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Police Use Surveillance Tool to Scan Social Media, A.C.L.U. Says - The New York Times | A Chicago company has marketed a tool using text, photos and videos gleaned from major social media companies to aid law enforcement surveillance of protesters, civil liberties activists say. The company, called Geofeedia, used data from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as nine other social media networks, to let users search for social media content in a specific location, as opposed to searching by words or hashtags that would be less likely to reveal an exact location. Geofeedia marketed its abilities to law enforcement agencies and has signed up more than 500 such clients, according to an email obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. In one document posted by the organization, as part of a report released on Tuesday, the company appears to point to how officials in Baltimore, with Geofeedia’s help, were able to monitor and respond to the violent protests that broke out after Freddie Gray died in police custody in April 2015. Geofeedia appears to have used programs that Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies offered that allow app makers or advertising companies to create tools, like ways for publishers to see where their stories are being shared on social media. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram say they have cut off Geofeedia’s access to their information. But civil liberties advocates criticized the companies for lax oversight and challenged them to create better mechanisms to monitor how their data is being used. “These platforms should be doing more to protect the free speech rights of activists of color,” Matt Cagle, a lawyer with the A. C. L. U. in Northern California, said in an interview. “When they open their feeds to companies that market surveillance products, they risk putting their users in harm’s way. ” Instagram and Facebook terminated Geofeedia’s access to their data in September, while Twitter shut off access on Tuesday. The response from the companies suggested that Geofeedia was using data from the companies in a way that was not allowed under their developer agreements. Jodi Seth, director of policy communications at Facebook, said that Geofeedia had access to data that had been made public on the social network, and that access was subject to the limitations in its platform policy. That policy asks developers to “provide a publicly available and easily accessible privacy policy that explains what data you are collecting and how you will use that data. ” It also asks that they “obtain adequate consent from people before using any Facebook technology that allows us to collect and process data about them. ” Twitter said that based on the information found by the A. C. L. U. it was “immediately suspending Geofeedia’s commercial access to Twitter data. ” Phil Harris, chief executive of Geofeedia, said in a statement that his company “provides some clients, including law enforcement officials across the country, with a critical tool in helping to ensure public safety while protecting civil rights and liberties. ” He said the firm has policies to prevent “inappropriate use of our software. ” Mr. Harris added that the company understands that given how quickly digital technology changes, Geofeedia “must continue to work to build on these critical protections of civil rights. ” In addition to law enforcement agencies, the company has marketed its services to journalists as a way to find people at breaking news events for interviews and social media content. The New York Times used Geofeedia on a trial basis, but has not had access since 2015. The A. C. L. U. said it first learned about the agreements with Geofeedia from responses to public records requests to 63 law enforcement agencies in California. Those records, the organization said, revealed a significant expansion of social media surveillance. “Posts on social media platforms can reveal information about our location, our religion, the people we associate with,” Mr. Cagle said. “Users of social media websites do not expect or want the government to be monitoring this information. And users should not be at risk of being branded a risk to public safety simply for speaking their mind on social media. ” | 0fake |
Even Staunch Republican Ben Stein Says He’d Support Sanders Or Clinton Over Trump (VIDEO) | Conservatives are going to be seriously shocked about this one.Ben Stein is a conservative economist who served as a speechwriter under Presidents Nixon and Ford in the 1970s, and he s been a Republican his entire life as well as a harsh critic of President Obama.Stein has always supported the Republican nominee in every election, so one would think he would do the same in 2016, especially since President Obama s former Secretary of State is running. Not so fast.Like other Republicans, Stein is troubled by Donald Trump. And after being asked who he would support during an interview on CNN, Stein professed that he could see himself supporting Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, the two Democrats in the race, because Trump is dangerous. I went to law school with Ms. Clinton so I ve always had a kind of fondness for her, she was always a very nice young woman. I admire the fact that Bernie Sanders has a single-payer national health plan. When I worked for Mr. Nixon as a speechwriter, I wrote the message that sent up Mr. Nixon s proposal for single-payer health plan. But I would like to see it be a Republican, I ve never voted for a Democrat. But Mr. Trump, I think, is dangerously misinformed. I like him, but he s dangerously misinformed. Here s the video via YouTube:This is an explosive sign that Republicans are in a hell of a lot of trouble if Donald Trump manages to capture the GOP nomination, which he is well on track to achieving. Trump s nasty and hateful rhetoric and association with members of the KKK and other white supremacist groups is terrifying the GOP establishment because it could not only cause Republicans to lose another presidential election, it could doom their effort to keep the House and the Senate from falling into Democratic control.To underscore that point, NBC s Chuck Todd reported on Tuesday night that a sitting Republican Senator is preparing to endorse Hillary Clinton if Trump wins the nomination.Clearly, Donald Trump is ripping the Republican Party to pieces and it sounds like it s only going to get more entertaining as election season continues.Featured Image: Wikimedia | 1real |
BREAKING: WikiLeaks Just Released Full ISIS Donor List With Names | in: Government , Government Corruption , Obama Exposed , Sleuth Journal , Special Interests , Whistle Blowers Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS. We have proven that through emails and documents leaked from WikiLeaks, but liberal media outlets still refuse to cover it. After all, they are still more focused on what Trump said eleven years ago than what Hillary has actually done. Because of brave patriots like Julian Assange, we have been given more evidence that Hillary Clinton is more connected to ISIS than we originally believed. An email was leaked between Clinton and John Podesta indicating that: “Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region” to accuse Qatar and Saudi Arabia of “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [or ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Citing the need to “use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets,” said Hillary to Podesta while arguing the current developments in the Middle East were “important to the U.S. for reasons that often differ from country to country.” Odd that Clinton argues Saudi Arabia and Qatar are helping fund ISIS when Hillary’s largest donations come from those two countries. She Is Funded By Nations That Fund ISIS. Coincidence? In another correspondence from 2012, the Director of Foreign Policy at the Clinton Foundation, Amitabh Desai , set up a meeting with Bill Clinton for five minutes in exchange for a $1,000,000 “birthday check.” The email adds that the small but rich nation occupying the Qatar Peninsula would “welcome [the Clinton Foundation’s] suggestions for investments in Haiti — particularly on education and health.” Desai added that while Qatar had already “allocated most of their $20 million … [they were] happy to consider projects we suggest.” We now see two more examples of the Clinton’s acting corrupt and being intertwined with nations that fund ISIS. For those that do not see where the dots connect, let’s simplify how this all worked for Hillary. Hillary, as Secretary of State, would sell terrorist nations large weapons deals only after they gave her a very generous donation to her “foundation.” These weapons, provided by Hillary and her State Department, then filtered down from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, and so on to create, supply, and bolster terrorist groups. That is exactly how ISIS was created. But instead of blowing them up with an air assault, Hillary and Obama decided to leave ISIS alone. Why? Because ISIS being in the Middle East allows the Obama/Clinton machine to make millions in personal profits from these nations in a repetitive cycle of selling weapons. They are choosing personal gain over eliminating a terrorist group. Let that sink in. Why else have they not arrested Hillary for all of these crimes? The FBI would arrest you in a heartbeat if you went to Facebook right now to praise Allah and ISIS. It also speaks volumes as to why they are trying so hard to silence Julian Assange. | 1real |
Unacknowledged Secret Access Projects: The Black Budget & Military Industrial Complex | 21st Century WireAre black budget projects illegally swallowing up your taxes?The military industrial complex has eaten up billions, if not trillions, of dollars from the American tax payer, and much of that has happened on a black budget that is entirely unacknowledged.The military industrial complex is one of the few industries in the world that actually profits from the misery of others, and is involved in numerous questionable projects like creating military cyborgs.In the following video, Dr. Steven Greer explains the significance of unacknowledged secret access projects and the consequences of their illegality: | 1real |
A Polarized Supreme Court, Growing More So - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Viewed one way, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch’s confirmation will not do much to change the dynamics of the Supreme Court. His appointment is a swap, a conservative replacing another conservative. But there is a more instructive way to think about what Judge Gorsuch’s impact will be after he is sworn in on Monday. It is to consider how the court would have been reshaped by President Barack Obama’s pick for the same seat, Judge Merrick B. Garland. The answer shows just how polarized the Supreme Court has become. The titanic struggle over who would replace Justice Antonin Scalia was nothing if not partisan, and for good reason — the Supreme Court is just as divided as the rest of the nation. Had Judge Garland replaced Justice Scalia, the court would have immediately shifted to the left. A majority of its members would have been Democratic appointees for the first time in almost 50 years. And, in a shift in recent years, partisan affiliation has become a very strong predictor of voting trends for all its members. All four of the court’s current Republican appointees are more conservative than all four of the Democratic ones, and that familiar dynamic seems very likely to hold when Judge Gorsuch joins the court. But it has not always been thus. As recently as 2009, two Republican appointees to the court, Justices John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter, were members of the court’s liberal wing. In losing the 2016 presidential election, Democrats may have given up the chance to change the balance of power on the Supreme Court for a generation. Judge Gorsuch is 49. If he serves as long as Justice Stevens, the last member of the court to retire, he will still be hearing cases in 2052. He would be 84, as old as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now. Actuarial realities suggest that President Trump will have additional chances to move the court to the right. The court’s three oldest members are Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, 80, a moderate conservative who holds the decisive vote in many closely divided cases, and the court’s two senior liberals, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 78, and Justice Ginsburg. Were Mr. Trump to replace any of the three, a court that generally leans right would have a conservative majority. Were Mr. Trump to replace all three, the court’s remaining liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, 62, and Elena Kagan, 56 — could find themselves writing lonely dissents for years to come. Until the Democrats’ surprise loss on Election Day in November, liberals had been anticipating something entirely different. “A Garland appointment would have swapped a centrist justice for a conservative one,” said Pamela S. Karlan, a law professor at Stanford University. “This means Garland would have been more likely to be a key vote on more issues than Gorsuch is likely to be, because Kennedy remains the critical vote for a conservative bloc, while Kennedy or Garland could have been the fifth vote for a liberal result. ” Not only would Justice Kennedy have been ousted from his central role, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would have been thrust into the ideological minority. That would have put the Roberts court’s least popular precedent in immediate peril, said Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia. “The biggest substantive change would probably have been in the area of campaign finance,” he said. “Citizens United would almost immediately have been on the chopping block with a liberal majority. ” That decision allowed corporations and unions to do what individuals had long been able to do: independently spend as much as they liked to support or oppose political candidates. “I can even imagine a court with Garland on it chipping away at the rule that forbids limits on individual campaign expenditures,” Professor Greene said. A range of other liberal policy priorities could also have been preserved, even though Judge Garland is not especially liberal. “With a Justice Garland,” said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, “the right for women to choose an abortion and exercise equal citizenship would have been comfortably protected. The ability of agencies to safeguard clean air and water, civil rights and workplace safety would be less threatened. Gay men and lesbians would rest secure in their marriages and not feel vulnerable to discrimination based on who they love. ” On the other hand, some said that Mr. Trump delivered on his campaign promise and found a nominee whose views reflected, among other things, his hostility to the administrative state, a position Judge Garland does not share. “Garland has a record of deferring to the government on pretty much everything, be it labor regulation or law enforcement, while Gorsuch is much more skeptical both of government action and of judicial deference to executive agencies,” said Ilya Shapiro, a fellow at the Cato Institute, the libertarian group. Judge Gorsuch is very likely to be precisely the sort of conservative Mr. Trump promised his supporters. “The justices that I’m going to appoint will be ” Mr. Trump said at the third presidential debate in October. “They will have a conservative bent. They will be protecting the Second Amendment. ” Liberal despair over the future of the Supreme Court is compounded by hostility to Mr. Trump. “A president with unprecedented ignorance of, and contempt for, fundamental constitutional values has gotten the opportunity to fill Justice Scalia’s seat with a nominee who is likely to have a career of moving the court to the right,” Professor Karlan said. In some ways, Judge Gorsuch’s impact in the short term will be modest. He will very likely vote much as Justice Scalia did. The court will thus be basically unchanged since 2006, when Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. ’s appointment moved it to the right. Justice Kennedy will remain at the court’s center, generally leaning right but occasionally joining the court’s liberal bloc, as he did in important decisions on gay rights, abortion and affirmative action. Those decisions are probably secure for now, but a newly empowered conservative majority is likely to continue the signature projects of the Roberts court: deregulating campaign finance law, allowing states to limit voting, expanding gun rights and viewing decisions by the government with skepticism. A threat to public unions, averted by a deadlock after Justice Scalia’s death, is likely to . Justice Breyer’s campaign to do away with the death penalty will founder. Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University, said the array of cases in which the actual Justice Gorsuch and the hypothetical Justice Garland might differ is vast, including on campaign finance, affirmative action, voting rights, religious freedom, class actions, and aspects of criminal and immigration law. But he cautioned in an email that the two judges should not be reduced to stereotypes. “Neither Gorsuch nor Garland has written opinions in most of these areas,” he wrote, “but if you treat them as place holders for ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ outcomes — which is too simplistic and unfair to both of them — these are where those fault lines have been in recent years. ” | 0fake |
London Bridge Terror Ringleader May Have Plotted to Attack Wimbledon | The ringleader of the London Bridge terror attack secured an interview with a security firm providing personnel to Wimbledon, sparking fears he was plotting to strike the tennis tournament. [Khuram Butt, who was a known extremist on a list of British police extremist suspects, landed the interview with the unnamed firm that also supplies staff to Premier League football matches. Wimbledon is the oldest and most famous tennis tournament in the world, attracting 493, 928 spectators over 14 days in 2016, and police are now investigating Mr. Butt’s motives for trying to work at the iconic event, The Sunday Telegraph reports. “The security firm would check his background but it does not have access to the police watch list or have knowledge of any MI5 investigation. There would have been no reason for him not to get the job,” a security source told the paper. They added: “Butt could not only have caused serious damage but potentially helped other terrorists get into one of these events. ” The revelation comes as Scotland Yard released photographs of the three London Bridge attackers’ fake suicide belts Sunday night. Mr. Butt was a supporter of notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary’s banned terror group and appeared on a Channel 4 television documentary called The Jihadi Next Door in 2016. He was reported to police for radicalising children in a park and was followed around the clock in 2015 whilst intelligence services were intercepting his communications under a warrant signed by the home secretary. Officers wound down the investigation, however, amidst concerns that there was not enough evidence to convict the suspect and “get him off the streets” sources told The Sunday Times. The security insider continued: “We knew Butt was up to no good. We got to know him intimately. We wanted to get him off the streets. But the view was that we may not have enough to convict. ” The British citizen, who came to the UK as an asylum seeker, was considered by police to be “low priority” despite warnings from whistleblowers. After he led last weekend’s attack, which resulted in the death of eight and 48 injured, there are calls for police to how they handled his case. | 0fake |
It’s Official: Simone Biles Is the World’s Best Gymnast - The New York Times | RIO DE JANEIRO — Simone Biles, already considered the world’s greatest female gymnast before even competing in the Olympics, emphatically confirmed her standing on Thursday by winning the women’s individual gold medal at the Rio Games. Wearing a leotard, Biles, 19, joined Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin and Gabby Douglas as American winners. The American Aly Raisman, 22, won the silver, and Aliya Mustafina, 21, of Russia won bronze. Victory in this event brings lucrative endorsements and widespread adoration, a popularity bonanza fueled by a showcase of athletic artistry. At 4 feet 9 inches, with size 5 feet, Biles is someone that young viewers can relate to. Then she performs, and her abilities are unimaginable. Her ascent has been sudden to those who follow gymnastics only every four years. At the last Summer Games, in London in 2012, Douglas was the . Biles arrived here from Texas and gave the Rio Games a performance for the ages. Whether you know an Amanar from an aardvark, you watch her not because the result is in doubt but rather to witness something without equal. The first rotation on Thursday for the top gymnasts was the vault, and both Biles and Raisman broke out their Amanars. In that challenging vault, the gymnast performs a onto the board and then a back handspring onto the table. She then completes twists before a blind landing. Biles, as usual, flew higher and farther than anyone else, though she took a big step on her landing. It was enough for the top score of the day. Raisman also pulled off her Amanar, and the two Americans were after one rotation. But after the uneven bars, Biles was in an unfamiliar place: second place. A strong performance by Mustafina, the 2012 champion in the bars, and a pedestrian one by Biles put the Russian ahead by a small margin. Raisman slipped to fourth. The score for Biles was lower than she has been used to getting. The bars is her weakest event, but the disappointment would shake some competitors and cause them to lose focus. But Biles isn’t just any competitor. She’s a world champion. Biles looked a little nervous on the balance beam, wobbling at one point. But she made a great landing. After Mustafina her full turn, had a few balance checks and left out a front aerial. Biles was back in front, and Raisman moved into third. The competition culminated with the floor exercise. Biles’s first pass is a double layout, and she followed that with her “Biles,” a double layout with a half twist, then a stag leap. Her third and fourth passes were just as phenomenal. Her coach Aimee Boorman cried as Biles came off the floor. Her score: 15. 933, the highest of the day on any apparatus. Raisman nailed her own difficult tumbling passes to grab the silver. | 0fake |
Media Bias Has Become Mental Illness | Media Bias Has Become Mental Illness Media Bias Has Become Mental Illness 31 am by Cliff Kincaid Leave a Comment 0
Accuracy in Media
Aware that their credibility is shot with the American people, the publisher and executive editor of The New York Times sent a “To our readers” note on Friday, saying, “we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.”
