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Burundi will raise funds from citizens to pay for 2020 election | NAIROBI (Reuters) - Burundi plans to raise money for an election in 2020 by deducting part of civil servants salaries and taking contributions directly from citizens, a government minister said on Monday, as it seeks to replace dwindling external funding. Until 2015, Burundi used external aid to pay for elections, but donors have suspended their assistance since a political crisis erupted when President Pierre Nkurunziza sought and won a third term. Pascal Barandagiye, the minister for interior, said the government will also be seek contributions from every household, which will pay up to 2000 francs ($1.14) a year. Gross national income per capita stood at $280 in 2016, and close to 65 percent of the population live below the poverty line, according to World Bank data. The total amount of the election cost is not yet known ... But as soon as the needed fund is got the fundraising campaign will be halted, Barandagiye told a news conference. That contribution should be given voluntarily, it shouldn t be seen as a head tax. Students of voting age will contribute 1000 francs annually. Civil servants will contribute at least a tenth of their monthly salaries, Barandagiye said. Foreign help would also be accepted, he said. Burundi has been gripped by a political crisis since April 2015, when Nkurunziza announced he would stand for a third term, which the opposition said violated the constitution as well as a 2005 peace deal that ended a 12-year civil war. He won a vote largely boycotted by the opposition, but protests sparked a government crackdown. More than 700 people have been killed and 400,000 displaced to neighbouring countries. The economy has stagnated. The aid-dependent nation now has to rely on domestic tax collection and modest revenue from coffee and tea exports. Key donors, such as the European Union, cut direct financial support to the government over accusations of human rights violations and the crackdown on opponents, which Burundi rejects. At the end of October, Burundi s cabinet adopted draft legislation seeking to change the current constitution to allow Nkurunziza to run for a fourth term in the 2020 election. The proposed amendments, which are likely to go to a referendum by next year, seek to abolish the two-term limit and lengthen the presidential terms to seven years. ($1 = 1,750.4900 Burundi francs) | 0fake |
This is What Will Happen to Mosul After ISIS is Evicted | Email
I visited Mosul on the day it fell to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and a small detachment of US Special Forces on 11 April 2003. As we drove into the city, we passed lines of pick-up trucks piled high with loot returning to the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Iraq. US soldiers at a checkpoint, over which waved the Stars and Stripes, were shooting at a man in the distance who kept bobbing up from behind a wall and waving the Iraqi flag .
If there had ever been any sympathy between liberators and liberated in Mosul, it was disappearing fast. Inside the city, every government building, including the university, was being systematically looted by Kurds and Arabs alike. I saw one man who had stolen an enormous and very ugly red and gold sofa from the governor’s office dragging it slowly down the street. He would push one end of the sofa a few feet forward and then go to the other end and repeat the same process. The mosques were soon calling on the Sunni Arab majority to build barricades to defend their neighbourhoods from marauders.
We parked our vehicle near a medieval quarter of ancient stone buildings while we went to see a Christian ecclesiastic. When we got back, we found that our driver was very frightened and wanted to get out of Mosul as fast as possible. He explained that soon after we left a crowd had gathered, recognised our number plates as Kurdish and debated lynching him and setting fire to his car before being restrained by a local religious leader moments before they took action.
The oil city of Kirkuk was captured at about the same time by the Peshmerga, despite having promised the Americans and Turks that they would do no such thing. Again, there was looting everywhere and I saw two Peshmerga stand in the middle of the road to stop an enormous yellow bulldozer that was being driven off. Instead of slowing down, the driver put his foot on the accelerator so the Peshmerga had to jump aside to avoid being crushed.
Inside the newly established Peshmerga headquarters, I ran into Pavel Talabani, whose father Jalal Talabani headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party whose militia now held the city. He stressed the temporary nature of the Kurdish occupation of the city. “We came to control the situation,” he said. “We expect to withdraw some of our men in 45 minutes.”
Some Peshmerga, but not all: 13 years later the Kurds still hold Kirkuk, whose population is Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman, and to which the Kurds claim an historic right saying they have only reversed anti-Kurdish ethnic cleansing by Saddam Hussein.
By now the rest of the world has forgotten that there was a time when the Kurds did not hold the city. The Kurdish leaders had understood that the US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein had created conditions of unprecedented political fluidity and it was an ideal moment to create facts on the map, which would become permanent whatever the protestations of other players.
The current multi-pronged offensive aimed at taking Mosul is producing a similar situation as different countries, parties and communities vie to fill the vacuum they expect to be created by the fall of Isis, just as in 2003 the vacuum was the result of the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The different segments of the anti-Isis forces potentially involved in seizing Mosul – the Iraqi army, Kurds, Shia and Sunni paramilitaries, Turks – may be temporary allies, but they are also rivals. They all have their own very different and conflicting agendas. Presiding over this ramshackle and disputatious alliance is the US, which is orchestrating the Mosul offensive and without whose air power and Special Forces there would be no attack.
The Shia-dominated Iraqi government needs to take and hold Mosul, Iraq’s main Sunni Arab city, if it is to be convincing as the national government of Iraq. To achieve this, Baghdad’s rule must be acceptable to the Sunni majority in the city in a way that was not true when Isis took it in 2014. It needs to establish its rule while it still has full military and political support from the US.
The Kurds, for their part, want to solidify their control of the so-called “disputed territories” claimed by both the central government and the Kurdish regional authorities. The Kurds opportunistically used the defeat of the Iraqi Army in northern Iraq by Isis two years ago to take these territories inhabited by both Kurds and Arabs, thereby expanding by 40 per cent the area of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). They know that once Isis is defeated, the Kurds will no longer get international and, above all, American backing to hold this expanded version of the KRG.
These problems have only begun to surface because Mosul is still a long way from being besieged or even encircled.
The Shia militia forces are surprisingly calm about being excluded from a military role in the siege. They may calculate that the Iraqi army, if it gets sucked into street fighting, will not be able to take Mosul on its own and will have to look to them for support. The Shia paramilitaries are making up for their lack of participation in the battle for Mosul by sending reinforcements – some 5,000 men, according to reports – to join the Syrian Army in the siege of East Aleppo.
Turkey wants to be a player and, as a great Sunni power, the defender of the Sunnis of Mosul. To this end, it has soldiers based at Bashiqa, north east of Mosul, and claims to be taking part in the attack. But so far at least, Turkish ambitions and rhetoric in Iraq and Syria have exceeded its performance. Both interventions may be designed to impress a domestic audience which is deluged with exaggerated accounts of Turkish achievements in the government-controlled Turkish media.
These participants in the struggle for Mosul may be dividing the tiger’s skin before the tiger is properly dead. Isis showed that it still has sharp claws when it responded to the assault on Mosul with raids on Kirkuk and Rutbah on the main Iraq-Jordan road. It is fighting hard to slow down the anti-Isis advance towards Mosul with a mix of suicide bombers, IEDs, booby-traps, snipers and mortar teams. But it is unclear if it will make a last stand in Mosul where, at the end of the day, it must go down to defeat in the face of superior numbers backed by the massive firepower of the US-led air forces.
The likelihood is that Isis will fight for Mosul, the site of its first great victory, in order to prolong the battle, cause casualties and to let divisions emerge among its enemies. But its strategy over the last 12 months has been not to stage heroic but doomed last stands in any of the cities it has lost in Iraq and Syria.
At Ramadi, Fallujah, Sinjar, Palmyra and Manbij it has staged a fighting withdrawal at the last moment. The same may now happen in Mosul. | 1real |
MEDIA LIE EXPOSED: Hundreds Of Students Rally In Support Of Fired SC School Cop: Fight Back Against Cop-Hating, Race Baiting Media[VIDEO] | We shared our Game Changer story with you earlier this week, after a new video emerged allowing a more clear picture of the student physically attacking the school cop assigned to removing her from class.Now in a surprising turn of events (which will certainly be a huge disappointment to the leftist media and George Soros funded Black Lives Matter terrorist organization), the students are fighting back against a manufactured media event created to promote more cop hate and racial division in America.Well, this is interesting.MT Spring Valley Walkout for fields today #bringbackfields #bringfieldsback pic.twitter.com/UamWKU6AXN Oink Trotters (@OinkTrottters) October 30, 2015Students wore T-shirts that said #BringBackFields or Free Fields. #BringBackFields pic.twitter.com/6jbmEnuSrN Mina Rena . (@_cappex) October 30, 2015 He was a great guy, student London Harrell told local WISTV. He protected us and everything. He was our school resource officer. We always could depend on him and everything. Every time I saw him, he was always joking around with people. It was never like Oh, I m about to body slam you. Principal Jeff Temoney said none of the students would be suspended if they returned to class. We ve heard your voices, okay, Temoney said according to WISTV. We appreciate you taking time to do this, but again, as you know, we always focus on teaching and learning, so let s head on back to class. pic.twitter.com/LJiGyAXDUs John Cassibry (@JCass_12) October 30, 2015Principal Temoney released a statement several hours later about the walkout, which said students and staff were safe during the protest.Fields, who is white, was recorded on cell phone video using force on an African-American student during a school discipline incident. When shared on social media, the footage caused national outrage on the use of force in schools and by school resource officers. Fields was fired on Wednesday. Via: RTHere is how the original story was presented to the public:School officer uses force against black female student, slams her on floor (VIDEO) https://t.co/0bLck097Sw pic.twitter.com/6oFt3fluFH RT America (@RT_America) October 27, 2015Here is how we responded when a student reluctantly shared their video with others which allowed the other side of the story to be told. Click HERE for the other side of the story. | 1real |
Living as a Man, Fighting Breast Cancer: How Trans People Face Care Gaps - The New York Times | A diagnosis of breast cancer at age 27 is shattering for anyone. But for Eli Oberman, it came with extra layers of anxiety. He is a transgender man, who was born female but began taking male hormones when he was 19 to change gender. Like many transgender people, Mr. Oberman switched gender without having surgery to change his body. The cancer was a stark reminder that he was still vulnerable to illnesses from his original anatomy — and that the medical world has blind spots in its understanding of how to take care of trans men and women. “I just felt overwhelmed on all levels,” Mr. Oberman said. “Overwhelmed about facing the diagnosis, overwhelmed about the irony of it being this part of my body that was already so fraught for me. ” About 1. 4 million adults in the United States report they are transgender, according to a recent analysis of federal and state data. That figure is twice the previous estimate, and as awareness has increased, the health care system has begun scrambling to meet their needs. The government lifted a ban on Medicare coverage for transgender surgery and hormone treatment in 2014, and in 2015 New York State ended a similar ban for Medicaid patients. This year, a rule under the Affordable Care Act banning discrimination in health care specifically included protection for transgender people. Hospitals and professional schools have begun training employees and students on transgender medicine, and on basic etiquette like addressing trans men and women by the name and pronoun they prefer. At the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, which recently opened a Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, about 8, 000 employees had such training last year. “When I think back to the earlier days and think where we are now, it’s unbelievably better,” said Barbara E. Warren, a psychologist and the director for L. G. B. T. programs and policies at Mount Sinai. But there are still struggles. Dr. Warren and other experts said it was common for transgender people to avoid screenings and other medical care for parts of their bodies associated with their original gender. If problems do arise, they may find themselves in situations like Mr. Oberman, who suddenly became the lone male patient in waiting rooms full of women, and a target of curiosity or scorn from some health workers. Mr. Oberman, now 33, was treated for the cancer six years ago, but decided just recently to speak about it publicly in hopes of helping to improve care for others. He has big, dark eyes, thinning hair, a warm smile and a leafy tattoo wreathing one arm — the kudzu vine, he said, because it is “so unstoppably alive. ” He lives in Brooklyn, has a degree in poetry and education, and plays violin in a rock band called the Shondes (“Disgraces,” in Yiddish). His day jobs have included managing a database for a nonprofit organization. He began taking testosterone when he was 19 for its masculinizing effects — these include increased facial and body hair, a lower voice, more muscle and, usually, an end to periods. But he never had surgery to change his body. Many trans people do not, and so many trans men still have ovaries and vaginas, and trans women, prostate glands and penises. Early in his transition, Mr. Oberman wanted “top surgery” — breast removal — but could not afford it, so he wore binders to flatten his chest. Gradually, he became more comfortable with his body and lost interest in the surgery. He first noticed a breast lump in 2010. It was not easy to feel, and cancer at his age just didn’t seem possible. He let six or eight months go by before having scans and a biopsy. Those tests required leaving the safety of his usual clinic, which specialized in L. G. B. T. patients, and plunging into the world of mainstream medicine, where he said doctors treated him with respect, but other workers did not. “I had some horrible experiences,” he said. During one procedure, when Mr. Oberman had his shirt off, a male technician, seeing that he was transgender, exclaimed: “Why would you do this to yourself? It’s disgusting. ” Mr. Oberman never reported the episodes. “I’m not proud to say I didn’t complain,” he said, adding that he wished he had done so for the sake of other patients. But he was facing a disease. The cancer was aggressive. He would need both breasts removed, and then chemotherapy. “I felt guilty, able to get free surgery I didn’t want because I had cancer, and so many others want it and can’t get it,” he said. He soon learned that mastectomies, which remove as much breast tissue as possible, differ from top surgery, which preserves enough to give the chest a contour. Because he had cancer, top surgery was not a safe option: It would leave too much breast tissue, and too much risk of recurrence. Friends who have had top surgery were stunned to find out they still had a risk of breast cancer because of the tissue left behind, he said. Before surgery, thinking that testosterone might interfere with healing, Mr. Oberman’s doctors advised him to stop taking it for a month. He followed their advice, but soon, he said, “I went insane. I wasn’t rational. I was lying on the floor, crying. ” Back on the hormone, he became himself again. Chemotherapy gave him a “definitionless moonface,” he said, and it coarsened his features and thinned his hair permanently. It had taken him years to feel comfortable in his trans identity, and now, he said, “It felt like starting all over again. ” He would have liked to join a support group, but feared he would not be accepted. His reluctance to deal with the health care system has lingered. Just last year, at 32, he finally had his first Pap smear to screen for cervical cancer. It was about 10 years overdue, according to current guidelines. Doctors had nagged him to be tested, and one even threatened to withhold his testosterone unless he complied. He kept putting it off because he feared being treated badly in a gynecologist’s office. Trans friends who had called for appointments were challenged by receptionists who assumed that a deep voice meant they did not belong. Trans men often avoid gynecologists, said Dr. Asa Radix, Mr. Oberman’s physician and the senior director of research and education at the Community Health Center in New York, which provides health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “Imagine, if you’re a trans man, and you’re going to the gynecologist,” Dr. Radix said. “You go to the front desk, and you have to out yourself. Everyone can hear what’s going on. You just want to run out the door. ” In addition, some trans people are conflicted about their bodies, “and may not want to think they have the anatomy they have,” Dr. Radix said. He added that pelvic exams could be physically uncomfortable for a transgender man because testosterone can dry out vaginal tissue. It can also change the cervix in ways that make a Pap test hard to read, necessitating a second round. Mr. Oberman said that in “moments of dark paranoia,” he wondered if taking testosterone might have caused his cancer — or if it was unrelated and the tumor might have developed anyway. His mother and her mother had both had breast cancer — though well after menopause. There is no evidence that trans men or women who take hormones have increased risks of any type of cancer, Dr. Radix said. Studies in Europe have found no increased risk, but it is not clear that the results apply to the United States, where the population is less homogeneous and many transgender people obtain hormones via the internet or other sources outside the health care system. Zil Goldstein, a nurse practitioner and program director at Mount Sinai’s transgender center, said that while she had concerns about the safety of transgender hormones, she worried more about the possible harm from not prescribing them — researchers report that 41 percent of transgender people attempt suicide. The hormone question concerns Mr. Oberman’s oncologist, Dr. Paula Klein, who specializes in breast cancer at Mount Sinai Beth Israel (not the same hospital where he had his biopsies and surgery). She said trans men with breast cancer were often urged to stop taking testosterone. One reason is that the body converts some testosterone to estrogen, which can speed the growth of many breast tumors. And some breast cancers may also be stimulated by testosterone, she said. But there is no solid data to guide trans patients, and Mr. Oberman does not want to stop taking the hormone. Dr. Klein was an author of a journal article in 2011 about two other trans men with breast cancer. Both took testosterone and, like Mr. Oberman, chose to stay on it. Few other cases have been reported. Dr. Klein has been suggesting that Mr. Oberman have his ovaries removed. Part of her reasoning was that he had stopped taking tamoxifen, a drug commonly prescribed to prevent breast cancer recurrence. Taking out the ovaries would mean lower estrogen levels, which would help prevent a recurrence of breast cancer. “You would definitely benefit,” she said during an office visit in September. “It’s a slam dunk for someone like you, taking away all your female parts,” Dr. Klein said, adding: “We thought you’d eat that up. A transgender gift. ” “Except I don’t want it,” Mr. Oberman said. He did not want more surgery or the hormonal jolt that removing his ovaries would bring. He thought the mastectomies and chemotherapy had very likely cured him. Dr. Klein backed off, saying, “Look, the odds are that you’re going to be fine. ” He hugged her on the way out. It seemed likely that they would have this conversation again. | 0fake |
Austrian conservative Kurz and far right to hold coalition talks | VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz will hold coalition talks with the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), both sides said on Tuesday, bringing the anti-immigration party a step closer to power, which it last held more than a decade ago. Having won last week s parliamentary election with 31.5 percent of the vote, Kurz s party is far short of a majority, needing a partner to gain control of parliament and form a stable government. Only two parties have enough seats to do that with the Social Democrats (SPO) and the FPO. Kurz, 31, took a hard line on immigration in the campaign that left little space between him and the FPO, and both parties capitalized on a widespread feeling that the country had been overrun during Europe s migration crisis in 2015 and 2016. He called for an end to the current coalition with the SPO when he took over as leader of the People s Party (OVP) in May, arguing in favor of a break with Austria s tradition of often deadlocked centrist coalitions. That left the FPO, a party founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, a more willing partner. I have therefore decided to invite (FPO leader) Heinz-Christian Strache and the FPO today to take part in coalition talks, Kurz told a news conference. Strache soon accepted, saying teams from both parties would meet on Wednesday but adding that the FPO would not strike a deal at any cost. Being part of the government is not an end in itself and only makes sense if we can implement our correct and important policies, Strache told a news conference. Therefore no one should think that we will make it easy for the OVP. Some European leaders have expressed concern about the possible return to power of the FPO, which first became a major force in the 1990s under the late Joerg Haider, who praised Hitler s employment policies. The party has steadily increased its mainstream appeal in recent years. It says it has turned its back on its Nazi past, though it still frequently has to expel members for anti-Semitic statements. It has also dropped calls for Austria to leave the European Union as most Austrians back membership. Kurz has sought to allay such concerns and repeated on Tuesday that any government must have a clear pro-European orientation , though he also wants a streamlined EU that focuses on core tasks like trade and protecting external borders. Strache said he backed that view of Europe, the fourth of five scenarios for the future of the bloc laid out by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in March, which Strache called less but better . Strache and Kurz on Tuesday both emphasized the importance of cutting taxes. Both believe in restricting benefits for foreigners and making the state more efficient, but the FPO also wants to increase some benefits like the minimum state pension. In terms of content there are some things that unite us and others that divide us, Kurz said in a typically vague answer on his expectations of a deal. He hopes to have an agreement by Christmas. The FPO has made control of the Interior Ministry a condition for any deal, but it did not mention that on Tuesday. The OVP and FPO went into government together in 2000, which prompted the rest of the EU to impose short-lived sanctions on Austria over the FPO s accession to power. Given the more guarded response to Austria s election in the aftermath of the migration crisis and the rise of other right-wing parties like France s National Front and the Alliance for Germany, a new tie-up between them is unlikely to provoke the same outrage. | 0fake |
Alabama Republican Official: ‘Just Because You Turned 18 Doesn’t Give You The Right To Vote’ (VIDEO) | November 2, 2016 Alabama Republican Official: ‘Just Because You Turned 18 Doesn’t Give You The Right To Vote’ (VIDEO)
Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has a big problem with increasing the number of registered voters in his state.
Slate reports that Merrill, like many Republicans, opposes recent reforms in voter registration policies that could significantly increase the number of registered voters.
The proposal would automatically register eligible state residents “who interact with government agencies” to vote. According to the Brennan Center , this legislation would also guarantee that voter-registration information is moved on to election officials electronically, which will reduce errors in the voting process.
However, Merrill says that he stands opposed to this initiative because it “cheapen[s] the work” of civil rights activists, adding that “just because you turned 18 doesn’t give you the right [to vote].”
“These people fought, some of them were beaten, some of them were killed because of their desire to ensure that everybody that wanted to had the right to register to vote and participate in the process,” Merrill explained in an interview with the voting rights initiative, Answering the Call .
He then went on to reference several civil rights leaders, like Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who Merrill claimed called him a friend.
Merrill continued, “I’m not going to embarrass them by allowing someone that’s too sorry to get up off of their rear end to go register to vote … because they think they deserve the right because they turned 18.”
The jackass then went on to say that automatically registering teen voters to be able to exercise their right to vote is “no different than giving them a trophy because they played on the ball team. You only get a trophy if you win!”
“I think it’s a sorry, lazy way out and it shows no initiative.”
Alabama joins 14 other states who have enacted new voting restrictions ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The Brennan Center says that these actions are designed to “curtail voting rights.”
The New York Times reported last year that the restrictions Alabama put in place included a photo ID law, which makes having a government issued ID mandatory to participate in the voting process.
The biggest problem with these identification laws is that many older and poorer citizens are faced with hardships when it comes to obtaining the necessary paperwork needed to get a government I.D. Many states also structure the office hours of their DMV services and polling locations to discourage people further from voting.
The bottom line is that Republicans love low voter turn out because they can’t convince the vast majority of Americans that their ideas are good for the country.
Featured image via YouTube . | 1real |
Thousands march in Tel Aviv to protest against Netanyahu, corruption | TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday for the second consecutive week against government corruption and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under criminal investigation over allegations of abuse of office. Police estimated the number of demonstrators at about 10,000 and they followed last Saturday s demonstration, which was by far the largest of the recent weekly anti-corruption protests when an estimated 20,000 people participated. The protests have been sparked by corruption allegations against Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing. The four-term leader is suspected of involvement in two cases. The first involves receiving gifts from wealthy businessmen and the second involves negotiating a deal with a newspaper owner for better coverage in return for curbs on a rival daily. If charged, he would come under heavy pressure to resign or could call an election to test whether he still had a mandate to govern. Netanyahu s right-wing Likud party said in a Facebook post that the protest was a left-wing demonstration. It called on all Israelis to back their prime minister as he defends Israel against international criticism following U.S. President Donald Trump s acceptance of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Instead of uniting with all the people behind Jerusalem and showing the world a unified front, the left cannot contain itself and it prefers to create division, part of the statement said. Over weeks of demonstrations, protesters have identified themselves as supporting both left- and right-wing parties. On Saturday they held banners reading: Neither left, nor right (we demand) integrity, We are fed up with corrupt (politicians) and Sweep the corrupt away. | 0fake |
BREAKING: Trump Kicks Reince Priebus Out Of White House (TWEET) | Donald Trump s White House has been going through a lot of insane changes lately, and it is certainly looking like a sign of an inevitable implosion.It was just a few days ago that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer resigned over Trump s hiring of Anthony Scaramucci as his new Communications Director. Now, another key player in Trump s administration is out thanks to the Mooch White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Trump announced this shocking change in staff over Twitter, remarking that retired four-star general and Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kennedy would be taking Priebus place:We might have seen this coming yesterday, Scaramucci told the New Yorker that Priebus was a f*cking paranoid schizophrenic and made several other vulgar comments about the former Republican National Committee president.While this story is still developing, these rapid changes in staff show an administration that is clearly in trouble and struggling to keep its head above water as it self-destructs. Trump s staff is being turned over at an unprecedented rate, and the amount of in-fighting between even the top staffers is like nothing we ve ever seen before. But what else can you expect when you appoint the most vile, corrupt individuals to help you run a country?If the leaks coming from the White House weren t concerning enough, the recent changes in staff serve as a telling sign that things are falling apart on a daily basis and Trump is desperate to save his failing presidency. Already, Trump s new Communication Director Anthony Scaramucci has become one of the most hated, abrasive characters in Trump s administration and is causing trouble with other staffers. We can only imagine what this administration will look like in the weeks to come and it s probably safe to say that recovery will be impossible.Featured image via Win McNamee / Getty Images | 1real |
More than 60 years on, Japan's mercury-poison victims fight to be heard | MINAMATA, Japan (Reuters) - Shinobu Sakamoto was just 15 when she left her home in the southern Japanese fishing village of Minamata to go to Stockholm and tell the world of the horrors of mercury poisoning. Forty-five years on, she is traveling again, this time to Geneva, to attend from Sunday a gathering of signatories to the first global pact to rein in mercury pollution. Sakamoto is one of a shrinking group of survivors from a 1950s industrial disaster in which tens of thousands of people were poisoned after waste water from a chemical plant seeped into the Minamata bay. (Graphic link reut.rs/2jIdmUS) The waste contained a toxic organic compound, methylmercury, which can cause severe damage to the brain and nervous system, leading to a condition called Minamata disease. It gives its name to the U.N.-backed treaty that took effect last month. Symptoms worsen with age, leaving some victims grappling with the question of who will care for them after the death of siblings and parents, while others face legal disputes. If I don t say something, no one will know about Minamata disease, said Sakamoto, who is one of the few born with the disease who is still able to talk. There are still so many problems, and I want people to know. Just 528 people survive from among the 3,000 certified victims of Minamata disease, environment ministry data shows. More than 20,000 people have sought to be designated victims, hoping for legal compensation. We need to take seriously the fact that there are still many people raising their hands, said ministry official Koji Sasaki, referring to victims efforts to win recognition. Born in a family of shipbuilders whose home overlooks the Minamata bay, Jitsuko Tanaka, 64, used to play on the beach with her older sister, picking and eating shellfish, unaware it was contaminated with mercury. She was almost three, and her sister five, when they lost the ability to move their hands freely and walk properly, becoming the first to be identified as disease sufferers. Tanaka s older sister died at age eight. Tanaka survived, but the poisoning left her too weak to walk without support. A few years ago, her family says, even that became impossible. As she lay motionless in bed, her brother-in-law, a fellow sufferer, said he worried about the patients left behind when family members die. After I die, who will take care of her? asked Yoshio Shimoda, 69. Sixty-one years since Minamata disease was identified in 1956, the grim struggles have eased for only a few. Before the government named methylmercury as its cause in 1968, disease sufferers faced discrimination over fears it was contagious, which deterred many from seeking legal recognition. People still send in decades-old umbilical cords to be checked for contamination, hoping for evidence to support their claims to be designated as victims, said Hirokatsu Akagi, director of Minamata s International Mercury Laboratory. Sakamoto, poisoned while still in the womb, considers it her duty to tell the world about the dangers of mercury. Minamata disease isn t over; it s not a thing of the past. | 0fake |
Thailand seeks air safety rating upgrade by U.S. aviation body | BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand aims to get its air safety rating upgraded by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) by March, the country s transport minister said on Wednesday, after the FAA downgraded the rating in December 2015. Thailand s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) was downgraded to Category 2 from 1 because it fell short of the FAA s standards. We aim to be restored back to Category 1 by March, Transport Minister Arkom Termpittayapaisith told reporters. Arkom s comment came three months after the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) removed a red flag against Thailand over safety concerns in October. He said Thailand will speed up its inspection of pilot qualifications and aim to have more aviation personnel and qualified pilots to be considered for the safety ratings upgrade. Bangkok is a regional airline hub and Thailand targeted a record 33 million to 34 million tourist arrivals this year. | 0fake |
Sanders signals the end is near | "One should not insist on nailing [Trump] into positions that he had taken in the campaign," he said. | 0fake |
RAW VIDEO: A SHOCKING TOUR Of The Detroit Ghetto…Ruled By DEMOCRATS For Decades! [Video] | 1real | |
‘Bathroom Police’ Law Sets South Carolina GOP Governor Into Panic Mode: ‘We Didn’t Ask For This!’ | Nikki Haley, South Carolina s Republican governor, is hyperventilating with fear at the thought of the state Republican legislature sending her a brand new anti-transgender bathroom police law. The law would re-segregate our restrooms and force the state to impose restrictions on what bathrooms transgender individuals are allowed to use.The bill would require public restrooms to direct people to use the bathroom that aligns with their birth sex, and it would bar local governments from letting trans individuals choose which bathroom to use on their own.Let s pause for a moment and think about the first portion of that law. To enforce this law, you would need to staff public bathrooms with at least one security guard, who would require a birth certificate and visual inspection of the genitals of an individual before allowing them to use any restroom open to the public. That is literally the only way a law like this would actually be enforceable.This begs the question; what is the criminal penalty going to be for using the bathroom? Would it be a monetary fine, jail time or would it be a combination of both?Can you imagine the headlines? Local resident busted in bathroom sting by law enforcement, gets 6 months in jail for peeing.Despite Nikki s reluctance to sign this bill, the unfortunate part is that this isn t about new Republican support for transgendered individuals. There is no reason to think this has to do with anything other than money corporate money, to be exact. North Carolina is seeing the massive corporate fallout from the passage of their own anti-LGBT legislation. Big money is pulling out of North Carolina now, and Nikki Haley is terrified of the same thing happening in her state.Governor Haley tried to sound benevolent about it, suggesting that protecting religious freedom and our public bathrooms were not necessary: This is not a battle that we ve seen is needed in South Carolina. It s not something that we see that citizens are asking for. When we look at our situation, we re not hearing of anybody s religious liberties that are being violated, and we re again not hearing any citizens that are being violated in terms of freedoms. Like it or not, South Carolina is doing really well when it comes to respect and when it comes to kindness and when it comes to acceptance. For people to imply it s not, I beg to differ. Source: TPMIt s as if Nikki Haley forgot what party she belongs to. She actually is implying protections of religious freedom are not necessary. Republicans will hate her for this one.As usual, the Republicans pushing for the bill say it s all about public safety, with the implication being that adult sexual predators would enter women s restrooms to prey on people s young daughters.Here s a context in which to view this whole thing. Republicans want to pass an anti-LGBT law that restricts the rights of lawful citizens, because of the actions of potential criminals.When it comes to gun control, Republicans whine constantly about how wrong it is to restrict the rights of lawful citizens, because of the actions of potential criminals. They also say no laws ever stop criminals from doing bad things. It s good to know that the only time restricting rights and preventing crime can happen is when it comes to bathrooms, and not guns.The hypocritical pretzel-twisting that Republicans are having to put themselves into over this issue, and its associated negative consequences, would be hilarious if they were not trying to hurt people in the process. They have to answer to their corporate owners who hold the money bags, yet they also have to answer to their hateful bigoted voter base. It has to be increasingly embarrassing to be a part of their party.Featured image via YouTube screen capture | 1real |
Samsung sales double in Pakistan after reports of exploding devices | Samsung sales double in Pakistan after reports of exploding devices Posted on Tweet (Image via mirror.uk)
Amidst reports of plummeting mobile phone sales, widespread losses, exploding Note 7s, J5s and washing machines, Samsung might have found a morally depressing silver lining. Our correspondent understands from his sources that Pakistani businessmen, investors, realtors and dealers have expressed interest to invest in faulty Samsung devices.
