I can afford,” he said. Mr. Clarke says he has been absorbing the costs personally until he can persuade utilities and steel mills to agree to pay for credits. He is hoping that states, led by West Virginia, will allow utilities to pass through the costs of his credits to ratepayers. Those discussions are continuing, he said. “Coal isn’t the villain,” he said. “The villain is excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and we have to find ways to deal with it. ” | 0fake |
Republicans Just Added What They Hated The Most About Obamacare To Their Bill | For the years since the debate over the Affordable Care Act began, anti-government Republicans (is there another kind?) have been bitching about the individual mandate that required people to buy insurance.Now it s their turn to come up with an alternative, and while theirs will cover fewer people, their solution is to force everyone to buy it, regardless of whether they can afford the barely subsidized coverage.The addition, which was tacked onto the Republican healthcare bill on Monday, is somewhat different from the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, which says that there would be a penalty for people who lack coverage for more than 63 days. In the GOP bill, it s even worse. People would be barred from coverage at all for six months if they have a 63 day gap.Republicans added this provision after economists and health policy experts convinced them that it would be unsustainable to not force people to purchase insurance.Health policy experts across the political spectrum had warned that the initial Senate bill s failure to include some penalty for going uninsured could cause a death spiral in which people go without health insurance while healthy and only buy it when they become sick. In that scenario, insurance premiums shoot up for everyone as insurance markets become flooded with customers who disproportionately require expensive treatments.Source: NBC NewsThe main difference between this and the Affordable Care Act, though, is that the cost of premiums are going to be much higher. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 22 million Americans stand to lose their healthcare coverage if the GOP bill becomes law.By and large, Republicans want to do away with the Medicaid expansion, which allowed poorer people access to insurance, often without paying anything. Everyone who makes under $48,000 a year receives subsidies to help pay for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Instead with Trumpcare, they want to offer those people a block grant, which would severely restrict medical spending. Instead of subsidies, there will be tax credits.Some who aren t receiving Medicaid or Medicare might see more affordable premiums, but that s only because the coverage will be so much less.Republicans have now chosen to take the most controversial portion of the Affordable Care Act and make it absolutely draconian. If you happen to be one of the 22 million who loses insurance, good luck getting it back.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
null | When will you stop putting up with an invasion of barbarians? | 1real |
Trump Is Ahead In Zero National Polls While The Media Continues ‘Close Race’ Narrative | Gravis: Clinton +1 LA Times: Tied
Overall, the Democratic nominee is beating Trump by an average of 5.4 points with just 12 days to go – and as millions of Americans have already cast their ballots.
On the Electoral College front, RealClearPolitics shows that Clinton is ahead in states that total 333 electoral votes. One of the states she leads in is Arizona – a red state before Republicans nominated Trump.
To put things in perspective, Barack Obama was leading Mitt Romney by just a single percentage point on this day in 2012. That is what you call a close presidential contest, and Obama still went on to easily win.
Yet, as I write, CNN and other cable news networks continue to plaster the “close race” chyron all over their networks, claiming Donald Trump is making it a race again.
Here’s the thing: the contest between Clinton and Trump may be naturally tightening in a few polls, but that doesn’t mean it’s becoming a close race. It’s clear that, despite any one poll showing Trump gaining ground, Clinton still has a pretty durable lead. | @FiveThirtyEight tackles question everyone is asking: Is the Presidential race tightening? (Answer: Not by much.) https://t.co/XoMxzleajd pic.twitter.com/Gq5O47rNsv
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) October 26, 2016
While the media looks silly for trying to make the Clinton-Trump race seem like a nail-biter for the ages, there is also some good that can come of it – besides high TV ratings.
Clinton supporters who may have previously assumed the race was in the bag for their candidate and were becoming complacent now may recognize, at least if they watch cable news, that the “race is becoming close again.”
This should provide a last-minute boost of energy among voters who fear a Trump presidency. | 1real |
Secret talks between Mozambique opposition, EU mediators canceled | More The file photo shows former rebel Renamo fighters in Gorongosa, Mozambique. (Photo by AFP)
Secret peace negotiations between Mozambique's opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama and EU mediators were annulled at the weekend after fighting erupted between the country's army and former rebel fighters, local media say.
The meeting aimed to contribute to talks that began in May to find a solution to the conflict between the government and Dhlakama’s rebel group turned political party Renamo.
"We had agreed (with President Filipe Nyusi) that two mediators would come ... to meet me," the independent weekly Canal de Mocambique quoted Dhlakama as saying.