This was another way of saying, “Sorry, we blew it,” without being honest with readers.
Those familiar with the paper’s “journalism” understand this to be media bias. But Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. and Dean Baquet were suggesting something else—that something had gone wrong and they don’t quite know what happened, but don’t worry because the Times will get back to its mission of reporting truthfully.
Beating around the bush, they said Trump’s victory was “the biggest political story of the year,” which had “reached a dramatic and unexpected climax late Tuesday night…”
The word “unexpected” means that the paper’s predictions were wrong.
Then they said that the paper’s newsroom had covered the campaign “with agility and creativity,” which are terms for incompetence and bias. Some people cling to the old-fashioned idea that a paper should report events objectively.
Pretending to reflect on the poor coverage, they finally got to the problem without saying so directly. They asked, “Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?” and “What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and outcome?”
In other words, Trump’s “sheer unconventionality” caused the paper to misreport what was happening. He had appealed to mysterious “forces and strains,” terms that apparently refer to the voters.
Sulzberger and Baquet insisted that the Times will “report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.”
In other words, they blew it during the 2016 campaign and will try to do better next time. But nothing is really changing at the paper. Nobody is being fired. And nobody is being hired who has an understanding of the conservative electorate.
The paper, they said, will “hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly.”
But who will hold The New York Times accountable?
In a real howler, they then claimed, “We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.”
This is another indication that the paper is hopelessly liberal, and that nothing will really change.
The business as usual attitude was reflected in the front-page headline in the Times after Trump won: “Democrats, Students and Foreign Allies Face the Reality of a Trump Presidency.”
As Accuracy in Media Chairman Don Irvine noted , the headline was even funny to various MSNBC personalities, because it focused on the disappointment of liberals at Trump’s victory, rather than the victory itself.
Mark Halperin commented, “If a Democratic candidate who was thought to have a 10 percent chance of winning by The New York Times that ended up winning, and winning red states as Trump won blue states, I don’t think that would have been the headline. And I’ll just say again, the responsibility of journalists is to not report on their biases. It’s to go out and understand the country through the prism of the election and say, ‘Why are people feeling the way they’re feeling?’”
Of course, the Times was not alone.
Consider the story in Politico headlined , “Insiders: Clinton would crush Trump in November.” It began, “In the swing states that matter most in the presidential race, Donald Trump doesn’t have a prayer against Hillary Clinton in the general election.”
In a story headlined, “The Democrat Media Complex Will Never Understand What Happened Tuesday Night,” Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media commented that the talking heads want desperately to avoid the topic of the “overwhelming lack of political and intellectual diversity in their ranks,” but that the problem of their liberalism is compounded by their laziness.
This is a fact, as reflected in my analysis of Post “journalist” Dana Milbank, who got caught asking Democratic Party officials for help on an anti-Trump column.
For his part, Milbank crafted another anti-Trump column after the Trump victory, in the form of a letter to his daughter. “This is a sad day for our country,” he told her . “I want you to know that I did everything I could to prevent this from happening. My efforts and those of many others came up short.”
Those “many others” were in the media and the Democratic Party, for whom Milbank worked. Perhaps Post owner Jeff Bezos ought to ask the Democrats to pay Milbank’s salary.
Milbank told his daughter, “You are going to be okay.”
That’s more than what we can say about Milbank. He is not okay. He is more than just a lazy liberal who gets the Democratic Party to help write his columns. He is completely out of touch with the America he claims to be writing about.
Like those at the Times, Milbank and others at the Post will never change. They are elitists whose hatred for their fellow Americans borders on mental illness.
Like other liberals, they claim to be on a crusade for “the children,” in his case his daughter. It’s frankly despicable that he would use his kid as a political prop. She needs our prayers. Cliff Kincaid
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid . 0 | 1real |
Egypt defends NGO law U.S. senators call a draconian rights crackdown | WASHINGTON/CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt defended on Thursday a new law on non-governmental organizations that three U.S. Republican senators have called “draconian” and a sign of “a growing crackdown on human rights and peaceful dissent”. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein also criticized the law, saying it “effectively hands administration of NGOs to the government”. The law, issued on Monday after being ratified by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, restricts NGO activity to developmental and social work and introduces jail terms of up to five years for non-compliance. Egyptian lawmakers said the law was necessary to protect national security. The government has long accused human rights groups of taking foreign funds to sow chaos and several are facing investigation over their funding. Cairo’s foreign ministry denied the law aimed to restrict NGOs and said some of them “have gotten used to working outside the law ... to defame the image of civil society in Egypt”. In Washington on Wednesday, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a joint statement: “President al-Sisi’s decision to ratify the draconian legislation ... that regulates the work of non-governmental organizations is the latest sign of a growing crackdown on human rights and peaceful dissent in Egypt.” McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Graham said the U.S. Congress should in response “strengthen democratic benchmarks and human rights conditions on U.S. assistance for Egypt.” That sentiment was echoed by Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said the law would have a “terrible impact” on Egypt’s ability to make reforms and would have implications for U.S.-Egypt relations. “This law is a direct attack on independent civil society in Egypt,” Rubio said in a statement. The UN human rights chief Zeid said on Thursday that the new law makes rights defenders even more vulnerable than before. “The crucial function of these NGOs – to hold the state accountable for its human rights obligations – has been severely hampered already through asset freezes, travel bans, smear campaigns and prosecutions. This new law further tightens the noose,” he said in a statement. In Egypt’s response, foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said: “It is important to be vigilant about the intention of some civil society entities that have gotten used to working outside the law, and that were harmed by the issuing of the new law, to defame the image of civil society in Egypt.” Egypt is one of Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East, receiving $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid annually. U.S. President Donald Trump praised Sisi after a meeting in Saudi Arabia last week, saying the Egyptian leader had “done a tremendous job under trying circumstance.” | 0fake |
Bernie Sanders Predicted The Panama Papers In 2011 (VIDEO) | The Panama Papers leak recently revealed how and to what extent some wealthy international elites use Panama as a haven to avoid paying taxes in their respective countries. The leak has embarrassed public officials all over the world, led for calls in Iceland for their prime minister to resign, and illuminated to the world the sneaky and greedy ways the rich stay rich and keep getting richer.In 2011, on the Senate floor, Bernie Sanders was railing against a trade policy between the United States and Panama, citing the country is one of the biggest tax havens for the wealthy in the world: Panama s entire annual economic output is only $26.7 billion a year, or about two-tenths of one percent of the U.S. economy. No-one can legitimately make the claim that approving this free trade agreement will significantly increase American jobs, begins Senator Sanders, before asking the Senate, why would we be considering a stand-alone free trade agreement with this country? Bernie Sanders answers his own question in the same way throughout his campaign he has criticized the broadening income and wealthy inequality in the United States which is permeating into a litany of other various social ills. Well, it turns out that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in off-shore tax havens. And, the Panama Free Trade Agreement would make this bad situation much worse. Each and every year, the wealthy and large corporations evade $100 billion in U.S. taxes through abusive and illegal offshore tax havens in Panama and other countries. Despite the harsh opposition from Bernie Sanders, the U.S. -Panama Trade Promotion Agreement went into effect in 2012, and more than likely has facilitated the ability for wealthy individuals and corporations in America to launder money and evade paying millions in taxes to federal and state governments in America.Here s the video: Featured image via screencapture | 1real |
Hillary Clinton Denounces Donald Trump as Untrustworthy on Women’s Issues - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton assailed Donald J. Trump on Friday as untrustworthy on women’s issues, sharpening her tone against him in her first major speech since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Finally free to focus on the general election, Mrs. Clinton signaled that she planned to hit her likely Republican opponent in an area of perceived weakness while working to mend fissures within her own party by focusing on issues dear to progressives, such as protecting abortion rights and funding for Planned Parenthood. “When Donald Trump says, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ that is code for let’s take America backward,” Mrs. Clinton said at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event in Washington. In a speech, Mrs. Clinton seized on Mr. Trump’s suggestion in March that abortion be banned and that women who violate such a ban face punishment. Although he later retracted the remark amid a bipartisan backlash, Mrs. Clinton made clear that she would not let it go. “Anyone who would so casually agree with the idea of punishing women, like it was nothing to him, the most obvious thing in the world, that’s someone who doesn’t hold women in high regard,” Mrs. Clinton said to loud applause. Mrs. Clinton said that protecting Planned Parenthood’s funding was a top priority amid an onslaught from Republicans who have threatened to shut down the government over its opposition to the organization. She also called for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of government money for abortions. Mrs. Clinton has struggled at times this year to appeal to younger women, but she does not expect that to be a problem against Mr. Trump. Her campaign plans to regularly remind female voters about his penchant for making sexist remarks, such as referring to women as “fat pigs” and “dogs. ” On Friday she quoted Mr. Trump as saying that he thought leave made the country less competitive and that women should work harder if they wanted to earn more. Mr. Trump has said that he will be better for women than Mrs. Clinton, but polls show that so far he is turning them off in a big way. A Gallup survey from April found that 70 percent of women in the country had an unfavorable opinion him. By making Planned Parenthood Action her first campaign stop after capturing the nomination, Mrs. Clinton demonstrated that, instead of making a quick pivot to the center, she is intent on rallying the Democratic base after a bruising primary campaign against Senator Bernie Sanders. Another important step toward party unity came on Thursday night when Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts offered a rousing endorsement of Mrs. Clinton. The two women met privately on Friday morning in Washington to discuss the party’s path forward and how to beat Mr. Trump in November. Ms. Warren is a favorite of the progressive wing of the party and has become one of its most vocal and effective critics of Mr. Trump. She described Mr. Trump as a “racist bully” in a speech on Wednesday night and made a forceful case for Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy. The meeting Friday could also fan speculation that Ms. Warren is on Mrs. Clinton’s shortlist of potential running mates. While she has maintained that she loves her current job, Ms. Warren did say Thursday night on MSNBC that she felt she had the capacity to be president. For now Mrs. Clinton is taking on Mr. Trump on her own, and after a difficult week for him in which he drew widespread condemnation for making racist remarks about a federal judge, she is not holding back. She mocked him for walking back his claim that Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel — who is presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University — was biased because of his Mexican heritage and lamented Mr. Trump’s disparaging treatment of a disabled reporter. Both were examples, she said, of how a Trump presidency would be problematic for more than just women. “Donald Trump would take us in the wrong direction on so many issues that we care about,” Mrs. Clinton said. “He does not see all Americans as Americans. ” | 0fake |
PRICELESS! WATCH EMBARRASSING Moment RINO Governor Is Reminded By President Trump That He Didn’t Endorse Him In General Election: “I never forget” | President Trump visited Michigan to promote the auto industry and jobs. While he was at Willow Run, he had a chance for a photo with the governor of Michigan. A priceless exchange happened between Trump and Snyder. Trump looked over and asked the governor to come over even though you didn t endorse me . The best part is when Trump says, I never forget Hahaha! People from Michigan will appreciate this because Snyder is a Republican governor who in reality is a Democrat. He refused to endorse Trump during the election! When Trump held his very last rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Snyder was a no-show. What a putz! This is why we love Trump he calls em as he sees em! | 1real |