One Pakistani businessman, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, “Yeah, I am one of the biggest traders in my district. I’ve dealt with guns, grenades, IEDs, but never something as innovative as an exploding cell phone. You have no idea how tough it is to smuggle such goods through airports. As it is, our potential recruits are dumb enough to scan themselves , so forget the thought of taking weapons past the scanner. But if we manage to get to get a few phones, it will be revolutionary!”
Another, an investor whose line of work involves making losses by financing suicide-bomb teachers and trainees, is glad that his colleagues are trying to use phones instead of the regular IEDs. “Teachers and trainees are less likely to die by the explosion of a single phone and I might have a chance of getting my money back,” he exclaimed, with an expression of delight on his face that is seen only when he looks at goats.
Realtors of Pakistan (No, not the kind who sell land like in the rest of the world) are overjoyed by the thought of burying washing machines instead of landmines, which they claim are far less expensive and far more beautiful to look at.
Sources also add that lobbies in Pakistan wanted their government to ink MoUs with Samsung to import their Note 7s and washing machines, but didn’t as they aren’t sure who’s running their government.
Samsung hasn’t commented on the interest shown by Pakistanis yet. Indian sources expect that they will dignify Pakistan with a (non-)response the same way the United Nations responds to Nawaz Sharif for his ‘Mummy!-India-used-my-rubber’-type complaints. | 1real |
Sanders, losing in delegates to Clinton, claims 'path to victory' | Bernie Sanders — who is winning delegate contests against Hillary Clinton but not catching up much in terms of actual delegates — insists he has a path to the Democratic presidential nomination, starting with primaries in New York and Pennsylvania.
"We believe that we have the momentum," Sanders said Sunday on ABC's This Week. "We believe that the polling is showing that we're closing the gap."
The Vermont senator toured a string of Sunday shows a day after beating Clinton by double digits in the Wyoming caucuses — though Clinton will wind up with more convention delegates thanks to "superdelegates" who can back any candidate they want.
Speaking on NBC's Meet The Press, Sanders said he has cut Clinton's lead by one-third in recent weeks, won eight of the last nine delegate contests, and is moving up in national polls against both Clinton and potential Republican opponents.
"We're running stronger against Donald Trump and other Republicans than Secretary Clinton," Sanders told NBC. "I think we stand a really good chance to do well in New York State, in Pennsylvania, and as we head into other states."
The New York primary is April 19, and Clinton holds a double-digit lead there, according to recent polls. Pennsylvania — along with Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island — holds its primary a week later.
The Associated Press reports that, when superdelegates are included, Clinton holds a significant lead over Sanders: 1,756 to 1,068.
Sanders said he believes his campaign can block Clinton from winning the 2,383 delegates needed for nomination at the convention.
"I believe that we have a real path to victory," Sanders said on CBS' Face The Nation, "and that at the end of the day, we're going to win this."
The former New York senator and secretary of State told CNN's State of The Union on Sunday: "I intend to have the number of delegates that are required to be nominated." | 0fake |
Practical Tips for Surviving a Hurricane, Learned the Hard Way - The New York Times | Four years after Hurricane Sandy, my condominium development at the Jersey Shore is finally fully back. Many of the residents around us in Ortley Beach — a Toms River beach town that was described as New Jersey’s “ground zero” in the hurricane — are still struggling through recovery, and some have abandoned their efforts and property. No one who was affected by that storm — or Hurricanes Katrina or Andrew or any other big natural disaster — will look at an approaching storm without deep trepidation. Here are some tips, learned through experience. ■ If they tell you to get out — get out. You put emergency crews in danger if you refuse to leave, and once the storm hits, your window of opportunity to leave is minuscule. ■ If you insist on staying, have a logical, achievable escape plan, and set a threshold for activating it. If you wait until the last minute, it will be too late, as an acquaintance of mine learned: He and his son had to jump out of an window, into the rising sea, and swim for their lives to a condominium development farther inland, where they kicked in a door and rode out the storm on the third floor. ■ Water rises swiftly and is more powerful than you can imagine. See anecdote above. ■ If you are in the evacuation zone and staying — or if you are just outside the zone — find a place in your home that can withstand extreme wind. Relatives of mine locked themselves in an inner bathroom during Hurricane Andrew, holding the doorknob for dear life when the wind died and they opened the door, there was nothing left of the rest of the house, but they were unharmed. ■ Put your important papers, your wallet, your purse and any jewelry that you hold near and dear into your safest space (someone online suggested a washer, dryer or refrigerator). Put other valuables, like family photographs, in tightly wrapped garbage bags and place them somewhere off the floor. You will need those papers to put your life back together after the storm. ■ Have numbers for your insurance company programmed into your cellphone (and make sure it is charged). ■ If you have loved ones in a nursing or an facility, or a hospital, get cellphone numbers and other contact information so you can check on them after the storm passes. If the facility does not contact you to share its storm plans, make sure you pin them down before it hits. ■ Many insurance companies will fight you tooth and nail on your claims. Document your valuables before the storm and be meticulous in keeping track of your losses and recovery expenses. Then be prepared to devote a large part of your life to fighting for what’s due. (Hopefully, this will not happen to you, but it did for far too many people I know). What are your tips? Let us know by leaving a comment. | 0fake |
Mattis slams 'false' reports on Trump request for nuclear arms hike | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday slammed what he said were absolutely false media reports asserting that President Donald Trump had called for an increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This kind of erroneous reporting is irresponsible, Mattis said in a written statement. NBC had reported that Trump sought a tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, something Trump had already denied. | 0fake |
'Economikes': the gatekeepers of Clinton’s economic policy | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton has no shortage of economic advisors. Scores of world-class experts pour ideas into her campaign on the policies she should champion in her bid for the White House. But before much of the input reaches the Democratic candidate, it is filtered through a pair of staffers known inside the campaign as the “Economikes.” Working out of Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, Michael Shapiro and Michael Schmidt are helping shape what could be a lasting economic agenda if the former secretary of state overcomes Republican rival Donald Trump in November’s election. In an interview with Reuters, Shapiro and Schmidt described Clinton’s process for forming policy by broadly soliciting ideas and crafting them into the action points that she takes to voters. Before Clinton takes a position, Shapiro said, “she wants to know we have talked to and gotten input from everyone, making sure that we’re consulting with labor, making sure that we’re consulting with experts.” Clinton’s inclusive approach to developing policy positions has been faulted for being slow and unwieldy. Much of the work of sifting through the wealth of sometimes disparate ideas and data it yields falls to the Economikes. Both are recent graduates of Yale Law School. Prior to joining the campaign, Schmidt, 30, worked at the U.S. Treasury Department and the Yale Investments Office, helping manage the university’s endowment. Shapiro, 29, worked at the White House for the National Economic Council. Earlier this year, he married the daughter of New York Senator Chuck Schumer. The pair helps Clinton draw upon a deep bench of advisers, including economist Alan Krueger, Duke professor Aaron Chatterji and Simon Johnson, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, along with scores of other academics and business people. Some communicate regularly through emails, conference calls, meetings and memos. Others are tapped once or twice for specific expertise. Frequent contributor Alan Blinder, the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said he will “usually email the Mikes” with ideas. The fruit of the process will be on display today in Ohio, where Clinton is expected to give a speech contrasting her economic vision with that of Trump, a businessman who often names himself as his main adviser and is known for his off-the-cuff style. Clinton has called raising middle class incomes the defining economic challenge of the time. So far, she has presented a mix of goals, including making child care more affordable and boosting jobs. Some business leaders have said her approach is reassuring, but progressives have criticized her policies as too moderate. Trump, in contrast, often has taken business leaders by surprise with his policy proposals. He has promised to renegotiate international trade deals to pump up U.S. manufacturing, vowed to penalize companies that move their headquarters abroad to avoid taxes, and pledged to dismantle Obama’s financial regulation reforms. While the “Economikes” nickname began as a joke, Shapiro said the campaign’s digital team made it stick by using it in a Q&A posted on Clinton’s web site. Their bosses, senior policy advisers Jake Sullivan and Maya Harris, have been known to stick their heads out of their offices and ask for “one of the Mikes.” On email chains, CC: notes will sometimes include “plus the Economikes.” Humor aside, their work often is serious business. After the tainted water crisis hit national headlines in January, Clinton dispatched Schmidt and her political director, Amanda Renteria, to Flint, Michigan to investigate. Schmidt said the effort informed Clinton’s approach to the water crisis during the Democratic debate in Flint, including her call for the governor to resign. In other cases, they said, Clinton will ask the pair to research issues she’s heard on the campaign trail, such as the case of an Iowa bowling alley owner who told the candidate student debt made it hard for him to get business loans. The campaign since has rolled out proposals to allow for refinancing of student debt and the use of income-based repayment programs to cut monthly payments. Shapiro and Schmidt said the policy points they bring back to Clinton typically lead her to ask more questions, a process that can go on for several rounds before the candidate finally settles on a policy proposal. | 0fake |
Newsweek Outs Trump As Putin’s Puppet And Our NATO Allies Are Terrified (VIDEO) | In yet another bombshell report, Newsweek just revealed that Vladamir Putin and the Russian government are actively trying to help Donald Trump win the election because they believe he will help them weaken our NATO allies.The Republican nominee s connections to Russia have been a huge topic in the news for many months due to his compliments about Putin and the fact that some of his closest campaign allies have connections to Russia.In addition, Trump has declared that he will consider pulling United States support from NATO and even strong-armed the Republican Party to ditch a platform plank condemning Russia s aggression toward Ukraine.And Putin has rewarded Trump by directing Russian media to blare out support for him and Russian hackers have been busy hacking American computer systems in an effort to hurt the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton.Of course, Trump has defended Russia despite the cyber-attacks being confirmed by Western intelligence agencies in the United States and Europe. Trump was even briefed about this and yet he still denies that Russia is the perpetrator.And that is leading many of our closest allies to worry about what could happen if Trump becomes president.According to Newsweek,Officials from two European countries told Newsweek that Trump s comments about Russia s hacking have alarmed several NATO partners because it suggests he either does not believe the information he receives in intelligence briefings, does not pay attention to it, does not understand it or is misleading the American public for unknown reasons. One British official said members of that government who are aware of the scope of Russia s cyberattacks both in Western Europe and America found Trump s comments quite disturbing because they fear that, if elected, the Republican presidential nominee would continue to ignore information gathered by intelligence services in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy.And we know Russia is backing Trump because they ended their hacking campaign when it seemed like he would be replaced as the nominee by a sane Republican, only to resume hacking on Trump s behalf when he wasn t replaced.When Trump launched into an inexplicable attack on the parents of a Muslim-American soldier who died in combat, the Kremlin assumed the Republican nominee was showing himself psychologically unfit to be president and would be forced by his party to withdraw from the race. As a result, Moscow put its hacking campaign temporarily on hold, ending the distribution of documents until Trump stabilized, both personally and in the polls, according to reports provided to Western intelligence.And the United States election is not the only one Russia has interfered with. The Kremlin also spread misinformation that helped right-wingers take control in Germany and caused the United Kingdom to vote in favor of Brexit, both of which help Russia weaken alliances.But their true target is NATO, which is what stands in the way of Russia overpowering Europe, and our allies fear that a Trump victory on November 8th would embolden Russia to do just that.Officials in Western Europe say they are dismayed that they now feel compelled to gather intelligence on a man who could be the next president of the United States, but believe they have no choice. Moscow is seen as a direct threat to their interests both in its aggressive efforts to reshape global alliances and for its power to damage Western Europe, which obtains almost 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia. Should the United States, the last remaining superpower, tilt its policies away from NATO to the benefit of Russia, the alliance between America and Western Europe could be transformed in unprecedented ways. And so, for perhaps the first time since World War II, countries in Western Europe fear that the American election, should Trump win, could trigger events that imperil their national security and do potentially irreparable harm to the alliances that have kept the continent safe for decades.Here s video of Rachel Maddow explaining how big this news is via YouTube.Oh, and one more thing. While Donald Trump and Republicans continue to whine about how Hillary Clinton used a private server, it turns out Hillary was smart to do so because the Russians hacked into the State Department email system, which means if she had used that system her emails would have been obtained by the Russian government.So Russia literally wants Trump to win so they can use him as their puppet to gain more influence in the world, which means more war, less democracy, and a United States that is weaker.That cannot be allowed to happen. Clearly, the Russians like Trump, and that should make all Americans cast their votes for Hillary Clinton.Featured Image: YouTube | 1real |
Myanmar, accused of crackdown, invited to U.S.-Thai military exercise | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Myanmar military, which has been accused of ethnic cleansing against the country s Muslim Rohingya minority, has been invited back as an observer in a major multinational military exercise next year led by the United States and Thailand. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, told Reuters that Thailand had invited Myanmar to take part in the annual Cobra Gold exercise, which involves thousands of U.S and Thai military personnel and participants from other Asian countries. Myanmar had been invited to observe the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief portion of the exercise, Logan said. A senior officer at the Directorate of Joint Intelligence of the Royal Thai Armed Forces told Reuters it was unclear whether Myanmar had accepted the invitation but Thailand was eager for them to join. Asked why Thailand decided to invite Myanmar despite concerns over the crackdown against the Rohingya and whether this issue was part of their deliberations, the official said: That never came up in the discussions. We separated that issue (the Rohingya). We focus on training, on education, on military cooperation. That is our wish, to have Myanmar involved. That is politics. We are soldiers. This is a military exercise, added the official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The Myanmar military did not respond to several requests for comment. When asked whether the U.S. military had attempted to apply pressure on Thailand not to invite Myanmar because of the international condemnation of its crackdown, the Pentagon declined to comment on internal deliberations. Myanmar s military cracked down on Muslim Rohingya from Rakhine state following Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts in August. The crackdown has caused around 650,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh in recent months. The United States and the United Nations have described the campaign as ethnic cleansing of the stateless Rohingya people. The Myanmar military has said its own internal investigation had exonerated security forces of all accusations of atrocities in Rakhine. But earlier this week, the United States imposed sanctions on 13 serious human rights abusers and corrupt actors including Myanmar general Maung Maung Soe, who oversaw the crackdown against the Rohingya. Zachary Abuza, a professor at the U.S. National War College, said inviting Myanmar to the exercise was outrageous and sent the wrong message. To invite them after what the U.S. government has labeled ethnic cleansing, when the Treasury Department just yesterday designated the commander for these egregious violations of human rights, just seems wrong, and that is putting it too mildly, said Abuza, who focuses on Southeast Asia and security issues, including human rights. In the 2017 Cobra Gold exercise, 29 nations either participated or observed the exercise, including Myanmar. It included about 3,600 U.S. personnel. Cobra Gold is an annual exercise in Thailand. The 2018 war games are expected to be held in February. The United States and Thailand have carried out joint war games for decades, even though Bangkok s record on human rights and democracy has often been criticized in Washington. The U.S.-Thai relationship cooled when the Thai military took power in a 2014 coup but has improved under President Donald Trump. Two Reuters journalists were arrested in Myanmar on Dec. 12 and on Thursday appeared in court and have been remanded in custody. Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been in detention for nine days with no detail on where they are being held. They have not had access to visitors or lawyers. | 0fake |
Catholic Church: It Is Not ‘Necessary’ For Bishops To Report Child Sex Abuse To Police | The Catholic Church has a decades long and likely even longer than that history of covering up child sexual abuse. They even looked the other way when child pornography was found within the walls of the Vatican itself. And now, despite Pope Francis s declarations that he would put a stop to this, recent actions and statements by the Church strongly contradict that.Times Live reports that a set of guidelines drawn up to train newly ordained bishops says the following: According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds. So, in other words, these people are telling their new bishops that they don t have to go to the cops if they find out someone in their charge is molesting kids. That is in sharp contrast to Pope Francis s earlier statement, which said: Everything possible must be done to rid the church of the scourge of the sexual abuse. Well, your words are high-minded, Pope Francis, but the guidelines regarding this issue are not. Nothing has changed. You people might be pretending to be concerned about the continued victimization of the children within your parishes and under the charge of your priests and bishops, but you aren t, really. All you care about is the church s image, and getting butts in the pews and cash in the collection plates.There is absolutely no defending this one. They are, essentially, grooming new bishops to continue covering up these heinous crimes, and hiding behind religious freedom and privileged communication to do so.Word to the wise, parents: the LAST people you should ever trust your children with without question are these priests and bishops. There s no telling what will happen to them.Featured image from Donkey Hotey on Flickr | 1real |
St. Louis Sues NFL Over Rams Relocation - Breitbart | The NFL and the City of St. Louis have tried and failed three times to make a football marriage work. Now, they’re going to court to finalize the divorce. [The City and County of St. Louis have filed a lawsuit against the NFL, claiming that the league violated the law when they approved the relocation of the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles. The lawsuit claims that the league ignored its own bylaws when approving the Rams move, specifically that the move, “was not supported by the required statement of reasons or the adopted relocation standards. ” According to Yahoo! Sports, “The lawsuit claims that the City of St. Louis has lost an estimated $1. 85 million to $3. 5 million per year in ticket tax revenue, an additional $7. 5 million in property tax and $1. 4 million in sales tax revenue, as well as “millions” in earning taxes. “The suit alleges that the parties ignored the NFL’s relocation bylaws, which were established in 1984 following a rash of teams relocating and after a court told the league it might want to do so to prevent antitrust liability. In essence, the relocation rules state that teams must work in good faith to try to keep the franchises at home first before seeking to move them elsewhere. They must first satisfy all the relocation requirements and exhaust all opportunities at home first before moving. The suit claims the Rams and owner Stan Kroenke “made false statements regarding the team’s intent to engage in good faith negotiations” with St. Louis. ” On one hand, the NFL and their terrible, awful, no good commissioner getting smoked in a courtroom would definitely be more than satisfying. On the other hand, if the league loses a ton of money in court, they’ll hike ticket prices in order to pay it off. In any event, given the fact that they lost teams as well, you can bet that the cities of San Diego and Oakland will keep a very close eye on how this case plays out. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 0fake |
EU Commission defends Malta on money laundering, lawmakers skeptical | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A top European Commission official defended Malta s record on preventing money laundering in a parliamentary debate on Tuesday prompted by the murder of an investigative journalist, but a variety of EU lawmakers expressed scepticism. Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans told European Parliament lawmakers that the European Commission had carried out an analysis of Malta s compliance with anti-money laundering laws and concluded that there were no general concerns . He added however that improvements could be made on various levels, and said the commission was assessing new information provided by Malta on recent alleged cases of wrongdoing. Timmermans assessment was however not shared by most lawmakers. Many called for closer oversight of Malta s adherence to the rule of law, a process that could lead to heavy sanctions if wrongdoing was ascertained. Esteban Gonz lez Pons, Vice-Chairman of the conservative group, the largest of the EU assembly, denounced in Malta the harassment of journalists, the blackmailing of independent media by banks connected with money laundering, the involvement of government officials in tax evasion. He said that police in Malta remain silent in the face of such activities. Other lawmakers echoed Pons s comments and raised other questions about Malta s respect for the rule of law and money laundering rules. A smaller number of parliamentarians urged caution on accusations against Malta. A resolution set to be voted on Wednesday openly questions the independence of the police on the island and raises serious concerns about the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights in Malta. The parliament s debate was triggered by the killing on Oct. 16 of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese journalist who had denounced high-profile corruption and accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of wrongdoing. The Parliament named the news room in its Strasbourg building after Caruana Galizia on Tuesday. Timmermans did not make any direct comment on the rule of law in Malta, but he called again on the Maltese authorities to bring to justice the perpetrators of Caruana Galizia s murder. He said the investigation should proceed unhampered and stressed that the Maltese authorities had committed to do all in their power to pursue the culprits. He also called on Malta to join the EU public prosecution office, a new body to prosecute crimes in the 28-country bloc, from which Malta has opted out. | 0fake |
Trump administration defends travel ban in Supreme Court brief | NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s administration reiterated arguments defending its temporary travel ban in a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, repeatedly citing the executive’s broad powers to exclude foreigners from the United States. The travel ban barring refugees and people from six Muslim-majority nations was signed as an executive order in March, after an earlier version had to be scrapped in the face of legal challenges. Two federal appeals courts blocked the revised order from taking effect until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June it could move forward on a limited basis. The nation’s highest court has agreed to hear oral arguments about the lawfulness of the ban on Oct. 10, and the brief laid out the legal position the government plans to make. The state of Hawaii and refugee organizations challenging the executive order claim it is discriminatory against Muslims, citing statements Trump made on the campaign trail calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” However, the government, hammering against a broad ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that blocked the ban, said campaign statements made by the president when he was a private citizen should not be taken into account. The brief said it was a mistake to probe the president’s motives in decisions about national security, which would amount to inappropriate “judicial psychoanalysis” of the president. Trump said the order was necessary to review vetting procedures to help protect the country from terrorist attacks. The Department of Justice argued the case would “invite impermissible intrusion on privileged internal Executive Branch deliberations” and that the plaintiffs in the case were calling for “up to 30 depositions of White House staff and Cabinet-level officials.” The government repeated its stance that Congress has granted the president wide authority to limit refugee admissions and bar the entry of any foreigner or group of foreigners if it would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” The Supreme Court ruled parts of the revised March executive order could go into effect on June 29, finding that anyone from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen with a “bona fide relationship” to a U.S. citizen or entity could not be barred. However, the government excluded grandparents and other family members from the definition of who would be allowed in, leading to another round of legal sparring. Eventually the Supreme Court said that, while litigation continues over enforcement of the ban in lower courts, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and siblings-in-law of people from the six countries would be let in but that refugees with relationships with U.S. resettlement agencies would not. Attorney Neal Katyal, who is representing Hawaii in its challenge to the ban, said in an email on Thursday: “We look forward to the Supreme Court hearing our case in October.” | 0fake |
WATCH REAGAN WARN US AND DRAW BATTLE LINES…Trump is Finishing the Battle Against the “Liberal Fascists” [Video] | President Reagan Warned Of The Dangers Of Liberalism, And He Was Eerily Prophetic. He really knew what he was talking about when it came to liberalism is, and what is has become in our day. He did not hesitate to describe liberalism as essentially fascism in a 1975 interview with CBS s 60 Minutes, a political characterization that few, if any, public leaders seem willing to utter, let alone discuss, today.In a Dec. 14, 1975 interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, Reagan discussed his political philosophy, saying that the heart of my philosophy is much more libertarianism, than . Wallace then interrupted, Well, that s the fashionable word these days, I guess. A conservative is no longer just that, he s a libertarian. Reagan continued, It always has been. How do we call a liberal? You know, someone very profoundly once said many years ago that if fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism. | 1real |
Russia Calls Downing Of Its Plane A 'Planned Provocation' | One of two crew members survived the shooting down of a Russian warplane by Turkey on Tuesday, Russian officials say, and was rescued by a Syrian commando unit in an operation that ended early Wednesday.
The news comes as international tensions continue to rise over the incident. As we reported Tuesday, Turkey says the Russian Su-24 fighter jet was in Turkish airspace when it was shot down by Turkish F-16s. Turkey says it warned the Russian warplane 10 times before taking action.
Russia maintains the jet was flying over Syria at the time.
Both Russian crew members appeared to eject from the jet and parachute to the ground, but one was reportedly found dead Tuesday by a Syrian rebel group.
Russia now says the other crew member has been rescued. It was a costly mission for Russia, NPR's Corey Flintoff reports for our Newscast unit:
"Russia's defense minister said the pilot was rescued in a 12-hour operation that ended in the early hours of the morning. "Rebel fighters in the area claim they shot one of the Russian helicopters involved in the search yesterday and then used a missile to destroy it on the ground after it was forced to land. "Russia says one of the helicopter crewmen was killed, but the rest were evacuated safely."
Meanwhile, Russia and Turkey continue to exchange angry rhetoric while at the same time calling for military restraint.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Wednesday that Russia could not justify its attacks on ethnic Turks in Syria under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State, and reiterated statements by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey will continue to defend its airspace.
But, Davutoglu said, targeting Russia is "out of the question," Reuters reports.
Also on Wednesday, Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called the shooting of the plane a "planned provocation" that is prompting Moscow to "reconsider relations with Ankara," The Associated Press reports. On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the shooting a "stab in the back."
But Lavrov says Moscow has "no intention to go to war with Turkey," the AP writes.
Russia says it is deploying an advanced anti-aircraft system to its base in Syria. Corey says the missiles appear to be guarding against Turkish planes — or planes from other coalition members, such as the U.S. or France. "As far as we know, ISIS and other jihadi groups in Syria have no aircraft that could threaten the Russian base," he reports.
Moscow may be considering nonmilitary forms of retaliation against Turkey. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that "important joint projects could be canceled and Turkish firms could lose Russian market share," the AP reports.