Dhlakama said he had cancelled the meeting after the army increased its presence near the place of the meeting.
"There was a violent shootout. I even heard explosions from here," said Dhlakama, who has been in hiding in the central Gorongosa mountains since October 2015.
"So I called (chief mediator Mario) Raffaelli to tell him that armed forces had come to ambush me," he added.
Dhlakama quoted the mediator as saying that he was "convinced" that the ruling Frelimo party "wanted to capture me during the meeting."
"It is obvious they have a plan to kill me," he added.
Raffaelli declined to comment on the matter but an EU diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that two mediators had gone to Gorongosa for a meeting with the opposition leader.
The diplomat said Dhlakama had told the mediators to "turn back at the very last moment."
The political situation in Mozambique has been tense for months with Dhlakama refusing to recognize the results of the 2014 elections, where the Frelimo party was declared the winner. The party has been in power since the southern African country’s independence from Portugal in 1975. Dhlakama also threatened to seize power by force in the northern half of the country.
Renamo and the Frelimo-led government had been engaged in a civil war for 16 years that was brought to an end in 1992.
Renamo's armed wing has conducted a string of fatal assaults in central Mozambique in recent years as it seeks to increase its share of power.
On October 19, the warring sides resumed a new round of peace talks despite the killing of an opposition negotiator on October 9.
The mediators continued separate talks on Tuesday with representatives of each side. Loading ... | 1real |
null | Innocent... | 1real |
Treasury watchdog reviewing Mnuchin's solar eclipse trip | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal watchdog said on Friday it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s controversial flight last month to Kentucky, where he spoke to business leaders and viewed the solar eclipse. “Responding to inquiries received from members of the public, we are reviewing the circumstances of the Secretary’s August 21 flight to Louisville and Ft. Knox to determine whether all applicable travel, ethics, and appropriation laws and policies were observed,” Rich Delmar, counsel to the Treasury’s Office of Inspector General, said in a statement. Mnuchin, a former hedge fund manager, and his wife, actress Louise Linton, traveled on a U.S. government plane to Kentucky where they viewed the Aug. 21 solar eclipse with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others. Linton posted a photo of herself on social media getting off the plane and listing the designer brands she was wearing, triggering criticism over the display of wealth and privilege. The Washington Post, which first reported the review, said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden last week requested a “detailed explanation” of the travel and justification for use of the government aircraft. An independent watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also had sought records of the trip, saying it seemed to have been planned to enable Mnuchin to be at a site that had views of the total eclipse. The eclipse visible in Washington only obscured about 80 percent of the sun. The Post said Treasury secretaries and other Cabinet members not involved in national security have traditionally flown on government aircraft on rare occasions, usually taking commercial flights for domestic travel. Treasury officials have said the trip was official government travel, with Mnuchin speaking to Louisville business leaders before visiting Fort Knox, where a large portion of the U.S. gold reserves are held. Delmar said the Office of Inspector General was looking into various issues raised by the flight. “When our review is complete, we will advise the appropriate officials, in accordance with the Inspector General Act and established procedures,” he said in the statement. | 0fake |
‘GAME TIME’ FBI MANHUNT ON FOR Heavily Armed Deranged Anti-Trump Nut-Job [Video] | Wisconsin police were widening their hunt Saturday for a 32-year-old man who allegedly burglarized a gun store after mailing an anti-government manifesto to President Donald Trump.Joseph Jakubowski has been on the run since Tuesday, when police say he broke into the Armageddon Gun Shop in Janesville, south of Madison, and stole 16 high-caliber rifles and handguns. He is believed to be armed and dangerous, and traveling with a bulletproof vest and helmet, according to authorities.At a news conference Friday, Rock County Sheriff Robert Spoden said Jakubowski had been highly agitated by national politics recently and had confessed to friends that he had plans to steal guns and conduct an unspecified attack. Janesville Police Chief David Moore said his department has also had multiple run-ins with Jakubowski over the years. There was one specific case where he attempted to disarm a police officer, Moore told reporters. Were it not for the very secure holster of this police officer, he would have certainly disarmed that police officer. And for that crime, (he) was sent to prison. Police released a video Jakubowski allegedly posted to Facebook that shows a man mailing a large envelope clearly addressed to Trump and the White House.Authorities say the package contained a 160-page manifesto that featured anti-government rants and personal angst against anything other than natural law or rule. | 1real |
Gay marriage ruling leaves debate about religious liberty wide open | The Supreme Court made a number of important decisions this term, but none more transformative than legalizing gay marriage. The decision, however, does not settle the issue of gay rights and religious liberty.