Vladimir Putin Exits Nuclear Security Pact, Citing ‘Hostile Actions’ by U.S. - The New York Times | MOSCOW — Saying relations with the United States have deteriorated in a “radically changed environment,” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia withdrew Monday from a landmark nuclear security agreement, in a troubling sign that the countries’ cooperation in a range of nuclear areas could be threatened. The treaty, on the disposal of plutonium, the material used in some nuclear weapons, was concluded in 2000 as one of the framework disarmament deals of the early War period. It required Russia and the United States to destroy military stockpiles of plutonium, a deal that represented another encouraging step away from nuclear doomsday and an insurance policy against the materials falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. The deal has no bearing on the numbers of nuclear weapons deployed by Russia or the United States. Instead, it concerns 34 tons of plutonium in storage in each country that might go into a future arsenal, none of which has yet undergone verifiable disposal. Still, the abrogation signals that the nuclear agreements that accompanied the breakup of the Soviet Union and were to lead the world back from the brink of atomic conflict could be open to revision, as Russia’s relations with the West sour on a range of disputes today, including Syria and Ukraine and the Kremlin’s interference in the domestic politics of Western democracies. The Kremlin had signaled previously that it planned to cut back on mutual efforts with the United States to secure nuclear material on Russian territory. Times have changed, Mr. Putin wrote in the decree signed on Monday. “The threat to strategic stability posed by the hostile actions of the U. S. against Russia, and the inability of the U. S. to deliver on the obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under international treaties” forced Russia’s hand, he wrote. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the administration was disappointed by the Russian decision since “both leaders in Russia and the United States have made nonproliferation a priority. ” “We’ve also been quite disappointed by a range of Russian decisions both in Syria and inside of Ukraine,” Mr. Earnest said, adding that the decision on the plutonium deal was part of a problematic pattern. Russia will withdraw from the original pact and subsequent amendments, the decree says, meaning that the country will no longer be to destroy its plutonium stockpiles. But the decree also offers an assurance, backed by no bilateral agreement, that the plutonium will not be used for military purposes. “These agreements were designed to limit and circumscribe the future chances of getting back into a competition over nuclear arms,” James Collins, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a telephone interview. “It was an important step in defusing the strategic nuclear arms race. ” Mr. Collins, who was the United States’ ambassador to Russia when the agreement was signed, called the abrogation a “strange move,” given the extraordinary danger, not least to Russians, should plutonium fall into terrorist hands. He added that it was “in my understanding the first time they have withdrawn from a specific nuclear agreement,” highlighting the slide in relations lately. Russia and the United States had reaffirmed the plutonium disposal agreement in 2009, as President Obama pursued the “reset” policy with Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the Russian president. Russia had viewed the agreement as rendering disarmament irreversible by destroying the fissile materials accumulated during the Cold War. In this light, the Russians had interpreted the treaty as requiring that the plutonium be irreversibly transformed into nonexplosive materials by using it in civilian nuclear power plants as a type of fuel, called mixed oxide fuel, or mox. Russia is pressing ahead with that. But glitches and cost overruns in the mox plant at Savannah River, S. C. delayed the American program. This year, Mr. Obama proposed canceling the program in the 2017 budget and instead sending the plutonium for storage at a nuclear waste site in Carlsbad, N. M. The State Department has said the move complies with the treaty, but the Russians have said it does not, as Mr. Putin reaffirmed on Monday. As ties with the West have frayed under Mr. Putin, analysts in Moscow have floated the prospect of a Russian pullback from an array of disarmament agreements dating from a period of greater friendliness. Two years ago, for example, the Obama administration accused Russia of violating another bedrock security agreement by testing a prohibited cruise missile. In Mr. Putin’s second term in office, Russia pulled out of a treaty governing conventional forces in Europe in retaliation for the Bush administration’s abrogation of the antiballistic missile treaty that prohibited missile defense systems. Russia and the United States last signed a nuclear disarmament accord in 2009, when both sides agreed to a new limit on delivery vehicles such as bombers or cruise missiles of 500 to 1, 100, and a limit on deployed warheads as low as 1, 500. In the chaos surrounding the end of the Cold War, the United States embarked on a sweeping program to secure the former Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal and fissile materials by returning them to Russia from former Soviet states and upgrading security at storage areas. The Soviet nuclear program was so entwined with the economy and society that slowing the Cold War military machine took years and cost United States taxpayers billions of dollars. In several cities, specialized nuclear reactors, for example, continued to pump out plutonium because they were also used to heat water for residential use in showers and space heating in nearby towns. A 1993 agreement allowed Russia to sell uranium bomb cores to American utilities for use as fuel rods in civilian power plants, in a program called Megatons to Megawatts. This program generated about 10 percent of all electricity in the United States for 20 years, until 2013. The plutonium program, while smaller, held the potential to also yield energy for civilian electrical networks. It seems unlikely that the two countries will resume cooperation on plutonium soon. The Kremlin first wants the removal of all economic sanctions and compensation for the damage they have caused the repeal of the Magnitsky Act, which allows Americans to freeze the assets of Russian officials thought to have been involved with human rights violations and reductions in the American military presence in countries that joined NATO after Sept. 1, 2000. | 0fake |
REPORT: FBI DIRECTOR COMEY Blocked By Obama Administration Last Summer On Supposed Russian “Influence” In 2016 Election | Comey would likely have pitched the op-ed to The New York Times.DEMOCRATS ON INTEL COMMITTEE CONTINUE THEIR ASSERTION OF RUSSIAN MEDDLING WHEN THERE WAS ZERO EVIDENCE OF IT:The question of collusion between Russian interests and Trump s campaign continues, despite repeated assertions by the president s spokesman that no link exists and no evidence emerging to show complicityWhite House Press Secretary Sean Spicer dismissed inquiries about the matter Tuesday, saying every single person who s been briefed on this, as I ve said ad nauseam from this podium have been very clear that there is no connection between the president or the staff here and anyone doing anything with Russia. SENATE INTEL INCLUDING MARK WARNER WANT YOU TO LOOK AT THE SHINY OBJECT OVER HERE DISTRACT, DISTRACT, DISTRACT FROM THE REAL CRIME OF SPYING ON AMERICANS:Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee announced Wednesday they are expanding their investigation of Russia s interference in the U.S. presidential campaign and beyond, vowing to remain independent and get to the bottom of this amid mounting controversy over a similar probe on the House side.The senators announced they are now scheduling interviews and reviewing thousands of sensitive documents, and are prepared to issue subpoenas if necessary.Michael Flynn was fired as national security adviser after it emerged he lied about pre-inauguration contacts with a Russian official. As for staff here being in the clear, as Spicer put it, they have neither been identified as targets of the investigations nor ruled out.A close adviser to Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner, has agreed to talk to lawmakers about the Russia allegations. Other Trump associates have volunteered to be interviewed by the House and Senate intelligence committees as well.Via: FOX News | 1real |
Mainstream Media Fake News: 21st Century Wire Debates American ‘Liberal’ Academic | This past week saw one of the most colorful debates regarding the CNN and US mainstream media meltdown over the Russia-gate conspiracy.CrossTalk says: Trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. But no one should be surprised and the media has itself to blame. This sad state of affairs is a self-inflicted wound and actually a conscious business model. The media no longer has an interest in reporting news media today propagates ideology. Host Peter Lavele is CrossTalking with guests Eric Alterman (Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress), Patrick Henningsen (21st Century Wire), and Lionel (Lionel Media). Watch:. READ MORE CNN FAKE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire CNN FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Islamic State Planning Chemical Attack on UK | Islamic State terrorists are plotting “mass casualty” chemical attacks in the UK, the government minister responsible for Britain’s national security has warned. [Ben Wallace, the minister of state for security, said that while no specific chemical plot has been identified, the terror group had the ambition and means to carry out such attacks. Speaking to The Sunday Times, he said: “The ambition of IS [Islamic State] or Daesh is definitely attacks. They want to harm as many people as possible and terrorise as many people as possible. “They have no moral objection to using chemical weapons against populations, and if they could, they would in this country. The casualty figures that could be involved would be everybody’s worst fear. “We have certainly seen reports of them using it in Syria and Iraq [and] we have certainly seen aspirations for it in Europe. ” As proof of Islamic State’s chemical attack ambitions, Wallace pointed to the arrest in February of an Islamic State cell in Morocco: “Moroccan authorities dismantled a cell involving chemical weapons. “They recovered toxic chemical and biological substances and a large stock of fertiliser. The substances found could have been used to produce homemade explosives and could have been transformed into a deadly toxin. ” Security sources have told The Sunday Times that Islamic State has used sulphur mustard gas in Syria. Within the group are many former members of Saddam Hussein’s army, including from his weapons programme. With such expertise, British intelligence believes Islamic State is able to produce sulphur mustard gas itself, has access to Iraqi and Libyan storage sites of chemical weapons, and has already experimented with biological weapons. Mr. Wallace also warned that as Islamic State was driven out of its strongholds in the Middle East, returning jihadists would pose a growing threat to Britain. “The big concern is if Mosul collapses and all the other bases of Isis collapse. We know there are a significant number of [Britons] fighting for IS in Syria. They will probably want to come home,” he said. “There will also be those people who wanted to go out there but no longer can get there. Their frustration may boil over. ” About 800 Britons went to fight in Syria and just under half have returned. Around 100 have been killed. In 2015, a further 150 were prevented from travelling to the war zone. Wallace said the figure for 2016 would be “very similar. ” | 0fake |
“Regime Change”? South Africa Targeted by Western Destabilization Efforts? | Global Research | / south africa
Issues surrounding a minimum wage bill, education and services are being utilized in attempts to overthrow the African National Congress
South African President Jacob Zuma has come out publically to state that there are efforts underway by the West to undermine the African National Congress (ANC) government which has held power for over 22 years.
A myriad of challenges are facing the South African ruling party including an economic recession, the bringing of several allegations about corruption within the office of the presidency, a declining stock market and national currency along with increasingly worsening relations with the United States.
In Africa there are numerous examples from the post-colonial period of the last five decades where the intelligence and military apparatuses of the imperialist states have sought to reverse the forward progress of the masses of workers, farmers, youth and their leadership. In the recent period in the South American state of Brazil, the first woman President Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party, was forcefully removed from office in a political coup.
In addition to the decline in the South African economy largely due to the overall world crisis which has driven down commodity prices and systematically disinvested from the emerging states, there has been a fracturing of the national democratic movement and the workers organizations over contentious debates surrounding a way forward. In an October report delivered at the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) 17 th Congress in Durban, South Africa, Dr. Blade Nzimande, the Secretary General of the South African Communist Party (SACP), placed these contradictions inside the national democratic revolution and the largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), within a broader context of the desire by the imperialist states to reverse the advances of the liberation struggles.
In a recent article published by the Agence France Press (AFP), President Zuma emphasized that: “Western powers want to remove the ANC because they do not want the ANC to develop relations with those countries which helped the party in the anti-apartheid struggle.” This statement was made by President Zuma on Nov. 19 laid the blame directly on certain Western countries which do not wish the ruling African National Congress success.
Zuma spoke to ANC supporters at a rally in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga Province that the imperialist states were utilizing some ANC members to further their agenda, adding that some party members had been won over to the views of Western countries. The president said that those ANC members calling for his resignation were in fact serving the interests of the Western states.
The Political Economy of Destabilization
Since 1994 there have been substantial reforms initiated under the ANC government. There has been the construction of housing for the poor and working class, the expansion of healthcare, the breaking down of racial barriers in public facilities, along with access to household utilities and clean drinking water.
However, the fundamental relations and ownership of production remains under the control of the capitalist class. As a manifestation of modern-day capitalism, high unemployment, rising costs of living including education fees as well as problems associated with service delivery, have continued.
“In all other countries, the majority controls everything from politics, economy and defense . . . It’s only in this country (South Africa) where we don’t have economic freedom. It’s controlled by the minority and those who oppressed us,” Zuma stressed. (AFP, Nov. 21)
The president went on to say: “That is why they are scared that we will take away this economy. They want to take away the strength of the ANC because they know the ANC is the only organization trying to balance the scales.”
Zuma said that his government would not break ties with longtime friends internationally in order to win the approval of the imperialist governments. The president had also spoke at the WFTU 17 th Congress noting that the capitalist system would not relinquish concessions to the working class without demands based upon mass struggle.
Recounting the history of the national liberation movement in South Africa, Zuma said: “Socialist countries like Russia and China helped the ANC, giving it military training and aid during the anti-apartheid struggle. The socialist countries came to our aid. It was Russia who trained us and helped us with the tools to fight. China and other socialist countries helped us.”
In addition Zuma said the Western states are retaliating against the ANC government due its affiliation with the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Summit. The advent of such blocs among the emerging states was a threat to Western hegemony of the world economy.
“They are fighting us because we joined BRICS. Some are in ANC gear but are in the company of the West. We are at war. We are going to protect the ANC,” Zuma emphasized.
In an article published by the South African Mail & Guardian in reference to the stock values of holdings traded on the local market, it noted: “Should South Africa avoid having its credit rating cut to junk in the next two weeks, it could just be staving off the inevitable. More than half of 12 economists surveyed by Bloomberg said S&P Global Ratings will strip the nation of its investment-level rating. The median probability of South Africa retaining its current assessment in December is 45%, falling to only 20% in 2017, the survey shows. The economy faces a cut to junk on its foreign-currency credit rating as output is forecast to expand at the slowest pace this year since a 2009 recession, delaying the government’s plans to narrow the shortfall on the budget and rein in debt.” (Nov. 18)
Debate Surrounds a National Minimum Wage Amid Allegation of Regime Change Agenda
The ANC government has proposed the adoption of a national monthly minimum wage of 3,500 rand which is approximately $242 U.S. dollars. 47 percent of the working population earns less than this proposed amount. (BBC, Nov. 21)
Despite the possible introduction of such legislation, it falls far short of what is actually needed to maintain a basic household. Prof. Chris Malikane of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg suggested that 12,000 rand per month was essential in maintaining a decent home. (BBC, Nov. 21)
This issue is controversial among the business interests which claim that any significant government-mandated increase in the minimum wage would create further unemployment which stands officially at around 25 percent. Over the last few years there have been large-scale job losses in the mining sector which is impacting economic recovery.
Two years ago COSATU proposed a minimum wage of 4500 rand per month. With inflation since 2014 the amount would be at least 5000 today.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said the 3,500 rand per month figure was decided by a panel of experts. Ramaphosa said: “We are now a step closer to finalizing discussions on the national minimum wage. All social partners will now decide what their take is.” (BBC, Nov. 21)
The ANC must address the issues of joblessness, poverty and service delivery in order to win back its two-thirds majority electoral base inside the country. Local governmental elections which were held in August saw a decline in support for the ruling party by approximately ten points although it remains by far the most popular party in South Africa winning 54 percent of the votes in the August poll.
A commission report issued several weeks ago alleged that the government of President Zuma has been involved in corruption. Zuma has denied the charges and attempts to pass motions of no-confidence in parliament failed on numerous occasions. The current ANC leadership seems solidly committed to keeping Zuma in office until his term expires in 2019.