The two countries' economies are closely linked by energy purchases, tourism and other business activity. | 0fake |
Liberal Establishment in Meltdown Over Trump Immigration Pause | The liberal establishment in Britain has reacted with fury to U. S. President Donald J. Trump’s decision to pause immigration from some Muslim states. The policy is aimed at protecting U. S. citizens from “radical Islamic terror attacks”. [President Trump has put a temporary suspension on the U. S. refugee resettlement programme while tough new vetting rules are put in place, meaning that for 90 days no visas will be issued to migrants or visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. But angry MPs have dubbed the new security measures a “Muslim ban” with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn arguing on Sunday that Trump’s planned state visit to the UK should be postponed until he lifts restrictions. Claiming that the U. S. president used “awful misogynist language throughout the election campaign” and launched “awful attacks on Muslims” the Labour leader demanded that Theresa May “condemn Trump’s actions in the clearest terms”. He added: “Donald Trump should not be welcomed to Britain while he abuses our shared values with his shameful Muslim ban and attacks on refugees’ and women’s rights. ” Despite the fact that more walls are being built than ever before — 65 countries have now erected fences on their borders compared to just 16 at the time of the Berlin Wall’s collapse — Corbyn also slammed Trump for what he said was “this absurd idea of building a wall with their nearest neighbour. ” In the past the Labour leader has himself come under fire for inviting controversial people and groups to the House of Commons, including Hamas. And in 1984, just weeks after the IRA bombed the Tory conference in Brighton, Corbyn invited Sinn Fein boss Gerry Adams to plug his autobiography. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who has repeatedly said the will of the British people can be overturned and Brexit stopped, claimed that the President’s actions have “horrified the world”. Slamming Theresa May for being, in his view, insufficiently condemnatory of Trump, he said “at [a recent] press conference she contrived to make the Turkish government look liberal. “They said it was wrong to build walls. Rather than fighting to build a world that is open, tolerant and united, Theresa May is dividing the world in a very dangerous way. ” Farron neglected to mention the fact that Turkey is currently building a concrete wall barbed with wire along its border with Syria. Outrage over Trump’s actions has not been limited to the political class, with recently knighted athlete Mo Farah stating today that the president’s policy “comes from a place of ignorance and prejudice. ” Referring to his move to Britain from Somalia as a child, the gold medallist said: “My story is an example of what can happen when you follow policies of compassion and understanding, not hate and isolation. ” While Farah is often hailed as a refugee success story, his younger brother Omar has a string of criminal convictions including for domestic burglary, and false imprisonment during a knife raid, for which he served a four and a half year sentence. | 0fake |
Factbox: Countdown to Brexit breakthrough? | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The next two weeks will determine whether Britain avoids further costly delays in giving business assurances of a smooth exit from the European Union and free trade in the future. Following is a timeline of critical meetings and explanation of the key decisions that need to be taken. British Prime Minister Theresa May wants the EU to open the second phase of Brexit negotiations, concerning relations after Britain s withdrawal on March 30, 2019. The EU will only do that if there is sufficient progress in agreeing divorce terms, notably on three key issues: a financial settlement, guaranteed rights for EU citizens in Britain and a soft border with Ireland. A deal on money is effectively done, EU officials say, and they are close on citizens rights, leaving Ireland the biggest headache outstanding. [nL8N1O06MU] [nL8N1O12A0] As part of the intricate choreography for a political deal, the EU set May an absolute deadline of Monday, Dec. 4, to provide new offers in time for the other EU leaders to approve a move to Phase 2 at a summit of the EU-27 on Friday, Dec. 15. May is pushing for a simultaneous, reciprocal guarantee from the EU of a soft transition and future trade deal, which she may use to show Britons what her compromises have secured. The EU wants to have firm British offers which the 27 can discuss before leaders commit. The result is some complex dance steps: Mon, Dec. 4 - May lunches in Brussels with EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker and Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. The latter says he plans a joint report on progress with the UK. Wed, Dec. 6 - Juncker chairs weekly European Commission meeting in the morning. After hearing Barnier, the Commission could say there is sufficient progress to move to Phase 2. Wed, Dec. 6 - At 3 p.m. (1400 GMT), EU-27 envoys meet to prepare decisions to be taken at EU-27 summit on Dec. 15 most significantly on opening talks on what happens after Brexit. Thur, Dec. 14 - May attends routine EU summit in Brussels, starting in the afternoon. Defense, foreign affairs on agenda. Fri, Dec. 15 - After May has left, EU-27 leaders hold summit. They could take one comprehensive decision on Phase 2 or break it down into separate ones on the transition and future ties. January - Outline of EU transition offer may be ready, under which Britain retains all its rights except voting in the bloc, and meets all its obligations until the end of 2020. [nL8N1MZ59A] February - After agreeing among the 27 their negotiating terms, EU may be ready to open talks with London on a free trade pact that Brussels likens to one it has with Canada. [nL8N1NL26Q] The EU estimated at some 60 billion euros ($71 billion) what Britain should pay to cover outstanding obligations on leaving. EU officials say there is now agreement after Britain offered to pay an agreed share of most of the items Brussels wanted especially for committed spending that will go on after 2020. Both sides say there is no precise figure as much depends on future developments. British newspaper reports that it would cost up to 55 billion euros sparked only muted criticism from May s hardline pro-Brexit allies who once rejected big payments. Barnier is still seeking a commitment that the rights of 3 million EU citizens who stay on in Britain after Brexit will be guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, not just by British judges. May has said the ECJ should play no more role in Britain. But the issue could be vital to ensure ratification of the withdrawal treaty by the European Parliament. A compromise might focus on making clear that the ECJ has a role only for the existing EU residents, whose numbers will shrink over time. Member states, some of which have taken a tougher line than the Brussels negotiators, are also insisting Britain make concessions on family reunion rules and social benefits. The EU wants more detail on a British pledge to avoid a hard border at the new land frontier on the island of Ireland that might disrupt peace in Northern Ireland. London says the detail depends on the future trade agreement. EU officials say a hard border can be avoided only if rules remain identical on either side. Northern Ireland could stay in a customs union with the EU. But Britain, and May s crucial Northern Irish parliamentary allies, insist there should be no new barriers between Northern Ireland and the British mainland. The EU says that means the whole of the United Kingdom would then have to follow EU rules, something Brexit campaigners do not want. A British newspaper reported London was considering offering Northern Ireland more autonomy to set different rules. But at present, party feuding means the province has no government. Dublin says it may not be possible to reach a deal on sufficient progress by Monday but in the days after that. Ireland, with the blessing of the EU-27, says it will veto any move to Phase 2 if Britain s border offer is unsatisfactory. | 0fake |
Дело компании Хунсян и американское давление на КНР | Новое восточное обозрение | Страна: Китай 26 сентября 2016 г. США ввели санкции против китайской компании, связанной с северокорейской программой развития ядерного и ракетного оружия. Речь идет о Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development (сокращенно — «Хунсян груп»), которая занимается поставками промышленного оборудования, и её четырёх представителях. Министерство финансов США официально включило их в санкционный список. Всё имущество и активы компании и её руководства на территории США замораживаются, и ряд южнокорейских источников сообщают, что компания фактически прекратила деятельность, а ее сайт закрыт. Китайские правоохранительные органы также расследуют дело корпорации «Хунсян груп», привлекая связанные с ней северокорейские компании, в том числе северокорейский банк «Квансон», который входит в список объектов санкций СБ ООН, но является главным акционером логистической компании в Даньдуне, входящей в состав «Хунсян груп». Глава представительства банка в городском округе Даньдун провинции Ляонин был вызван для дачи показаний, а северокорейским торговым представителям запретили выезжать из страны. В чем провинилась данная корпорация? «Хунсян груп» подозревают в поставках Северу комплектующих и материалов, имеющих отношение к ядерной программе, в том числе оксида алюминия, триоксида вольфрама и иных товаров двойного назначения, которые можно использовать для обогащения урана. Главный источник обвинений — совместное исследование южнокорейского института Асан и американского центра продвинутых оборонных исследований (U.S. Center for Advanced Defense Studies). Также, как сообщил и.о. замминистра финансов США Адам Шубин, сотрудники «Хунсян груп» стремились уклониться от санкций, введённых США и ООН, облегчая доступ Пхеньяну к американской финансовой системе. Они, в частности, предоставляли финансовые услуги вышеупомянутому банку «Квансон», который управлял средствами «Хунсян груп» и расчётами при выполнении экспортных и импортных операций с КНДР. Предположительно, компания отмывала северокорейские деньги через подставные компании, работавшие с банками США. По данным южнокорейских экспертов, которые будто бы и обратили внимание на данный факт, в 2011-15 гг. компания вложила в северокорейский бизнес 532 миллиона долларов, при том что строительство реактора в Енбене стоило менее 700 млн. Китайскую фирму обвиняют даже в поддержке северокорейских хакеров! Как отмечает СМИ США, впервые администрация Обамы ударила по китайской фирме, и история Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Co является примером как китайской поддержки режима Ким Чен Ына, так и того, что США могут сделать для обрыва таких контактов. При этом в Америке открыто говорят, что введение санкций против компании Hongxiang должно сыграть роль, аналогичную репрессиям против Banco Delta Asia в 2005 г. — сигнал китайским компаниям прервать отношения с КНДР или испытать ту же участь. Правда, пока минюст США отметил, что против связанных с Hongxiang банков КНР обвинений не выдвигается, и это вызывает негодование сторонников жесткого курса. В открытом письме Обаме 19 сенаторов указали, что Банк Китая предположительно помог клиентам, связанным с КНДР, получить из американских банков 40 млн долларов, и хотя предположения и связанность клиентов с Северной Кореей еще надо расследовать, санкции вводить надо – иначе как еще остановить угрозу и преподать урок нарушителям!? Как заявил 21 сентября 2016 г. высокопоставленный представитель Белого дома, заместитель советника по национальной безопасности Бен Родс, КНР обязан предотвращать экспорт в КНДР запрещенных товаров, особенно продукции двойного назначения. Он заявил, что от Пекина ожидается соответствующий ответ на провокации, которые могут привести к дополнительным санкциям. С ним согласен главный специалист СНБ США по вопросам нераспространения Джон Вульфсталь: резолюции ООН ясно запрещают экспорт любых товаров, которые могут использоваться для развития ракетно-ядерной программы Пхеньяна, даже если речь идет о карандашах . Запрещаем все, кроме того, что можно убедительно обосновать как «поддержку гуманитарных целей». На этом фоне между США и КНР разгорается еще одно противоречие, связанное с торговлей углем между Пекином и Пхеньяном. Если Америка пытается прервать эти поставки то, как заявил 28 сентября официальный представитель МИД КНР Гэн Шуан, эта торговля ведётся в соответствии с предписаниями и резолюциями, а также национальным законодательством и нормативными актами КНР, не нарушает норм международного права и резолюций ООН с санкциями в отношении Пхеньяна, которые вполне допускают торговлю Севера углем. Это заявление было ответом на выступление помощника госсекретаря США Дэниела Рассела, в котором он заявил, что США работают над перекрытием лазеек для получения Севером валюты. В этом контексте Рассел отметил, что Север ежегодно зарабатывает от продажи угля в Китай 1 млрд долларов, что составляет треть общей суммы северокорейского экспорта, однако пункт о возможности экспорта северокорейского угля был включён в резолюции СБ ООН с учётом позиции Китая. Хотя южане пытаются представить дело так, что Резолюция 2270, принятая СБ ООН в марте 2016 года, вообще запрещает импортировать северокорейский уголь, речь идет о запрете на поставки, доход от которых может пойти на развитие ракетно-ядерной программы. В результате объем ввоза угля в Китай увеличивается. 24 сентября японская газета «Нихон кейдзай» опубликовала статью, в которой отмечается, что в апреле этого года объем импорта угля из СК в КНР резко сократился на 38% по сравнению с аналогичным периодом прошлого года, и такая тенденция продолжалась до июля. Однако в августе данный показатель начал расти, увеличившись на 27,5% в годовом исчислении. Общий объем торговли между СК и Китаем также увеличился на 30%. Эксперты РК полагают, что восстановление импорта в Китай северокорейских товаров произошло из-за смягчения контроля китайского правительства, которое выражает недовольство по поводу размещения ПРО THAAD на Корейском полуострове. Так что попытка навязать Пекину односторонние санкции пока не удается. И более того, там постоянно подчеркивается, что «Китай выступает против односторонних санкций, которые не помогают разрешить вопрос». Так, в частности, заявил 15 сентября министр иностранных дел КНР Ван И в телефонном разговоре со своим японским коллегой Фумио Кисидой, и та же позиция прозвучала 22 сентября на встрече спецпредставителей правительств КНР и РК, где обсуждались ответные меры в отношении проведённого Пхеньяном пятого ядерного испытания. Сообщается, что южнокорейская сторона потребовала от Китая принятия более жестких санкций в отношении Пхеньяна, в том числе запретить наземную перевозку грузов, на что китайская сторона ответила отказом. Скрываемый разлад нашел свое отражение и в заявлении генсека ООН Пан Ги Муна, который высказал недовольство относительно задержки принятия дополнительных санкций в ответ на пятое ядерное испытание КНДР. По его словам, СБ ООН затрачивает на это излишне много времени. Между тем позиция КНР в отношении санкций против Севера вполне ясна. Как отмечается в представленном на сеульском форуме «Объединение Кореи и вопросы безопасности» докладе старшего научного сотрудника Института Седжона Чун Чжэ Хона, Китай не склонен поддерживать применение против КНДР санкций, которые приведут к падению в стране существующего режима и ухудшению положения северокорейцев. По словам докладчика, крах режима Ким Чен Ына «чреват непредсказуемыми последствиями», включая и объединение обеих Корей под руководством Сеула. Пекин не хочет появления у своих границ объединенной Кореи, являющейся союзником США, и сделает все возможное для срыва такого сценария. Соответственно, выполняя резолюции ООН и не превышая их за счет дополнительных односторонних мер, как это делают США или их союзники, китайское правительство четко ограничило уровень санкций в отношении Пхеньяна, который ни при каких обстоятельствах не превысит. Константин Асмолов, кандидат исторических наук, ведущий научный сотрудник Центра корейских исследований Института Дальнего Востока РАН, специально для интернет-журнала «Новое Восточное Обозрение». Популярные статьи | 1real |
Suspect in Stockholm truck attack to stand trial in February | STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Rakhmat Akilov, who has confessed to driving a truck that killed five people in an attack in Sweden s capital Stockholm, will stand trial in February, the main prosecutor in the case said on Monday. In April, the hijacked truck sped down a busy street in Stockholm and mowed down shoppers before crashing into a department store, killing three Swedes, a British citizen and a person from Belgium. The youngest victim was 11. The preliminary investigation is almost complete, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Hans Ihrman at the National Security Unit said. As it looks at the moment, we will be able to start the trial at the beginning of February, he told TV4. There is one suspect, no others. Akilov, a failed asylum seeker from Uzbekistan, was subject to a deportation order at the time of the attack. He was taken into custody just hours afterwards. His lawyer said he had confessed to committing a terrorist crime. Under Sweden s legal system, he has yet to be charged. When he is charged, he will face a full trial. Ihrman said the trial was likely to take a couple of months. | 0fake |
THE DEATH OF P.C. POLICE? Trump’s DOJ Makes Major Announcement Over “Redskins” Name | The Justice Department on Thursday dropped the legal challenge to the the Washington Redskins name, the Associated Press reported.According to the AP, the Trump administration dropped the challenge in a letter to the Supreme Court in response to last week s ruling in Matal V. Tam, in which an Asian-American rock band won the right to copyright the name The Slants, despite the name s offensive connotation.In the Thursday letter, the Justice Department argues that the Matal V. Tam decision means that the court would decide in favor of the Washington Redskins if the case went before the justices.Last week, Redskins owner Dan Snyder drew the same conclusion, and said he was thrilled by the court s decision in the copyright case His lawyer, Lisa Blatt, issued a statement saying that the court s decision resolved the dispute over the NFL team s name.Washington Post Nine in 10 Native Americans say they are not offended by the Washington Redskins name, according to a new Washington Post poll that shows how few ordinary Indians have been persuaded by a national movement to change the football team s moniker.Among the Native Americans reached over a five-month period ending in April, more than 7 in 10 said they did not feel the word Redskin was disrespectful to Indians. An even higher number 8 in 10 said they would not be offended if a non-native called them that name. The Washington Redskins team, our fans and community have always believed our name represents honor, respect and pride, the owner said in a statement. Today s Washington Post polling shows Native Americans agree. We are gratified by this overwhelming support from the Native American community, and the team will proudly carry the Redskins name. Watch: Snyder and his wife have a close relationship with President Trump and his administration. In January, Snyder attended an exclusive inauguration celebration with Trump s Cabinet members, and Snyder s wife donated to Trump s campaign in 2015.Weeks after Snyder s wife made the donation, Trump spoke out about the team name controversy, suggesting it should remain the Redskins. I know Indians that are extremely proud of that name, Trump said in October of 2015. Honestly, I don t think they should change the name, unless the owner wanted to. The Hill | 1real |
EXCLUSIVE: Wife of 911 Victim Pens Letter to Donald Trump Urging Strength During Saudi Visit | WASHINGTON, D. C. — Ahead of President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia this weekend, the national chair of the Families Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism advocacy group wrote a letter to the leader of the free world. The letter urges him not to buckle under pressure from Saudi Arabia and potentially weaken a provision in a law that would allow the families of victims of America’s most devastating terrorist attack to sue countries involved in carrying out terrorism. [Breitbart News acquired an exclusive copy of Terry Strada’s letter to President Trump urging him to remain steadfast in his support for families of 911 victims who are suing the government of Saudi Arabia under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) which was first enacted in 1976. JASTA creates a path for U. S. citizens to file civil claims against foreign governments for wrongful deaths, injuries, and property damage related to terrorist acts that were financed by those governments. The law also removes any government’s sovereign immunity — in this case Saudi Arabia’s — from being sued if it were involved in a terrorist attack against the United States. The majority of hijackers on September 11, 2001, were Saudi citizens. Strada lost her husband, Tom, in the devastating terrorist attacks that claimed nearly 3, 000 lives on September 11, 2001. Part of her letter to President Trump reads: We remain deeply grateful for your support for our cause, especially last September when you denounced President Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. Your backing was essential to ensuring that JASTA — which guarantees that terror victims like us can hold foreign nations accountable when they provide support and funding to terrorists who carry out attacks on U. S. soil — is now the law. … First, we fully expect that the Saudis will try to convince you to betray the families. They will not put it that way, but will instead argue that JASTA should be “fixed” or “modified” to eliminate “unintended consequences. ” Please do not let them get away with this dishonest approach. The Saudis do not want to “fix” JASTA they want you and Congress to pass a new law that arms them with a special defense against our lawsuits. This is the same false claim that Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have made — after voting for JASTA in September and betraying the families just days after the November election. Would you please make it very clear to the Saudis that you will never support any weakening of the families’ legal rights? Second, the Saudis need to hear directly from you that Americans do not appreciate being manipulated by propaganda and fake news peddled by foreign agents. Just this week, the Associated Press reported on how the Saudis are engaged in a $1. 3 campaign to manipulate the public, deceive our military veterans, and fool Congress into weakening JASTA. That news story has been carried throughout the world, and was picked up in the U. S. by outlets as varied as Breitbart, Fox News, Bloomberg, ABC News, and even the Daily Beast. We are sure you especially share our outrage that the Saudi agents are lying to our nation’s veteran community. Would you please tell the Saudi Kingdom that this deceitful campaign must stop? Under U. S. law, foreign governments are generally immune from the jurisdiction of U. S. courts and cannot be sued for injuries they cause, unless one of the exceptions to sovereign immunity — which is set forth in a statute called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act — applies. Congress included a provision in JASTA designed to encourage and empower the president to press for, and ultimately, broker settlements of cases brought under JASTA law. But JASTA provides a path for President Trump to raise this issue with the Saudis and work towards a resolution should he choose to do so. Last year, the Saudi government reportedly attempted to astroturf the United States in an attempt to roll back JASTA. This year, reports surfaced that Saudi Arabia was paying millions to send veterans on trips to Washington and using them as pawns to lobby against the JASTA legislation. As of October last year, Saudi Arabia was reportedly paying American lobbyists and public relations firms $1. 3 million per month to fight against the right of Americans to sue the nation for financing terror. Ahead of President Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia this weekend, the Saudis expressed their hope that he will reverse the legislation that allows for the families of the 911 victims to sue their country for their role in the devastating terrorist attacks. The Saudis’ raising the issue of JASTA legislation being a concern for them could encourage a settlement. It could also provide Trump with the opportunity to showcase his steadfast support for the 911 community and all who were affected by the tragedy. Despite the justice aspect JASTA law provides for the 911 victims and their families, some have raised concerns that it could open the floodgates to a number of foreign countries to sue the United States for frivolous matters. “The law has opened up Pandora’s Box, creating risks with international consequence for Americans working directly or indirectly for our intelligence agencies,” James Zumwalt once wrote. For example, last year an Iraqi lobbyist group, citing JASTA, sought to sue the government to ask the United States for compensation for alleged violations by the American military following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Similarly, retired U. S. Navy Admiral Edward Masso suggested JASTA was a “congressional mistake. ” William W. the deputy dean and professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, shed some light on this matter in an interview with Breitbart News. “There is a long history of countries having claims against one another. This goes back as long as there have been countries,” said: When we think about whether there is a liability on the part of Saudi Arabia for activities, we have to think about it in a background context that countries often have disputes with one another and they often settle them through some sort of international agreement. What the JASTA legislation does do is open up a broader range of private suits wrought by individuals rather than by countries against one another directly. And, in some ways, changes some of the traditional approaches the United States has taken to sovereign immunity. also suggested the JASTA legislation changes the U. S. approach, “but within a consistent background under international law. Countries have always been able to have some flexibility with what suits they allow individuals to bring against countries and the U. S. has been somewhat restrained in that in its prior approach. ” He continued, “JASTA, to some degree, opens up a somewhat broader set of claims that can be brought by U. S. entities against foreign governments. ” noted that many past presidents have resolved the claims of private citizens against foreign governments by reaching a diplomatic deal that involves a lump payment by the culpable foreign government to the United States. He also stated his belief that this trip provides Trump with a real “opportunity to put the American lives and victims of 911 first. And an opportunity to be a great dealmaker, which he is, and to bring a resolution to one of the hardest moments in modern American history. And doing so is fully consistent with his authority. ” Follow Adelle Nazarian on Facebook and Twitter. | 0fake |
The Tribeca Film Festival Announces Winners - The New York Times | The Tribeca Film Festival announced its winners Thursday, with movies from feature directors and seasoned veterans taking prizes. The Founders Award for best narrative feature went to the comedy “Dean,” the directorial debut of Demetri Martin, who also wrote and stars in the movie. The best international feature prize went to “Junction 48,” an Israeli film with a Palestinian rapper at its center. Craig Atkinson’s “Do Not Resist,” about the militarization of police forces in the United States, won the prize for best documentary feature. All three awards come with $20, 000 prizes. Priscilla Anany won the prize for best new narrative director for her Ghanaian film “Children of the Mountain,” about a woman who faces scrutiny when her child is born with birth defects. The Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Prize went to David Feige for “Untouchable,” which looks at the effect of strict sex offender laws in the United States. The Nora Ephron Prize, awarded to a female director or screenwriter, was given to Rachel Tunnard for her dark comedy “Adult Life Skills,” about a young woman who moves back to her hometown and into a shed in her mother’s backyard. The festival continues through April 24, with additional screenings of some of the prizewinning films to be held this weekend. The festival’s audience awards will be announced April 23. | 0fake |
LOCAL ANCHOR GETS REAL: Clinton Presidency ‘Should Freak People Out’, Will Hurt North Dakota Economy | We ve heard from this local anchor before. He s unafraid to get real with Americans about what s going on in the world. This is great! | 1real |
Palestinian Factions Demand ‘Day of Rage’ During Trump Trip to Israel | The Jerusalem Post reports: Palestinian factions in the West Bank are calling for “A Day of Rage” to coincide with US President Donald Trump’s visit to Bethlehem on Tuesday, where he is expected to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. [Trump, who is currently in Saudi Arabia for his first international trip since taking office in January, will arrive in Israel on Monday and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu where the two are expected to discuss prospects for peace negotiations and security issues. One Palestinian organization, called the Islamic and National Forces, initiated the “Rage Day” call in a statement in conjunction with other West Bank factions, saying that they want to send a message to the American president that “the Palestinian people insist on their right to and national independence with east Jerusalem as its sovereign capital. ” Read more here. | 0fake |
Fractured Republicans come together in face of Trump triumph | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - One immediate consequence of Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the U.S. presidential race is that the identity crisis that convulsed the Republican Party during his tumultuous candidacy has been resolved. It’s Trump’s party now, for better or worse. Although having never before held public office, the businessman and former reality TV star vanquished 16 other Republican candidates to win the nomination and go on to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, but established Republicans challenged his commitment to party tenets and organized against him. Trump’s political ascent encountered fierce opposition from some in the party’s establishment wing that includes former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Ohio Governor John Kasich and from others in its social-conservative faction, such as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. All of them criticized Trump at times for straying from orthodox Republican positions on such issues as trade, his temperament or his lack of governing experience. But on Wednesday, all of that seemed forgotten and forgiven, at least for the moment, as Trump, the surprise winner in a 17-month-long election campaign, prepared to take power with the backing of Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and the promise of an aggressive conservative agenda. “The American people have spoken and it’s time to come together,” Kasich tweeted on Wednesday after he scrapped plans for a speech in Washington later this week that was intended to pave a new direction for the party after an expected Trump loss. Bush said he would “pray” for Trump. Cruz termed Trump’s win “an amazing victory for the American worker.” Paul Ryan, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives who had drawn the ire of Trump supporters by refusing to campaign for him, praised Trump on Wednesday and said that voters had delivered Trump a “mandate” to pursue his agenda, having won the electoral vote that counts while Clinton likely won the popular vote. Had Trump lost, both Ryan and Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, were expected to face challenges to their jobs. Now, having protected his House majority, Ryan will be Trump’s top legislative ally. If, as many expect, Priebus is tapped by Trump to join his administration, Trump will be able to replace him with a hand-picked successor, thus cementing his grip on the party’s apparatus. Republican donors who did not support Trump, too, were coming around. “Nothing unifies like these decisive wins, and nothing unifies like the power of having the House, the Senate and the White House,” said an adviser to a leading donor. Representative Chris Collins, who was an early Trump supporter, said without the opposition of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, many divisions within the Republican Party would dissipate. “The big difference is we now have complete Republican control,” Collins told Reuters. “We’re all on the same page give or take 10 percent, which is nuances more than anything.” Trump adopted much of the “Better Way” domestic policy agenda Ryan has painstakingly put together in over the last few years, notably revising his tax plan to bring it roughly in line with House Republicans’ proposal after initially floating much more drastic reform. Trump this year proposed cutting the top individual income tax rate to 33 percent from its current 39.6 percent. He had initially said he would drop that rate down to 25 percent but revised his proposal after tax experts said it would balloon government deficits. While Trump has offered a bare-bones outline of his replacement plan for Obama’s signature national healthcare law known as Obamacare, advisers told Reuters he would draw heavily on the House version. At a news conference on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed that Congress under Trump would move quickly to repeal Obamacare. It remains to be seen whether House Republicans view Trump’s mandate as extending to other, prominent campaign promises. Trump staked much of his candidacy on opposing major trade deals, while Republicans have generally favored free trade. Trump promised repeatedly not to touch Medicare and Social Security federal retirement benefits, asserting that Clinton would slash those programs even though she had not proposed to do so. Most mainstream Republicans believe revamping Medicare and Social Security is critical to curbing federal spending. Trump vowed to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. During the campaign he met with House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling but never endorsed Hensarling’s proposed bank regulation legislation and instead called for a return to the 1930s Glass-Steagall law separating commercial and investment banking. Representative Warren Davidson, a member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus in the House, said he thought Congress could get some early wins on areas of agreement with Trump that included replacing Obamacare and finding a way to repatriate corporate profits held overseas and using the money to pay for infrastructure repairs. Richard Hunt, head of the Consumer Bankers Association, which lobbies for some of the biggest U.S. banks, said Republicans must act swiftly to show that as change agents they can actually govern. “They have to show the American people that Republicans are able and capable of governing. Obviously there was a clear mandate last night that says Washington is not working and people want Washington to work,” he said. “Part of me says you need to have a clean slate, okay, that was the campaign, now this is governing.” | 0fake |
North Korea warns threats a 'big miscalculation' in letter to Australia lawmakers | SYDNEY (Reuters) - North Korea has sent a letter to Australia s parliament, warning it is a nuclear power and will not be cowed by U.S. President Donald Trump s threats to destroy it, according to a copy of the letter published in an Australian newspaper on Friday. If Trump thinks that he would bring the DPRK, a nuclear power, to its knees through nuclear war threat, it will be a big miscalculation and an expression of ignorance, said a facsimile of the letter, published by the Sydney Morning Herald and verified by Australia s foreign ministry. Trump threatened to totally destroy the DPRK ... it is an extreme act of threatening to totally destroy the whole world. A spokeswoman for Australia s Foreign Minister told Reuters the Herald report was accurate and the paper s copy of the letter, dated Sept. 28, was genuine. Titled Open Letter to Parliaments of Different Countries, the note said it was sent from North Korea s Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Australia s Embassy in the same city, as well as to other countries, without naming them. DPRK stands for the Democratic People s Republic of Korea, North Korea s official name. Tension has soared on the peninsula following a series of weapons tests by North Korea and a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump, in a speech last month at the United Nations, threatened to totally destroy North Korea if necessary to defend itself and allies and called the North s leader Kim Jong Un a rocket man on a suicide mission. The letter calls for countries loving independence, peace and justice to discharge their duty and keep sharp vigilance against the heinous and reckless moves of the Trump administration trying to drive the world into a horrible nuclear disaster. At a press conference in Sydney, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the note was an unprecedented communication. It is not the way they usually publish their global messages. The collective strategy of imposing maximum diplomatic and economic pressure through sanctions on North Korea is working. This is a response to the pressure. | 0fake |
Ron Howard’s Defense Of Meryl Streep To A Twitter Troll Will Make Your Day (TWEETS) | By now you have seen, or at least heard about Meryl Streep s speech at the Golden Globes where she went after Donald Trump without even needing to say his name. If you haven t, well, what the hell have you been doing in the past 18 hours?Needless to say, Streep s speech has brought on a lot of controversy with many people coming out against her, including Donald Trump himself.Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a .. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never "mocked" a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him . Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017"groveling" when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017Which, by the way, is hilarious, because Meryl Streep is probably one of the most celebrated actors in all of Hollywood and is absolutely not over-rated because she s f**king phenomenal at her craft.However, with as much negativity thrown at Streep over her speech, there s been just as much defense. And one person who is standing up to defend the famed actress is none other than famed actor/director Ron Howard.Taking to Twitter, and taking aim at a few Twitter troll, egg profiles and all, Howard lays out some solid facts. He tweeted: Trump used his fame to speak out on issues years before he ran 4 office. why was he allowed & Ms Streep should keep quiet? no hypocrisy please. trump used his fame to speak out on issues years before he ran 4 office. why was he allowed & Ms Streep should keep quiet? no hypocrisy pls https://t.co/CrpSCREcrw Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) January 9, 2017Then when a troll responded:@RealRonHoward It would be nice if Streep had any idea of the facts! It's always disgusting when these celebs repeated the lies from the MSM Deanne Tate (@deanne_tate) January 9, 2017Howard replied: Trump was a reality tv star spouting criticisms of a president & reinforcing the Birther Lie. but now celebs should b muzzled? @deanne_tate trump was a reality tv star spouting criticisms of a president & reinforcing the Birther Lie. but now celebs should b muzzled? Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) January 9, 2017Then, really laying the point home about Trump, Howard tweeted the next morning after Trump pathetically and expectedly responded to Streep: Trump takes the bait & calls Meryl Streep overrated?! Please Pres-Elect. Don t make this into the WWF which is fun but not presidential Trump takes the bait & calls #MerylStreep overrated?! Please Pres-Elect. Don't make this into the WWF which is fun but not presidential Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) January 9, 2017Which is exactly what all of this has become.To be blunt, Trump is an embarrassment to not only the nation, but himself, but he s too narcissistic to see it. He can t handle people criticizing him and calling him out on things he very much did.Good on Howard for defending Streep, as we all must because she was absolutely on point in her criticism. And if you don t like her calling out a bully, that says more about you than it does her.Featured photo by Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for Ferragamo | 1real |
Clinton Leaked Email Story To Press BEFORE Giving It To Congress | Pinterest
Officials with the State Department told Hillary’s campaign staffers that they planned to leak a story about the missing Benghazi emails to a “friendly” AP reporter before giving it to Congress.