Why climate scientists are taking fact-checking into their own hands
A man holds a US and a rainbow flag outside the Supreme Court in Washington after the court legalized gay marriage nationwide on June 26. After the decision, religious conservatives are focusing on preserving their right to object. Their concerns are for the thousands of faith-based charities, colleges, and hospitals that want to hire, fire, serve, and set policy according to their religious beliefs.
Two blockbuster cases dominated the docket at the United States Supreme Court in its recently-concluded term – one stands as a civil rights landmark, the other is slipping into quiet obscurity.
In its 2014-15 term, the high court decided 74 cases, including rulings upholding the president’s power to determine US policy over the contested status of Jerusalem, permitting Texas to exclude the confederate flag from specialty license plates, and barring prosecutors from treating an undersized grouper as the legal equivalent of a shredded document.
But by far the term’s biggest decisions came in the court’s historic ruling for same-sex marriage and in a 6-to-3 vote upholding distribution of tax credits in President Obama’s health care reform law.
While the same-sex marriage decision will reverberate for years, the high court’s ruling in the Obamacare case has quickly fallen off the national radar now that the once-dire threat to millions of health insurance policies has subsided.
In contrast, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision in the same-sex marriage case is a transformative event. It marks the most significant civil rights decision by the high court in at least a generation – a kind of gay rights version of Brown v. Board of Education.
In his decision, Justice Kennedy established that the fundamental right to marry embraces all Americans – regardless of sexual orientation.
In the 5-to-4 ruling, the high court said that state bans on same-sex marriage violate due process and equal protection rights of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The decision effectively ends a rancorous state-by-state debate over marriage, and extends a welcoming hand to a segment of American society that has faced open hostility and discrimination.
As such, the marriage decision represents a huge victory for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, their friends, families, and other supporters.
“This decision affirms what millions of Americans already believe in their hearts. When all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free,” President Obama said in comments shortly after the ruling.
But the case that sharply divided the court itself has also left the country sharply divided. Religious conservatives feel they are under siege and are looking for ways to fight back or protect themselves.
Recognizing this, Kennedy’s decision hints at matters beyond gay marriage and anticipates the next big high court showdown – a bitter national struggle pitting gay rights against religious liberty.
Analysts say Kennedy went out of his way in his decision to avoid labeling religious conservatives as bigots or motivated by animosity toward homosexuals. That posture is critical, they say, because it leaves open a way for the court in future cases to balance the competing interests of religious conservatives with the growing rights and clout of gay Americans.
“Kennedy, I think, wants to keep the court’s options open to respect religious and traditional marriage libertarian rights to exclude or to discriminate,” Yale Law Professor William Eskridge told a recent gathering of the American Constitution Society.
“Justice Kennedy is loath to close off those options,” he said.
Professor Eskridge noted that Kennedy provided the decisive fifth vote in a 2000 high court case that upheld the Boy Scouts’ right to bar gay men from serving as scoutmasters. To the Boy Scouts, the decision affirmed their right to associate with like-minded individuals. To the rejected scoutmaster, the decision endorsed blatant anti-gay discrimination.
Washington Appellate Lawyer Gene Schaerr said in a Heritage Foundation briefing that Justice Kennedy went “out of his way in numerous places in his opinion to try to suggest respect for the religious viewpoint on this issue.”
“Those of us who care about religious liberty can be grateful that Justice Kennedy’s opinion dodged some big bullets,” Mr. Schaerr said. “But the opinion, unintentionally I think, launched a number of grenades that are still in the air.”
He noted that some religious organizations may soon face loss of their tax exempt status unless they jettison their opposition to same-sex marriage, and religious colleges may discover their accreditation is in jeopardy if they are found to discriminate against same-sex married couples in violation of constitutional rights.
In contrast to the historic same-sex marriage landmark with its ongoing repercussions, the high court challenge to President Obama’s health care reform law is fast on its way to being forgotten.
Had a majority of justices agreed with the plaintiffs that the Affordable Care Act barred the distribution of tax credits thorough federal health care exchanges set up in 34 states, that decision would have gutted the ACA and left millions of Americans unable to afford any health insurance.
But that’s not what happened.
Instead, the court essentially gave the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt over what the majority justices said were “a few examples of inartful drafting.”
Writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said it would make no sense for Congress to create a law meant to advance universal health care by allowing tax subsidies only in health care exchanges established by a state – rather than also in exchanges set up by the federal government.
“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
It marked the second time the chief justice had joined the high court’s liberal wing to save the ACA from its potential demise at the nation’s highest court. In June 2012, Roberts joined with the court’s liberal wing to uphold the controversial measure after concluding that the law’s mandated insurance requirement amounted to a tax rather than a penalty.
The chief justice’s twin rescue operations prompted Justice Antonin Scalia to quip in a dissenting opinion that rather than calling the law Obamacare, it should be renamed SCOTUScare. (SCOTUS is an acronym for Supreme Court of the United States.)
Beyond the two blockbusters, the court’s term produced several other notable decisions.
In an 8-to-1 decision, the court put employers on notice that they must recognize the need to accommodate religious practices of their workers or job applicants, even when a job applicant fails to request an accommodation.
In that case the court ruled for a Muslim teen who was rejected for a job at an Abercrombie Kids store because she wore a headscarf.
In its 10th year under Chief Justice Roberts, the court remains essentially a conservative body. But you wouldn’t know it from this year’s highest profile cases. Of the top 10 decisions of the term, analysts classify eight as liberal victories. Only two of the top 10 decisions are said to embrace a conservative approach.
This pendulum-like movement at the court between liberal and conservative rulings is due in large part to Justice Kennedy’s position at or near the center of the nine-member court.
He is, thus, frequently positioned to cast the fifth and deciding vote in controversial cases.
The chief justice has also occasionally swung over to join the liberal wing in high profile cases, as both he and Kennedy did in the Obamacare decision.
Despite that exception, Kennedy’s power to singlehandedly decide major cases was on full display this term.
He provided the deciding vote in a ruling that an independent commission formed in Arizona by ballot initiative did not violate the Constitution’s "elections clause."
The decision is a major victory for election reform advocates. It upholds similar commissions in six other states and gives a green light to others looking for ways to reduce the involvement of partisan politics in drawing election districts.
Kennedy also swung over to join his liberal colleagues in a redistricting case in Alabama. In that case the court agreed to keep alive a challenge to a voting map drawn by the Republican-controlled state legislature. Minority groups charged the map illegally undercut black voting clout in the state.
Kennedy also played a key role in holding off an effort by the court’s conservatives to bar the use of so-called disparate impact discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act.
The case marked the third time in recent years that the court’s conservatives had sought to take up a case to strike down the disparate impact approach under the FHA.
The disparate impact theory of discrimination permits lawsuits when a statistical analysis shows that minorities suffer disproportionate harm from a particular policy – even when that policy is racially neutral.
Instead of joining the conservatives, Kennedy sided with the liberal wing and wrote the majority opinion upholding disparate impact lawsuits under the FHA, but also seeking to impose limits on such suits when they might lead to racial quotas.
Apart from the string of liberal wins, the high court produced two conservative victories among the term’s top cases. Both were made possible by the swing vote of Kennedy.
In one, the court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must take the cost of compliance into account when considering whether to regulate toxic air pollutants emitted from coal- and oil-fired power plants.
In the second conservative victory, the court upheld Oklahoma’s use of the drug midazolam as part of its three-drug lethal injection protocol despite the involvement of that same drug in three botched executions last year.
Again, with Kennedy’s support, the court said three Oklahoma death row inmates had failed to prove that the state’s use of midazolam presented an intolerable risk that the condemned prisoners would suffer severe pain during the execution process.
The case was important because capital punishment abolitionists have been working to dry up the availability of certain drugs used in lethal injections. The ruling will make it easier for states like Oklahoma to continue to use midazolam, and to continue carry out executions.
The case is also notable because two liberal justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, announced that they believe the time has come to declare the death penalty unconstitutional.
That announcement is expected to trigger a new round of litigation in death penalty cases with an eye toward bringing a dispute to the high court that might facilitate a decision striking down capital punishment throughout the US. As in most other high profile cases, the outcome in that one would likely, once again, come down to the vote of Justice Kennedy. | 0fake |
WW3 averted? Putin congratulates Trump! [Video] |
November 10th, 2016 - Fort Russ News -
RT- Translated by Inessa Sinchougova
Putin took a minute to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory, during a reception of foreign delegates in the Kremlin.
Follow us on Facebook!
Follow us on Twitter!
Donate!
| 1real |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.