The party maintains that Washington through its embassy in Pretoria is pursuing a regime-change agenda. Party spokesperson Zize Kodwa stated in March: “They have taken about 45 young people to America to train them as part of their leadership program. What we got from those young people is not what they expected; they were trained on how to destabilize the country and regime change.” (Xinhua News Agency, March 16) | 1real |
U.S., Cuba hold 'substantive' second round talks on claims | WASHINGTON/HAVANA (Reuters) - The United States and Cuba have concluded a “substantive” second round of talks on multibillion-dollar claims against one another in Washington and agreed to hold more regular meetings on the matter, a State Department Official said on Friday. The former Cold War foes had a first meeting outlining their respective claims in December in Havana as part of a deepening detente. The issue is one of the key and complex obstacles to normalization of relations between the two countries. “The second meeting was more substantive both in exploring more details about claims that need to be resolved but also in reviewing the practices of both countries in solving claims,” the State Department official told reporters on condition of anonymity. “Both sides agreed they would have more regular meetings.” There is no set date yet for the next meeting, which will place in Havana, in accordance with bilateral protocol, the official said. Cuba wants at least $121 billion in reparations for economic damages caused by the U.S. trade embargo and at least $181 billion for “human damages.” The United States has awarded its firms and individuals $1.9 billion worth of claims against Cuba for factories, farms, homes and other assets that were nationalized on the island after Fidel Castro’s rebels came to power in 1959. Those claims are now roughly worth $8 billion when including 6 percent annual interest. The Cuban government has reached settlements with other countries for expropriated assets but it cut off negotiations with the United States when bilateral relations soured in the 1960s. Many of the nationalized companies no longer exist and individual claims have been passed to heirs. The State Department official said the United States also is claiming $2.2 billion for court judgments outstanding against Cuba and hundreds of millions for former government mining interests on the island. Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement the two countries had continued sharing information on their respective claims “with the aim of preparing the process of negotiation.” | 0fake |
U.S. House panel narrowly backs Mattis waiver | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee narrowly backed a waiver on Thursday that would allow James Mattis to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, despite having retired as a Marine general in 2013. The panel voted 34 to 28, along party lines, for a waiver of a provision of a law on civilian control of the U.S. military requiring a seven-year wait before active-duty military can lead the Department of Defense. Committee Democrats opposed the measure after Trump’s transition team canceled Mattis’ appearance at a committee hearing. | 0fake |
U.S. lawmakers debate funding gimmick in defense policy bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers in the House Armed Services Committee began debating an annual defense policy bill on Wednesday that would shift $18 billion in Pentagon war-funding to other military needs. The proposed legislation would use the $18 billion to halt cuts to the size of the military and boost training and maintenance in an effort to improve U.S. military readiness. The funding shift would leave $35.7 billion to pay for U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The House panel said that was enough to last through April 2017, giving the next president time to evaluate the security situation and make a supplemental budget request to Congress. Representative Madeleine Bordallo, a Democrat from Guam, said she was “concerned that the short-sighted budget gimmick ... may leave our troops short of funding required in the near future.” But Representative Mac Thornberry, chairman of the committee, said that while “some people may call it a gimmick,” the Democratic majority in 2008 had done something very similar. The U.S. military has warned repeatedly in recent years that ongoing efforts to trim nearly $1 trillion from projected defense budgets over a decade have forced it to postpone training, maintenance and upkeep. The measure, the National Defense Authorization Act, sets U.S. defense policy and authorizes, but does not appropriate, funding for the Pentagon. Lawmakers in the House panel expected to vote on the final version early on Thursday, after which it will go to the full House of Representatives. The draft bill unveiled by Thornberry this week would authorize $610.5 billion in defense spending for the 2017 fiscal year beginning in October. That total is in line with the defense spending plan proposed by Obama earlier this year. The proposal calls for an active duty Army of 480,000 troops, which is 20,000 more than proposed in the president’s budget request. It also seeks significant reforms in the organization of the Defense Department, including expanding the term and the advisory role of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. During debates on the legislation, lawmakers approved an amendment that calls for a senior U.S. defense official to be placed in charge of developing directed energy weapons. The U.S. military hopes directed-energy weapons will provide it with an asymmetric advantage over potential rivals, for example enabling it to counter million-dollar missiles with a weapon that fires projectiles costing only $25,000. | 0fake |
Tillerson Leads From State Dept. Shadows as White House Steps In - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Henry A. Kissinger slipped into the State Department last week for a quiet lunch in his old office with Rex W. Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil chief executive, who has all but covered himself in a cloak of invisibility in his first six weeks as secretary of state. Describing his impressions, Mr. Kissinger, perhaps America’s most famous diplomatic strategist, chose his words judiciously. “The normal tendency when you come into that job is to increase your visibility and to show that you are present and in charge,” he said in an interview. “He wanted to first inform himself of all the nuances. I was impressed by the confidence and that he showed. ” But in the Washington of Donald J. Trump, where foreign policy proclamations often appear first on Twitter, and where White House advisers are still battling for dominance, this approach can be seen as brilliant, mystifying or a prescription for powerlessness. Mr. Tillerson has skipped every opportunity to define his views or give guidance to American diplomats abroad, limiting himself to terse, scripted statements, taking no questions from reporters and offering no public protest when the White House proposed cutting the State Department budget by 37 percent without first consulting him. He suffered in silence, State Department officials said, when President Trump called, in a way, to reject Mr. Tillerson’s choice for deputy secretary of state. He has been absent from the White House meetings with key world leaders, and when the State Department issued its annual report on human rights — usually a major moment for the United States to stand up against repression around the world — he skipped the announcement. Defenders say Mr. Tillerson has been accomplishing far more behind the scenes, including arranging for the first trip of a Saudi foreign minister to Iraq in more than a — his first foray into the sinkhole of Middle East politics. “He’s already developing plans to begin ratcheting back Putin’s nefarious behavior,” Senator Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview — steps that would represent the first known effort by the new administration to face off against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “He’s won status and respect of the president, of McMaster, and talks all the time to Jared,” the senator said, referring to the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s who has emerged as a prominent voice on American foreign policy. “He doesn’t mind at all that these stories are being written about him being missing,” Mr. Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said about Mr. Tillerson. “When he’s ready to talk, you will be very highly impressed. ” On Tuesday, Mr. Tillerson will leave for his first truly fraught diplomatic mission: a trip to Japan, South Korea and China, at a moment when open conflict with North Korea is a growing possibility, and when the administration is planning Mr. Trump’s first meeting with President Xi Jinping of China. The trip is so vital that the “principals” committee of the National Security Council is set to convene on Monday to discuss the North Korean threat and how to deal with China, so that Mr. Tillerson speaks from a consensus strategy. But do not expect to hear much about that strategy from the secretary before he arrives in Asia: The State Department has told reporters that they cannot ride on the plane. The decision appears to be unprecedented for a major diplomatic trip — even four decades ago, when Mr. Kissinger was conducting shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East and opening up China, he was delivering spin to reporters on the plane and offering up diplomatic tutorials. “All his predecessors have traveled with press,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who served as spokesman, ambassador and under secretary of state in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Failing to do so, he noted, creates the risk that the secretary of state will be defined by the country he is visiting — especially a place like China. Within the State Department, Mr. Tillerson, 64, got off to a promising start with a warm, humble greeting to staff members in the drab headquarters’ foyer on his first day on the job. He talked about his upbringing and his wife’s belief that he had been preparing for this job his whole life, even if he had not known it. But few have heard from him since. Those who have say they regard him as an impressive manager who knows how to run a crisp meeting, take in a variety of views and give little away about his own. “He forces everyone to boil their memos down to a page or two, so they really have to think about what their message is,” said one official who has dealt with him frequently in recent weeks. “He’s already met with two of the most important Chinese officials. He knows a lot about some countries many secretaries don’t know about,” including Indonesia and others that have energy assets. He understands what embassies do, because Exxon Mobil often relied on them for help. But he is also introverted, a bit standoffish. He never met in person with John Kerry, his predecessor. “These guys came in to drain the swamp,” one career State Department official said, “and it’s clear that they are under orders not to cooperate or deal with swamp creatures. ” So, for thousands in the State Department, Mr. Tillerson has come to be viewed as the phantom of Foggy Bottom, scarcely glimpsed and known mostly for his directives to wipe out some of the department’s top jobs. Longtime career officials who expected to stay in their jobs or remain long enough to show their successors the ropes were ousted in Mr. Tillerson’s first two weeks. He is talking to members of Congress about further cuts, and while there are plenty of opportunities in a department that has not exactly embraced technological change, the major reductions proposed by the administration are a nonstarter with many lawmakers. The biggest concern among diplomats and many in Congress is that when Mr. Trump talks about bolstering America’s commitment to its national security, he does not have diplomacy in mind. Longtime diplomats often cite — or email to reporters — a line uttered four years ago by the new defense secretary, Jim Mattis, when he was in charge of Central Command. “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition,” Mr. Mattis said at the time. As one diplomat who has met frequently with Mr. Tillerson since he took office noted recently, “Rex clearly agrees with that. He just won’t say it. ” (A senior State Department official said Mr. Tillerson did say it, to Mr. Trump, over dinner a little more than a week ago.) On his first trip, to Europe, Mr. Tillerson went out of his way to reassure allies of the United States’ commitment to NATO, doing little to repeat the “America First” notion that Mr. Trump has promoted. In Asia, Mr. Tillerson is scheduled to visit the Demilitarized Zone on the border with North Korea, and it seems almost unimaginable that he would repeat Mr. Trump’s warning as a candidate that the United States may pull back from the region. So why is the man many in the State Department call T. Rex so quiet? Secretaries of state from both parties have relished their role as chief spokesman for American values. Madeleine K. Albright made her name describing the United States as the “indispensable nation” that needed to intervene in the Balkans. Colin L. Powell took the lead in making the case for invading Iraq (words he later regretted). Hillary Clinton, under President Barack Obama, highlighted human and women’s rights in particular. Mr. Kerry narrated his own role as relentless negotiator, sometimes using background briefings to read aloud from copious handwritten notes he had taken while haggling over the Iran nuclear deal and the removal of chemical weapons from Syria. In indiscreet moments, he talked about his differences of view, mostly on Syria, with Mr. Obama. There are several theories about Mr. Tillerson’s reticence. One is that his silence is highly strategic: He wants to cement key relationships in private, make sure he is aligned with a mercurial president and let the policy process at the National Security Council play out before making any grand pronouncements. The second is that he is waiting for the battles at the White House to burn out. In short, he wants to sidestep Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s top strategist, who believes that China’s rise can be halted and that Iran should be vigorously confronted, and work with Mr. Mattis, Mr. Kushner and Mr. McMaster. Mr. Corker said that “he’s already reached an agreement with Mattis to come to agreement and present ideas together,” something that Condoleezza Rice and Mrs. Clinton often did with their defense counterpart, Robert M. Gates. The third is that he sees the job as more akin to what he did at Exxon Mobil: Cut your deals, say as little as possible and take the heat. One of the first tests may come in the arena of human rights, where he caused alarm during his confirmation hearings in January by declining to criticize the killings ordered by the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, in an antidrug campaign. Speaking out against repression has always been fraught Mr. Kerry often danced around the topic when visiting Egypt. But Mr. Tillerson took up the issue on a recent call with Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, who was pressing him to link arms sales to Bahrain — home of the Fifth Fleet of the United States Navy — to measurable human rights improvements. “When we get the notifications of arms sales, it will be interesting to see if he has something to say on the issues we talked about,” Mr. Cardin said in an interview. He attributed some of Mr. Tillerson’s problems to the fact that “he doesn’t have his team in place. ” “Having a subcabinet to back up your views,” Mr. Cardin added, “gives you the confidence to be more direct. ” Clearly, Mr. Tillerson will not have much of a staff for a while not a single under secretary or assistant secretary — the people who make the policy wheels turn — has been nominated, and only a couple of ambassadors have been named. Some say the problem is not with Mr. Tillerson, but those he works for. “Rex Tillerson is off to a slow start, but the White House is partly to blame,” said Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, whom the administration briefly considered for a top post. “The president needs to give the secretary the staff he wants protect, not decimate, his budget and make clear to the world that it is the secretary and no one else who speaks for the administration when it comes to foreign policy. ” Mr. Kissinger, at 93, is philosophical about most things, including Mr. Tillerson. “I would expect that as foreign policy evolves, Rex Tillerson will become an increasingly prominent exponent of it,” he said. “When I first came to Washington” as national security adviser to President Richard M. Nixon, “you would find me mentioned in The New York Times maybe 10 times. ” A computer index suggests that the actual number in his first year was around 228, but who’s counting? Mr. Tillerson, in a sign of progress, has already exceeded that figure this year. | 0fake |
To wonks hungry for policy details, Trump team serves lighter fare | CLEVELAND (Reuters) - People seeking a deeper understanding of Donald Trump’s economic policy came up empty-handed this week at the Republican National Convention. Best known to Americans previously as a reality TV host and having never held public office, the New York businessman on Thursday accepted the party’s nomination for the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. The party establishment has fretted over some of his plans to curb illegal immigration, renegotiate trade deals and levy tariffs on China. Trump’s skepticism about free trade puts him at odds with Republican orthodoxy. Wall Street investors are wary and confused. In speeches from the main stage and in panel discussions on the sidelines, the four-day convention was notable for a paucity of policy details, the result perhaps of a desire to play down differences among the party faithful. The lack of specifics was too much for one head of a multinational corporation, who complained at a business forum that he had no idea what to expect from Trump, a New York real estate developer. “We feel anxious,” said Michael Thaman, chief executive officer of Owens Corning, which operates in 25 countries. “In business, obviously details matter.” Trump offered little insight himself in his convention-ending acceptance speech. He spoke in broad, thematic strokes without much detail, sticking closely to positions he had outlined during 13 months of campaigning. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” Trump said. Speakers in Cleveland placed a greater emphasis on defeating the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, than on what Trump has called the failed economic policies of President Barack Obama. On Tuesday night, when the theme was “Make America Work Again” and the economy was the designated topic, a rough search by Reuters of the prime-time speeches found some 80 mentions of the word “Clinton” compared to about 15 mentions of “economy.” According to transcripts of the speeches delivered at the convention, only Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. mentioned Dodd-Frank, the financial oversight law many Republicans rail against. Asked on Thursday, before the older Trump’s speech, about the shortage of policy specifics, his campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said: “The campaign is pleased with the convention program, the content of which has been diverse and dynamic and we look forward to an exciting conclusion tonight.” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was chief economic policy adviser to Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008, was not satisfied with his experience. He described taking part in a panel discussion on Wednesday with two Trump advisers, television commentator Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore of the conservative Heritage Foundation, that he said was light on details. “‘Isn’t Mr. Trump bad on trade?’” he said someone would ask. “‘Yes, but we’re going to fix it. Don’t worry.’ “‘Isn’t his tax plan a problem that’s going to lose $12 trillion?’ “‘Yes, but we’ll fix it. Don’t worry.’” Kudlow and Moore also appeared on Tuesday at an event hosted by conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, along with donor Andy Puzder, the chief executive of CKE Restaurants, which owns fast-food restaurants Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. The group discussed trade and immigration policy, with panelists at times shrugging off Trump’s lack of specifics. “All you really need to know is the alternative is Hillary Clinton,” Puzder said at one point, reinforcing the week’s theme. Republicans typically use their nominating conventions to emphasize their candidates’ main policy points. Think tanks and lobby groups hold panel discussions. Experts circulate white papers. With Trump, the events were built more around his personality and the need for the party to unite behind him. There were some such gatherings in Cleveland, but fewer than usual, Holtz-Eakin said. Some advisers to past Republican candidates suspected Trump was not relying on a vast team of policy advisers. Lanhee Chen, an adviser to 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, sorted through convention speeches in 2012 before speakers delivered them because, he said, he wanted to make sure they hewed closely to Romney’s positions. “I imagine the Trump campaign doesn’t have that process in place because they don’t have a lot of policy to talk about,” Chen said. “It just says that policy hasn’t been a priority for them. You end up with a situation where the candidate is making pronouncements that don’t seem particularly well informed.” Some delegates who spoke to Reuters seemed unconcerned by the policy-light approach to the convention, arguing that it was more important for the gathering to whip up enthusiasm among the delegates and forge unity. “This is more of a party,” said Ray Suttle, a 53-year-old lawyer and delegate from Virginia. “You don’t like people talking shop at a cocktail party, do you?” | 0fake |
South Korea's Moon says there will be no war on Korean peninsula | VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday there will not be war on the Korea peninsula, even though tensions have risen considerably since North Korea s latest nuclear test less than a week ago. | 0fake |
BLACK FEMALE RAPPER Endorses Trump: “Black Folks Have Been Voting Democrat For Last 70 Years And We Don’t Have Shit To Show For It…Hillary Treats Us Like ‘PETS'” | We may not agree with MOST of what rapper Azalea Banks has to say, but she is a fierce defender of free speech and as such, has come out with a flurry of in-your-face tweets to the black, typically Democrat voters, announcing her supporting Donald Trump. Donald Trump can add another member of Hollywood to his list of supporters.Azalea Banks offered her support for Donald Trump in a series of tweets that started out with, I REALLY want Donald Trump to win the election. She went on to say Trump just wants the U.S. to be lavish for all of us. Her tweet seems to suggest that Trump wants everyone to have the opportunity to prosper in America. She followed it up by saying, Hillary talks to black people as if we re children or pets. i can t stand herrrrr. When her followers called her out, suggesting Trump was a racist and symbol of hatred, Banks replied:Banks defends her right to her opinion against angry Twitter followers over her endorsement of Trump: It wasn t that long ago Azealia Banks called for the gang rape of Sarah Palin. We re not so sure her endorsement is one that Donald Trump will embrace. | 1real |
ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE IN FRANCE… | How socialism and political correctness are destroying a nation We reported about the crime and chaos taking place in France, as Muslim migrants who have no intention of assimilating, have flooded their country. The border town of Calais is a disaster, with migrants camping in the jungle hoping to catch a ride across the border into the UK. France is also seeing a massive increase in rapes and sexual assault crimes by the grateful refugees. Every day 33 rapes are reported in France, that s one every 40 minutes! So far today, 20 have been arrested in French taxi driver, air traffic controller and teacher protests as riots are taking place in 2 major cities. Farmers blocked roads and burned tires, as they protested only yesterday against the prices of dairy and meat products in the province of Brittany. It would appear to the casual observer, that socialism and political correctness are not working out too well for France. What do you think? Taxi drivers in France are blockading roads with burning tires in protest at the low-cost Uber app, resulting in at least 20 arrests. Air traffic controllers are also staging a demonstration, leading to dozens of canceled flights.At least 20 arrests had already been made by 10 a.m. local time, following taxi driver protests around major cities including Paris and Marseille.Drivers blocked roads with burning tires, prompting the arrival of riot police and firefighters. Some drivers had set pre-dawn bonfires which authorities had to put out.Des pneus br lent sur le p riph rique #PorteMaillot pic.twitter.com/CfMyOKhyJQ Paul Louis (@paul_louis11) January 26, 2016Hundreds of taxis, joined by a few from Belgium and Spain, blocked a massive intersection leading into western Paris, causing huge disruption to the area.The taxi drivers are protesting over working conditions and competition from non-traditional services such as Uber.Uber drivers vandalize professionals who are paying taxes, who respect the rules, Rachid Boudjema, president of the taxi drivers union in Marseille, told AP.In response to the protests, Uber sent a message to its French customers which said that the goal of the demonstrations was to put pressure on the government to limit competition. Here is an example of a violent clash today in Paris:Meanwhile, a planned walkout from air traffic controllers prompted the French civil aviation authority, DGAC, to call on airlines to cancel one in five flights.EasyJet said it had cancelled 35 flights, although Air France said it would operate more than 80 percent of its short and medium-haul flights in France and Europe. It did, however, stress that last-minute delays or cancellations cannot be ruled out. Hundreds of thousands of civil servants and teachers also went on strike on Tuesday, protesting against a pay freeze and poor salaries. Teachers are scheduled to march in cities across the country on Tuesday afternoon.It s the newest challenge to Francois Hollande s Socialist government and its stop/start efforts to modernize the economy, in response to low economic growth and record-high unemployment. Earlier this month, Hollande announced what he called a state of economic and social emergency, involving a 2 billion (US$2.1 billion) plan to revive hiring and catch up with the world s economy.The protests come just one day after French farmers demonstrated against the prices of dairy and meat products in the province of Brittany, blocking roads and burning tires. The farmers demanded that prices be increased because the proceeds from their sale don t cover the cost of production. Via: RTWatch shocking video of Calais residents attacked by migrants in front of their home: | 1real |
The White House Easter Egg Roll exists because Congress banned fun | Today the White House will hold the annual Easter egg roll. Kids will roll their eggs along the lawn, hunt for eggs, and enjoy other fun activities. It's a benign, heartwarming event.