“Just spoke to State a little more about this,” Clinton’s travelling press secretary Nick Merrill wrote to campaign staffers on June 24, 2015, regarding emails sent between the former Secretary of State and her longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal, The Daily Caller is reporting .
State Department told officials they would tip off AP reporter that at least 15 emails between Clinton and Blumenthal were missing from the more than 55,000 pages of emails given to a House committee investigating the 9/11/2012 attack on the Benghazi compound in Libya.
“They do not plan to release anything publicly, so no posting online or anything public-facing, just to the committee,” Merrill said. “That said, they are considering placing a story with a friendly at the AP (Matt Lee or Bradley Klapper), that would lay this out before the majority on the committee has a chance to realize what they have and distort it.”
“On that last piece, we think it would make sense to work with State and the AP to deploy the below,” Merrill wrote, referring to press statements the campaign had crafted after they got tipped off State would hand over Blumenthal emails to Congress.
Staffers with the Clinton campaign put together a series of statements on the missing emails after being told it would have to disclose it to House investigators.
“So assuming everyone is in agreement we’ll proceed,” Merrill wrote. “It would be good to frame this a little, and frankly to have it break tomorrow when we’ll likely be close to or in the midst of a SCOTUS decision taking over the news hyenas.”
AP reporters Lee and Klapper did run with a story on July 25, 2015 — the day after Merrill’s email. Their story cited “officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.”
Lee and Klapper’s article also included the statement crafted by Clinton campaign staffers in the email chain — that chain was one of thousands released by WikiLeaks from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s hacked Gmail account.
Podesta’s emails suggest the Clinton campaign had a cozy relationship with many members of the media, including the AP.
In one email chain, Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden told Podesta to get the New York Times to cover Clinton favorably.
Tanden said former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with Arthur Sulzberger, NYT’s publisher, to alter coverage of him.
Tanden told Podesta that “when bloomberg was having problems w the times he called Arthur Schulzburger and asked for coffee.”
“He made the case that they were treating him like a billionaire dilettante instead of Third term mayor,” Tanden wrote. “It changed the coverage moderately but also aired the issues in the newsroom so people were more conscious of it.” | 1real |
Trump’s Rambling Speech About Abe Lincoln Is Like Watching A Car Crash In Slow Motion (VIDEO) | I m convinced that whenever Trump says most people don t know, it really means I just learned.' That was Chris Hayes s takeaway from watching Trump s flailing attempt to talk about Abraham Lincoln a man he clearly knew nothing about. The fact that he was ignorant of one of America s most famous presidents was painfully obvious.An infamous bullshitter, Trump is either getting worse at it or we re getting better at spotting it.Trump was at a fundraiser for Republicans when he decided to share a little hidden gem about Abraham Lincoln that he assumed nobody knew: Lincoln was a Republican.For most people who graduated elementary school that is common knowledge. For Trump, it was a revelation. He was so impressed by it that he ordered Republicans to start paying to promote the fact. Great president. Most people don t even know he was a Republican. Right? Does anyone know? A lot of people don t know that. We have to build that up a little more. Naturally, even that statement was a lie. A recent Pew study found that over half of respondents knew that Lincoln was a Republican.Nevertheless, he instructed right-wing Political Action Committees to start buying television ads to inform the public that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. The crowd politely laughed, unsure if it was a joke or not:The remainder of Trump s speech was equally insane. At one point, he noted a few rival real estate developers in the crowd and had an on-stage meltdown. He s President of the United States and still engaged in petty feuds with business tycoons that he views as his competitors. His unfiltered rant is like watching his brain go to war with itself. He knows he should be more dignified, less petty, but he just can t help it.This is, by far, my favorite bit from the president s speech tonight. pic.twitter.com/xDTMZy9zeI Hunter Walker (@hunterw) March 22, 2017Truly unhinged behavior.Featured image via Twitter | 1real |
White House: Trump considering Powell, Taylor for either Fed chair or vice chair | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is considering a scenario in which he would nominate Fed Governor Jerome Powell and Stanford University economist John Taylor for the two top positions at the Federal Reserve Board, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Friday. Under the scenario, Trump would pick one or the other for the Fed chair position and the other for vice chair. “That is something that is under consideration but he hasn’t ruled out a number of options. He’ll have an announcement on that soon, in the coming days,” Sanders told reporters. | 0fake |
China calls for peaceful Zimbabwe resolution under legal framework | BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Foreign Ministry called on Friday for a peaceful resolution in Zimbabwe under a legal framework, after the army took charge this week. China calls on all sides in Zimbabwe to keep their eyes on the country s long-term and fundamental interests, and uphold dialogue and consultations to bridge differences, to promote a peaceful and appropriate resolution to the issue under a legal framework, ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters. Pressed on what he meant by a legal framework, he said that it must accord with Zimbabwe s laws. Zimbabwe s President Robert Mugabe appeared in public on Friday for the first time since the move, as the ruling party made plans to force him to step down after more than three decades in power. China and Zimbabwe have close economic and political ties. | 0fake |
LIBERAL TEACHER’S Social Media Message Goes VIRAL: “Lots of white trump supporters in Las Vegas” Asks Liberals To “Pray Only Trumptards Died” | Anyone who is not yet convinced that liberalism is a mental disorder hasn t been on social media since President Trump s inauguration. Every day the hateful rhetoric is ramped up by liberals who are no longer able to function in everyday society since they ve been afflicted with Trump derangement syndrome.Hollywood celebrities are holding up severed heads of our President. Has been pop-stars like Madonna say things like they d like to blow up the White House. Black Lives Matter has inspired an entire league of overpaid professional NFL athletes to turn what was a movement against our brave law enforcement officers into an anti-American, anti-Trump movement. Only two days ago on the SNL Resistance show, Michael Che called President Trump a cheap cracker .This tweet by a woman who claims to be a teacher, mother, sister and woman may not even come as a surprise to anyone who follows the hatred vitriol the left spews every day on social media. Sadly, this woman didn t even have the common courtesy to keep her disgusting hate for anyone who doesn t agree with her politics in her shallow little head.Ann#TheResistance has deleted her Twitter account. If anyone knows this woman, it would be great if you could contact the school where she works, as it appears she is not stable enough to be left alone with children who may hold opposing political views. | 1real |
Donald Trump’s Final Rally: Grand Rapids, MI 11/7/16 | Donald Trump Tells Veterans He’s ‘Financially Brave’ ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. Donald Trump’s Final Rally: Grand Rapids, MI 11/7/16 By VNN on November 7, 2016 Make America Great Again
“Put an End to decades of Clinton corruption…” Mike Pence, said.
“Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class or do you want America to be ruled again by the people?” Trump asked.
“I want the entire corrupt Washington establishment to hear the words we are about to say. When we win on November 8, we are going to drain the swamp” Trump said.
“Tomorrow the American working class will strike back.” Trump said.
Donald J. Trump for President FINAL rally in Grand Rapids, MI at Devo’s Place. Trump’s final pitch – A 2 minute Ad airing in all battleground States: | 1real |
Syrian government returns to Geneva talks, Western envoys skeptical | GENEVA (Reuters) - The Syrian government s delegation returned to Geneva on Sunday for the resumption of talks with United Nations mediator Staffan de Mistura after more than a week s absence, but Western diplomats voiced scepticism about its willingness to engage. Bashar al-Ja afari, Syria s ambassador to the U.N. and chief negotiator in talks aimed at finding a political solution to end the nearly seven-year-old war, landed in a snowstorm on a flight from Beirut, a Reuters reporter on board said. Ja afari declined to comment. De Mistura convened an eighth round of separate talks with the government and unified opposition delegations on Nov. 28, focusing on constitutional reform as well as elections. But Ja afari arrived a day late and left after two days, saying the opposition had mined the road to the talks by insisting that President Bashar al-Assad could not play any interim role in Syria s political transition. De Mistura told reporters last Thursday that he would assess this week whether either side is trying to sabotage the process. The opposition has been extremely constructive and willing to get down to it, a senior Western diplomat said. They are in a difficult place while being criticized internally and pressured by the fact that the regime is bombing away in eastern Ghouta and other places. The diplomat told Reuters that the government s failure to return as scheduled on Dec. 5 had been a clear sign of not being interested in engaging in the political process . Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested holding a Syrian congress in the Russian city of Sochi early in 2018. Diplomats see his plan as a bid to draw a line under the war and celebrate Moscow s role as the power that tipped the balance of the war and became the key player in the peace process. | 0fake |
BREAKING: PLANNED PARENTHOOD PULLS A LAME PR STUNT AND GETS BUSTED | Desperation has set in and Planned parenthood is resorting to messy stunts that try and make anti-abortion groups look bad. I just don t think these ghouls realize that no matter what they do, this is evil and wrong Planned Parenthood claims on several of its websites that the organization s web operations have been attacked by extremists, but this so-called hacking has all the hallmarks of an orchestrated public relations stunt.Numerous people on Twitter pointed to evidence suggesting that this so-called hack wasn t a hack at all:A review of the source code of the main page that appears at PlannedParenthood.org shows that as of 9:30 a.m. today, the page is listed as a Campaign and uses a specific template named Site Down Tempalte (the typo is theirs). The same page then directs visitors to the Facebook page of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the political fundraising arm of the nation s largest abortion provider.And that s where Planned Parenthood s hacking facade begins to crumble. On the splash page declaring that the organization was hacked, visitors are asked Why do you stand with Planned Parenthood and invited to share their stories on a separate page.And wouldn t you know it, that page functions perfectly.What next Planned Parenthood, you gonna stage a fake bombing or arson at one of your abortion clinics as a fundraising hoax? I m sure your pals at the SPLC could supply a list of likely suspects to frame.It s just a shame these ghouls can t cry racism or homophobia. Hey, maybe they should expand their services to include sex change operations or race reassignments . I bet Bruce Jenner and Rachel Dolezal would be onboard with that.Via: Blur Brain | 1real |
The Trump presidency on Feb 16 at 8:08 p.m. EST | (Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday: Trump dismisses a growing controversy about ties between his aides and Russia as a “ruse” and a “scam” perpetrated by a hostile news media, and denies any of his associates had contacts with Moscow before last year’s election. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, says he does not see the conditions for military collaboration with Russia - a blow to Moscow’s hopes for repairing ties with the United States following Trump’s election. Trump says he will issue a new executive order to replace his controversial directive suspending travel to the United States by citizens of seven mostly Muslim countries. Trump announces his new choice to lead the Department of Labor, former National Labor Relations Board member Alexander Acosta, after his original pick withdrew under congressional pressure. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, has turned down the offer, a senior White House official says. The Senate moves closer to approving President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency even as nearly 800 former officials urge the chamber to reject the nominee. U.S.-ISRAEL The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says the United States still supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a day after Trump suggested he was open to new ways to achieve peace. Trump’s uttering the phrase “one-state” - rather than a two-state solution to the conflict, the bedrock of international diplomacy for two decades - took him to a place in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where past presidents feared to tread. Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Israel faces repeated heckling at a Senate confirmation hearing before apologizing for his stinging criticism of liberal American Jews and promising to be less inflammatory in an official capacity. The confirmation hearing for Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, conservative federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch, will begin on March 20, the panel’s Republican chairman says. Businesses shut their doors, students skip class and thousands of demonstrators take to the streets in cities across the United States on Thursday to Trump’s immigration policies. Trump and Republicans in Congress say they will soon unveil plans to repeal and replace Obamacare, providing a timeframe for a legislative goal they have struggled with for weeks. | 0fake |
Iraqi forces score major gains south of Mosul | Iraqi forces score major gains south of Mosul Fri Oct 28, 2016 12:1AM
Altaf AhmadPress TV, South Mosul
Government forces are advancing on the Daesh-held city of Mosul in northern Iraq. The Commander in Chief of Iraq’s Emergency Response Division says the country army and allied forces have liberated over 1,200 square kilometers of land in Mosul’s south since the beginning of the battle last week. The Iraqi troops are expected to launch a key offensive to liberate more key ground south of Mosul in the days to come. | 1real |
Former Ford, Bush national security adviser Scowcroft endorses Clinton | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to two Republican U.S. presidents, on Wednesday endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president over Donald Trump, in a snub of the Republican Party’s likely nominee by a prominent member of its security wing. “The presidency requires the judgment and the knowledge to make tough calls under pressure,” the Republican elder statesman said in a statement. “I believe Hillary Clinton has the wisdom and experience to lead our country at this critical time.” Scowcroft, 91, served as national security adviser under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Ford was president from 1974 to 1977 and Bush from 1989 to 1993. He joined a number of well-known Republicans defecting due to the prospect of a Trump presidency, including Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush. Armitage gave Clinton, 68, who was secretary of state under Democratic President Barack Obama, his backing last week. Trump “doesn’t appear to be a Republican, he doesn’t appear to want to learn about issues. So, I’m going to vote for Mrs. Clinton,” Armitage told Politico at the time. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Scowcroft’s endorsement of Clinton. Trump, 70, who has never held elected office, often boasts on the campaign trail his relative newness to politics, appealing to voters disillusioned by the current political climate. Despite that facet of his appeal - which helped Trump beat 16 rivals in the campaign’s primary phase to become his party’s presumptive nominee - establishment Republicans worry that his inexperience and brash style will alienate foreign allies and other international partners. Among his proposals, Trump has criticized NATO, a cornerstone of U.S. security policy, and said he would consider letting Japan and South Korea develop their own nuclear weapons instead of relying on the United States for protection against North Korea and China. “Secretary Clinton shares my belief that America must remain the world’s indispensable leader,” Scowcroft said. “She understands that our leadership and engagement beyond our borders makes the world, and therefore the United States, more secure and prosperous.” Trump has said he would strengthen national security, but has offered few details about his plans, other than his proposals to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexican border and for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Many national security experts have expressed alarm over the proposed ban and have warned that Trump’s fiery rhetoric on the campaign trail is fueling extremism. | 0fake |
White House to host fresh biofuels talks to help refiners: sources | (Reuters) - The White House will host talks between the rival oil and ethanol industries on Wednesday in hopes of brokering a deal to help refiners struggling to meet the country’s biofuels policy, according to sources familiar with the matter. The meeting comes after the White House last week pressured Midwest lawmakers to take part in talks over possible tweaks to the Renewable Fuels Standard, a law that requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of biofuels, mainly corn-based ethanol, into the nation’s fuel supply each year. A handful of refiners say the law is threatening to put them out of business. But ethanol interests have said the refineries can pass along the costs at the pumps and have vehemently opposed any changes to the regulation. The meeting on Wednesday will include staff from the offices of Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, both representing the oil-refining industry, according to the sources. On the corn side, staff will be present from the offices of Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa, along with Deb Fischer of Nebraska, the sources said. Staff from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture were also expected to attend. A spokesman for Grassley confirmed that “staff-level dialogue and meetings” were under way but did not provide details. Officials for the other senators and the White House did not comment. One source familiar with the matter said the meeting would likely focus on short-term fixes to help oil refiners on the U.S. East Coast who say they are struggling with the costs of meeting the RFS requirements. Refining companies - like Philadelphia Energy Solutions PESC.N and Monroe Energy, both of Pennsylvania, along with Texas giant Valero Energy Corp (VLO.N) - that do not have adequate facilities to blend biofuels into their products are required to purchase blending credits called RINs from rivals that do. RINs prices have surged this year. The source said talks on Wednesday could center on solutions like a price cap for RINs or waivers to certain refiners that are at risk of going bankrupt without relief. The governors of both Texas and Pennsylvania have already formally requested such waivers from the administration. The industry has requested tweaks to the policy in the past that would cut the annual volume targets for biofuels, allow ethanol exports to be counted against those targets, or shift the blending burden to supply terminals from refiners. But the Trump administration has ruled in favor of Big Corn and against the refining industry in a series of decisions this year. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulator which administers the RFS, slightly increased biofuels volumes targets for 2018. The refining industry has also been seeking a longer-term overhaul of the RFS before it expires in 2022, but such a change would require an act of Congress and has met with stiff resistance from the corn lobby. The RFS was introduced more than a decade ago by President George W. Bush as a way to boost U.S. agriculture, slash energy imports and cut emissions, and it has since fostered a market for ethanol amounting to 15 billion gallons a year. | 0fake |
Mary Keitany of Kenya Wins 3rd Straight New York City Marathon - The New York Times | Mary Keitany, a mother of two, went out for a run on Sunday morning. She started at the foot of the Bridge on Staten Island and worked her way through the city. About 10 miles into her run, in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Keitany picked up the pace, the first signal to those running with her that she was not in the mood for a group run. She soon surged again, effectively saying, “Goodbye, everyone I’ll see you at brunch. ” It was no ordinary weekend run. Keitany, a marathon dynamo who trains at 7, 500 feet in Kenya’s western highlands, put on a virtuoso solo performance that is uncommon for the streets of New York. It resulted in her third consecutive New York City Marathon title. She was so far in front of her competitors that she could have taken a stroll through the Sheep Meadow in Central Park on her way to the finish line. Instead, Keitany took the most direct path, at a punishing pace that no one else could maintain, her body gliding along for 26. 2 miles without any apparent struggle. Keitany finished in 2 hours 24 minutes 26 seconds, with the finisher nowhere in sight. “I was not planning to do this, but I had a time I wanted to run, and I needed to keep the pace,” Keitany said of her breakaway. “I’ve run alone many times, and I trained well. And if anyone caught me, I was going to chase them. ” A from Eritrea, Ghirmay Ghebreslassie, won the men’s race. He emerged from a tight pack of three at Mile 20 and blew kisses at onlookers as he won in 2:07:51. He is the youngest winner in race history. Ghebreslassie, who won the world championship in Beijing in 2015 at 19, took fourth place in the Rio Olympics. He was followed Sunday by Lucas Rotich of Kenya (2:08:53). Abdi Abdirahman, a who is based in Arizona, finished in third (2:11:23). Keitany’s unexpected break from the lead pack threw the women’s race into early upheaval as her competitors stretched out one by one along the course, jockeying for the remaining two podium spots. Sally Kipyego of Kenya, the 2012 Olympic silver medalist in the 10, 000 meters, placed second in 2:28:01, more than three and a half minutes behind Keitany, and Molly Huddle of the United States, in her marathon debut, was third in 2:28:13. Keitany’s push so early in the race seemed to wreak mental havoc on her competitors, who were forced to either try to keep up or hope that she could be caught later. “On the breakaway, I had to decide if I go or stay,” Huddle said. “I kind of went a little harder around Mile 8 and was alone for a while. Then slowed down a little bit too much on the bridge at Mile 15, and I think that just — I need to measure myself a little better. ” Huddle held back, but that meant Keitany’s lead would grow. Joyce Chepkirui, also from Kenya, chose to follow. But that proved fatal she was unable to sustain the pace and fell back before the halfway mark. Overtaken by Huddle, she faded to fourth. Taking off alone is a risky move, particularly early in a race, when a chase pack has more than an hour to band together in pursuit. In this case, Keitany’s strategy led to the largest margin of victory in the woman’s race — 3 minutes 34. 98 seconds — since Grete Waitz won in 1980. Breakaways in this marathon are common, but early ones can ruin a as often as they carry her to victory. Many make their moves at Mile 16 when they have safely cleared the Queensboro Bridge and are in Manhattan — and they are often overtaken in wild chases through the final miles of Central Park. In 2000, Abdelkhader of Morocco ran away from the Kenyans chasing him far earlier than he was supposed to, leaving even the pacesetter behind and causing an upset. And in 1988, Steve Jones of Britain ran alone to set the fastest time in seven years, with a 3:21 margin of victory that almost rivaled Keitany’s. Meb Keflezighi, then 38, used the tactic in the 2014 Boston Marathon, when at Mile 11 he eluded a formidable field of younger athletes who figured the aging Keflezighi would fade back. Other Americans, including Ryan Hall, said they realized Keflezighi had an opportunity to win and slowed the pace of the chase pack. By the time his younger, fitter rivals realized his lead was insurmountable, it was too late. Keflezighi became the first American to win the race since 1983. Frank Shorter pulled away just beyond nine miles to take gold in the 1972 Munich Olympics. And at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Joan Benoit Samuelson took the lead early on as well, at Mile 3 in the first Olympic women’s marathon, heading to her historic victory. “I tell people all the time, you need to run your own race,” Benoit said Sunday. “That’s what Mary did if you play into somebody else’s hands, especially early on, it can foul your plans. ” Benoit’s decision to take the lead was spontaneous. “I didn’t want to take the lead that early, but I knew what I was capable of running, and I went with it,” she said. “You’ve got to go with what you know. ” It has grown less common for women to risk taking off alone in the New York City Marathon, especially after the race switched to the separate start for the women’s professional field in 2002. In a pack, runners can take turns keeping a pace and blocking headwinds. But running together often leaves the race decided by decisive breakaways in the final miles. So if a marathoner is confident that she can maintain the pace while running alone, absorbing all of the wind, she might try to break away from the pack early to avoid a tactical sprint near the finish. In the 2011 New York City Marathon, Keitany broke away but was overtaken by two Ethiopians who steadily reeled her in. Buzunesh Deba of Ethiopia, who lives in the Bronx, ran nearly the entire course minutes ahead of the rest of the professional field with her friend and teammate Tigist Tufa through bracing wind in 2013 before Priscah Jeptoo of Kenya caught her in Central Park. Deba finished second. Keitany said she did not plan to challenge the field so assertively. But of the women on the podium, she was the only one who had completed a marathon before Sunday. Kipyego, who dropped out of this race last year, said: “I wanted to run within myself and stick to something that I felt was more conservative. I kind of came in thinking that I’d rather run a much more conservative race, hold something back, and be able to have a good experience just because this a new distance for me. ” Huddle agreed. “I was kind of just surviving at the end and looking ahead and really trying to catch Joyce and trying to catch Sally, but you were too fast,” Huddle said to Kipyego. “So just kind of flailing the last 10K probably, well, probably the last 10 miles. ” Keitany became the first woman to win New York three times in a row since Waitz won five from 1982 to 1986. As her orange sneakers bounced steadily off the pavement through the five boroughs and into Central Park, Keitany showed that she had no problem running alone — provided she has a chance to start at all. Although she is the woman in history and her country’s (2:18:37) Kenya left her off its Olympic team this year. The snub left her to focus on her fall race. She chose to execute a bold maneuver against a weak field, vacated by those who had already spent themselves at the Olympics in August or at other fall marathons. Keitany acknowledged the risk in her race strategy Sunday. “Sometimes if you break off and you’re not ready to follow through, they will catch you,” she said. “But I was ready. ” | 0fake |
WOW! LEFTIST LIBRARIAN REJECTS Shipment Of Children’s Books Donated By Melania Trump…Her Reason For Rejecting The Books Is DISGUSTING! | A school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, rejected a shipment of books that were donated by first lady Melania Trump, according to CBS Boston.#HBFamilyReading: "Dear Mrs. Trump": @reflectlibrary says, Thanks but no thanks to the First Lady + Dr. Seuss https://t.co/98SUPkjUN6 pic.twitter.com/3t6U6vvwPI The Horn Book (@HornBook) September 26, 2017CBS Boston on Wednesday reported that Liz Phipps Soeiro of Cambridgeport Elementary School turned down the works Trump intended to send.The White House chose one school in all 50 states to receive a package of 10 books authored by children s literary author Dr. Seuss.The initiative was meant to promote education and childhood literacy as part of National Read A Book Day.Soeiro on Tuesday penned an editorial for the Horn Book s Family Reading blog explaining why her school did not need the donation. My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in literary science, she wrote. Multiple studies show that schools with professionally staffed libraries improve student performance, Soeiro added.Trump s package reportedly included such Seuss classics as Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Soeiro criticized Seuss for being the only author represented in Trump s donation, citing controversy over some of his illustrations. You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a clich , a tired and worn ambassador for children s literature, she told Trump. Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes. According to the School Library Journal when social justice warrior, Lizz Phipps Soeiro isn t influencing the minds of young children with her progressive drivel, she s working to influence the minds of the parents: Once a week, she invites a speaker for casual meetings with parents at the library. Guests have included the mayor, school committee members, and local artists. Following President Trump s executive order banning travel from six Muslim nations, she invited a representative from the Council on American Islamic Relations and an attorney from the Muslim Justice League to speak to an audience including some 25 Muslim families about their rights. The lawyer met with individual families afterward. The library s collection reflects Phipps Soeiro s commitment to social justice. Titles such as Margarita Engle s Drum Dream Girl and Debbie Levy and Elizabeth Baddeley s I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark spark discussions about government and fairness. During a field trip to city hall, students sat in council chambers and asked questions of city leaders.(So in other words, a donation of books from the wife of our Republican President just didn t fit into the public school library that employs a narrow-minded liberal librarian.)The Cambridge School system on Wednesday released a statement noting the opinions Soeiro expressed do not represent the district. In this instance, the employee was not authorized to accept or reject donated books on behalf of the school or school district, it said. We have counseled the employee on all relevant policies, including the policy against public resources being used for political purposes. CircaSo there you have it the librarian is being counseled and NOT fired!If this story happened two years ago, and we inserted Michelle Obama s name into the story instead of Melania Trump s, does anyone think this would be a major news story with the school librarian s face plastered all over every major news network?Liz Phipps Soeiro can be found on Twitter at: @Cport_SpecialHere is the nasty letter that was written by Liz Phipps Soeiro in reply to Melania Trump s sweet gesture:Dear Mrs. Trump,Thank you for the ten Dr. Seuss titles that you sent my school library in recognition of this year s National Read a Book Day. (Sent second-day air, no less! That must have been expensive.) I m proud that you recognized my school as something special. It truly is. Our beautiful and diverse student body is made up of children from all over the world; from different socioeconomic statuses; with a spectrum of gender expressions and identities; with a range of abilities; and of varied racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. According to the White House website, you selected one school per state by working with the Department of Education to identify schools with programs that have achieved high standards of excellence, recognized by State and National awards and Blue Ribbon Awards Each of those carefully vetted schools received ten books: Seuss-isms!; Because a Little Bug Went KaChoo; What Pet Should I Get?; The Cat in the Hat; I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; The Foot Book; Wacky Wednesday; Green Eggs and Ham; and Oh, the Places You ll Go!. My students were interested in reading your enclosed letter and impressed with the beautiful bookplates with your name and the indelible White House stamp, however, we will not be keeping the titles for our collection. I d like to respectfully offer my explanation. * * * * * My school and my library are indeed award-winning. I work in a district that has plenty of resources, which contributes directly to excellence. Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an amazing city with robust social programming, a responsive city government, free all-day kindergarten, and well-paid teachers (relatively speaking many of us can t afford to live in the city in which we teach). My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in library science. Multiple studies show that schools with professionally staffed libraries improve student performance. The American Association of School Librarians has a great infographic on these findings. Many schools around the state and country can t compete. Yearly per-pupil spending in Cambridge is well over $20,000; our city s values are such that given a HUGE range in the socioeconomic status of our residents, we believe that each and every child deserves the best free education possible and are working hard to make that a reality (most classrooms maintain a 60/40 split between free/reduced lunch and paid lunch). This offers our Title I school and the district a lot of privilege and room for programming and pedagogy to foster high standards of excellence. Even so, we still struggle to close the achievement gap, retain teachers of color, and dismantle the systemic white supremacy in our institution. But hell, we test well! And in the end, it appears that data and not children are what matters. Meanwhile, school libraries around the country are being shuttered. Cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit are suffering through expansion, privatization, and school choice with no interest in outcomes of children, their families, their teachers, and their schools. Are those kids any less deserving of books simply because of circumstances beyond their control? Why not go out of your way to gift books to underfunded and underprivileged communities that continue to be marginalized and maligned by policies put in place by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos? Why not reflect on those high standards of excellence beyond only what the numbers suggest? Secretary DeVos would do well to scaffold and lift schools instead of punishing them with closures and slashed budgets.So, my school doesn t have a NEED for these books. And then there s the matter of the books themselves. You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a clich , a tired and worn ambassador for children s literature. As First Lady of the United States, you have an incredible platform with world-class resources at your fingertips. Just down the street you have access to a phenomenal children s librarian: Dr. Carla Hayden, the current Librarian of Congress. I have no doubt Dr. Hayden would have given you some stellar recommendations.Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes. Open one of his books (If I Ran a Zoo or And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example), and you ll see the racist mockery in his art. Grace Hwang Lynch s School Library Journal article, Is the Cat in the Hat Racist? Read Across America Shifts Away from Dr. Seuss and Toward Diverse Books, reports on Katie Ishizuka s work analyzing the minstrel characteristics and trope nature of Seuss s characters. Scholar Philip Nel s new book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books, further explores and shines a spotlight on the systemic racism and oppression in education and literature. I am honored that you recognized my students and our school. I can think of no better gift for children than books; it was a wonderful gesture, if one that could have been better thought out. Books can be a powerful way to learn about and experience the world around us; they help build empathy and understanding. In return, I m attaching a list of ten books (it s the librarian in me) that I hope will offer you a window into the lives of the many children affected by the policies of your husband s administration. You and your husband have a direct impact on these children s lives. Please make time to learn about and value them. I hope you share these books with your family and with kids around the country. And I encourage you to reach out to your local librarian for more recommendations. Warmly, Liz Phipps Soeiro School Librarian Cambridge, MALiz Phipps Soeiro is an elementary school librarian in the Cambridge, MA, Public Schools. She is an advocate for inclusive libraries and active in her community to create spaces that are welcoming to all students. She tweets @Cport_Special @ReflectLibrary and blogs at reflectivelibrary.blogspot.com | 1real |
Factbox: Contenders, picks for key jobs in Trump's administration | (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview aired on Friday that he expected to have most members of his Cabinet announced next week. Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Below are people mentioned as contenders for senior roles as Trump works to form his administration before taking office on Jan. 20, according to Reuters sources and media reports. See the end of list for posts already filled. * Mitt Romney, 2012 Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor * Rudy Giuliani, Republican former mayor of New York City * Bob Corker, Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee * David Petraeus, retired general and former CIA director who pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information that he shared with his biographer, with whom he was having an affair * Michael McCaul, Republican U.S. representative from Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee * David Clarke, Milwaukee County sheriff and vocal Trump supporter * Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, former leader of Southern Command * Joe Arpaio, outgoing Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff, after losing his bid for re-election, who campaigned for Trump * Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state * Frances Townsend, who was homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Republican President George W. Bush * Jeff Holmstead, energy lawyer, former EPA official during George W. Bush administration * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Leslie Rutledge, Republican Arkansas attorney general * Carol Comer, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management * Scott Pruitt, Republican Oklahoma attorney general * Kevin Cramer, Republican U.S. representative from North Dakota * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Heidi Heitkamp, Democratic U.S. senator from North Dakota * Joe Manchin, Democratic U.S. senator from West Virginia * Gary Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc * Larry Nichols, co-founder of Devon Energy Corp * James Connaughton, chief executive of Nautilus Data Technologies and a former environmental adviser to President George W. Bush * Rick Perry, former Republican Texas governor * Forrest Lucas, founder of oil products company Lucas Oil * Heidi Heitkamp, Democratic U.S. senator from North Dakota * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Cathy McMorris Rodgers, U.S. representative from Washington state and House Republican Conference chair * Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee * Jan Brewer, former Republican Arizona governor * Mary Fallin, Republican Oklahoma governor * Ray Washburne, chief executive of investment company Charter Holdings * U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency * Ronald Burgess, retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former Defense Intelligence Agency chief * Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency * Pete Hoekstra, former Republican U.S. representative from Michigan * Rudy Giuliani, former Republican mayor of New York City * Dan DiMicco, former chief executive of steel producer Nucor Corp * Andrew Puzder, chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants * Lou Barletta, Republican U.S. representative from Pennsylvania * Victoria Lipnic, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member and former Labor Department official during the George W. Bush administration * Dr. Ben Carson, former 2016 Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon * Gary Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc * Mick Mulvaney, Republican U.S. representative from South Carolina * Scott Brown, former Republican U.S. senator from Massachusetts * Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee * Jeff Miller, former Republican U.S. representative from Florida who was chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee The Trump transition team confirmed the president-elect would choose from a list of 21 names he drew up during his campaign, including Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah and William Pryor, a federal judge with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. * Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus * Steve Bannon, former head of the conservative website Breitbart News * Jeff Sessions, Republican U.S. senator from Alabama and senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (subject to Senate confirmation) * Republican U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo from Kansas (subject to Senate confirmation) * Michael Flynn, retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency * Nikki Haley, Republican South Carolina governor (subject to Senate confirmation) * Betsy DeVos, Republican donor and former chair of the Michigan Republican Party (subject to Senate confirmation) * Tom Price, Republican U.S. representative from Georgia, orthopedic surgeon (subject to Senate confirmation) * Elaine Chao, former labor secretary and deputy transportation secretary under Republican Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, respectively (subject to Senate confirmation). Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell * Steven Mnuchin, former Goldman Sachs Group Inc executive and Trump’s campaign finance chairman (subject to Senate confirmation) * Wilbur Ross, billionaire investor, chairman of Invesco Ltd subsidiary WL Ross & Co (subject to Senate confirmation) * James Mattis, retired Marine Corps general (subject to Senate confirmation) | 0fake |
Peru president, crying 'coup,' signals VPs would quit if he ousted | LIMA (Reuters) - Peru s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Wednesday signaled both his vice presidents would resign if Congress forced him from office, calling an opposition bid to remove him a coup attempt that had to be resisted. The rightwing populist party that controls Congress, Popular Force, aims to oust Kuczynski in a vote on Thursday on grounds he is morally unfit to govern, after finding he once had business connections with a company at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal. Kuczynski, who denies anything improper or illegal, said Popular Force was misusing its majority to attempt a power grab. The constitution and democracy are under attack. We re facing a coup dressed in supposedly legitimate legal interpretations, he said in a late night speech on national television. This is a conviction that my two vice presidents share, because neither wants to be part of a government born of an unjust and anti-democratic maneuver, Kuczynski said. He was flanked by First Vice President Martin Vizcarra and Second Vice President Mercedes Araoz. If Kuczynski loses Thursday s congressional vote to remove him and his two vice presidents depart as well, new presidential and legislative elections would be called. A 79-year-old former Wall Street banker, Kuczynski has struggled to govern since winning last year s presidential election but only a small share of congressional seats for his center-right party. Popular Force says its efforts to remove him are well within the bounds of the constitution and key to its fight against corruption. He simply doesn t care about the country, Popular Force lawmaker Luz Salgado said after Kuczynski s address. Earlier this week, Salgado called for Vizcarra to govern the country through 2021, when Kucyznski s term ends. Vizcarra and Araoz both pledged their loyalty to the center-right president on Wednesday but declined to comment on whether that meant they would resign if he was removed from office. Araoz told Reuters on Sunday that she and Vizcarra would not quit. In recent days, Kuczynski s supporters have increasingly called for his vice presidents to refuse to replace him. They believe new elections would cost Popular Force its majority amid widespread contempt for elected officials as a graft scandal taints much of the country s political class. But investors worry a new ballot could sweep anti-establishment candidates to power in one of Latin America s most stable economies. Kuczynski s government does not think it will come to that, said a government source. It expects about a dozen opposition lawmakers to oppose the motion or abstain from voting, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Eighty-seven votes are needed to oust Kuczynski. Congress passed the motion to start presidential vacancy proceedings last week with 93 votes. On Wednesday, thousands of Peruvians marched in front of Congress to denounce what they saw as Popular Force s bid to exploit the crisis to sabotage country s democratic institutions, pointing to its recent efforts to also oust the attorney general and a justice in the Constitutional Court. Popular Force emerged from the rightwing populist movement started in the 1990s by former President Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year-sentence for graft and human rights crimes during his autocratic 1990-2000 government. The United States, where Kuczynski once held citizenship, said Peru was a strong democracy. We are confident that the Peruvian people and institutions will address this situation according to Peru s constitutional norms, the U.S. State Department s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs said. The political crisis stems from a disclosure by Brazilian builder Odebrecht [ODBES.UL], which has landed elites in jail from Colombia to the Dominican Republic since acknowledging bribing officials across the region for much of the century. Responding to a request by Congress, Odebrecht said it paid more than $4 million to consulting companies owned by Kuczynski or a close business associate for about a decade starting in 2004. Some deposits were made to a company Kuczynski owned while he was minister in a government that awarded Odebrecht lucrative contracts. Odebrecht said Saturday that there was no indication the transactions were part of its past corrupt dealings with politicians, which it can only discuss with prosecutors. Kuczynski once strenuously denied ever having any ties with Odebrecht. He has since apologized to Peru for not disclosing his connections with the company, blaming forgetfulness and poor organization of his personal records after decades of work in finance and public administration. But he said there was nothing improper about the payments. Being careless and sloppy is a defect but it is not...a tool for dishonesty and much, much less, for crime, Kuczynski said. Kuczynski had once raised hopes that his decades of finance and public administration experience would usher in a new period of investments to spur faster economic growth in the world s No.2 copper producer. But in a sign of how the crisis has engulfed his government, Peru postponed an auction of a $2 billion copper project, scheduled for Wednesday, until February. | 0fake |
Leftists Claim Dress Code Promotes “Rape Culture” | Pinterest
At a prestigious Boston school, they have a pretty strict dress code. No gang-related colors, no cut-offs, nothing too offensive or revealing.
Women at Boston Latin School can’t wear skirts whose hemlines are more than four inches above the knee and their bra straps can’t be the “spaghetti” style, where they’re so thin they’re barely there. This is a middle and high school folks … not a college for adults.
It’s a way of showing a little decorum – a little respect for yourself and for the school.
And it promotes rape culture .
Because for radical feminists, telling them not to dress provocatively is telling them that men are sexist pigs who simply can’t resist the wiles of a woman.
They call it “victim-blaming” and while there’s a point to it – you can’t blame a woman for being assault if she’s jogging alone in a park, but certainly you can bring up a woman’s attire if it is specifically designed to attract attention from the opposite sex.
Let’s be honest: Women sometimes dress for attention. They want guys to look at them.
But under leftist-feminist theory, they shouldn’t.
So, as HeatStreet reports, there’s a Change.org petition that claims this dress code sends the message that “we live in a patriarchal society where men can decide whether a female’s clothing is appropriate or inappropriate.”
The dress code, they claim, creates a “a sense of shame towards girls [sic] bodies” and reinforces the notion that “yes, it is our fault when girls get raped because they should have covered up and avoided the situation by dressing in a way that does not attract another person.”
I’m not sure what these women want. Do they want to be able to attend school wearing micro-miniskirts and just bras? Pasties? Maybe we shouldn’t have a dress code at all?
In reaction to the idiotic controversy, Boston Latin School changed their policy, allowing women to wear “leggings” as long as they’re not “see-through.” The rest of the policy will stay in place until Nov. 1 – then it will probably be changed again.
Here’s how their “petition” reads: By allowing the school to dress code us, we are telling the school several things: Yes, we still live in a patriarchal society where men can decide whether a female’s clothing is appropriate or inappropriate. Yes, a body should be covered in order to be attractive. Establishing a sense of shame towards girls bodies is okay and perfectly acceptable. Yes, a girl’s body is a sinful temptation that needs to be covered up at all costs for others to focus on their education. Yes, a female’s body is more tempting and sexual than a male’s body. Yes, it is our fault when girls get raped because they should have covered up and avoided the situation by dressing in a way that does not attract another person. Are these statements correct to you? Is it okay to assign a dress code in this manner? If the answer is NO! then sign this petition to tell Mr. Contompasis to reconsider his dress code restrictions.
What a bunch of nonsense. These are CHILDREN. They do not get a say in establishing a school’s dress code. PERIOD. | 1real |
NEW STUDY Shows Why Atheists and People Who Agree With Immigrants That Bash Their Country Use LESS BRAIN POWER | It s not at all surprising that at least 28% of Democrats consider themselves to be atheists. Fascinating This has to be embarrassing . . . if you re an atheist. A new study performed at the University of York used targeted magnetism to shut down part of the brain. The result: belief in God disappeared among more than 30 percent of participants.That in itself may not seem so embarrassing, but consider that the specific part of the brain they frazzled was the posterior medial frontal cortex the part associated with detecting and solving problems, i.e., reasoning and logic.In other words, when you shut down the part of the brain most associated with logic and reasoning, greater levels of atheism result.You ve heard the phrase, I don t have enough faith to be an atheist ? Apparently, we can now also say, I have too many brains to be an atheist. The American VisionDaily Mail The study was carried out by Dr Keise Izuma from the University of York and Colin Holbrook from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).They recruited 38 participants with an average age of 21, to take part in the study.Each of these participants said they held significant religious beliefs, and the majority held moderate to extremely conservative political beliefs.Political views were important because it suggested they were more likely to have stronger viewpoints on immigration.Half of these participants formed part of a control group and received a low-level sham procedure that did not affect their brains.The other half received enough energy through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to lower activity in the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC).This part of the brain, located near the surface and roughly a few inches up from the forehead, is associated with detecting problems and triggering responses that address them.Following the treatment, all the participants were first asked to think about death before being asked questions about their religious beliefs and their feelings about immigrants.The death task including writing brief responses on the subject of their own death.To address their levels of prejudice, participants were asked to read two essays one critical and one positive written by an immigrant from Latin America about the US.After reading each essay, participants rated how much they liked the person who wrote the essay and how much they agreed with their views.Religious belief was measured using a version of the Supernatural Belief Scale.Items were presented in random order and rated according to the same scale used in the immigrant ratings.Questions included: There exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God , There exist good personal spiritual beings, whom we might call angels and There exists an evil personal spiritual being, whom we might call the Devil. Circa So how do Democrats and Republicans stack up when it comes to having faith vs. athesists?According to the Pew Research Center, nones people who don t identify with any religion make up 23 percent of American adults.In the Democratic Party, that number is even bigger. 28 percent of Democrats are non-religious, Pew s research shows.Conversely, people who identify as non-religious are much more likely to vote Democratic. 70 percent of self-identifying atheists, for example, voted for President Obama in 2012, according to Pew.One of those atheists is James White, a Texas delegate for Hillary Clinton at this year s DNC. At the convention on Monday, White was wearing a shirt that read, I m actually an atheist. White said he still feels it s necessary to publicly broadcast his beliefs to promote acceptance of atheism within the party. When we make it safe for people to realize that a nearly 60-year-old Texas middle-aged white guy is an atheist and a Democrat, those things make it easier for others to come forward too, he said. There has been some progress, White said. Earlier this year, the Texas Democratic Party adopted three secular resolutions into its official policy platform.The investigators additionally found that the magnetic stimulation had the greatest effect on reactions to the critical author in the essay test. We think that hearing criticisms of your group s values, perhaps especially from a person you perceive as an outsider, is processed as an ideological sort of threat, said Dr Izuma. One way to respond to such threats is to double down on your group values, increasing your investment in them, and reacting more negatively to the critic, he continued. When we disrupted the brain region that usually helps detect and respond to threats, we saw a less negative, less ideologically motivated reaction to the critical author and his opinions. Daily Mail | 1real |
Trump Explains Why He Fired James Comey, F*cks Up And Admits He Should Be Impeached (VIDEO) | After kicking the morning off with a tweet storm attacking Democrats for criticizing his choice to fire FBI Director James Comey, Trump only seemed to make matters worse as the day went on.While meeting with pool reporters in the White House, Trump gave a public explanation for the termination of Comey, and accidentally made himself look horrible in the process. Keeping his message short and sweet, Trump said that the reason he fired Comey was because: He wasn t doing a good job, very simply. He was not doing a good job. You can watch that baffling moment below, where Trump cluelessly insults himself and ignored every question about Russia before kicking all the reporters out:That s certainly a strange thing for Trump to say, because by now he must know that his own approval rating is historically low and it continues to plummet with every failure his administration suffers. If Trump agrees that an FBI Director can be fired for their poor performance, it only makes sense that the same should apply to Trump.There s overwhelming evidence that Trump s job performance sucks and it s not just his disastrous approval rating or the fact that polls show that most Americans want him out. From Trump s failed Muslim travel ban to his disgusting American Health Care Act (Trumpcare), Trump s first 100 days have been filled with failure after failure. There have been several times where Trump had to resort to taking credit for former President Barack Obama s work just to save his image.America is so much worse off now that Trump is in the White House, and if the country has to suffer through the rest of his term, the damage may be irreversible by the time we get a more qualified POTUS. But today, Trump accidentally said those magic words: if Comey can be fired for doing a bad job, so should he.Featured image via Pool / Getty Images | 1real |
EU cranks up criticism of Poland over court reforms, nationalist rally | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission on Wednesday voiced fresh concerns over Poland s plans to reform its courts and EU lawmakers accused Warsaw of promoting intolerance, reflecting deep fears for the rule of law in the country. Poland s nationalist, socially conservative ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), in power since late 2015, is at loggerheads with the EU over its push to bring the courts and state media under more direct government control, as well as over migration and the logging of a primeval forest. PiS says the court reforms are needed for Poland s moral renewal and accuses the EU of heavy-handed meddling in the country s affairs. Critics say the changes threaten judicial independence and spell an erosion of democratic standards. PiS-allied President Andrzej Duda unexpectedly vetoed two of the government s judicial reforms in July and presented his own version of these draft laws, infuriating PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and precipitating a power struggle in the ruling camp. The European Commission s deputy head, Frans Timmermans, told the European Parliament on Wednesday that even the draft laws proposed by Duda - which would row back somewhat from the options for direct government interference in the judiciary envisaged in the original PiS bills - were not acceptable. At this preliminary stage of our assessment, the Commission already notes that certain issues in these draft laws could raise serious concerns, Timmermans told EU lawmakers in their fifth debate on concerns about the rule of law in Poland. Timmermans urged Warsaw to align the drafts with EU democratic on judicial independence. EU concerns about developments in Poland escalated after a nationalist rally in Warsaw at the weekend that saw participants, their faces covered, waving banners bearing anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic slogans such as pure blood, clear mind and Europe will be white or uninhabited . Both Duda and Kaczynski condemned the racist banners but the government defended the march itself, held to mark the 99th anniversary of Polish independence. On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said the march, an annual occurrence since 2010, was valuable and important for stirring patriotism and love for Polish history. There were incidents, it is true, there were banners and slogans that should not be there (...). The incidents are of course, reprehensible, Waszczykowski told reporters. But, he added, the reaction of some politicians and some global media had been manipulated and extremely exaggerated. It is not based on facts, it is based on fake news. I did not see any banners condemning the Jews, for example (...) There were references to migrants or refugees, but I did not hear of any anti-Semitic behavior. Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, who ordered no detentions or arrests of nationalists who displayed white supremacy slogans, though some counterprotesters were detained, said he didn t see any racist banners and thought the Independence Day rally had passed in a very good atmosphere . Prime Minister Beata Szydlo told the conservative wpolityce.pl news portal on Wednesday that Poland is free of anti-Semitism and racism. Marginal incidents should not be identified with the whole nation, she said. But the International Auschwitz Council, an advisory body to Szydlo s office, said it was alarmed about the resurgence of racist and anti-Semitic attitudes and public hate speech. Knowing the tragic history of Auschwitz-Birkenau, there is no doubt where it can lead, it said in a statement. We therefore appeal to European governments for a strong response and effective countermeasures. Many members of the European Parliament on Wednesday joined Jewish and human rights groups in expressing alarm at the attitudes on display during the Nov. 11 rally. This was happening in Warsaw, in Poland, at less than 350 kilometers from Auschwitz and Birkenau, said Guy Verhofstadt, head of the EU parliament s liberal group, referring to the Nazi death camp set up in occupied Poland where more than a million people, mostly Jews, were killed during World War Two. Poland could still be a leader in Europe, but has degraded itself... by politicizing the constitutional court, curtailing civil society, muzzling the free media, he said. Amnesty International echoed that criticism. The Polish government is... increasingly restricting the freedom of assembly and expression, while peddling dangerously xenophobic rhetoric, AI researcher Barbora Cernusakova said. EU lawmakers voted by 438 to 152 against to demand that the 28 member states punish Warsaw by triggering Article 7 of the EU treaty, a procedure that could lead to Warsaw losing its voting rights in the bloc. Such a move is highly unlikely as it requires unanimity and Poland s ally Hungary, whose right-wing government is also under fire from Brussels, has promised to block any sanctions. A more likely punishment would be reducing the generous development funds Poland receives from the EU. The Polish foreign ministry rejected the criticism from Timmermans and the European Parliament, accusing them of stigmatizing an EU member state. There is nothing happening in Poland that would demand a debate by 700 members of the European Parliament, Waszczykowski told reporters. | 0fake |
Iraq accused of violating due process for Islamic State suspects | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi federal and Kurdish regional judiciaries are violating the rights of Islamic State suspects with flawed trials, arbitrary detentions under harsh conditions and broad prosecutions, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. As the Sunni Muslim militant group s self-proclaimed caliphate crumbles following defeats in Iraq and Syria, thousands suspected of joining it have been captured, detained, and put on trial. At least 200 have been sentenced and at least 92 executed, an HRW report said. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, at a weekly news conference on Tuesday, denied that Iraq puts Islamic State suspects on trial without evidence but did not address other parts of the HRW report. His government faces the task of exacting justice on Islamic State members while preventing revenge attacks on people associated with the group that could only undermine efforts to create long-term stability. New York-based HRW said that an 80-page report it released early on Tuesday finds serious legal shortcomings that undermine efforts to bring (Islamic State) fighters, members, and affiliates to justice. A spokesman for Iraq s Supreme Judicial Council, which supervises the federal judiciary, declined to comment on the contents of the report ahead of its release. Issues highlighted by the HRW report: - It is too easy to accuse someone of belonging to Islamic State and have them detained. Wanted lists or community accusations without evidence can result in the detention of suspects for months even if wrongly accused. - Detention centers are overcrowded and authorities fail to separate children from adult detainees. Iraqi law states detainees should be brought to a judge within 24 hours of capture but this does not happen. - Detainees are often subject to torture, not granted access to lawyers, and their families are not informed of their whereabouts. Iraqi authorities say they have investigated these allegations but have not released any findings. - The reliance of Iraqi and Kurdish courts on counter terrorism laws to prosecute suspects rather than on laws in the criminal code means crimes are not prioritized by gravity and victims are not included in the process as suspects are not tried for individual acts of murder, rape, torture or slavery. - Proving guilt under counter-terrorism laws is easier as a judge only needs proof that a defendant was a member of Islamic State to find them guilty. This means that anyone from cooks and doctors serving under the group to actual fighters is subject to the same sentences, which range from life in prison to death. This stretches Iraq s resources thin as casting such a wide net means the courts lack the time or manpower to go through all cases, the HRW report says, which prevents victims from getting personal justice. HRW said that when it raised concerns about prosecutors not charging suspects with crimes under the criminal code, Iraqi judicial authorities said there was no need. Genocide and terrorism are the same crime, why would we need a separate charge for genocide? the report quoted one counter-terrorism judge as saying. | 0fake |
WATCH: Tamron Hall Tears Top Trump Adviser Apart Piece By Piece | One of Donald Trump s top advisers repeatedly tried to change the subject during an interview on MSNBC on Monday but Tamron Hall was having none of it.From the Republican nominee s refusal to release his taxes to his illegal donation to Pam Bondi to his immigration policy, Hall grilled A.J. Delgado until she was burned to a crisp.Delgado bragged about 88 retired military veterans endorsing her boss and claimed that it s because Trump is constantly fundraising and donating money to veteran s organizations. Delgado also claimed that Hillary Clinton doesn t have a record of helping veterans.As usual, Trump is slandering Hillary Clinton by lying about what she has done.According to Correct The Record, Hillary Clinton worked tirelessly in the Senate to pass legislation aimed at helping veterans.She introduced the Heroes At Home Act of 2006 and 2007 to help families care for veterans with traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. She fought to increase the survivor benefits for military families from $12,000 to $100,000. In addition, she helped author a new G.I. Bill of Rights and fought to expand retirement and disability as well as family medical leave for veterans as well.Hall pointed out that Trump, on the other hand, hasn t really proved that he donates a lot to veteran s groups because he refuses to release his tax returns.Delgado once again dragged out the tired old excuse that Trump can t release his taxes because he is being audited, but Hall immediately called bullshit. Yes, you can, Hall said. There s nothing that prevents you. Delgado, who is supposed a lawyer, argued with Hall by repeatedly saying that he can t until she finally conceded that legally he can release his taxes. But then she tried to make the discussion about Hillary Clinton s health. Why is it you want them released? Delgado asked. I think the bigger issue is Hillary Clinton s medical records. Unperturbed, Hall made it clear why American voters have the right to see his taxes. We don t know where he s invested his money. There was a New York Times report about ties to Chinese banks, potential investments in Russia. We need to know more about this presidential candidate. Why not release that information? Frankly, it s time for the IRS to speed up and finish their damn audit so that Trump can no longer use it as an excuse.Hall moved on to slamming Trump for whining about Hillary s ties to foreign leaders and claiming that she ran a pay-to-play as Secretary of State. But Hall pointed out that Trump is involved in a real pay-to-play scandal right now because Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi dropped an investigation into Trump University shortly before Trump donated to her campaign. It sounds like a situation of pay-for-play, Hall said, prompting yet more whining from Delgado and yet another attempt to pivot to Hillary Clinton. Pam Bondi asked for that donation before she even knew that some complaints had come into her office, hundreds of complaints, Delgado said, which brings up another question. Why would Bondi kill an investigation even though there were complaints flowing into her office against Trump University? It definitely sounds like Bondi was paid off to drop it.Hall pointed out that if Hillary had donated to Bondi and had a case against her magically dropped that Trump would lose his shit over it. He would say that there s no way Hillary Clinton had this conversation and that this lawsuit did not come up, Hall said. Remember all the suspicions regarding [Attorney General Loretta Lynch] and Bill Clinton on the plane? Donald Trump would not accept that as answer. Delgado then tried to portray the IRS fine against Trump for his $25,000 donation as resulting from a clerical error. Hall knew that Delgado would keep trying to pivot back to attacking Hillary Clinton and she quickly shut her down. I fully realize that you ve come locked and loaded but what we re going to do is we re going to talk about what your candidate is now saying on the campaign trail 62 days out, Hall said before playing a clip of Trump flip-flopping on his immigration message.Once again, Delgado was reduced to desperately trying to pivot to Hillary Clinton instead of answering for her boss clear flip-flop.Here s the video via YouTube.And once again, Tamron Hall proves that she will not take any bullshit from Trump s campaign.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Girl Asks Her 20 Boyfriends To Each Give Her an iPhone, Uses The Money To Buy a House | We have heard the stories about Apple fanatics selling body parts and changing their passport in order to get the latest products from the company, but this latest story coming from China gives a different perspective on how you can use Apple devices as a tool.
As a rather strange tool, in fact: an entrepreneurial Chinese woman is said to have convinced 20 men that she has been dating to buy her iPhones, which she would then sell and use the money as a downpayment for a house.
The purchase of a house is probably the single biggest one-time spending in the lifetime of a person, and it could take long years of hard work, so it is indeed remarkable that the woman found the quick way to get there (however, not the most ethical one, arguably).
Let’s make it clear: the story seems to have started on local Tian Ya Yi Du forum, where someone by the nickname Proud Qiaoba told the story of how her co-worker Xiaoli (not her real name) asked each of her 20 current boyfriends to buy her the new iPhone 7. How in the world is it possible to simulatenously date 20 people remains a mystery that gives this whole story a bit of a fairy tale aura, but knowing that China suffers from a terrible male-to-female ratio let’s assume that is somehow possible.
Xiaoli, whose life remains veiled in secrecy, then sold all of the phones to a suspiciously particular place: mobile phone recycling site Hui Shou Bao, all for a total of 120,000 Chinese yuan, the equivalent of around $17,500. The woman then used the cash for a downpayment towards a countryhouse home.
Xiaoli broke the news when she invited her co-workers for a house warming party. “Everyone in the office is talking about this now. Who knows what her boyfriendsthink now this news has become public.”
From Qiaoba we also learn that Xiaoli “is not from a wealthy family. Her mum is a housewife and her dad is a migrant worker, and she is the oldest daughter. Her parents are getting old and she might be under a lot pressure hoping to buy them a house… But it’s still unbelievable that she could use this method!”
It does indeed sound quite fantastical and made-up, and some have theorized that it’s all just a theory to popularize the local Hui Shou Bao phone re-seller (the company has confirmed that it had indeed sold 20 iPhones from a single person recently).
Meanwhile, the whole story quickly started becoming popular in China: a ’20 mobiles for a house’ hashtag went trending on local microblog Weibo and has been used more than 13 million times.
Reaction sway from admiration for Xiaoli’s boyfriend-getting and management skills to sheer awe and condemnation of her actions. Whatever it is, Xiaoli – if she even exists – is now said to shy away from the public eye and to refuse interviews from media. That’s actually not surprising… those 20 boyfriends surely would not be happy about her actions.