So where did this lovable tradition come from? It all started when Congress made kids get off its lawn.
The Easter egg roll goes back a long time — some say Dolley Madison began the tradition, though that's probably just legend. There are reports of various egg rolls occurring throughout the mid-1800s, but by the 1870s, there weren't a lot of places for kids to have fun in Washington, DC. The city was very much under construction — the Washington Monument had been left half-finished for 23 years — and contained a lot of dirt and mud.
That led a lot of kids to play near Capitol Hill. The only problem? Their presence uprooted some of the tender grass that was just starting to grow near the Capitol Building. The annual Easter egg rolls they held there upset the national landscaping.
So on April 21, 1876, Congress passed the Turf Protection Law, which banned Easter egg rolls on Capitol Hill. In 1877, bad weather kept the Easter egg roll from happening, and 1878 didn't look much better. In the days leading up to Easter, the Washington Post warned kids not to roll their eggs on the Capitol's lawn or they'd encounter the large Capitol police force:
Things looked bleak for the Easter tradition until the president stepped in.
At some point in April 1878, a child from the neighborhood saw President Hayes on a stroll. He asked Hayes when he'd allow kids to roll eggs on his new White House lawn. Hayes looked into it and told the guards that if any kids showed up to roll eggs on the White House lawn, it was fine.
It's tempting to interpret the egg roll as a political battle. After all, the leader behind the Turf Protection Law, William Holman, was a Democrat, and that party regularly called Hayes "Rutherfraud" because of his disputed election in 1876. So perhaps Hayes was just trying to show up Democrats?
More likely, it was that the president wanted kids to have fun. Nancy Kleinhenz is the communications manager at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, where they've been re-creating the egg roll for years. She says it wasn't politics but fatherly instincts that inspired Hayes to save the day. After all, Hayes had two children who were still young: Scott and Fanny, who were 10 and seven. "Politics wasn't a factor," Kleinhenz says. "He was a dad." Since then, the Easter Egg Roll has become a tradition at the White House, with only brief pauses during wartime.
The Easter egg roll probably isn't a story about partisan battles. But in Washington, everything becomes political when federal resources are involved — and that includes which lawn gets trampled by children playing with eggs. | 0fake |
Senegal’s Pink House Gives Hope to Pregnant Women Who Have Been Victims of Abuse | In the West, pregnancy outside of marriage is acceptable, and abortion on demand is considered a woman’s right. But in the West African nation of Senegal, it is taboo to be pregnant while unmarried, and abortion is not legal. [The challenges for Binta, whose name was changed to protect her privacy, were even greater because her pregnancy was caused by someone in her extended family. “I didn’t know how to tell my family about this. … The family is too sacred,” the said in a story reported by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “So Binta made up an elaborate story about finding a job and packed her bags for Guediawaye, a poor suburb on the outskirts of capital Dakar, where a social worker had told her she could find refuge at the Maison Rose, French for ‘pink house,’” the foundation reported. The Pink House is a courthouse that has been transformed into a haven in Senegal for women whose pregnancy occurred outside of wedlock or who became pregnant because of rape or forced marriage. In the nine years since Mona Chasserio, the French woman who founded the Pink House, opened its doors, hundreds of women — and their unborn and born babies — have found sanctuary there. “Anything that can happen in Senegal, we’ve seen it,” Chasserio said. Most women who come to the house do so to continue their pregnancies and give birth, the foundation reported. The women also receive help dealing with their trauma through music, art, and other types of therapy. “Six toddlers played in the sunny courtyard one morning while their mothers shared stories as part of a workshop,” the article said. “Binta sat across from a girl who was seven months pregnant from rape. ” A video posted on the BBC Africa’s Facebook page features life at the Pink House. “I couldn’t accept my pregnancy,” one girl said in the video. “I didn’t think I would be able to take care of the child. ” “I was planning to give her up for adoption,” she said. “But the workers here helped me create a bond with the child before the birth. ” Women are taken to a nearby hospital to give birth, and they get help with their babies when they return to the Pink House. The hope is that the girls can reunite with their families, but they can stay at the Pink House for as long as they like. “It’s not just a house that welcomes women who have had problems,” Chasserio said in the video. “But it is, above all, a place about rebirth — rebirth. ” “And that, to me, is very, very important,” Chasserio said. The foundation reported that Chasserio is now also helping women learn how to support their children. “The problem here is jobs for women are extremely limited,” Chasserio said, adding that women mostly work in traditionally female fields in Senegal, such as sewing, housekeeping, and hair salons. Chasserio said she hopes to expand training programs, including joining forces with a local mill where women can learn to make bread. A fashion website features handbags that women at the Pink House helped craft: Christian Louboutin joined forces with longtime friend Valérie Schlumberger and the women of La Maison Rose to create the unique and vibrant Africaba day bag. A charity which focuses its work on assisting the most vulnerable women and children of Senegal, La Maison Rose offers a practical and reactive route to restoration whilst highlighting inherent talents of artisanal craftsmanship found within the region. “It’s helped me a lot,” a woman said. The woman’s mother took her to the Pink House after she got pregnant. She is now studying fashion and hopes to find a job in a clothing shop. “I came to rebuild myself,” she said. | 0fake |
TOP POLLSTER: Trump Could Create Permanent Majority…Change Politics As We Know It [Video] | 1real | |
BIG BROTHER: IRS Using Secret Cellphone Tracking Systems | This is Orwellian stuff The IRS is spying on you-how crazy is that? Secret cellphone tracking systems are being used by the IRS when they had previously been used only by law enforcement. Does this tell you anything more about how the IRS has gotten way too snoopy and way too political since they were caught red handed withholding tax exempt status from conservative groups. Two top senators are probing use by the Internal Revenue Service of secret cellphone tracking systems that are more often utilized by federal or local law enforcement agencies. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen admitted this week that the agency does use the technology, known as cell-site simulators, or StingRays. The admission came after a report by The Guardian that indicated the IRS has spent more than $71,000 to upgrade a version of the device and to receive training from a company that manufactures the devices. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Patrick Leahy on Thursday sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew demanding answers about the use of the technology by the IRS. We were surprised to learn that IRS investigators may be using these devices, Mr. Grassley, Iowa Republican, and Mr. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, wrote in the letter. While the devices can be useful tools for identifying the location of a suspect s cell phone or identifying an unknown cell phone, we have previously expressed concerns about the privacy implications of these devices. Read more: WT | 1real |
Gay and Transgender Egyptians, Harassed and Entrapped, Are Driven Underground - The New York Times | CAIRO — The last days of the government of Hosni Mubarak and the turbulent revolution that followed were tense, occasionally times for many in Egypt. But for gay and transgender Egyptians, it was also a period of unaccustomed freedom. They socialized in bars and sidewalk cafes and met partners over cellphone dating apps with a greater degree of openness and comfort than they had known. But that era came to an abrupt end with the return of military rule. Since the 2013 military intervention that established former Gen. Abdel Fattah as the country’s ruler, at least 250 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been arrested in a quiet crackdown that has shattered what had been an increasingly vibrant and visible community. Through a campaign of online surveillance and entrapment, arrests and the closing of businesses, the police have driven gay and transgender people back underground and, in many cases, out of the country. Before the crackdown, “there was no deliberate campaign of arrest and monitoring,” said Dalia Abdel Hameed, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “But now the police are going out of their way to arrest gay men and trans women. ” Between the unraveling of the Mubarak government and the overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people faced little threat from the police, who were focused on other matters and largely ignored what happened at house parties or bars in Cairo’s crumbling, bohemian downtown. The crackdown began in earnest when a military curfew imposed after the removal of Mr. Morsi ended in fall 2013, said Scott Long, a human rights activist who lived in Egypt for many years and wrote a landmark report for Human Rights Watch on the last major crackdown. At the time, control of Egypt’s streets was passing from the army, a relatively trusted institution, to the police, a hated symbol of the Mubarak government. “Somebody in the Ministry of Interior realized this was a way to get good publicity for the police,” Mr. Long said. The arrests signaled the return of an aggressive approach by the morality police division, which has participated in a larger crackdown that has jailed tens of thousands of people since 2013. Using tools last deployed in a campaign against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people over 10 years ago, the division has reasserted the authority lost by the police before and during the revolution. Other branches of the security forces have also flexed their muscles since the return of military rule, arresting protesters or clamping down on unlicensed street vendors, activists said. “The police want to show they have a strong grip on society,” Ms. Abdel Hameed said. “So this is the morality police having their own campaign to arrest L. G. B. T. people. ” There is no law in Egypt specifically banning homosexual acts, so gay and transgender people are charged with “habitual debauchery” under a 1961 law that is used to prosecute men for homosexuality and women for prostitution, Ms. Abdel Hameed said. So far, the sentences have ranged from two to 12 years. The crackdown has primarily targeted gay men and transgender women, some of whom have been arrested in raids on private homes or picked up on the street if their appearances raised suspicions. (Transgender women are usually prosecuted as men because the police, courts and news media in Egypt, unlike those in the West, make no meaningful distinction between gay men and transgender women, activists said.) Most, however, have been arrested after officers entrapped them on dating apps like Grindr, which now greets its users when they log in with a warning message about a possible police presence on the site. Ms. Abdel Hameed said the police used the apps to flirt with people, engaging in sexual banter and asking for risqué photos that could be used as evidence in court before asking them out on dates. When the unsuspecting targets of the stings arrive for the dates, they are swiftly arrested. This is not the first time these tactics have been used against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Egypt. A crackdown that began in 2001 is still remembered for a raid on the Queen Boat, a nightclub where the police arrested dozens of men accused of being gay. Their trials dominated Egypt’s headlines for months and sent a wave of terror through gay circles. “There was the Queen Boat and its aftermath, then there was our normal life, and now this is the biggest crackdown after the Queen Boat,” Ms. Abdel Hameed said. Perhaps the crackdown’s greatest physical manifestation is in the proliferation of police checkpoints in downtown Cairo and the closings of cafes and other businesses that were gathering spots for activists, intellectuals and gay people during the heady days of political upheaval. One gay man, who asked to be identified by only his middle name, Ali, for fear of arrest, said the police campaign had devastated his community. “Everything leads to getting arrested,” Ali said. “The huge threat is being arrested or losing your friends to prison, because after the failed revolution there was a huge crackdown on the downtown community, especially. This is my community, and it is being destroyed. ” Many gay and transgender people who are able to leave the country have done so or still hope to, Ali said, adding that he wanted to move to Europe or North America. “I am running out of friends because they are all being arrested or they are leaving Egypt,” he said. The police also seize detainees’ phones and “search their data to find others,” Ms. Abdel Hameed said. When they find them, they often torture them to produce lists of gay friends and former sex partners. Detainees are also subjected to forced anal examinations, a form of torture that the police believe can prove if a person has engaged in homosexual conduct, a contention that Egyptian jurists have said is false. Mr. Long said that online entrapment had become especially effective in the last two years, because the shutdown of spaces had left many with no place to go. “There aren’t many queer places left in downtown or in the rest of the city, so people become more reliant on apps and social networks,” he said. “People are lonely and they meet someone who seems like they’re interested, and bang, they’re arrested. ” Ali agreed that despite the dangers, the internet was one of the few public spaces left for gay and transgender people. “There is no other way,” Ali said. “It is Egypt. ” | 0fake |
Did Trump Go Full Nixon? Former Employees Reportedly Saw Him Taping Conversations | Amateur president Donald Trump sent out a threatening tweet targeting former FBI Director James Comey and it s backfiring. Trump tweeted, James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Members of Congress have demanded that the former reality show star hand over the alleged tapes for the review. At this moment, team Trump has declined in interviews to address whether tapes exist or not and Comey, for his part, doesn t seem concerned about it. The question over if they exist can be answered by three of Trump s former employees.The former employees and a former associate said it wasn t a surprise to them that Trump would mention taped conversations.The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump sometimes taped phone conversations with associates and others from his Trump Tower office in New York when he was a businessman, according to three people who say they have direct knowledge of the recordings.The former employees said that they were fearful of using their names and another employee said that he had signed a nondisclosure agreement. We do know that the former high-level employees worked for Trump over a span of three decades, so it appears they knew of the goings on at his office and they added that they saw devices in use recording phone calls.It wasn t just three employees.A fourth person said he knew that Mr. Trump had recorded a phone conversation with him because it was later entered into evidence in a lawsuit.During a Fox News interview Friday, Trump was asked whether there might be tape recordings of Comey as he suggested. Trump said, That I can t talk about. I won t talk about that. Former President Richard Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor assigned to the investigation into his scandal. Sound familiar? The night Cox was fired was called the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon refused Cox s request to release the tapes. Instead, Nixon fired him.Ultimately, Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, mandated that the White House release the subpoenaed tapes.The firing of Cox shocked America because it was the first time a president had ever brazenly and abruptly fired an official charged with investigating a president s conduct before. And now it s 2017, and Trump just shocked America by firing the man leading the investigation into his administration s alleged ties to Russia. Before Comey, it was Preet Bharara, then Sally Yates. History repeats itself.It s only a matter of time before we hear Trump say, I am not a crook! Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images. | 1real |
BREAKING NEWS: DACA IS DONE! WATCH AG Jeff Sessions Explain Why Obama’s Unconstitutional Act Has Harmed Americans | President Trump keeps another promise. The winning streak for Americans continues The Department of Homeland Security will stop processing any new applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program. I am here today to announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday at a Justice Department news conference.Sessions was critical of the Obama program implemented through executive order in 2012 to give work authorization and government benefits, like Social Security to nearly a million illegal aliens. MRCTV Watch: The brilliant Jessica Vaughan, from the Center for Immigration Studies, shared these important facts about DACA recipients in America, compiled by Harvard University researcher Roberto G. Gonzales, called the National UnDACAmented Research Project. There are important (self-acknowledged) caveats to the findings: The research is based on an online survey of just over 2,000 self-described DACA-eligible respondents and about 200 follow-up interviews. Gonzales believes that for a variety of reasons, the respondents are more educated and well-off than the DACA population as a whole.Nevertheless, the findings are interesting. Here is a sample:73 percent of DACA recipients he surveyed live in a low-income household (defined as qualifying for free lunch in high school); 22 percent have earned a degree from a four-year college or university; 21 percent have dropped out of high school; 20 percent have no education beyond high school and no plans to attend college; 59 percent obtained a new job with a DACA work permit, but only 45 percent increased their overall earnings; 36 percent have a parent who holds a bachelor s degree; and 51 percent were already employed before DACA. None of this is to suggest that these individuals should not be considered for an amnesty or legalization program, but to suggest that the arguments in favor of such a program are largely political rather than economic. Immigrants who are not highly educated and who are working in low-paying jobs are more likely to access welfare and other public assistance programs over the course of their lives. | 1real |
FAKE NEWS! MAXINE WATERS and JOY REID Make Outrageous Claims Against President Trump “Will make sure poor people aren’t getting too much from government” | 1real | |
Review: As Amy Schumer Evolves, So Does Her Arena Show - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — In the middle of her dynamic show at the Verizon Center here on Friday, Amy Schumer swigged from a bottle of wine like a movie pirate and asked, “Can I just tell you guys all my secrets?” Giving an arena show the intimate feel of a sleepover requires the presence of a star, and Ms. Schumer doesn’t pretend she isn’t one. “It’s been an insane year,” she said early on. “I’ve gotten very rich, famous and humble. ” When she soberly brings up her “passion project,” she’s referring to her appearance in those ubiquitous Bud Light ads. “People say you sold out for money,” she said midstride, before stopping and flashing a look that announced: Duh. Ms. Schumer was a gleefully raunchy comic who found a pointed feminist voice on her Comedy Central sketch show “Inside Amy Schumer. ” But in her new global tour, which comes to Madison Square Garden next month, she has slyly found an arena language to match her evolving reputation. Ms. Schumer smuggles social commentary about gender into broad bits. At one point on Friday, she lay down onstage, took off her high heels and invited a guy in the audience to try them on. After she flirted with him onstage, he stepped into the shoes and teetered awkwardly. Then she ordered him to walk around like she had, which he tried to do, uneasily. A man stumbling in woman’s shoes is an easy joke, but this bit of crowd work evoked the old line about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, except backward and in heels. It got a huge response, but around me, the women laughed louder. The most significant shift in her is one of perspective. Her early work used the voice of a blinkered, entitled party girl who often said dumb and offensive things, many of which were false. And yet there were moments when a different voice interrupted for a punch line that broke the fourth wall, like the : “My best friend is black … in this story. ” The early criticism of Ms. Schumer’s work came from comedy snobs who dismissed her jokes as character comedy, shorthand for material rooted in a fake persona, an approach deemed by some to be inferior to in your own personal voice. This distinction between character and personal comedy is rooted in naïve notions about the authenticity of certain kinds of a belief as simplistic as the one that indie are more real than pop stars. But there is some truth (and usefulness) in these aesthetic categories, particularly when it comes to describing Ms. Schumer’s evolution. In her new when Ms. Schumer says something happened to her, she wants you to believe it. She also doesn’t play dumb. She speaks in a confident, savvy voice that doesn’t sound that different than the one you might read in interviews with her. This dovetails with the politics of her comedy, which offers a sustained critique of how the media and culture make women feel insecure and apologetic. You might say Ms. Schumer has merely changed rude personas, replacing the ditsy girl with that of the arrogant celebrity. If so, she’s still keeping a firm eye on her audience’s sympathies. Her harshest gibes are for famous people (Gwyneth Paltrow, the Kardashians) who market fantasies of perfection masked as something more down to earth. Ms. Schumer positions herself as a star so relatable she’s not going to try to trick you into thinking she’s relatable. While she delivered some topical jokes (a funny about gun laws, a scene about meeting Hillary Clinton, for whom she appeared at a before the show) the content of her material — much of it new, some repurposed — could still be described by the title of her first special: “Mostly Sex Stuff. ” She still favors a jaunty style of joke that depends on pinpoint pauses. “I’m going to make him wait,” she says about sex on a first date, waiting a beat. “All through dinner. ” Pivot, deepening voice: “We didn’t go to dinner. ” Most of her laughs, however, are earned not from concise jokes but detailed stories, punched up by an animated performance style. Ms. Schumer has long cut sour material with a sweet glance, but now she uses a more theatrical vocabulary for such incongruities. When she describes telling her boyfriend that she is finished performing oral sex, she employs the cheery voice of a game show host. And when she gets really dirty, Ms. Schumer pairs jokes with pantomimes of tap dancing or a tip of a cap accompanied by a . Ms. Schumer, who made the leap to movies last year with “Trainwreck,” makes a point of saying is her favorite thing, but her comedy, like that of Louis C. K. increasingly leans on acting chops. She moves from prim scold to maniac princess to aggression with alacrity — and without ever seeming as if she’s working too hard. She makes hustle look effortless. Yet after a breakthrough 2015, Ms. Schumer’s stardom has shifted into a slightly precarious position. She remains at the center of pop culture — her book, “The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo,” is on the lists — but often for reasons peripheral to her work. She’s become a fixture on the online controversy circuit, garnering headlines not for the last season of her sketch show, but for accusations that she stole jokes (which she denies) and for criticism of comments about rape from one of her TV show’s writers. Such are part of being a famous and provocative comic today. And she has proved herself canny at negotiating the digital world, creating her own viral moments by releasing a clip of her handling a heckler or posting a photo on Instagram skewering double standards in publishing. Still, Ms. Schumer repeatedly called herself an awful famous person onstage here. “I say what I mean,” she said, “so I probably won’t be able to do this much longer. ” It’s unclear exactly what she meant, but it’s the kind of intriguing aside that makes you sit forward in your chair. In comedy, meaning what you say doesn’t beat saying it in a meaningful way. | 0fake |
5-STAR MOOCH Tells Graduates: “Every Single Day, I Wake Up In A House That Was Built By Slaves” [VIDEO] | Poor 5-star Mooch. At least we know now why she spends so much time traveling around the world on our dime First Lady Michelle Obama touted the diversity of the 2016 graduating class of City College in New York by comparing it to her own life and experiences. It s the story that I witness every single day, when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves, Obama told the 3,000 graduates and their families Friday, adding:And I watch my daughters two beautiful, black young women head off to school waving goodbye to their father, the President of the United States, the son of a man from Kenya who came here to American to America for the same reasons as many of you: To get an education and improve his prospects in life.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Comment on 11 Things To Let Go Of Before The New Year by 11 Things To Let Go Of Before The New Year – Motivate3.com | The new year is almost here and it’s often a time when we all start to think about what we want to change for the next year. I’ve never been much a fan of the whole cliche of changing because of the new year, but why not embrace it as a time where we can make change? Do a quick reflection right now. Do you feel like you have followed your dreams and passions this past year? Do you feel you got caught up in the stresses of life quite often? Did you feel judgement, negative self talk and anger were a big part of your days? Reflecting on how you’ve felt over your year and being honest with yourself about it gives you the chance to know how to adjust and move forward from this moment forward whether it be the new year or not. I’ve found in my own life that if I don’t pay attention to how I feel, what I create, what’s playing out in my life and take responsibility for it, it doesn’t change. It stays the same, I experience the same emotions or stagnant feelings, and I don’t move forward. But the moment I decide to take it into my own hands, I see how much I’m not a victim to what happens. 11 Things To Let Go of Before the New year 1. Stop all the negative self talk – It’s first because it’s probably one of the most important. The more we talk poorly about ourselves to ourselves or others, the more we disempower ourselves and empower all the things we wish to adjust about ourselves. Observe it, take note of it, and kick it. It’s not helping you. 2. Choose one bad eating habit and kick it! – Taking care of and fuelling your vessel is one of the most important things we can do in life to stay mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy. Pick one of your worst eating habits and aim to cut it out completely in 3 months. Whatever it might be, be honest with yourself and make it happen. Then take on the next bad eating habit in 3 months. 3. Let go of chasing ‘success’– So often we put up goals or plans for ourselves yet have this tiny limited scope of what success is. Next thing you know we bring stress, worry and fear into the equation throughout the whole journey because we may not be totally in line to hit this pin prick point of what success looks like to us. Instead, do your best to take the steps needed to get to where you want to go, but let go of the lure of success and what it looks like and means. There’s no such thing as failure. (more) 4. Kick the idea that you cannot achieve or follow your dreams – So often we have our ideas of what we are excited or passionate about, but let it go because we think we can’t do it or because it’s unrealistic. Instead of believing every word of that, take ONE step. One step towards making your passion or your dreams happen. The one step will lead to the next and the next, but you have to take the first one. Plan out that first step and take it! 5. Let go of the idea that you should run from your problems – We often get into this mentality that we just need to “get over it.” In theory this sounds sorta good, you move on from things that happen in the past or something to that effect. But by just forgetting about it, did we really move on? No, it gets triggered again later or lies dormant as a resented event etc. Instead, let’s face our problems and truly move past them. Journal about it, talk to someone else about it. Put the cards on the table to someone who cares about you and who can help you move past it. Pick someone who will see the bigger picture and be honest with you. You have all it takes to move past what challenges you. 6. Stop comparing yourself to others – This is a big one. So often we are looking at others and using what they have, do or are to compare it against us and make up a story. This whole game can make us sad or feel down about ourselves or it can feed our ego in a big way. Let it go, respect everyone’s journey, including your own and stop the need to compare yourself to others. 7. Stop judging others – Judging other people can become a habit and an addiction. It’s like something we can’t stop doing sometimes! Take a moment the next time you judge someone and observe it. Ask yourself why you did it, how did it make you feel? Etc. Make a conscious effort to stop. (more) 8. Stop the blame game – Blaming and pointing fingers when it comes to our challenges or what happens to us doesn’t allow us to look at and observe how we might have created or aligned with an experience to help make it happen. I’m not saying there’s no such things others can do to hurt you, I’m simply saying take responsibility for how you feel and don’t even point blame, it doesn’t help us. 9. Stop worrying and trying so hard to fit in and be accepted – This is something far too many of us do just to save face and not be “the weird one.” The reality is, it’s more ‘weird’ to be a version of yourself that isn’t genuine or real simply because you want to be accepted by others. It’s a choice you can’t maintain forever and the longer it goes the more uncomfortable you will feel. Be you, accept yourself, be genuine and don’t try to make others do the same when. Let it happen. Trust. 10. Let go of the need to control everything – Sometimes we can’t take a step forward in anything because we don’t know all the answers or all the variables. This is our obsession with control sometimes. Yes, observe a situation and make the best choices available to you, but don’t worry so much about needing to control or know every detail about it. Learn to leave things up to trust and knowing that things will work out as they need to. This doesn’t mean be reckless, just that you don’t need to control every thing, person and detail. 11. Stop procrastinating – This one goes with everything on the list. Stop putting it all off. Whatever it may be. The changes listed above, the hobby you want to, the career you want to explore, or the thing you want to tell to someone important to you. Stop putting it off and just do it!
| 1real |
Northern Ireland's DUP says talks with UK government continuing | BELFAST (Reuters) - Talks between Democratic Unionist Party and the British government to secure a deal on the post-Brexit future of the region s border continued on Thursday, a spokesman for the Northern Ireland party said. The British government needs to agree a text with both the DUP and Irish government before the European Union will agree to move onto the next phase of Brexit talks. We have been talking to the government over the last couple of days and that is continuing today, the DUP spokesman said, saying deputy party leader Nigel Dodds and party Chief Whip Jeffrey Donaldson were involved but that party leader Arlene Foster remained in Northern Ireland. Ultimately if there is an agreement she will go over, he said. Flights can be booked reasonably quickly but there is not an expectation of her going today. | 0fake |
Mexico Vows $50 Million Legal Fund to Fight U.S. Deportations - Breitbart | MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s top diplomat said Monday his country will spend about $50 million to hire lawyers for migrants in the United States facing deportation. [advertisement | 0fake |
Trump Wakes Up To Scream At Black People After Hurling A Racial Slur Yesterday | Donald Trump thinks if he rage-tweets about NFL players who choose to kneel instead of stand during the national anthem as a form of silent protest against racial injustice and police brutality, it will all go away but by doing that, he inadvertently highlights that there is a problem. The former reality show star dropped a racial slur yesterday in front of Native American heroes, then today, he jumped on Twitter to yell at black people. We see a pattern here. At least 24 players kneeling this weekend at NFL stadiums that are now having a very hard time filling up, Trump screamed at the world. The American public is fed up with the disrespect the NFL is paying to our Country, our Flag and our National Anthem. Weak and out of control! At least 24 players kneeling this weekend at NFL stadiums that are now having a very hard time filling up. The American public is fed up with the disrespect the NFL is paying to our Country, our Flag and our National Anthem. Weak and out of control! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2017This didn t go down well on the Internet.Hey Mr. Clumsy, Now that you have added the Native Americans to the long list of Americans you insulted, can you make life easier on us and just tell us when and where you ll be using the N word? The suspense is killing us. #disgrace (@ronenbergen) November 28, 2017Collin Kapernick was named Time person of the year. Way to go Collin #Time #TakeAKnee Winning MN (@WinningMN) November 28, 2017Let it go. Your just mad because they aren t doing what YOU want them to do. Rick Laferriere (@RickLaf2) November 28, 2017The American public is fed up with the disrespect the President is paying to blacks, browns, mexicans, gays and all women since he entered office. Hafiz Shariff (@HafizDoc) November 28, 2017Mr. Trump, you are fake news. https://t.co/7LA9ExaK3b Leanne (@MsTeacher80) November 28, 2017"Weak and out of control!" Pot calling the kettle black. pic.twitter.com/6ovSNvbStm Dan (QWERTYGEO) (@The_QWERTYGEO) November 28, 2017Disrespect is being an a-hole while trying to honor code talkers while standing in front of Andrew Jackson. kimberly (@kdd75) November 28, 2017According to numbers compiled by the Associated Press from its reporters at stadiums around the country on Sunday, it was 23 not 24 players who participated in the protests.As for Trump s claim about a lack of attendance, attendance through Week 12 was listed at nearly 12 million fans for the league s 32 teams by Pro Football Reference, with Week 12 drawing just over 1 million, according to The Washington Post.The average attendance at NFL games was actually up slightly, from 68,914 per game in 2016 to 69,264 per game, so President Liar Pants lied again. If he wants to talk about attendance, we can discuss his unenthusiastic inauguration crowd size. As for his ratings, he ranks as the least popular president in the history of polling.Donald Trump is actively trying to divide our country even more than it already is. Trump s obsession with NFL athletes protesting against racial injustice is obvious, and yet, he didn t seem to be concerned about the tiki-torch carrying Nazis who marched in his name in Charlottesville this year.Trump s outrageous attacks during the past two days mean that some big news is about to drop. Wait for it.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. | 1real |
2016 Election: The Political Elite Establishment vs. Social Justice? | 21st Century Wire says Is this year s US election a story of the political elite establishment going to war with social justice?In the following episode of CrossTalk, three experts discuss how social justice is a rising force in American election politics.With the rise of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, a movement is definitely emerging that is calling for a radical change to how things are currently being done.Do you think that this election cycle will bring about the real change that people are so obviously desperate for, or will the political establishment find a way to crawl back into power?Watch the episode here: . GET THE FULL STORY ON THE ELECTION: 21st Century Wire 2016 Election Files | 1real |
Medicaid Funding to End for Planned Parenthood in Texas, State Says - The New York Times | In a critical step in a longstanding fight, Texas formally said on Tuesday that it was ending Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood, a move the group said could affect 11, 000 patients. The office of inspector general for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission issued a final notice terminating Planned Parenthood’s enrollment in the health care system for the poor. If it is not stopped, the termination will be effective in 30 days. Planned Parenthood officials said on Tuesday night that they would continue to provide birth control, cancer screenings, H. I. V. tests and other care to Medicaid patients and seek an injunction in federal court to stop the state. The group sued the state in 2015 after a preliminary notice was filed, but the court case has lingered pending further action by the state. At stake is about $4 million a year in Medicaid funding. The formal notice is the latest salvo in a legal and political fight that dates back years but intensified 15 months ago when the state issued a preliminary notice to end Medicaid funding for the group’s 34 health care centers. “Texas is a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation,” said Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “If the nation goes the way of Texas, it will be nothing less than a national health care disaster. ” In a statement on Tuesday night, the office of Gov. Greg Abbott said, “Texans expect that when taxpayer dollars are granted to health care providers, it is only to those who demonstrate that the health and safety of their patients come before a profit motive that puts women at greater risk. ” The termination notice, signed by the inspector general, Stuart W. Bowen Jr. cited violations that found Planned Parenthood was unqualified to provide medical services “in a professionally competent, safe, legal and ethical manner. ” The notice cited “extensive undercover video” obtained from a Planned Parenthood center in April 2015. The secretly recorded videos purported to show officials trying to illegally profit from the sale of aborted fetal tissue and discussing the issue with abortion opponents who posed as representatives of a biomedical firm. Planned Parenthood has said that the videos were deceptively edited and that the group did nothing illegal or unethical. Representatives from the Health and Human Services Commission and the inspector general could not be immediately reached on Tuesday night about the timing of the notice. Planned Parenthood has 15 days to file an administrative appeal. A spokeswoman said the group was evaluating whether to pursue an appeal in addition to seeking relief in federal court. | 0fake |