Phone Arena
SOURCE | 1real |
Senate's McConnell says tax bill should be revenue neutral | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday he has not abandoned his longtime goal of making sure any tax cuts are revenue neutral, saying the growth estimates in the Republican tax reform plan will offset the cuts. The Trump administration’s tax plan promises up to $6 trillion in tax cuts but will increase the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if it abandons the revenue-neutral goal, McConnell said: “No, actually we’re not because that’s a rather conservative estimate of how much growth you’ll get out of this pro-growth tax reform.” | 0fake |
Life: Lucky Break: This Teen Boy Just Got Another 4 Years To Plan His Viral Coming-Out Video | Email
This kid just seriously hit the jackpot.
Fifteen-year-old Taylor Hutton has known that he’s gay for as long as he can remember, and over the past few months he’s been working up the courage to finally tell his friends and family the truth. Taylor even planned to film some of those moments and post them on YouTube, in hopes that they might help other kids going through a similar experience. But just when this teen was ready to stop hiding who he really is, something incredible happened: Donald Trump and Mike Pence were elected into the White House, and Taylor just got another four years to plan his viral coming-out video!
Um, luckiest teen ever?
Up until now, Taylor figured he’d just prop his iPhone up to record the moment he came out to his parents, but after watching the presidential election results come in last night, Taylor knew that he needed to scrap that plan immediately. This lucky teen now has until at least 2020 before he can safely come out of the closet, and that’s more than enough time to come up with the sort of next-level viral video idea that could seriously break the internet!
Instead of releasing some half-baked, hastily edited video on his YouTube channel this spring, Taylor will now get to spend at least the next four years of a Trump/Pence administration dreaming up the most heartwarming and totally shareable coming-out video imaginable. And depending on how the next election goes, this kid just might get the chance to keep brainstorming camera angles and staging options in his head until he’s well into his mid-20s or older.
So awesome! With cameras only getting better and better, it’s possible that four years from now we’ll even get to witness Taylor finally arrive at some sort of peace with himself in stunning, crystal-clear 8K resolution.
Best of luck to you over the next four years, Taylor! We can’t wait for you to release that coming-out video as soon as doing so doesn’t put you under immediate danger from your own government. With all that extra time to plan it out, it’s going to be so great! | 1real |
#NoDAPL Spills Over: Musicians Boycott Dakota Access Pipeline CEO’s Record Label & Festival | Videos #NoDAPL Spills Over: Musicians Boycott Dakota Access Pipeline CEO’s Record Label & Festival ‘I do not play for oil interests. I do not play for companies who defile nature, or companies who attack demonstrators with trained attack dogs and pepper spray,’ declared singer-songwriter Jackson Browne. Be Sociable, Share! A water protector stares down police off highway 134, October 27. (Photo: Derrick Broze)
AUSTIN, Texas — When it comes to the Dakota Access pipeline, musicians want to stop the music.
Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation building the controversial $3.8 billion pipeline, also owns Music Road Records, a small record label which presents the annual Cherokee Creek Music Festival in Austin, Texas.
The Indigo Girls announced in September that they would not be playing at the next festival, slated for May 2017.
Reaffirming their support for “ Standing Rock, the Standing Rock Sioux, their friends and allies in protecting their sacred land and water by stopping the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and all pipelines that carry dirty oil and threaten massive ecosystems, ” the folk rock duo also encouraged other musicians to cancel their plans to perform at the festival.
Emily Saliers, one half of the Indigo Girls, recently explained that she hadn’t realized Warren was responsible for both the pipeline and the music festival until a fan alerted her to the connection via Facebook.
“Once we found out, we immediately started talking about what can we do to rectify the situation and our presence in something that is completely the antithesis of what we stand for as artists and as allies for Native communities,” Saliers told Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman on Thursday.
In addition to playing at the festival twice, Saliers and her musical partner, Amy Ray, also contributed a song to a tribute album published by Music Road to honor the legacy of singer-songwriter Jackson Browne. Saliers and Ray said they reached out to Browne and the other musicians on the album, then contacted Warren to inform him of the growing boycott. VIDEO: Emily Saliers of the @Indigo_Girls reads letter to #DAPL CEO Kelcy Warren, urging him to halt construction on Dakota Access pipeline pic.twitter.com/gD98Uu7rdY
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) November 4, 2016
Ray read from the letter to Warren on Democracy Now!: “Sadly, we realized that the bucolic setting of your festival and the image it projects is in direct conflict with the proposed Dakota Access pipeline, a project your company, Energy Transfer Partners, is responsible for spearheading. This pipeline violates the Standing Rock Sioux nation’s treaty rights, endangers the vital Missouri River, and continues the trajectory of genocide against Native peoples.”
In a statement published by Indian Country Today Media Network , Browne vowed to donate all the profits from the Music Road tribute album to the Standing Rock “ water protectors .” Like Saliers and Ray, Browne said he’d been unaware of Warren’s involvement in the pipeline when he met him and agreed to have Music Road produce the album. He continued: “I do not play for oil interests. I do not play for companies who defile nature, or companies who attack demonstrators with trained attack dogs and pepper spray. The list of companies I have denied the use of my music is long. I certainly would not have allowed my songs to be recorded by a record company whose owner’s other business does what Energy Transfer Partners is allegedly doing — threatening the water supply and the sacred sites of indigenous people.”
Amy Goodman noted in a Nov. 3 editorial co-written with Denis Moynihan that, “Kelcy Warren is a Texas oil billionaire several times over, and might not be easily deterred by a threatened boycott.”
The notion that Warren may not be moved by a boycott isn’t stopping music fans from taking up the cause. A group of activists and fans from Denton, Texas, are asking musician Hal Ketchum to end his association with Music Road, and they’re planning to protest his concert there on Wednesday night.
In addition to dabbling in the music industry, Warren and Energy Transfer Partners also spend millions influencing U.S. elections . Energy Transfer Partners PAC spent over $869,000 in the 2014 and 2016 federal election cycles, according to OpenSecrets , a project of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Andrew Wheat, research director at Texans for Public Justice , an Austin-based nonprofit that tracks the influence of money and corporate power, told MintPress News that Warren, himself, has spent far more influencing elections on the state level. He was awarded a position on the board of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, likely due to his largesse. | 1real |
Hillary Clinton Attempted To Hack WikiLeaks And Delete Everything, Assange | Email
Julian Assange claims that Hillary Clinton’s campaign used hackers to attack WikiLeaks’ servers. WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief says that despite the Ecuadorian embassy shutting down its internet to stop accusations of interference in U.S. elections, his organisation will keep on publishing until the elections are over.
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“Everyday that you publish is a day that you have the initiative in the conflict,” Assange said via telephone at a conference in Argentina on Wednesday. Scroll Down For Video Below!
The whistleblowing website has been releasing emails from Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, on a daily basis since early October. Assange claimed the release “whipped up a crazed hornet’s nest atmosphere in the Hillary Clinton campaign” leading them to attack WikiLeaks.
“They attacked our servers and attempted hacking attacks and there is an amazing ongoing campaign where state documents were put in the UN and British courts to accuse me of being both a Russian spy and a pedophile,” he added.
Ecuador’s decision to shut down his internet was described by Assange as a “strategic position” so that its “policy of non-intervention can’t be misinterpreted by actors in the US and even domestically in Ecuador.” He said he was sympathetic with Ecuador, insisting they face the dilemma of having the US interfere with their elections next year if they appear to interfere with the US elections next month. MORE: #WikiLeaks has activated contingency plans after #Assange 's internet link was intentionally cut off https://t.co/octsMseme1
— RT (@RT_com) October 17, 2016
Assange, who claimed the embassy will be without internet until the election is over to avoid accusations of interference, said he did not agree with Ecuador’s decision but did understand it. WikiLeaks will not be affected by the decision as they do not publish from Ecuador, he said.
He did, however, reject the idea that WikiLeaks is interfering with the US election, claiming, “this is not the interference of electoral process, this is the definition of electoral process – for media organizations and, in fact, everyone to publish the truth and their opinion about what is occurring. It cannot be a free and informed election unless people are free to inform.”
He also attacked US TV networks, many of whom he accused of being “controlled by Clinton supporters.“ We were fastest on #Podestaemails6 , faster than @wikileaks , and the US conspiracy machine can’t handle it https://t.co/njAae50qDd
— RT (@RT_com) October 13, 2016
The Podesta emails will make no difference to the election result, according to Assange. “I don’t think there’s any chance of Donald Trump winning the election, even with the amazing material we are publishing, because most of the media organizations are strongly aligned with Hillary Clinton,” he said.
Assange said journalists and people who work in the media are predominantly middle class and view Trump as representing “what in their mind is white trash.” | 1real |
'Lone hacker' claims responsibility for cyber attack on Democrats | (Reuters) - A “lone hacker” has taken responsibility for a cyber attack on the U.S. Democratic National Committee, which the DNC and a cyber-security firm have blamed on the Russian government. The DNC and cyber firm CrowdStrike disclosed the attack on Tuesday, saying that hackers working for Russia broke into the DNC’s computer network, spied on internal communications and stole research on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. A Russian government spokesman responded by saying that Moscow had not been involved. On Wednesday, an individual using the moniker Guccifer 2.0 took responsibility for the attack in a post on the blogging site WordPress.com, saying the DNC was “hacked by a lone hacker.” The DNC did not respond to a request for comment late on Wednesday evening on Guccifer 2.0’s claim. CrowdStrike said it stands by findings that the Russian government was behind the attacks. Guccifer 2.0’s blog includes images of documents it claims were stolen from DNC servers, including one titled “Donald Trump Report,” which was dated Dec. 19, and spreadsheets purportedly containing information about party donors. Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the documents, which the blog said were among “thousands of files and mails” removed from DNC servers that would soon be published on WikiLeaks. CrowdStrike issued a statement saying it “stands fully by its analysis” that two groups affiliated with Russian intelligence were discovered in the DNC’s network last month. The company said it was reviewing the documents published by Guccifer 2.0 to determine whether they were authentic. | 0fake |
TOMI LAHREN Blasts The Left For Attacking Trump’s Grandson…Yes, his GRANDSON! [Video] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=NeqMSI6OR5Q | 1real |
Trump aide Greenblatt returning to Israel for peace talks: official | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace negotiator, Jason Greenblatt, is returning to Israel to “continue the peace track” after the president met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last week in New York, a White House official said on Sunday. “While President Trump had productive meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas at the United Nations, we always said that the UN would not focus on peace conversations and that those conversations would be happening on a separate track,” the official said in a statement. “(Greenblatt) will have follow-up meetings in advance of a private trip in the region with his family for Sukkot. The meetings are part of the Administration’s quiet, steady discussions toward peace,” he said. Sukkot is a Jewish holiday. | 0fake |
Afghans believe country headed in wrong direction, but optimism rising slightly: survey | KABUL (Reuters) - More than 60 percent of Afghans still believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, but signs of better governance and rebuilding has slightly lifted the national mood, according to a survey by the Asia Foundation. Just over half of the 10,000 people surveyed said they had confidence in President Ashraf Ghani s government, which has struggled to establish security in the face of a growing Taliban insurgency. Last year, just under half of Afghans said they had confidence in Ghani. However, nearly 39 percent of those surveyed said they would be willing to leave if they had the opportunity, the second highest figure in the survey s more than decade-long history. The main reason was increased security concerns. More than 70 percent of Afghans fear for their personal safety. Attacks are up across the country. In May, more than 150 people were killed by a blast in Kabul s diplomatic zone - one of the deadliest since the Taliban s ouster in 2001. On the day the survey was released, more than 20 policemen were killed in fighting with Taliban insurgents in the southern province of Kandahar. The survey which was conducted in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan in July, primarily in rural households, pointed to a mixed picture, with steady gains in education and health over the past decade and a half matched by continuing concern over corruption, unemployment and security. Around a third of Afghans, or 33 percent, believe the country was heading in a positive direction, up slightly from 29.3 percent last year to buck a years-long declining trend. After a historic decline in 2016, confidence in public institutions has slightly improved; growing confidence in the Afghan National Security Forces stabilized in 2017, Abdullah Ahmadzai, Asia Foundation s country representative in Afghanistan said in a statement. The increase in optimism applied across ethnic groups except Uzbeks, who make an important minority in Pashtun- and Tajik-dominated Afghanistan. While there was a slight rise in positive sentiment, it was down significantly from a peak in 2013 before the withdrawal of most foreign forces. Back then nearly 60 percent of Afghans were positive about their future. The survey comes as the United States in August announced a boost in U.S. troops to Afghanistan, which could push optimism higher in the coming months. | 0fake |
Should Third Parties Support ‘Vote Pacts’ To Avoid ‘Spoiling’ Elections? | Videos Should Third Parties Support ‘Vote Pacts’ To Avoid ‘Spoiling’ Elections? Unlike other vote swapping schemes which pair a voter in a swing state with a voter in a ‘safe’ state, a vote pact pairs voters across party lines who each promise to cast their ballots for a third-party candidate instead. Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein, foreground, meets her supporters during a campaign stop at Humanist Hall in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016.
AUSTIN, Texas — Third-party candidates are often accused of acting as “spoilers” by siphoning votes from the two major parties’ nominees and potentially tipping the balance in an election.
Perhaps the most notable example of this is Ralph Nader. The former Green Party candidate is frequently accused of helping George W. Bush win the 2000 presidential election by diverting votes which otherwise would have gone to Democratic nominee Al Gore, although this theory has been disproven many times .
“A lot of people have basically grown to depend on the confines of the two-party system and have a hard time getting their brain around a constructive, strategic path out of it,” Sam Husseini, a political activist, told MintPress News.
Husseini proposed an alternative strategy in which voters form “voting pacts” across party lines. For example, a Democrat and a Republican might each agree to vote for a third-party candidate of their choice, rather than the two major parties’ candidates. The strategy reduces the potential for “spoiling” votes, as long as voting pacts don’t cross state lines, because each of the major candidates loses voters equally.
Husseini operates the website VotePact.org to encourage this method of vote sharing or vote pairing. Letter in Wash Post: “VotePact Offers Voters a Sensible Alternative” — how #NeverTrump & #NeverHillary can pair up: https://t.co/HB3CtnGGdi
— votepact (@votepact) August 30, 2016
“It has the potential for being a catalyst for genuine realignment and perhaps even for a victory for a so-called third party or independent candidate creative enough to use such a strategy,” Husseini said.
Third-party candidates frequently urge voters to follow their conscience rather opt for one of the “lesser of two evils” selected by the two-party system. As Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein frequently says , “We need to stand up and fight for the greater good like our lives depend on it.”
Husseini said he’d like to see third-party candidates embrace vote pacts instead of dismissing spoiler claims. He suggested they should also urge their supporters to form vote pacts as a way to safely support third-party movement building. Here’s how Husseini imagines the idea being pitched by a candidate: “There’s a way out of this. You feel like you gotta vote for Clinton because you hate Trump. I get that. Lots of people are like that and lots of people are on the other side. Well, they should pair up and both vote for me.”
He continued: “I’ve never seen any third-party candidate do that, which is why I think they’re going to remain in single digits” in the popular vote.
Other forms of “vote swapping” have been proposed during this and previous elections, usually seeking to pair a voter from a swing state with a voter from a state “red” or “blue” state. The voter in the so-called “safe state” agrees to vote for a third-party candidate in return for securing a vote for their preferred candidate in a state where the election is in play.
This “safe state” strategy was especially popular in 2000, when voters sought to trade Nader and Gore votes. That election prompted a court case in which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that that vote swapping is “clearly protected by the First Amendment.”
Last month, Husseini told Bustle’s Amée Latour that the “safe state” strategy just “kicks the can down the road.” Third parties often hope to secure 5 percent of the popular vote in presidential races, which would unlock millions in additional federal funding for future elections, but Husseini thinks by embracing vote pacts they could potentially win elections outright.
“The other so-called ‘strategies’ are basically a way of minimizing the so-called ‘damage’ of third-party runs,” he told MintPress.
While Husseini said he hopes alternative candidates will someday make vote pacts a key part of their campaign strategy, he also stressed that it isn’t too late for voters to embrace the idea in the 2016 election. Vote pacts require mutual trust between political opponents, so he recommends forming them with family members, close friends, and coworkers across party lines.
He also said voting pacts could spur political change by encouraging people to engage in challenging political conversations across party lines rather than simply shutting out opposing views.
“Instead unfriending that guy who said he might vote for Trump because he hates Clinton, reach out to them.” Be Sociable, Share! | 1real |
Pope urges decisive measures for Myanmar refugees, avoids 'Rohingya' | DHAKA (Reuters) - Pope Francis called on Thursday for decisive measures to resolve the political reasons that caused mostly Muslim refugees in Myanmar to flee to Bangladesh and urged countries to help the Dhaka government deal with the crisis. However, just as on the first leg of his trip, in Myanmar, he did not use the word Rohingya to describe the refugees, which is contested by the Yangon government and military. In a speech before Bangladeshi President Abdul Hamid and diplomats hours after arriving under heavy security in Dhaka, the chaotic and dusty capital of 14 million people, Francis instead spoke of refugees from Rakhine State . In his speech, Francis, who used the term Rohingya twice this year in appeals from the Vatican, praised impoverished Bangladesh s spirit of generosity and solidarity in helping a massive influx of refugees from Rakhine State . The exodus of some 625,000 Muslim Rohingya people from Rakhine state to the southern tip of Bangladesh was sparked by a military crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. Scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, and refugees arriving in Bangladesh told of killings and rapes. The United States has said the campaign by mainly Buddhist Myanmar s military included horrendous atrocities aimed at ethnic cleansing . The military denies the accusations. None of us can fail to be aware of the gravity of the situation, the immense toll of human suffering involved, and the precarious living conditions of so many of our brothers and sisters, a majority of whom are women and children, crowded in the refugee camps, Francis said at the presidential palace. It is imperative that the international community take decisive measures to address this grave crisis, not only by working to resolve the political issues that have led to the mass displacement of people, but also by offering immediate material assistance to Bangladesh in its effort to respond effectively to urgent human needs. Even though his calls for justice, human rights and respect in Myanmar were widely seen as applicable to the Rohingya, who are not recognized as Myanmar citizens or as members of a distinct ethnicity, rights groups such as Amnesty International said they were disappointed he did not defend them by name. In studiously avoiding the highly charged term, the pope has so far followed the advice of church officials in Myanmar, who feared it could set off a diplomatic incident and turn Myanmar s military and government against minority Christians. Francis is due to meet a group of Rohingya refugees in Dhaka on Friday. In his address to the pope, the president of Bangladesh, which is predominantly Muslim, used the term Rohingya several times and accused the Myanmar army of committing ruthless atrocities . He called for a safe, sustainable and dignified return of the refugees to their homes. Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an accord last week on terms for the return of Rohingya, though rights groups are skeptical Myanmar will follow through on the deal and have called for independent observers for any repatriation. There are concerns about protection for Rohingya from further violence if and when they go home, and about a path to resolving their legal status - most are stateless - and whether they would be allowed to return to their old homes. The pope s visit to the South Asian country unfolded under heavy security. While Francis stuck to his custom of using a simple car, he was escorted by many armored military and police vehicles. The country was shocked on July 1, 2016, when gunmen stormed a caf in Dhaka s upscale Gulshan neighborhood, killing 22 people, most of them foreigners, in an overnight siege. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility. | 0fake |
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Donald Trump: ‘My God, He’s So Stupid’ | Paris first female mayor and the one who brought the city together after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and November s mass attack, recently made a blunt (and much needed) statement on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.In an interview in which she and London s newest mayor Sadiq Khan, a practicing Muslim, showed a sign of religious unity, Hidalgo plainly stated that Trump is so stupid and repeated it: Donald Trump is stupid. My God he s stupid. My God. There s no other way to frame it than that. Trump has not been on good terms with the French ever since their two attacks, which happened 11 months apart. He tweeted that Parisians would have survived the attacks if they were allowed access to open carry. He also blamed France s immigration policy and tolerance of Muslims as a culprit for the attacks.Hidalgo also told reporters that the people of France, of all religions whether they be Christian or Muslim or even atheists do not agree with Trump s policies.Not long after the comments were made, Hidalgo and the city of Paris announced that a refugee camp would be opened in the city s northern suburbs. Not only will the camp house migrants and refugees, but it will also lay groundwork for establishing permanent housing for those who come with nothing. Hidalgo blasted France and Europe for failing to face up to the migrant crisis that has claimed thousands of lives trying to escape persecution and violence.Hidalgo told reporters that France cannot sit by and continue to watch migrants suffer and die when more could be done to help them: I hear people say won t this act as a magnet. But I think of other countries, like Germany, where they have created conditions to welcome hundreds of thousands of migrants in dignified conditions. We must do the same by taking the full measure of this migrant flow that is flooding Europe. Paris will not sit idly by while the Mediterranean becomes a graveyard for refugees. Hidalgo says the camp will be opened within six weeks time.And like that, another world leader smacks down Donald Trump and shows him how it s really done in the civilized world.Featured image via Wikipedia | 1real |
Feeling left out, under threat, east Germans rebel with far-right vote | DIPPOLDISWALDE, Germany (Reuters) - Like a third of his neighbors in the east German town of Dippoldiswalde, Rene Rothe voted for the far right in last Sunday s election. The biggest concern for the 57-year-old milk farmer was migrants - especially if they drain government funds. There s loads of refugees here in the town and I m wondering what will happen to my pension, he said as he emerged from one of the renovated pastel-colored shops that line Dippoldiswalde s clean cobbled streets. The town of 14,500 people has taken in 132 asylum seekers, according to the town s official website. I have to pay for what the refugees need, and then when their families follow I ll have to pay again won t I? he said. Campaigning on a platform to take your country back , the Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 12.6 percent of the national vote, propelling it into parliament as the third largest party and making it the first far-right group to win seats in the lower house since the 1950s. In the state of Saxony, where Dippoldiswalde lies, the AfD was the overall winner, beating even Chancellor Angela Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU), who won at the national level. While the former Communist east has taken in far fewer than the west of the more than a million migrants that have arrived in Germany in the past several years, the AfD won around one fifth of votes there compared to around one in ten in the west. The AfD spokesman in Dippoldiswalde, Rolf Suessmann, said voters turned to his party because they were angry about the government s liberal migrant policy and some felt left behind. Problems in the town ranged from a patchy mobile network and small firms facing problems with digitalization to low pay, with some people earning less than 10 euros an hour, he said. Here especially most people don t agree with the idea of a multicultural society, Suessmann, a bailiff, told Reuters. Cultural differences between east and west, reunited less than 30 years ago, persist. In the west a multicultural society of immigration is seen as a cultural achievement whereas in the east it s seen as a threat, said Werner Patzelt, political scientist at Dresden s Technical University. Protest groups find more fertile ground in east Germany where party preferences are not set in stone and people tend to trust institutions less than in the west, he added. The concern over pensions was an example of that. Germany s population is aging fast and people worry that there will not be enough young workers to fill the pension pots when they hit retirement age. Some are concerned that because many migrants are claiming benefits, it will detract from their own welfare. Germany s finance minister has insisted that the migrant issue had not left anyone in Germany with even a euro less for their family or children. The AfD has said it has not finalised its position on pensions. Many rural areas in eastern Germany suffered a brain drain after reunification as young, educated people moved to the west, said Thomas Krueger, head of the German government s bpb agency for civic education. While some eastern industrial zones and university towns have flourished since - Saxony itself has become known as Silicon Saxony due to its success as a high-tech hub - many people in rural areas, some of whom have to travel 40 km (25 miles) to get to a local authority, feel forgotten, he said. In many regions there was emigration, no businesses settled, there were no prospects for jobs and on top of that there was new competition for jobs even in small and medium-sized businesses, with workers from central and eastern Europe suddenly there, Krueger said. Polling institute infratest dimap said its exit polls on election day showed that while almost three-quarters of AfD voters thought their personal economic situation was good, some 42 percent felt disadvantaged compared to others. Those who voted for the party were concerned about losing their German culture, refugees changing the country and Islam getting too much influence, the survey of thousands of voters showed. Almost two-thirds voted for the AfD in protest, it said. The party fared better among men than women and most of its voters were of working age. Around one fifth were unemployed while another fifth were laborers. White-collar workers and self-employed people also make up a sizeable part of their voters. Manfred Guellner, head of Forsa polling institute, said some of the AfD s voters in the east saw themselves as the losers in reunification. They feel left behind and they re looking for a scapegoat and now they ve found one in the refugees, who they think are getting all the money that they lack, he said. The jobless rate in Dippoldiswalde is only four percent, labor office data showed. But Gisela, 66, lost her job at a restaurant shortly after reunification and was unemployed for 26 years before reaching pension age. The foreigners are given everything and when we want something the answer is no, she said, sitting on a bench overlooking the spot where the restaurant once stood. She said she could not remember who she voted for and asked that her surname not be used. The foreigners need to go back home quickly and the young people need to get work, she said. | 0fake |
This Anti-Abortionist’s Comment On Flint Crisis Proves ‘Pro-Life’ Republicans Don’t Exist (AUDIO) | A so-called pro-life Republican has yet again proven the entire concept of being pro-life is a total fraud this time, with her comments on the Flint water crisis. Sandy Rios, who wastes her time fighting against both abortion and contraception, has declared the Flint lead poisoning crisis and the Zika virus as liberal conspiracy theories that are not worthy of concern.Rios actually made the incredible suggestion that neither of the health crises posed as great a threat as either ISIS or Latino immigrants. How Latino immigrants moving into this country are related to an entire American city being poisoned for over a year is beyond comprehension.A caller to her radio show asked her why she and other Republicans that are obsessed with the well-being of fetuses were mostly silent on the Flint water crisis. Rios had the following mind-numbing response: The whole issue in Michigan the left loves to, they re now creating this, I m sorry, I m going to really go out on a limb here, this Zika virus which I haven t talked about. They love to come up with tragedies and they love to blame and they love to scare people. I think this issue in Michigan is a serious one, but I don t think it s the big issue that these other issues are. Source: RawstoryHere is a bit of context on what Rios said. Lead poisoning is not safe at any level for any person, but it s most harmful to developing brains and nervous systems found in fetuses and children. The Zika virus has been linked to microcephaly, which is a condition that causes abnormally small heads and incomplete brain development. It s causing such an epidemic in Brazil that at least one judge is planning on challenging Brazil s harsh restrictions on abortion, which only allow for exceptions of rape or life of the mother.These are real public health issues that are seriously endangering the unborn, and an absolutely rabid Christian anti-abortionist just blows them off, insisting they are not a serious problem. It s unreal how narrowly they define their concern for the unborn. They seem to only care about the act of forcing women to give birth. Whether or not the child is healthy is of no concern.Listen to Rios ridiculous comments below:[soundcloud url= https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/245269720 params= color=ff5500 width= 100% height= 166 iframe= true /]Featured image from Huffington Post | 1real |
‘TOLERANT LEFT’ FIRE-BOMBS Anti-Migration Member’s Car…Attack Houses In Germany | A high profile, anti-mass migration Member of the European Parliament has had her office attacked by left wing radical thugs in Berlin, just under two weeks after her car was firebombed.Beatrix von Storch MEP, a member of the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party which held a massive demonstration against German Chancellor Angela Merkel s immigration policies yesterday. This is the second attack on Ms. von Storch in just over a week.According to Die Welt, Mrs. von Storch s office was pelted with paint bombs and rocks in the overnight attack. The state protection office has begun an investigation into the incident.In a previous attack, Ms. von Storch s car was fire-bombed by opponents angry at her criticism of Berlin and Brussels in relation to the ongoing European migrant crisis. Two neighbouring cars were also destroyed in that arson attack in a densely populated residential area in the middle of Berlin.Good morning from Berlin where the row over refugees deepens. Asylum activist attacked house of #AfD's von Storch. pic.twitter.com/QmAc1PFpwP Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) November 8, 2015Ms. von Storch, 45, is the Duchess of Oldenburg, a distant relative of the Duke of Edinburgh, who trained as a lawyer and spent 10 years as an insolvency specialist before entering politics.As Breitbart London has reported, her eurosceptic AfD party campaigns against mass migration and stands on a more children for German families platform.After coming close to entering the German parliament soon after its founding in 2013, AfD won seats in last year s European Parliament elections where it sits in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group alongside British Conservative Party MEPs.It then won representation in five German state assemblies after widening its appeal with populist positions on law and order, immigration and traditional social values. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Drama On The Docket: High Court's Term Set To End With Slate Of Big Cases | Drama On The Docket: High Court's Term Set To End With Slate Of Big Cases
Major decisions are expected this month, as the U.S. Supreme Court works its way through several cases still pending before it closes out its calendar for the 2014-2015 term.
Among the biggest issues hanging fire: the status of same-sex marriages, subsidies for health insurance under Obamacare and the drugs that states may use to administer the death penalty by lethal injection. But the court is also expected to weigh in on the drawing of lines for congressional elections, the right to put the Confederate flag on license plates and the right of a municipality to regulate outdoor signage.
"Decision days" are scheduled for each Monday this month, along with Thursday, June 18 — and there could be yet another day announced, as well. The court has not gone beyond June in more than 20 years.