Top U.S. Senate Democrat says Trump's nominees need 'thorough' vetting | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, decried what he called undue haste to confirm President-elect Donald Trump’s nominations for various top posts, saying on Monday they needed more thorough vetting. Hearings start on Tuesday for the Republican president-elect’s choices for senior administration posts, beginning with U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, nominated to be attorney general, and retired General John Kelly, Trump’s pick for secretary of homeland security. Schumer said Trump’s nominees, many of whom have extensive business backgrounds at companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp and Goldman Sachs, should be carefully scrutinized to be sure they avoid conflicts of interest. “We’re not doing this for sport. Democrats feel very strongly that pushing for a thorough and thoughtful vetting process is the right thing to do,” Schumer said in a speech. Republicans, who control the majority in the Senate, are presenting the Democratic objections as political grandstanding, saying they moved quickly eight years ago to confirm Democratic President Barack Obama’s Cabinet picks, approving seven the day he began his first term. Schumer said some of Trump’s nominees have not completed a review process conducted by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer said on Monday that every nominee with a hearing this week has turned in the required paperwork. “Everybody will be properly vetted as they have been in the past,” said U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, speaking in New York after meeting with Trump on Monday. He said he hoped to confirm six or seven national security appointees by the time Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump needs to keep the 52 Republicans in the 100-seat Senate on his side to secure the simple majority votes needed for confirmations. One of the more contentious hearings could be over Rex Tillerson, nominated for secretary of state. Trump’s stated desire for warmer relations with Russia comes at a deeply sensitive moment, after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Moscow used cyber hacking and other methods to try to tilt the U.S. presidential election in Trump’s favor over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Republicans including U.S. Senator John McCain and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, veterans in foreign policy and security issues, have signaled concerns about Tillerson’s ties to Russia during his tenure as the chief executive of Exxon Mobil. Transition officials expressed confidence that Tillerson would win the pair’s support. Sessions is also likely to face a thorough grilling, with critics arguing he obstructed civil rights protections in the past. Democrats are likely to question nominees for positions related to national security about Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and his pledge to temporarily suspend immigration from regions deemed to be exporting terrorism. The Trump team has put the nominees through mock hearings that are standard practice ahead of such events. Questions have included the kind of everyday concerns that periodically upset nominees for high office, such as the price of a gallon of gas. Each mock-up has also included at least one disruptive pretend protester, a transition official said. Transition officials say they believe they could pick up Democratic votes from senators facing 2018 re-election bids in states Trump won on Nov. 8, such as U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Trump voiced optimism about the process on Monday, telling reporters at his office and residence in New York, “The confirmation is going great. I think they’ll all pass.” | 0fake |
Danish Parliament: Danes Should Not Become Minorities in Denmark | The Folketing, Denmark’s unicameral parliament, has passed a resolution stating that Danes should not become minorities in Danish communities, as figures show the migrant and population are now a majority in Brøndby Strand and Odense. [“Parliament notes with concern that today there are areas in Denmark where the number of immigrants from countries and their descendants is over 50 percent,” the resolution states. “It is parliament’s opinion that Danes should not be a minority in residential areas in Denmark. ” Denmark, like many other European countries, saw a surge in sexual assaults and harassment by migrants after they began to arrive in large numbers. Rafi Ibrahim, a Syrian who has been settled in Denmark for many years, told reporters that the new arrivals find it difficult to control themselves around Western women. “If they see a girl, they go nuts. They simply can’t handle it,” he said. “In Syria and many other countries, it is not normal for a strange woman to smile at you. Those girls who are harassed aren’t necessarily or drunk. Sometimes it is enough just to be a girl. ” Danish immigration minister Inger Støjberg confessed in late 2016 that “integration in Denmark has failed” following a damning report on criminality and unemployment in increasingly ghettoes. “In my opinion it is because we have been too scared to set out clear demands to the people coming to Denmark,” she said. “We have not dared to say that we expect and demand that they provide for themselves and their families, and that we expect them to adjust to Danish values. ” Indigenous Britons were officially recorded as a minority in the nation’s capital for the first time in 2011, with just 44. 9 per cent of Londoners identifying as “White British” in the 2011 census. White Britons are also under 50 per cent of the population in Leicester, Luton, and Slough, with Manchester University researchers predicting that Birmingham, the UK’s second city, will soon follow suit. | 0fake |
Hispanic Man Living In “Hood” Has BRUTAL Message For “Lefty”: My dead friends were not shot by “White Right wing extremists” [VIDEO] | It s easy to blame the White man that way, you don t have to be accountable for your actions I lived in Oakland [CA] all my life, and the people that robbed my mama at gun-point, when she was just a hard-working immigrant trying to get ahead honestly, it wasn t White, right-wing extremists, it was black and brown people. Why don t you cheat on your wife and blame her for it? My hardworking mom was not robbed by "White Right wingers."My dead friends were not shot by "White Right wingers" pic.twitter.com/RqyeWnShpu Oak-Town Unfiltered (@hrtablaze) August 30, 2016 | 1real |
Trump’s Legal Team Directly Contradicts Him On The Investigation Yet Again | Despite his tweets, apparently Trump isn t being investigated for obstruction of justice, according to Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump s legal team.On Friday morning, President Trump tweeted: I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt. I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2017According to NBC, Sekulow was adamant that Trump is not under any investigation on NBC s Meet The Press . Let me be clear here, said Jay Sekulow, a member of the president s legal team. The president is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction. Sekulow goes on to say that Trump was actually responding to news reports of an investigation.Funny, because that s not what it sounded like from Trump himself. Surely the President of the United States knows how to be clear in his official White House tweets. The tweet from the president was in response to the five anonymous sources purportedly leaking info to the Washington Post, Sekulow said, referring to the Washington Post s report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into Russian interference in the election, now also includes a look at whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice. He s not afraid of the investigation there is no investigation, Sekulow said, adding, there is not an investigation of the President of the United States, period. Ah but Sekulow first said He s not afraid of the investigation , that implies something else entirely. It sounds like Trump and his team are working to cover up an investigation and have it become hush hush and forgotten about.We all know Trump tells it like it is on Twitter, covfefe or otherwise. Trump doesn t know when to shut up or keep his mouth shut. Unfortunately for him there s only so much his team can do. Or try to do.Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, also noted on NBC s Meet The Press that one thing we ve learned from the testimony of multiple people now is the president is pretty fired up about this and doesn t believe that he did anything wrong. The president wants people to say that, he said.If that s the case, again I ask: what does Trump have to hide then?Featured image by Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1real |
Watch: Chris Wallace Has Heated Exchange With Trump Attorney Jay Sekulow - ’Oh Boy, This Is Weird’ - Breitbart | On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace had a heated exchange with Jay Sekulow, who is member of President Donald Trump’s legal team. Partial transcript as follows: WALLACE: I want to ask you a direct question, does the president think that Rod Rosenstein has done anything wrong? SEKULOW: The president has never said anything about Rod Rosenstein doing anything wrong. Here’s what — what is the legal situation here. There is a constitutional issue when you have this scenario. The president made a determination based on consult of advice. He decided ultimately. He’s the commander in chief. He gets to make that decision that James Comey had a go. That was coming, by the way, from groups right, left, and center over the last year. You — you and I know that. So there had been concern about James Comey. It was put forward in a memorandum — that’s what the president’s referencing — from the deputy attorney general and the attorney general requesting the removal of James Comey as the FBI director. And, ultimately, that’s the president’s determination. So here’s the constitutional threshold question, Chris. The president takes action based on numerous events, including recommendations from his attorney general and the deputy attorney general’s office. He takes the action that they also, by the way, recommended. And now he’s being investigated by the Department of Justice because the special counsel under the special counsel relations reports still to the Department of Justice. Not an independent counsel. So he’s being investigated for taking the action that the attorney general and deputy attorney general recommended him to take by the agency who recommended the termination. So that’s the constitutional threshold question here. That’s why, as I said, no investigation — WALLACE: Well, I — what — what — what’s the question (INAUDIBLE). I mean you — you stated — you stated some facts. First of all, you’ve now said that he is getting investigated after saying that you didn’t. SEKULOW: No. WALLACE: You — you just, sir, that he’s being — SEKULOW: No, he’s not being investigated! WALLACE: You just said that he’s being investigated. SEKULOW: No, Chris, I said that the — any — let me be crystal clear so you — you completely understand. We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States, period. WALLACE: Sir, you just said two times that he’s being investigated. SEKULOW: No. The context of the tweet, I just gave you the legal theory, Chris, of how the Constitution works. If, in fact, it was correct that the president was being investigated, he would be investigating for taking action that an agency told him to take. So that is protected under the Constitution as his article one power. That’s all I said. So I appreciate you trying to rephrase it, but I’m just being really direct with you, Chris. This is — let me be — WALLACE: No, I — I — sir, I didn’t rephrase it. The tape will speak — Jay, the tape will speak for itself. You said he is being investigated. And it’s not that big — SEKULOW: Chris, he is — just — no, Chris — that’s (INAUDIBLE) unfair, Chris. WALLACE: Wait a minute — wait a minute. Jay, and it’s not — Jay, it’s not just being investigated for firing Comey. There’s also the question of what he said to Comey when Comey was still the FBI director. So there’s more than just the fact that he fired Comey. SEKULOW: He — Chirrs, let me be clear, you asked me a question about what the president’s tweet was regarding the deputy attorney general of the United States. That’s what you asked me. And I responded to what that legal theory would be. So I do not appreciate you putting words in my mouth when I’ve been crystal clear that the president is not and has not been under investigation. I don’t think I can be any clearer than that. WALLACE: Well, you don’t know that he’s not under investigation again, sir. I mean you might — SEKULOW: You know, I can’t read the mind — you’re right, Chris, I can’t read the minds of the special prosecutor. WALLACE: Well, then, good, OK, so we’re in agreement, you don’t know whether he’s under — you don’t know whether he’s under investigation. SEKULOW: But I have not been notified. No one has been notified that he is. WALLACE: You don’t know whether he’s under investigation or not. SEKULOW: Chris, I — WALLACE: The question I’m asking you is, does he think that Rod Rosenstein — it’s a very simple question — does he think that Rod Rosenstein did anything wrong? SEKULOW: The president has not expressed any opinion about Rod Rosenstein. WALLACE: Does he think that Robert Mueller has done anything wrong? SEKULOW: First of all, he has not said anything about Robert Mueller. And, Chris, let me say something here. You’re asking me if I had a conversation, which I have not had, about Robert Mueller with the president of the United States on — or anyone else for that matter. I can’t discuss that and would that with you. Unlike James Comey, who leaks information to the press, I actually respect the privilege. Apparently, he did not. WALLACE: Does the President believe — well, you’re speaking for his legal team, so you’re out here to represent him and tell us what the president’s belief is, is that correct? SEKULOW: No, I’m out here to tell you what the facts are and the legal issues are. I’m not to tell you what the beliefs are. I’m not the client’s conscience I’m his lawyer. WALLACE: I understand that and the — and the client — have you spoken the — have you spoken to the president at all? SEKULOW: Yes, but I’m not going to discuss those conversations with you. Those are privileged under the privilege. WALLACE: Well, I assume that if he asked you to say something, for instance, Marc Kasowitz said all kinds of things about — after Comey’s testimony. I assumed he was speaking for the president, SEKULOW: Marc Kasowitz made a general statement to the press after the testimony of James Comey. That’s what that was about. This — you’re asking me now questions about what people are thinking in their minds, which I don’t read minds, and you’re asking me also what I may or may not have had a conversation with the president about and you understand this. I respect the privilege, unlike James Comey. WALLACE: Does — SEKULOW: I want to be real clear on that too. I’m not going to give you conversations I’ve had with — have or have not had with the president of the United States. So when I’ve had conversations with the president of the United States — WALLACE: Well, I — your — SEKULOW: As his lawyer, it’s privileged, period. WALLACE: Does the president think that Rosenstein, because you talked about this constitutional theory that he took action, that’s on the advice — SEKULOW: Yes. WALLACE: Although he says he didn’t take it on the advice of Rosenstein, does he think that Rosenstein should recuse himself, and is healing the groundwork to fire Rosenstein and Mueller? SEKULOW: I’ve had no conversations, and I’ve heard nothing without that at all. Nothing. I think this — Chris, this points out — let me tell you one thing quickly about the constitutional theory, as you called it. It’s actually called the Constitution. You know, the president has certain (INAUDIBLE) authority under the Constitution. It’s — WALLACE: Well, you called it the constitutional theory, sir. SEKULOW: Yes, it is a constitutional theory based on the Constitution. WALLACE: I understand that. SEKULOW: Not . It’s the constitutional theory. It’s part of the Constitution. The president has inherent authority. Here’s what you’re trying to — here’s what you’re trying to do, Chris, and I appreciate that you’re — you’re trying to push back. WALLACE: Well, now you’re reading minds again. Now you’re reading minds again. SEKULOW: No, Chris, I deal with fact and law. You were asking me to read people’s minds. That I don’t do. WALLACE: Well, don’t tell me what I’m trying to — well, don’t tell me what I’m trying to do because you don’t know what I’m trying to do. What I’m trying to get is a straight answer out of you. Let me ask you this — SEKULOW: Yes, well — sure. WALLACE: As a matter of law, does the President think that he can be indicted under the Constitution? SEKULOW: The president — I haven’t had that conversation with the president, but the president can’t be indicted under the Constitution of the activity alleged in something like this. Of course not. WALLACE: Why is that? SEKULOW: Because there’s not an investigation. And there’s — there’s no investigation against the president. WALLACE: Well, you don’t know whether there’s an investigation. Oh, boy, this is weird. You — you don’t know that there’s — whether there’s an investigation. You just told us that. SEKULOW: Chris, you’re asking me to speculate — so then what you’re asking me to do is to speculate on — WALLACE: And it would matter. I’m asking you as a matter of law, not whether there’s an investigation. Does the president think he can be indicted as president? SEKULOW: For — for — WALLACE: That’s a constitutional issue, isn’t it? SEKULOW: For obstruction of justice? No, the Constitution’s — WALLACE: No, for any of it. SEKULOW: Now, Chris, you know, let’s — let’s be realistic here. You know what the — the answer is. Can the president be indicted for obstruction? You know what the position has been at the Department of Justice since the 1970s and again stated in 2000. That’s not what President — that’s now how you engage a president. There’s a political process if somebody did something wrong. You’re talking about — you’re conflating a constitutional process, criminal law, with an issue of political consequence. So I am his lawyer. I’m not his political advisor. WALLACE: Senator Dianne Feinstein, a top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, responded to the president’s tweet this week with this statement. “The message the president is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn’t apply to him and that anyone who thinks otherwise will be fired. ” Is she wrong, sir? SEKULOW: Yes, she’s wrong. First of all, Dianne Feinstein also called for an investigation of James Comey and Loretta Lynch for that whole episode regarding her engagement and calling it a, quote, “matter,” not an “investigation. ” But with regard to this particular issue, I mean the tweet — there’s nothing illegal or inappropriate about the tweet. If the tweet came on the heels of a Washington Post story that had five anonymous sources and didn’t even identify the agency from which those sources came from, and that’s what he tweet in response to. It’s that simple, period. WALLACE: Final question, the president just — just added John Dowd, a Washington lawyer, to his legal team. Should we expect him to hire other criminal lawyers? And, in a sense, is he preparing for a potential legal battle here? SEKULOW: Look, I mean John Dowd is — is a legal legend, you know that, in — in — in the — in Washington, D. C. and the president is doing the appropriate thing by hiring lawyers necessary, if there was to be an investigation, if there were to be an investigation, you have the lawyers in place. We’ve got a great legal team led by Marc Kasowitz. We’ve got John Dowd on the team. This is a solid team. Contrary to some of the press reports, a deep team, if necessary. WALLACE: Do you think — I — I — I misspoke. I’m going to ask one more question. Because I’m not allowed to ask you what the president thinks, do you think that he should stop — SEKULOW: Of course. WALLACE: Do you think he should stop tweeting about this case? SEKULOW: Look, I — here’s the thing on that. You know, people have been asking me that. Look, the president has changed the way in which engagement goes in — I mean you’ve got great ratings, no doubt about it, Chris. But let’s face it, the president speaks to 107 million people through his social media platforms. He revolutionized the election process by utilizing media in a different way. So I — I think, look, the president knows the effectiveness of social media. He’s been very effective at it. Again, I’m his lawyer, I deal with the issues. Nothing that he’s tweeted is causing me any issues whatsoever at this point. Nothing. WALLACE: Jay, thank you. Thanks for coming in. SEKULOW: Thanks, Chris. WALLACE: It’s always — it’s always interesting to talk to you. Please, come back, and we’ll — SEKULOW: Thanks, Chris. WALLACE: We’ll continue it and maybe this time we’ll get on this — you know what, be here in studio and we can stay on the same wavelength. SEKULOW: There we go. WALLACE: All right, sir — SEKULOW: Happy Father’s Day. WALLACE: Happy Father’s Day to you too, sir. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