It is typical for the court to issue its most important and controversial rulings in the final days of its annual session. Many expect the same-sex-marriage and Obamacare decisions to come later in the month. But many court observers are expecting the lethal injection decision sooner, along with more than a dozen cases that carry considerable significance of their own.
The court meets at 10 a.m. ET Monday and on the other decision days of the month. NPR will be covering the proceedings and reporting on the decisions as soon as they become available, on our regular radio programs, on NPR.org, NPR One and other platforms.
Lethal Injection (Glossip v. Gross)
As traditional methods such as hanging, firing squad and electrocution have fallen from favor, states with the death penalty have been injecting a "protocol," or series of drugs, to execute death row prisoners. But pharmaceutical companies now refuse to provide sodium thiopental, the drug used at the beginning of the series to make the prisoner lose consciousness.
States have looked for substitutes, including midazolam, which is a sedative and not an anesthetic. Inmates who have brought this case say that those who receive this drug may remain conscious after dosage, when they receive subsequent drugs. Some members of the court were clearly sympathetic to this viewpoint in the oral argument earlier this year. But some of the court's conservatives seemed to regard it as a "backdoor" means to undermine the death penalty itself.
If the court sides with the inmates, states will have to scramble to find alternative means of execution, which may include a return to the more traditional methods.
Obamacare (King v. Burwell)
Plaintiffs have argued that only those states that have set up their own exchanges for the purchase of health care insurance are entitled to give subsidies to lower-income people. States that let the federal government set up their exchanges for them, they contend, may not accept the federal tax credits that subsidize those eligible in state-run exchanges. The administration argues that the intent of the legislators was clear, whatever the exact wording of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and that all exchanges are eligible for the subsidies.
If the court rules for the plaintiffs, subsidies could go away for more than 6 million current recipients, although the timetable for their losing insurance is somewhat uncertain. Congress would be under pressure to act.
Taking this many people out of the system would also affect the private health insurance market and the amount that people pay in insurance premiums. The degree of impact would depend on how sweeping the justices' ruling is. But it could affect individuals, small business, large business, the insurance industry, doctors and hospitals.
Same-Sex Marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges and related cases)
A series of recent rulings by the high court has led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in three dozen states, which are home to more than 70 percent of the U.S. population. This has happened despite many states' efforts to enact bans on such marriages, either by legislation or by referendum.
These laws and state constitutional amendments have been consistently struck down by federal courts at the district and appellate levels — except for the Federal Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. This one court, sitting in Cincinnati, upheld the ban enacted in that state and several others and said states did not have to recognize marriages performed legally in other states. This "circuit split" between appeals judges brought the case before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.
The court now has the opportunity to clarify the legal situation by legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states or to adopt any of several more complicated resolutions — leaving some states with legal same-sex marriage but others — perhaps most — without. The court is also deciding a related case regarding the right of a state to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage that took place legally in another state.
Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission
Are state laws that put redistricting in the hands of independent commissions unconstitutional? Arizona voters created a commission by constitutional amendment, and some state legislators say that this strips them of their redistricting power, thus violating the U.S. Constitution.
Walker v. Texas Division, Sons Of The Confederacy
May states constitutionally ban the Sons of the Confederacy from displaying the Confederate battle flag on vanity license plates?
Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Ariz.
What should be the constitutional rules for municipalities seeking to limit sign clutter? In this case, a church posted signs that the town wanted to regulate or remove.
Michigan v. EPA
At what point does the federal Clean Air Act require the Environmental Protection Agency to take into account the costs that factory owners face in complying with EPA regulation? Should it be before or after deciding to regulate hazardous pollutants?
Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project
The most significant race-related case of the term involves what's called "disparate impact" in housing. Must plaintiffs have proof of someone's intent to discriminate? | 0fake |
Jesus Christ's Real Tomb Finally Discovered in Jerusalem underneath Sepulchre Church |
A burial slab believed to have held the body of Jesus Christ before he was resurrected has been uncovered for the first time in centuries by a restoration team in Jerusalem.
The original limestone shelf, known as a “burial bed,†was exposed during the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after being covered by marble since at least 1555 A.D.
“It will be a long scientific analysis, but we will finally be able to see the original rock surface on which, according to tradition, the body of Christ was laid,†Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist involved in the discovery, told National Geographic.
According to scripture, Jesus Christ was laid on the shelf in the tomb after dying at the crucifixion around 33 A.D. After three days his remains were discovered to be missing and Jesus was said to have appeared over a span of 40 days before ascending into heaven.
The discovery was made by a team of scientists from the National Technical University of Athens (NTU) who were making restorations to the Edicule (“little houseâ€), a structure which had been built around the tomb.
The tomb was found underneath this Crypt at the Sepulchre Church. Throughout the years there have been many conspiracies about the location of Jesus’s tomb but the Christian Orthodox Church has always maintained that the tomb is underneath Sepulchre Church.
Researchers now hope to study the original surface to better understand the original tomb and how it evolved to become one of the most sacred sites in Christendom.
“We are at the critical moment for rehabilitating the Edicule,” Chief Scientific Supervisor Professor Antonia Moropoulou told National Geographic. “The techniques we’re using to document this unique monument will enable the world to study our findings as if they themselves were in the tomb of Christ.”
The newly-uncovered surface was described as having a grey-beige stone surface.
Also known as the Church of the Resurrection, its custody is shared between six Christian denominations including the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Armenian Orthodox Church, whom together invited the NTU to undertake the restoration.
At a cost of US$4 million, (â‚Ź3.7 million) the restoration was not cheap, with major donors including Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Mica Ertegun, widow of Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun.
Source
| 1real |
Fox And Friends Completely Panics And Cuts Segment Short Because A Democrat Showed Up (VIDEO) | While the right accuses the left of being snowflakes because we think all people should be treated with fairness and respect, the right, led by Donald Trump, is becoming more and more frightened of any dissenting voices.That point couldn t have been made more clearly on Wednesday s Fox and Friends. They did one of their man on the street segments, where they visited a diner in Louisville, KY. The idea was to have a debate, but only with Fox s rules, apparently. Let s get right to the debate, (Fox s Todd) Piro said. Jefferson County, where we are, highly Democrat. Bullitt County, right across the way here, heavy Republican. Turning to a man named Keith, Piro began to ask a question of a Trump voter but he was quickly interrupted by a man who approached from behind with a sign reading Fox Lies. I m a Democrat right here, the man said.The appearance of an actual Democrat, and not one hand-picked by Fox was a bit too much to deal with, apparently.Source: Raw Story Alright, alright, Piro replied, pushing the man s sign out of view of the camera. We re going to wrap this up and we re going to go on off to commercial. Here s the video:Not all heroes wear capes. pic.twitter.com/I9Ny64xWRe Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 23, 2017Fox didn t really have an explanation as to why they cut the segment short, other than being afraid of the white haired man.Brian Kilmeade said, I was reading his lips. I know exactly what he meant. His lips weren t visible in the shot. He did call Fox fake news though, which is only a threat, apparently, if a Democrat says it.Then Steve Doocy admitted that we don t know exactly what was going on there, but they felt it in the best interest of the telecast, we cut away. Apparently for Fox, there s nothing more threatening than actually being fair and balanced.Featured image via video screen capture. | 1real |
Wakame Seaweed Salad May Lower Blood Pressure | Wakame Seaweed Salad May Lower Blood Pressure VN:F [1.9.22_1171] Close Wakame Seaweed Salad May Lower Blood Pressure
I used to think of seaweed as just a beneficial whole food source of minerals—like iodine, for which it is the most concentrated dietary source. And, indeed, just a half-teaspoon of mild seaweeds, like arame or dulse, or two sheets of nori a day, should net you all the iodine you need for the day.
But, “the intake of seaweeds is advised” not only as a whole food source of iodine, but also, evidently, “for the prevention of lifestyle-related chronic diseases.” Based on what?
Well, you’ll see this kind of reasoning; the Japanese live long, and they eat seaweed. And so, they speculate that seaweed might have something to do with it, based on suggestive reports. But, when you see lists, like this, of all the supposed biological activities some food has, you want to know is this based on clinical data (meaning on actual people) or so-called preclinical data (based on test tubes and lab animals)? When a study like this is published, talking about the “Effects of seaweed-reconstructed pork diets” on rats, what do you do with that information? Seaweed is one of the ingredients they’re trying to use to improve the “image” of meat products. So, they try to add grape seeds, or flax seeds, or walnuts, or purple rice or, whatever this is. I had to look it up: thong-weed. How’s that for an image booster?
You can look at epidemiological studies (meaning looking at populations). And, indeed, Japanese preschoolers who eat seaweed tend to have lower blood pressures, suggesting seaweed might have beneficial effects—which would make sense, given all the minerals and fiber. But, you can’t prove cause and effect with that kind of study. Maybe it was the other components of the diet that went along with the seaweed-eating.
It’s even harder to do these kinds of studies on adults; so many people are on high blood pressure medications. University of Tokyo researchers took an innovative approach by comparing the diets of people on low-dose, versus high-dose, versus multiple blood pressure medications. And, although they all had artificially normalized blood pressure, those that ate the most fruit and sea vegetables tended to be the ones on the lower doses—supporting a dietary role for seaweed. But, why not just put it to the test?
A double-blind crossover trial found that seaweed fiber lowered blood pressure, apparently by pulling sodium out of the system. I know they couldn’t use real seaweed, because then you couldn’t fool people with a placebo; but, why not just, like, put whole powdered seaweed in pills? This was finally attempted, ten years later.
Compared to doing nothing, they got beautiful drops in blood pressure. But, if you look deeper into the study, they desalinized the seaweed—meaning they took out two-thirds of the sodium naturally found in it. So, that still doesn’t tell us if eating seaweed salad is actually going to help with blood pressure. What we need is a randomized controlled trial with just plain, straight seaweed. But, no one had ever done that study—until this study out of Ecuador.
Six grams of wakame, natural sodium and all, led to a significant drop in blood pressure, especially in those who started out high. Side effects were all minor, and what one might expect increasing fiber intake. And, the nice thing about whole food, plant-based interventions is you sometimes get good side effects as well, such as the resolution of gastritis—stomach inflammation that they’d been having—as well as the disappearance of chronic headaches. Close Sources Video Sources
My next video, Salt of the Earth: Sodium and Plant-Based Diets , will further address the sodium question.
Roxy
I’ve read that only asians, for the most part, have the bacteria (macrobiome) to properly digest seaweed. And by properly digest I mean….”to properly breakdown the seaweed to allow usability of the nutrients and such in seaweed.”
Some sort of genetic trait asians have? Evolutionary?
Truth in this? Joe Caner
It would seem that gut flora has more to do with what one eats as opposed to genetic factors. Asian populations are better able to handle seaweed in their diets precisely because they eat more seaweed so their gut flora adapts accordingly:
“Recent studies analyzed the gut flora of people across multiple countries and continents and identified two enterotypes. Enterotypes correlate with our diet and can change as our diet changes. Diets rich in animal protein and saturated fat are associated with the Bacteriodes enterotype, while diets rich in healthy carbohydrates are associated with the Prevotella enterotype.” http://nutritionfacts.org/topics/microbiome/ Roxy
So did the Okinawans have both of these types of enterotypes? How about some of the other cultures (longest lived) that include animal products/fish in their diet? Do they also have a healthy, varied enter type that of both baceriodes and prevotella? Roxy
And, apparently, the seaweed/gut bacteria macrobiome evolved over thousands and thousands of years, unlike, I think, the enteretype issue you are referencing that has more to do with our gut bacteria changing quickly, daily, weekly, due to the diet. Apparently seaweed might be a different issue, and for whatever reason takes a culture thousands of years to adjust. Richard W
Perhaps it is beneficial but, like fish oil, seaweed probably comes with a dose of pollutants too. Roxy
I am curious about all the plastic-residue showing up in fish….and if seaweed would then accumulate these plastics-chemical residues. Ishay
Unfortunately, most natural food will contain at least trace levels of pollutants, even those grown organically in ‘natural’ soil. It doesn’t mean, however, that this is always a palpable cause for concern. Theoretically, even though all seas and oceans are polluted to a degree, sea vegetables are low in the food chain, so there is less bio-accumulation of most contaminants.
The biggest concern in seaweed is inorganic arsenic. Hijiki is known to have high, potentially harmful levels, but moderate consumption of most other sea vegetables, including wakame, shouldn’t pose a significant risk:
I don’t know if seaweed that’s grown in indoor tanks is commercially available (similar to microalgae used for DHA/EPA pills), but that might become a safer alternative one day. Wade Patton
I shared the transcript. nonyabizzz
ok, but the seaweed salad shown obviously has a sizable amount of oil on it, possibly counteracting some of the health benefits…
The frame rate seems off in this video? rjs
small study that hasn’t been replicated (with seaweed that hasn’t been desalinized). Given the high sodium content of commercially available seaweed, I still feel reluctant to try it.
I’m already doing as many lifestyle things as I can to lower my BP such as eating a whole plant vegan diet, restricting sodium, drinking hibiscus tea, consuming fax seeds daily, avoiding BPA, doing daily aerobic exercise, and exercising with hand grips. Anyone have any other ideas? Matthew Smith
Hello! You are doing everything exactly right. Dr. Greger suggests “beans, whole grains, other legumes, beets, beet juice, cocoa, flaxseeds, greens, hibiscus tea, purple potatoes, and the seaweed, wakame,” in his hypertension page. Have you tried Vitamin D and Magnesium (watch out for diarrhea)? How long have you been on a low sodium diet? Since they add Iodine to salt, I have avoided it, and I developed in my opinion low Iodine levels. I had just one half teaspoon of salt and could no longer feel my heartbeat in my chest. I have since fallen in love with some salt. It takes at least a gram of salt a day to be healthy. I love Iodine. Dr. Greger recommends it. Beware of its heart benefits. Doctors say it is ideal to not be able to feel your heartbeat. Perhaps it is Iodine that modulates this. Darryl
Potassium Blood pressure response to changes in sodium and potassium intake: a metaregression analysis of randomised trials
Sodium reduction (median: -1.7 g/d) was associated with a change of -2.54 mmHg in systolic blood pressure…Corresponding values for increased potassium intake (median: +1.7 g/d) was -2.42 mmHg
In the context of a WFPB diet, increasing potassium means favoring tubers and beans over cereal grains as staple calories, more greens & tomatoes, and using “lite-salt” (50/50 mix KCl & NaCl) where possible. I mail-order sun-dried tomatoes (the most concentrated potassium source) in bulk, and they’re my main “dried fruit”. Previous Video | 1real |
When They Asked Her What She Thinks of Hillary Clinton, They Never Expected Her to Say THIS! | Hillary Clinton When They Asked Her What She Thinks of Hillary Clinton, They Never Expected Her to Say THIS!
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Kids say the darndest things… ADORABLE! "My dad told me that Hillary Clinton LIES A LOT, so if she wins she might take over the country! " @realDonaldTrump #VoteTrump pic.twitter.com/cHrP8lkPbS | 1real |
Heavy civilian casualties in Raqqa from air strikes: U.N. | GENEVA (Reuters) - Civilians caught up in the battle for the Syrian city of Raqqa are paying an unacceptable price and attacking forces may be contravening international law with their intense air strikes, the top United Nations human rights official said on Thursday. A U.S.-led coalition is seeking to oust Islamic State from Raqqa, while Syrian government forces, backed by the Russian air force and Iran-backed militias are also advancing on the city. Some 20,000 civilians are trapped in Raqqa where the jihadist fighters are holding some of them as human shields, the world body says. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein said that his office had documented 151 civilian deaths in six incidents alone in August, due to air strikes and ground-based attacks. Given the extremely high number of reports of civilian casualties this month and the intensity of the air strikes on Raqqa, coupled with ISIL s use of civilians as human shields, I am deeply concerned that civilians who should be protected at all times - are paying an unacceptable price and that forces involved in battling ISIL are losing sight of the ultimate goal of this battle, Zeid said in a statement. ...the attacking forces may be failing to abide by the international humanitarian law principles of precautions, distinction, and proportionality, he said. The U.S.-led coalition has said it conducted nearly 1,100 air strikes on and near Raqqa this month, up from 645 in July, the U.N. statement said. Russia s air force has reported carrying out 2,518 air strikes across Syria in the first three weeks of August, it added. Meanwhile ISIL fighters continue to prevent civilians from fleeing the area, although some manage to leave after paying large amounts of money to smugglers, Zeid said. We have reports of smugglers also being publicly executed by ISIL. U.S.-led warplanes on Wednesday blocked a convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families from reaching territory the group holds in eastern Syria and struck some of their comrades traveling to meet them, a coalition spokesman said. | 0fake |
Don’t underestimate Rand Paul as a 2016 presidential contender | The first nine months of 2013 have convinced us of one thing: Rand Paul acts, and the rest of the potential 2016 Republican presidential field reacts.
On drones, the senator from Kentucky led a 13-hour filibuster that drew Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), among others, to the floor in support. On Syria, Paul was out front in his opposition to a military strike — a position that more than two dozen of his Republican Senate colleagues came to share.
Paul, in short, seems to be a step or two in front of the ongoing transformation of the Republican Party from a hawkish conservatism to a sort of populist libertarianism.
That’s not to say, of course, that significant strains of resistance to the vision of the Republican Party that Paul is offering don’t remain. They do. And it remains to be seen whether the establishment, such as it is — elected officials and major donors, primarily — can unite to keep Paul from the nomination in favor of a politically “safer” choice such as Rubio or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
And Paul, as he showed with his civil rights comments during his 2010 Senate campaign in Kentucky, holds some controversial views that can — and will — get him into trouble in the glare of the national spotlight.
But anyone who laughs at Paul as a serious contender, dismisses him as just a carbon copy of his father — former representative Ron Paul (R-Tex.) — or otherwise writes him off would do well to study the year in politics so far. No one in the GOP has had a better year than Paul. And it’s not all that close.
Below are our rankings of the 10 candidates with the best chance of winding up as the Republican presidential nominee. While this should go without saying, making predictions in 2013 about 2016 is something short of purely scientific.
10. Mike Pence: The Indiana governor is flying way under the radar at the moment, but he has the makings of a potential 2016 dark horse. Social and fiscal conservatives like him, he’s a charismatic communicator and, perhaps most important, he doesn’t work in Washington.
9. John Kasich: The Ohio governor’s poll numbers have recovered remarkably well from his first few years in office, and he now looks like a modest favorite for reelection against much-touted Democratic nominee Ed FitzGerald. If Kasich wins in 2014, he has a case to make as a swing-state Midwestern governor who previously served as the chairman of the House Budget Committee and who ran, albeit briefly, for president in 2000.
8. Bobby Jindal: We believe that Jindal’s stock was probably a bit too high a year ago and is now a bit too low. His numbers in Louisiana still aren’t great, but they are better than earlier this year. Jindal’s decision to reject Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act will be a feather in his cap among conservative presidential-primary voters.
7. Scott Walker : The Wisconsin governor may have a bit more of a reelection race on his hands than he originally thought with wealthy former Trek executive Mary Burke running for the Democratic nomination. And we hear from reliable Wisconsin sources that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is more interested in running than we believed. If Ryan runs, it’s hard to see Walker also getting in.
6. Ted Cruz : Cruz is the biggest attraction among rank-and-file Republicans at the moment. He evokes genuine passion among the base — and that’s not ever to be underestimated. But it’s also worth remembering that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) held that title once upon a time, and she held it much closer to the time when people were actually set to cast votes for president.
5. Jeb Bush: This is our holding-pattern ranking for the former Florida governor. If he announces that he’s running or even that he’s moving toward running — heck, we’d take a Bush trip to Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina — then he is probably our No. 1 on the list.
4. Paul Ryan: See the note above about our previous underestimating of Ryan’s interest in running. The coming fights over the government shutdown and raising the debt ceiling are ready-made for Ryan and will (re)increase his profile nationally. We still are skeptical that he has the political chops to run a two-year-plus campaign for the Republican nomination, though.
3. Marco Rubio: Rubio’s front-runner status has clearly come into question in the aftermath of his work to pass comprehensive immigration reform through the Senate. The bill’s fate remains decidedly uncertain in the GOP-controlled House and is still not popular among the party’s grass roots. For those who write off Rubio because of immigration, however, go back and watch his speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention. He is someone of considerable political talent.
2. Chris Christie: Yes, Christie has something of a base problem given the false idea that he somehow cost Mitt Romney the 2012 election because of his embrace of President Obama after Hurricane Sandy. But Christie’s regular-guy populism is a nice fit for the times.
1. Rand Paul: He’s not a clear front-runner. But, if you are looking for a candidate who can (a) raise the money, (b) has a clear and compelling message and (c) has an obvious edge in an early state (Iowa), then Paul is the only person in the top three who checks all three boxes. We repeat what we said above: Underestimate him at your peril. | 0fake |
Donald Trump's tough path to the White House | Washington (CNN) Donald Trump got a morale boost this week -- but it likely won't be enough to propel him to the White House.
After weeks of devastating headlines, the Republican nominee seemed to give himself a break. He largely avoided incessant talk about allegations of sexual assault by multiple women and claims that the election is rigged -- both of which made wavering Republicans nervous.
The drumbeat of WikiLeaks disclosures yielded material to lambast Hillary Clinton and her family's foundation. And news of rising Obamacare premiums gave him an opening to criticize President Barack Obama's legacy that Clinton is running to inherit.
Trump edged up in some state surveys and CNN moved two crucial states -- Florida and Nevada -- from lean Democratic to battleground status on its electoral map.
But 11 days before the election, Trump is down six points in CNN's Poll of Polls. His path to the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency remains daunting and it will be tough to overcome the deficit in the remaining time. Trump seemed to acknowledge the challenges Thursday.
With the new changes, CNN's electoral college map leaves Clinton with 272 electoral votes from states either solidly or leaning in her direction. Trump has 179 electoral votes from states either solidly or leaning in his direction. That leaves 87 electoral votes up for grabs at the moment. Trump will have to pitch a perfect game to secure the ones he needs, especially as he struggles to pull states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania or Michigan out of Clinton's column.
"To have a fighting chance in this election of getting to 270 electoral votes, he has to win North Carolina, Ohio and Florida. If he does win all three that still gives him only 253 electoral votes," said Ford O'Connell, a GOP strategist. "The biggest problem for the Trump campaign is overall, where are you going to get 270? He basically almost has to run an inside straight and almost has to have them all fall into his hands."
Trump and his aides insist he has a path and momentum, citing huge crowds, long lines for early voting and the few polls in his favor. A Fox News poll Wednesday put the national gap to Clinton at only three points and a Bloomberg Politics survey in Florida said he was two points up.
"I think we're going to have a tremendous victory," Trump told CNN's Dana Bash Wednesday. "If I didn't think it, I wouldn't say it."
Trump's schedule shows that he knows the stakes.
He spent several days in Florida earlier this week, was in North Carolina on Wednesday and spent Thursday in Ohio. Without that trio, Trump has no platform to mount what even then would be a long shot bid for the White House.
Clinton is of the same mind. She was in Florida Wednesday and plans to go back Saturday. She campaigned in North Carolina with first lady Michelle Obama on Thursday. Clinton could effectively stop Trump in his tracks if she can win either state -- barring a huge and unpredictable upset elsewhere.
If Trump does win North Carolina, Ohio and Florida, he can trace the narrowest of routes to 270 electoral votes by winning New Hampshire, a congressional district in Maine, Iowa and Nevada. But Clinton is leading or in a tight race in those states. Trump also cannot afford to drop any red state, and is already fighting rearguard actions in Arizona and Utah, and some Democrats believe that Georgia could be competitive.
Again, Trump's travel is instructive -- he is campaigning in Maine, New Hampshire and Iowa on Friday.
Some Democrats worry Clinton's biggest risk is that her voters think she has the presidency in the bag and will fail to show up to vote.
"No complacency here," Clinton said Wednesday at a rally in Tampa, Florida. "Donald Trump says he can still win and he is right. That is why it is so important everyone gets out and votes."
Clinton's advisers also warn that the race will probably narrow in the days to come.
"Quite likely we are in store for one final round of tightening," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted Wednesday.
In essence, Trump's hopes rely on a huge turnout of his base voters, who are largely white and working class. He also needs significantly depressed enthusiasm among Clinton voters and a poll-defying shock on the scale of Brexit, the surprise British vote this year to quit the European Union.
Trump has repeatedly said the polls are wrong. And it's true that some pre-election polls underplayed the size of Obama's re-election victory in 2012 and the Democratic mid-term election debacle two years later.
But if he goes into Election Day with his current deficit, Trump would require a massive polling miss outside the margin of error in multiple states.
The Republican nominee's own strategy makes his task even more difficult.
Since he has likely alienated minority and educated women with his rhetoric and behavior, Trump must pull in vast numbers of new white voters — some who may have voted for Democrats in the past -- to make up for the shortfall.
But the Fox News poll, like some other recent surveys, suggested Trump is underperforming 2012 nominee Mitt Romney among this core constituency. Romney won white voters by 20 points over Obama according to exit polls, but Trump is only 14 points ahead of Clinton in the poll with the same voting group.
Trump's problems with educated white female voters have been well documented.
If those numbers hold, it means that the GOP nominee must reverse trends in which white voters have become a smaller share of the electorate in recent elections.
"There are just not enough white men in these battleground states for him to win this election," said Tharon Johnson, who ran Obama's southern states strategy in his 2012 re-election bid.
Still, Bloomberg's poll of Florida does suggest Trump has some traction in the state he regards as a second home — even though most other recent surveys have given Clinton a lead of a few points. Some close observers of Sunshine State politics do believe his intense campaigning is having an impact.
"I think it has moved some polls. He has been very strategic about going into some of the media markets where there are a lot of suburban voters," said Professor Susan MacManus of the University of South Florida, who does not rule out a late Trump surge. "Never say never in our state. On paper, it should be Hillary's to lose. But it's not an on paper election. She has soft spots in her base, so does Trump." | 0fake |
DON’T LET DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ GET AWAY WITH HER ASSAULT ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY… | Home › POLITICS › DON’T LET DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ GET AWAY WITH HER ASSAULT ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY… DON’T LET DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ GET AWAY WITH HER ASSAULT ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY… 0 SHARES
[11/1/16] While everyone’s talking about acting DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile’s current scandals, let’s not lose sight of the fact that her predecessor, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has seemingly gotten away with spearheading and successfully executing a years-long plot to rig the Democratic primaries for her friend, ally, and former employer Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As we’ve discussed before , we know for a fact thanks to a leaked email that Tim Kaine had been promised the vice presidential slot long before it was anywhere close to necessary for Clinton to select a running mate. If you know anything at all about politics, you know people don’t get promised a favor that big unless they’ve given something equally massive in return. It would be hard to think of a political favor greater than being installed into one of the most esteemed positions in American government; it is the most significant thing that a presidential candidate can bestow upon someone from that position.
We also know for a fact that Obama was already a “friend and political ally” of Kaine back in 2011 according to this Washington Post article from that year, which was the year President Barack encouraged his friend Tim to step down from his position as DNC chair and make a run for retiring Democratic muppet Jim Webb’s Senate seat. And according to this Politico article from the very same day, Obama then immediately installed former Clinton campaign co-chair and Hillary attack poodle Debbie Wasserman Schultz to the conveniently-vacated DNC chair, who then went on to orchestrate the rigging of the Democratic primaries for her girlfriend in violation of the Impartiality Clause of the DNC charter.
In doing this, Obama was able to effectively hand-pick a successor to his throne who happens to be married to his Democratic presidential predecessor Bill Clinton. You’re not supposed to be able to do that in a democracy.
We’ve talked about all that before. What I have personally failed to address adequately is the fact that Wasserman Schultz got away with it. She did every single thing she was placed in the DNC chair to do, she got caught, and then all she had to do was say “Oopsie! Looks like I’ll have to resign now!” and just stroll away, grinning like the cat that already ate the canary. Post navigation | 1real |
Kenneth Starr to Resign as Chancellor at Baylor - The New York Times | Kenneth W. Starr announced Wednesday that he would resign as chancellor of Baylor University, effective immediately, saying it was a “matter of conscience. ” Mr. Starr’s decision came less than a week after he was stripped of the more operationally powerful position of president of the university in the wake of a scandal in which Baylor acknowledged that it had mishandled accusations of sexual assault against several football players. “I have to, and I willingly do, accept responsibility,” Mr. Starr told “Outside the Lines,” the ESPN program in which he announced his decision. “The captain goes down with the ship,” he added. But he also doubled down on a statement he released last week in which he said that he had been unaware of the beginning of what was later described as a widespread problem until last August, when a former football player was convicted of sexual assault. While Mr. Starr is stepping down as chancellor, a role that a Baylor regent described last week as one focused primarily on raising money as well as on “religious liberty,” he planned to retain his post as a tenured professor at Baylor’s law school. The scandal has also claimed the jobs of Art Briles, the successful head football coach, whom the Board of Regents fired last Thursday, and Ian McCaw, the athletic director, who resigned Sunday, days after the Regents had placed him on probation. Mr. Starr said he had not been consulted on Mr. Briles’s firing. He mixed some light condemnation of the coach, for failing to be a “stronger disciplinarian,” with praise, calling him a “players’ coach” and a “genius. ” Before entering academia as dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law in 2004 and becoming president of Baylor, the country’s largest Baptist university, in 2010, Mr. Starr was an independent counsel whose report to Congress led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. Before that, he was the United States solicitor general and a federal judge. At Baylor, Mr. Starr was credited with raising the university’s national profile — along with hundreds of millions of dollars — in no small part by tying the university’s national image to the recent success of its football team under Mr. Briles. It was Mr. Starr who, nearly one year ago, ordered an internal investigation into the university’s handling of a former player who was convicted of sexually assaulting another Baylor athlete. That inquiry led Mr. Starr to recommend that Baylor hire outside lawyers to investigate Baylor’s handling of such accusations more broadly. The board agreed, and it described the results of that investigation last Thursday in an executive summary that accompanied its decisions to demote Mr. Starr and to fire Mr. Briles. The board said in a statement last week that the investigation had found that the university’s climate flouted federal laws, including Title IX. The board condemned a university leadership that, it said, “created a cultural perception that football was above the rules. ” | 0fake |
Massive Spherical Space Object Disturbed NASA’s Satellite H1 | Massive Spherical Space Object Disturbed NASA’s Satellite H1
NASA still won't talk about a giant mysterious spherical object that sometimes becomes visible in the vicinity of the Sun.
Now, it seems a massive unknown force disturbed NASA’s satellite H1 on November 17, 2016 which almost led to an equipment malfunction.
On November 16, the satellite was still functioning normally then on the 17th something disturbed the satellite but the H1 camera still managed to capture images and one day later the 18th everything returned to normal.
Images captured on the 17th show a giant spherical object which was probably the cause of the incident.
Whether the object is one of the giant extraterrestrial or interdimensional spacecraft, which are accessing our solar system, using the Sun as a stargate or an unknown celestial body like the famed planet Nibiru, it is clear what happened on the 17th was not the result of an equipment failure.
Note: Planet Nibiru – This mysterious object has been researched by Intellihub’s Shepard Ambellas for over 25 years and is likely the basis for all emergency preparations by world governments which we’ve seen transpire over the last three decades after the object was discovered during the Regan Administration by NASA’s IRAS telescope.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
UFO Sighting Hotspot SOURCE | 1real |
Donald Trump is reinventing the GOP in his image: The secret Republican memo that admits what already should have been obvious | When Donald Trump descended from that escalator to announce his presidential run nearly six months ago you probably couldn’t have found more than three people in the whole country who thought he had a chance. It was even reported at the time that he had paid actors at fifty bucks a head to enthusiastically cheer and clap for his bizarre announcement speech, in which he declared his intention to build a big beautiful wall to keep out all the immigrant rapists. It seemed like a joke or some kind of political performance art. Everyone settled in to enjoy the show, never dreaming that anyone would take him seriously.
But over the course of the last half year he’s stayed at the top of polls and, even more astonishingly, gotten away with saying things that no other political figure could have ever gotten away with. With each gaffe, insult, mistake, faux pas, slander and cheap shot, his followers become even more loyal.
The latest polling average by the Huffington Post pollster has Trump at 34.4 percent with Rubio at 14.6 percent, Carson at 13.9 percent and Cruz at 13.4 percent. He’s not going down. He’s going up. And now that the primary season is in full effect, everyone’s starting to wonder whether he might actually win.
There have been a flurry of recent articles reporting that big GOP donors starting to get nervous, particularly since their designated candidate, Jeb Bush, sank in the polls a few months ago and hasn’t been able to climb back up. But they are stumped about what to do about him. On the one hand they’re sure he’s going to implode and on the other worried that any money they spend trying to take him down will be wasted.
This article in last week’s Washington Post by Matea Gold and Robert Costa is filled with colorful anecdotes and quotes from various consultants, advisors and party poohbahs wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the problem. But the best are the big money donors who are convinced that the voters will see the light and all will be well:
“He is going to implode himself,” said Frank VanderSloot, the chief executive of an Idaho nutritional-supplement company who is backing Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.). He said he recently turned down a funding request from a group seeking to run anti-Trump ads. “It’s just going to take a little time for people to take a step back and look at his track record, see who he is and how he’s changed his positions and how unprepared he is to be president of the United States,” VanderSloot said.
Their faith is rather charmingly naive. They don’t seem to realize that the voters who are flocking to Trump hate people like them and have no respect for anything they believe. It’s not the money, of course. The fact that Trump is a billionaire is one of the things they love about him. He’s a winner. What they hate is the fact that these elites don’t think Trump is qualified. His lack of political experience is irrelevant.
He says out loud what they are thinking and he does it without any self-awareness or sense that there’s anything wrong with it. He validates their rage. The large field has all the Super PACs tying themselves in knots trying to game out the ramifications of taking on Trump, worried that it will end up benefiting one of their rivals. John Kasich’s Super PAC decided to take the plunge and was greeted with a threat of a lawsuit from Trump’s lawyer: Fred Davis, the GOP admaker crafting the super PAC’s spots, said the missive is an example of why more donors are not stepping forward to take on Trump. “I think the reason people are hesitant is that he’s a bully,” he said. Trump and his followers were undoubtedly thrilled with that admission. So the campaigns, the big donors and the Super PACs have been pretty much paralyzed by the Trump phenomenon. At this point they are just hoping he’ll implode and they can run the campaign they always planned to run. But others in the party, those with concerns beyond the presidential election are starting to do some serious analysis and strategizing around Trump. Yesterday, Robert Costa and Philip Rucker reported that the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee wrote a seven page confidential memo that “urges candidates to adopt many of Trump’s tactics, issues and approaches — right down to adjusting the way they dress and how they use Twitter.” If you can’t beat him, join him. The NRSC is obviously right to be concerned about Trump. But most would assume this concern stems from the possibility that his brand of politics could lead to the party being decimated down ticket if he should get the nomination. But this takes a different tack altogether. NRSC Executive Director Ward Baker is telling his Senate candidates that Trump is on to something and they should try to emulate him. Many people have pointed out that the Republicans created the angry constituency that is now enthralled by Trump with decades of talk radio and Fox TV propaganda. And they were obviously startled by the results. But now they seem to be in the process of accepting and adapting. The problem is that they don’t really understand Trump’s appeal. They think he’s popular because of his “anti-Washington populist agenda” and because “he can’t be bought.” And it’s true that people like that about him. But what his followers love about him is his open, almost cheerful disdain for people they hate and a willingness to win by any means necessary. Without that, he’s just another guy railing against Washington and saying he’ll lower taxes. Ward seems to think that candidates can cop Trump’s attitude without going for the substance and people will go for it. But that’s pretty condescending. Voters like Trump for what he’s saying even more than the way he’s saying it. They’re not going to be fooled by someone trying to do “Trump-lite.” Nonetheless, the memo is important for the fact that it admits that the highest levels of the Republican party see a way in which Trump can put together a coalition that could win a general election. It’s hard to believe they’re right, but they do seem to be serious. But even more concerning is the fact that Trumpism is seeping beyond his candidacy and into the Party as whole. They are no longer rejecting him, they are co-opting him. They are becoming him. | 0fake |
French Muslims Protest and Pray in Street After Mosque Closure | Muslims in the French city of Clichy protested a local government decision to remove them from a building which they were occupying and had turned into a mosque. [On Wednesday, police removed the Muslim group known as the Union of Muslim Associations of Clichy (UAMC) who were squatting in the building after a long and heated battle between the city and the UAMC. The city wants to turn the property into a media library, and the Muslim group want it to remain a mosque. On Thursday, a large group of Muslims appeared on the street outside the city hall at 5:00 am to pray and protest the evacuation of the property, La Parisien reports. According to reports, the local government gave the Muslim association a lease on the property but it expired in June last year, and the Muslims refused to leave. On Wednesday at 8:30 am, bailiffs arrived at the building and welded the gate shut so that no one could enter. However, around 50 individuals managed to gain access to the building and had to be forcibly removed by police. The removal was not entirely peaceful as police report that three of their officers were injured during the operation. One Muslim demonstrator was arrested for committing a violent act against a police officer. The city decided to repurpose the building last year and gave the UAMC another building to pray in. The Muslim group rejected the offer and said the new area was too small and did not have the “dignity” befitting its worshippers. Footage has emerged claiming to be of the protest, showing protestors blocking a street and being flanked by police in full riot gear whilst cars beep their horns. #France: Illegal mosque evacuated by police in #Clichy. later, the clever believers celebrated prayer on the street. pic. twitter. — STOP TERROR (@S_T_O_P_TERROR) March 23, 2017, The street prayer protests come as part of a rising movement in France. The recurrence of mass public prayer became so disruptive in the country that in 2011 the government was forced to pass a law banning Muslims from praying on the streets of Paris. Illegal mosques are not just a problem in France but also in Italy where authorities shut down at least six mosques last year. Muslims in Italy also protested the shutdowns, which officials closed for safety reasons and building standards, and threatened to invade the Vatican and pray there if they weren’t allowed to continue using their mosques. In Germany, some small mosques, which are often located within private homes, have been linked to radical Islamic schools of thought like Salafism. Earlier this year, Socialist Party politician Sigmar Gabriel called for Salafist mosques to be shut down after it was revealed the Berlin Christmas Market terror attacker Anis Amri had been involved with several Salafist mosques in Berlin. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com | 0fake |
null | Obama and Hillary are all about deceit and lies. Both should be tried for treason. If anyone thinks foreign countries have not hacked these emails they are living in a fantasy land. Both have unnessarily put our National Security at risk. Unexcusable and proper action should be taken against them. | 1real |
Hoping to extend maritime reach, China lavishes aid on Pakistan town | GWADAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - China is lavishing vast amounts of aid on a small Pakistani fishing town to win over locals and build a commercial deep-water port that the United States and India suspect may also one day serve the Chinese navy. Beijing has built a school, sent doctors and pledged about $500 million in grants for an airport, hospital, college and badly-needed water infrastructure for Gwadar, a dusty town whose harbor juts out into the Arabian Sea, overlooking some of the world s busiest oil and gas shipping lanes. The grants include $230 million for a new international airport, one of the largest such disbursements China has made abroad, according to researchers and Pakistani officials. The handouts for the Gwadar project is a departure from Beijing s usual approach in other countries. China has traditionally derided Western-style aid in favor of infrastructure projects for which it normally provides loans through Chinese state-owned commercial and development banks. The concentration of grants is quite striking, said Andrew Small, an author of a book on China-Pakistan relations and a Washington-based researcher at the German Marshall Fund think tank. China largely doesn t do aid or grants, and when it has done them, they have tended to be modest. Pakistan has welcomed the aid with open hands. However, Beijing s unusual largesse has also fueled suspicions in the United States and India that Gwadar is part of China s future geostrategic plans to challenge U.S. naval dominance. It all suggests that Gwadar, for a lot of people in China, is not just a commercial proposition over the longer term, Small said. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Beijing and Islamabad see Gwadar as the future jewel in the crown of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship of Beijing s Belt and Road initiative to build a new Silk Road of land and maritime trade routes across more than 60 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. The plan is to turn Gwadar into a trans-shipment hub and megaport to be built alongside special economic zones from which export-focused industries will ship goods worldwide. A web of energy pipelines, roads and rail links will connect Gwadar to China s western regions. Port trade is expected to grow from 1.2 million tonnes in 2018 to about 13 million tonnes by 2022, Pakistani officials say. At the harbor, three new cranes have been installed and dredging will next year deepen the port depth to 20 meters at five berths. But the challenges are stark. Gwadar has no access to drinking water, power blackouts are common and separatist insurgents threaten attacks against Chinese projects in Gwadar and the rest of Baluchistan, a mineral-rich province that is still Pakistan s poorest region. Security is tight, with Chinese and other foreign visitors driven around in convoys of soldiers and armed police. Beijing is also trying to overcome the distrust of outsiders evident in Baluchistan, where indigenous Baloch fear an influx of other ethnic groups and foreigners. Many residents say the pace of change is too slow. Local people are not completely satisfied, said Essar Nori, a lawmaker for Gwadar, adding that the separatists were tapping into that dissatisfaction. Pakistani officials are urging Gwadar residents to be patient, vowing to urgently build desalination plants and power stations. China s Gwadar project contrasts with similar efforts in Sri Lanka, where the village of Hambantota was transformed into a port complex - but was saddled with Chinese debt. Last week, Sri Lanka formally handed over operations to China on a 99-year lease in exchange for lighter debt repayments, a move that sparked street protests over what many Sri Lankans view as an erosion of sovereignty. The Hambantota port, like Gwadar, is part of a network of harbors Beijing is developing in Asia and Africa that have spooked India, which fears being encircled by China s growing naval power. But Pakistani officials say comparisons to Hambantota are unfair because the Gwadar project has much less debt. On top of the airport, Chinese handouts in Gwadar include $100 million to expand a hospital by 250 beds, $130 million towards upgrading water infrastructure, and $10 million for a technical and vocational college, according to Pakistani government documents and officials. We welcome this assistance as it s changing the quality of life of the people of Gwadar for the better, said Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the parliamentary committee that oversees CPEC, including Gwadar. China and Pakistan jointly choose which projects will be developed under the CPEC mechanism, Sayed added. When China suggested a 7,000 meter runway for the new airport, Pakistan pushed for a 12,000 meter one that could accommodate planes as large as the Airbus 380 and be used for military purposes, according to Sajjad Baloch, a director of the Gwadar Development Authority. The scale of Chinese grants is extraordinary, according to Brad Parks, executive director of AidData, a research lab at the U.S.-based William and Mary university that collected data on Chinese aid across 140 countries from 2000-2014. Since 2014, Beijing has pledged over $800 million in grants and concessional loans for Gwadar, which has less than 100,000 people. In the 15 years before that, China gave about $2.4 billion in concessional loans and grants during this period across the whole of Pakistan, a nation of 207 million people. Gwadar is exceptional even by the standards of China s past activities in Pakistan itself, Parks said. There are early signs China s efforts to win hearts and minds are beginning to bear fruit in Gwadar. Baluchistan is backward and underdeveloped, but we are seeing development after China s arrival, said Salam Dashti, 45, a grocer whose two children attend the new Chinese-built primary school. But there are major pitfalls ahead. Tens of thousands of people living by the port will have to be relocated. For now, they live in cramped single-story concrete houses corroded by sea water on a narrow peninsula, where barefoot fishermen offload their catch on newly-paved roads strewn with rubbish. Many of the fishermen say they fear they ll lose their livelihoods once the port starts operating. Indigenous residents fear of becoming a minority is inevitable with Gwadar s population expected to jump more than 15-fold in coming decades. On the edge of town, mansions erected by land speculators are popping up alongside the sand dunes. Analysts say China is aware that previous efforts to develop Gwadar port failed partly due to the security threat posed by Baloch separatists, so Beijing is trying to counter the insurgents narrative that China wants to exploit Baluchistan. That weighs heavily on the minds of the Chinese, Parks added. It s almost certainly true that they are trying to safeguard their investments by getting more local buy-in. Chinese officials, meanwhile, are promoting the infrastructure development they are funding. Every day you can see new changes. It shows the sincerity of Chinese for development of Gwadar, Lijian Zhao, the deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad, tweeted last month. For its investment in Gwadar, China will receive 91 percent of revenues until the port is returned to Pakistan in four decades time. The operator, China Overseas Ports Holding Company, will also be exempt from major taxes for more than 20 years. Pakistan s maritime affairs minister, Hasil Bizenjo, said the arrival of the Chinese in the region contrasted with the experience of the past two centuries, when Russia and Britain, and later the United States and the Soviet Union, vied for control of the warm water ports of the Persian Gulf. The Chinese have come very smoothly, they have reached the warm waters, Bizenjo told Reuters. What they are investing is less than a peanut for access to warm waters. When a U.S. Pentagon report in June suggested Gwadar could become a military base for China, a concern that India has also expressed, Beijing dismissed the idea. Talk that China is building a military base in Pakistan is pure guesswork, said a Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman, Wu Qian. Bizenjo and other Pakistani officials say Beijing has not asked to use Gwadar for naval purposes. This port, they will use it mostly for their commercial interests, but it depends on the next 20 years where the world goes, Bizenjo said. (This story has been refiled to correct typos in spellings of names of Chinese officials in paragraphs 40, 46) | 0fake |
THE BEST OF WATTERS’ WORLD: “If liberals are so creative, why can’t Obama create jobs?” | Jesse Watters is pretty awesome! He s great at making people think but being funny at the same time. Pretty awesome! | 1real |
Magnetic storm could disrupt power grids, navigation systems and satellites over the next few days | This magnetic storm could disrupt power grids, radio navigation systems and satellites causing problems with phone and internet networks A giant coronal hole in the sun recently sent charged particles hurtling toward Earth.
These solar winds triggered a geomagnetic storm that could disrupt power grids, radio navigation systems and satellites, which could cause problems with phone and internet networks.
This most recent event was big enough for the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center to issue a moderate geomagnetic storm watch for Wednesday.
It isn’t all bad news, though. Because of the strength of the storm, parts of the United States may get a look at the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights.
Areas as far south as northern Indiana and northern Ohio could get a bit of a show overnight.
Over the next few days, the chances of any disruptions and auroras will decrease.
Images: Spaceweather.com
Source: Strange Sounds
Related: She’s back! Large coronal hole faces Earth again Sunspot Cycles and the Global Shift in Consciousness Evolution of Consciousness triggered by Solar flares Global Elite Prepare for Massive Solar Eruptions Claim Secret Space Program Whistleblower The White House Just Issued An Executive Order officially Preparing For The “Event?” | 1real |
Keith Olbermann to Betsy DeVos: “The Hurricane is Going to Do Less Damage to Schools Than You Are, Motherf*cker” | The lefty lunatic of the day just can t keep himself from being hateful and disgusting. It doesn t matter that he s calling a lady a mother*cker . The vitriol is disgusting and has no place in ANY media outlet. Potty talk is for crybabies Keith Olbermann is a BIG one!The hatefulness coming from the left never ends If it s not Maxine Waters then it s DNC Chair Tom Perez with his potty mouth. Does the left think this will attract people to their party? They must Check out what Perez said about Republicans: OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON DNC CHAIR TOM PEREZ: Republicans don t give a sh*t about people DNC Chair Tom Perez was on MSNBC (video below) to answer to critics who didn t like his nasty speech last week.He appeared at an event held by New Jersey Working Families Alliance, a re-branded ACORN agency and gave a hateful and divisive speech. He claimed that, Republicans don t give a sh*t about people . Why the Democrats picked this far left radical is puzzling unless the Democrats plan on going full commie Perez is connected to the radical open borders group La Raza. Something tells us that Obama made this pick for the Democrats. Check out a defiant Perez doubling down on is nastiness:OUR PREVIOUS REPORT AND VIDEO BELOW:Perez has a long radical history connected to La Raza and other open borders organizations. His track record is full on radical. e s in cahoots with Obama to continue the fundamental transformation of America. Anyone who s a Democrat should be shocked that he s taking the party in such a far left direction. Do your research and you ll know why he was the choice for Dem Chair.He just fired all Democrat Party staffers and is bringing in all new people. The party is clearly taking a new direction and it s not a good one for any American. DONALD TRUMP DIDN T WIN WATCH ENTIRE VIDEO: Republicans don t give a sh*t about people | 1real |
REFUGEE BUSINESS IS CASH COW FOR LUTHERAN CHARITY IN MI AND OTHER STATES | How very charitable of the Lutheran and Catholic churches to bring tens of thousands of refugees to America, dump them off, and expect the American taxpayer to fund their existence Michigan Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence cheers the news that more money is coming to her district for illegal aliens magically transformed into refugees.What she won t understand until it is too late, is that the arrival of thousands of refugees in Michigan will squeeze Americans, especially the African Americans, at the bottom rung of the pay scale. Michigan is in the top five states receiving refugees and yet they are adding alien children into the mix.But, what the heck, even as states increase poverty, these church groups have to make a living!From the Detroit Free Press:WASHINGTON The Obama administration has awarded a Michigan social services group $2.2 million to house unaccompanied immigrant children, U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence announced today. US Rep Brenda Lawrence is happy that the Lutherans are flooding Michigan with refugees and alien children. It was not immediately known how many children would receive or had received residential services under the grant to Lutheran Social Services of Michigan or whether any other groups were receiving grants in the state as well.No surprise! No one will return calls!Calls and emails to Lutheran Social Services of Michigan and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from the Free Press seeking more information were not immediately returned.According to data on the ORR s website, only 235 unaccompanied immigrant children had been placed in Michigan in the last two years, far less than the number placed in neighboring states including Ohio. [I wonder if the new grant is in anticipation of Michigan getting more of the UACs ed]Some 63,000 undocumented children have been placed throughout the U.S. in the last two years, the ORR s website said.In announcing the grant, Lawrence, D-Southfield, said the grant assists unaccompanied minors who seek relief from the violence and poverty that threatens their very existence in their home countries. They can hardly be described as being faith-based while living off of taxpayer boodle! Doesn t sound like Christian charity to me! Lutheran Social Services truly lives up to their faith-based mission statement to serve the people most in need of help and I am proud to see them receive this substantial federal grant, she said, adding that she believes it also time for Congress to address comprehensive immigration reform.Lutheran Social Services of Michigan is the largest refugee resettlement agency in the state, Lawrence said, providing thousands of families from dozens of countries.So, it is the Lutherans resettling most of the Muslim refugees to Michigan?Other of the nine major contractors are also busy overloading Michigan, go here to see the handy list of subcontractors/contractors working in Michigan and your state too!For new readers, for years we have covered the unaccompanied minors (one of the government s original names for the youths illegally crossing the border). Click here for all of our previous posts.The US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service were the two big dogs doing the resettlement of the children (Obama s new refugees) until two other federal contractors eclipsed them. Grant recipients Baptist Child and Family Services and Southwest Key Programs are now on the scene devouring federal cash as well. | 1real |
ELLEN Just Proved She’s A HUGE Hypocrite And Knows NOTHING About Trump [Video] | Someone needs to educate Ellen DeGeneres on President Trump. She obviously knows nothing about him or his policies that DO include ALL Americans! He just not into identity politics like Obama was.She claims that his views on immigrants and women aren t aligned with hers. So isn t she doing what she proclaims to object to when she refuses to have Trump on simply because of his views?He is FOR immigrants but for LEGAL IMMIGRANTS. Does Ellen advocate for illegally coming to America? Traditionally, talk show hosts salivate at the mere thought of the president of the United States visiting their chatfests.Ellen DeGeneres? Not so much.President Donald Trump isn t welcome on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the comedienne told Matt Lauer in an interview that aired on NBC s Today on Friday, because I m not gonna change his mind. He s against everything that I stand for. DeGeneres said she had met Trump in the past; the two filmed a Celebrity Apprentice -related segment for her show years ago. I flew in his helicopter and did a bit with him, so I knew him then, she said. I have not spoken to him since he s run for president or become president. DeGeneres, who recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of her coming out as a lesbian during an episode of her sitcom Ellen, implied that Trump s well-documented comments about women and immigrants, among other topics, do not jibe with her own views and do not seem to be malleable.Read more: NYP | 1real |
null | A lot of these creeps are going to be looking to flee like roaches over to Syria. Syrian forces need to set up blockades to ensure they cannot slip in. And as far as after this city is liberated and free from Satan's grip, there doesn't need to be one power control structure implemented. I think this city is and should be a completely dynamically diverse and peaceful enclave. No power trips, no hate, no sectarian strife. Food, water, power, etc. those are all things every resident needs and wants and no government body can or shoud try to play tough guy. I honestly think Mosul can be the city of miracles. I really hope that all the nasty people that are salivating to move in and try to dominate this enclave will back off and contribute only good will and objective and benevolent efforts. It could truly be an amazingly beautiful, simple and harmonious place if only the evil troublemakers were not allowed to take root | 1real |
Seven U.S. states still without budgets a week into new fiscal year | (Reuters) - Seven U.S. states are still without budgets, nearly a week into the new fiscal year that started July 1. Legislatures in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin remain in disagreement about how to close ongoing budget gaps in their states or fund new budget initiatives. “We always have some states that go into the new fiscal year without budgets, but the number is a bit high this year,” said Eric Kim, a director at Fitch Ratings. Weak revenues complicated budget negotiations in several states, while idiosyncratic issues pushed others beyond their June 30 deadlines. The Illinois House was poised to take final budget action on Thursday by attempting to override the governor’s vetoes of a $36 billion spending plan and $5 billion tax hike approved by the Democratic-controlled legislature over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. A hazardous materials situation in the state Capitol in Springfield delayed the House session, but officials determined the substance was harmless and lawmakers were returning. If enacted, the budget would mark Illinois’ first complete budget since 2015. No other U.S. state has lacked a budget for that long. Thirty-three of the 50 U.S. states reported revenues that came in below projections in fiscal year 2017, the highest number of states since the recession decimated budgets in 2010, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. Connecticut and Pennsylvania have the most challenging revenue situations, according to Fitch, as lower-than-anticipated tax collections exacerbated budget gaps and led to disputes over how to close them. Massachusetts, also amid a revenue shortfall, enacted a one-month interim budget for July to provide additional time to negotiate a full-year budget. Wisconsin legislators are working to close a transportation funding shortfall. Oregon’s budget process includes multiple bills, most of which have been approved. But the legislature is still debating several measures, including changes to hiring practices. Rhode Island had appeared ready to finalize a budget by June 30, but late last week the state Senate amended a House proposal to phase out an automobile tax, causing the House to halt the budget process. Many states retain the authority to make debt service payments without enacted budgets. Over the holiday weekend, several states came to last-minute budget agreements. New Jersey and Maine ended partial government shutdowns just in time for the Fourth of July holiday on Tuesday, while governors of Washington state and Alaska signed new operating budgets late last week, hours before deadlines that would have triggered partial government shutdowns. | 0fake |
World War 3 Alert Russia Prepares For Nuclear War | November 3, 2016 at 10:20 pm
well clinton is a fool if she does not seek to restore relations with russia ASAP…they seem to be forgetting about ''the dead man's switch" it's an actual system implimented by russia as a warning to it's enemies of nuclear retaliation….why the fuck is america's citizens letting their leaders destroy peaceful relations with russia.. even if russia would lose a war against usa the problem is the aftermath….we're talking millions dead if not billions and nuclear fallout on a global scale | 1real |
Palestinian protests break out in Jordan over Trump's move on Jerusalem | AMMAN (Reuters) - Protests broke out on Wednesday in areas of Jordan s capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees in response to U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, witnesses said. Youths chanted anti-American slogans in Amman, while in the Baqaa refugee camp on the city s outskirts, hundreds of youths roamed the streets denouncing Trump and calling on Jordan s government to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America.. America is the mother of terror, they chanted. King Abdullah s Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman sensitive to any changes in the status of the city, whose eastern sector was captured by Israel from Jordan in a 1967 war. Many people in Jordan are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948. | 0fake |
UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT APOLOGIZES TO TRAUMATIZED STUDENTS For Allowing Cops To Sleep In Campus Housing During RNC…Makes Them Feel “Unsafe” | ***WARNING***If you are between the ages of 18-23 and believe everything your Leftist teachers and professors are feeding you, and you are offended by pretty much EVERYTHING, you may not want to read this story.Students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland were so traumatized by the prospect of sharing their campus with armed police officers during the Republican National Convention next week that the university has opted instead to essentially shut down for the week.The students were incensed that school officials had agreed to allow police officers imported to maintain order during the convention to stay in campus housing. More than 300 of them signed an online petition demanding that, among other things, the riot police store their weapons off-campus between shifts, restrict themselves exclusively to the residence halls and abide by university rules regarding anti-discrimination and sexual harassment.Some students even asked to be moved to alternative housing for the week, saying the increased police presence caused them to fear for their safety following the shooting deaths of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana. I am scared and concerned for students of color, queer* and trans* students and all university community members at the mercy of an arbitrarily expanded police force without clear oversight or attachment to the community, wrote one petitioner, Shannon Groll. Please, protect CWRU as a safe space for all bodies. I am deeply troubled by the presence even temporarily of a militarized police force on the CWRU campus, wrote Keith Fitch. The number one priority for an educational institution is to guarantee a safe environment for its students, faculty, and staff. Said petitioner Andrew Stark: The institutionally-sanctioned presence of militarized police forces in an educational environment is unacceptable and contributes to the creation and maintenance of a gendered and racialized space, physically, socially and psychologically unsafe for persons belonging to marginalized groups. TRANSLATION PLEASE!??Police officials assured the students and administration that any officers using the University to bed down during the convention would take care to secure their weapons between shifts, and that officers would be on their best behavior while on campus, but that wasn t enough.Campus administrators, including the campus President Barbara Snyder, tried to take students into consideration and address student requests as best as possible, but Tuesday morning felt they could no longer handle the overwhelming sentiment among the student body and simply closed campus for the week of the RNC.President Snyder apologized profusely in an email to the students who had been hurt when the college approved the city s request to house officers. [I]n answering the city s convention request, we failed to give adequate consideration to the impact the decision would have on members of our community in particular students staying in residence halls near the buildings housing the officers. Classes will now be held off-campus next week, on-campus summer camps have been rescheduled, and students who live on campus or are staying on campus for the summer will receive help finding alternate accommodations. Heatstreet | 1real |
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