White House Staff Hiding From Reporters | Word has gone out through the White House that anyone caught speaking with reporters is as good as gone, according to reports that have come out today. Staffers are making themselves scarce, not answering their phones, and keeping their heads down. According to senior aides, some staffers are literally hiding in their offices and refusing to come out while the White House press corp is around. This comes in the wake of startling revelations that President Trump leaked Israeli intelligence to the Russians during a closed-door meeting last week. Do not ask me about how this looks, we all know how this looks, a senior White House aide told The Daily Beast earlier this week.Asked a longtime House GOP staffer where things are headed. "This is like Reservoir Dogs. Everyone ends up dead on the floor." Molly Ball (@mollyesque) May 17, 2017Those sentiments, implying that Trump is obviously guilty of collusion and mishandling classified information, have driven morale even lower. It s especially ironic, given how vocal President Trump was during the campaign, hammering Secretary Clinton over and over again for her allegedly poor handling of classified emails. Now that the tables have turned, White House staffers are losing faith in the administration.Part of the problem with morale stems from Trump s leadership, or lack thereof. He s notorious for shifting blame and firing whoever sticks their heads up at the wrong time. In part, because Trump doesn t seem to be able to take responsibility for his own actions.None of that will surprise anyone paying attention to his disastrous administration, and it s not news to White House staffers either. They re waiting for the fallout, to see who will be blamed for Trump s latest mess and whose head will roll in response to the latest news. Until it becomes apparent which way the wind is blowing, smart staffers are in hiding.That speaks to huge problems within the administration. The lack of trust, and fear of raising the ire of President Trump sounds more like an abusive household than a presidential administration.Photo by Win McNamee via Getty Images | 1real |
ILLEGAL ALIENS Set Up Huge Tent City…You Won’t Believe Where It Is! [Video] | Legal Latino Heat filmed a tent city full of illegals (Language alert!) that s right between two courthouses in Santa Ana, California! This is Sanctuary City Hell! Santa Ana declared itself a Sanctuary City in December of last year in defiance of Trump (see below).Coming From New York City I thought the homeless were bad over there. Here they have their own community and the city allows it. Illegals and criminals have their way in Liberal Sanctuary cities. If you needed more evidence to convince you that sanctuary cities are destroying our country, then look no further than this Activist Legal Latino Heat released a shocking video that shows a massive tent city packed with illegals, drug addicts, and their pets. sprawls across the Plaza of the Flags situated in the heart of the Santa Ana Civic CenterThis illegal camp is centered in sanctuary city of Santa Ana, California, sprawling across the Plaza of the Flags situated in the heart of the Santa Ana s Civic Center.It doesn t even look like America!SANTA ANA DECLARE ITSELF A SANCTUARY CITY IN DECEMBER OF 2016: Santa Ana declares itself a sanctuary city in defiance of TrumpSince Donald Trump was elected president in November, cities with large Latino populations have debated how to respond.Many activists have urged these communities to do everything they can to protect people in this country illegally, even though such efforts might jeopardize some federal funding from a Washington in which Republicans will control not only the White House but also Congress.Santa Ana the seat of Orange County and home to one of the nation s largest Latino populations decided this week to strike a defiant tone.City Council members voted to declare Orange County s second-most populous city a sanctuary city a largely symbolic gesture to protect immigrants who are in the country illegally.Paid Post WHAT S THIS?FREE Unlimited?A Message from SprintHere s all you need to know: FREE Unlimited data, talk and textSee More Tuesday s vote is historic in that it makes Santa Ana the first city in Orange County to grant itself the designation. It joins dozens of other cities across the country that have declared themselves sanctuaries. Still want to bail out California? | 1real |
Re: Don’t CLICK that, stupid! Is this email from March 2016 where #PodestaEmails21 and others started? | Don’t CLICK that, stupid! Is this email from March 2016 how ‘hackers’ accessed #PodestaEmails21 and others? Posted at 11:22 am on October 28, 2016 by Sam J. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
Baby Boomers and the Interwebz.
Dear John and other people who have been living under a rock, Google wouldn’t send you an email called, “Someone has your password.” Likely it would be a message about a possible breach or some urgency about changing your password but they wouldn’t send you something like this.
And never, EVER EVER EVER click a link in an email, especially if it’s one you don’t recognize. Okay – is this a copy of the phishing email to Podesta on March 19? pic.twitter.com/1jqUvafUpk
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) October 28, 2016
A bit.ly link for you to click to change your password.
John, don’t be stupid.
Couldn’t someone in Homeland Security or the NSA or one of those other fancy Federal agencies have taken some time to tell these people the do’s and don’t of being online? *smh* @jamiedupree Actually, wait, I didn't see the bit.ly link. (and I ain't gonna fire it up to see!) Could be the phish, yeah.
Typically most people are apprehensive to click a bit.ly link from someone they KNOW, let alone some odd email from Google telling you someone has your password. Trending It's official, she's NUTS! Donna Brazile thinks Democrats can turn THIS state blue (hint: no way in Hell)
*don’t click it* @jamiedupree That's likely it… check out where the bitly link goes: https://t.co/yKjaZzCxo9 (Chrome warns the site is malicious.) pic.twitter.com/7WACDWQwfS
— Kyle Wilson (@nosliwelyk) October 28, 2016
Yikes. Shocked Kyle clicked it … hope he didn’t have anything signed in or important in that browser or app. @jamiedupree Most definitely. For many reasons. One being that google does not use @Bitly
— SETH WEATHERS (@sethweathers) October 28, 2016
Surely Podesta is like, “NOW YOU TELL ME.”
Heh. @jamiedupree Looks like 'that sort of thing',However, | 1real |
Obama Spends Earth Day In The Everglades, Taunting Republicans On Climate Change | "2014 was the planet's warmest year on record. Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century," Obama said. "Yes, this winter was cold in parts of our country, including Washington. Some people in Washington helpfully used a snowball to illustrate that fact. But around the world, in the aggregate, it was the warmest winter ever recorded."
It's of course a huge coincidence that the visit is in the backyard of two Republican presidential hopefuls who have been squishy on the subject of climate change, and a Republican governor who reportedly told state employees they can't even use the words "climate change."
"Climate change can no longer be denied," Obama said. "It can't be edited out. It can't be omitted from the conversation. And action can no longer be delayed."
Ahead of the visit, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on a call that Obama would "use the occasion of Earth Day to highlight his commitment to fighting to protect public health and to fighting the carbon pollution that contributes to climate change." And the president picked Florida, Earnest said, because it's a place "where these kinds of issues have traditionally been bipartisan."
Earnest was coy about the fact that Florida also happens to be the home of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, two likely Republican presidential contenders who haven't been as enthusiastic about climate action. Bush has said he's a "skeptic" when it comes to climate change, while Rubio says he doesn't believe human activity is causing the planet to heat up.
The president, Earnest said on the call, hopes the visit "will prompt an elevated political debate about making climate change a priority." However, he added, the trip is "not an effort to go to anyone's home state, but to raise the debate."
Earnest maintained that Obama's visit "isn't about campaigns, this is about making progress on a priority." But he also noted that "the Republicans who choose to deny the reality of climate change, they do that to the detriment of the people they're elected to represent."
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), also no big fan of the concept of climate change, has taken to Twitter to criticize Obama's Everglades visit. Scott argued that the president should do more to get federal funding for Everglades restoration, because, he said, "Our environment is too important to neglect."
Earnest fired back against Scott on Wednesday. "It's a little tough to take criticism from someone who has banned the words 'climate change' for the accusation that the president has been insufficiently committed to fighting climate change," he said, referring to reports that Florida officials were forbidden from using the terms "global warming" and "climate change" in official communications. "That's a tough case to make, but it sounds like that didn't stop him."
The White House also used the occasion to tout the benefits of the National Park Service, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year. A new report from the NPS released Wednesday finds that every dollar invested in the parks returns $10 to the U.S. economy through tourism and other related industries. The NPS reported a record 293 million visitors in 2014. | 0fake |
Cell Phone Footage Of Cop Brutally Assaulting Student Will Make You Sick (VIDEO) | A student at Baltimore s Reach! Partnership School took a cellphone video of a school resource officer brutally assaulting a high school sophomore on Tuesday, and now the city s top school cop and two others have been placed on leave.The sickening video shows a police officer slapping the teenager in his face three times, kicking him and cursing at him. Another officer, a female, can be seen standing behind the abusive officer doing absolutely nothing to stop the attack.When officials saw the video they placed the officers and Baltimore School Police Chief Marshall Goodwin on PAID administrative leave until the investigation into the incident can be completed. Yes, that s right, the cop beat this child and he is still being paid.Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said she was appalled by the officers behavior: As a parent of a Baltimore city school student, I was appalled by what I saw. The behavior that was demonstrated is certainly something you never want to see. Certainly not a school officer acting in this way, particularly with a young person. Meanwhile, the city school system is trying to blame the kid for his assault because he wasn t a student at Reach! saying, His presence at the school and the series of events before and after the incident are currently under investigation. His family s attorney Lauren Geisse, however, is saying that is not true: The boy had a right to be at the school where he was an enrolled student. With respect to refusing to leave the school, the student didn t want to leave the school where he had a right to attend. Attorney Michael Davey who represents the police officer who is seen hitting the student claimed his client was responding to a call of an intruder on campus and explained away the video by saying only a few seconds of the incident were captured. As if that somehow makes it perfectly okay that a grown man was hitting and kicking a teenage boy in the face.The school system s CEO, Gregory Thornton is calling the officer s assault on the child unacceptable : I am completely appalled and disappointed by what is depicted in the video. Our school police officers are entrusted with ensuring the safety of our students and staff, and I know that most of them take this job seriously while maintaining a high level of professionalism. The behavior in the video is completely unacceptable. He is absolutely correct. Frankly, there is absolutely no excuse for a police officer to his ANYONE that way, let alone a child. And it is appalling that he is still being paid after this. This kid suffered injuries to his face and his ribs and this guy is allowed to just collect a paycheck while hanging out at home. WTF is that about?If peace officers do not know how to control their tempers, they have no business wearing a badge. And if they do lose their temper and hurt someone, they damn sure don t deserve to be paid while the investigation is completed. That s outrageous. Featured image via video screenshot | 1real |
Putin-Obama Trust Evaporates : Information | Putin-Obama Trust Evaporates
While the U.S. is investigating a potential covert Russian plan to throw a digital wrench in the 2016 election, one nominee has regularly praised their president Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has expressed concern about cybersecurity to Putin amidst negotiations to curb common enemies in Syria. Sept. 9, 2016.
Ray McGovern
October 31, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Baltimore Sun " - How did the "growing trust" that Russian President Vladimir Putin once said marked his "working and personal relationship with President Obama " change into todays deep distrust and saber-rattling?
Their relationship reached its zenith after Mr. Putin persuaded Syria to give up its chemical weapons for verified destruction, enabling Mr. Obama at the last minute to call off, with some grace, plans to attack Syria in late summer 2013. But at an international conference in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi last week, Mr. Putin spoke of the "feverish" state of international relations and lamented: "My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results." He complained about "people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice" and, referring to Syria, decried the lack of a "common front against terrorism after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort, and difficult compromises."
A month earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov , who chooses his words carefully, told Russian TV viewers, "My good friend John Kerry is under fierce criticism from the U.S. military machine. Despite [Mr. Kerrys] assurances that the US commander in chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia (he confirmed that during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin) apparently the military does not really listen to the commander in chief."
Do not chalk this up to paranoia. The U.S.-led coalition air strikes on known Syrian army positions killing scores of troops just five days into the September cease-fire not to mention statements at the time by the most senior US generals were evidence enough to convince the Russians that the Pentagon was intent on scuttling meaningful cooperation with Russia.
Relations between the US and Russian presidents have now reached a nadir, and Mr. Putin has ordered his own defense ministry to throw down the gauntlet. On Oct. 6, ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russia is prepared to shoot down unidentified aircraft including any stealth aircraft over Syria, and warned ominously that Russian air defense will not have time to identify the origin of the aircraft.
It seems possible that the US air force will challenge that claim in due course perhaps even without seeking prior permission from the White House. Last week, National Intelligence Director and former Air Force General James Clapper commented offhandedly, "I wouldnt put it past them to shoot down an American aircraft if they felt it was threatening their forces on the ground."
Injecting additional volatility into the equation, major news outlets are playing down or ignoring Russias warnings. Thus, Americans who depend on the corporate media can be expected to be suitably shocked by what that same media will no doubt cast as naked aggression out of the blue if Russian air defenses down a US or coalition aircraft.
Meanwhile in Europe, as NATO defense ministers met in Brussels on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters the US is contributing "a persistent rotational armored brigade combat team" as a "major sign of the US commitment to strengthening deterrence here."
"This was a decision made by the alliance leaders in Warsaw," he explained, referring to NATOs July summit meeting in the Polish capital. "The United States will lead a battalion in Poland and deploy an entire battle-ready battalion task force of approximately 900 soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which is based in Germany."
On Thursday, at the Valdai Conference in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, President Putin accused the West of promoting the "myth" of a "Russian military threat," calling this a "profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defense budgets expand NATO and bring its infrastructure, military units, and arms closer to our borders."
Myth or not, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was correct to point out last spring that military posturing on Russias borders will bring less regional security. Mr. Steinmeier warned against "saber-rattling," adding that, "We are well advised not to create pretexts to renew an old confrontation."
Speaking of such pretexts, it is high time to acknowledge that the marked increase in East-West tensions over the past two and a half years originally stemmed from the Western-sponsored coup détat in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, and Russias reaction in annexing Crimea. Americans malnourished on the diet served up by "mainstream" media are blissfully unaware that two weeks before the coup, YouTube published a recording of an intercepted conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador in Kiev, during which "Yats" (for Arseniy Yatsenyuk) was identified as Washingtons choice to become the new prime minister of the coup government in Kiev.
This unique set of circumstances prompted George Friedman, president of the think-tank STRATFOR, to label the putsch in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, "really the most blatant coup in history."
Its time for Western politicians and media to learn their lesson and pay attention to the statements coming out of Russia. Ask yourselves: Why all this hype now?
Ray McGovern, like Sam Adams, began a career as a CIA analyst under President Kennedy; working on Vietnam, they became close associates. Sam was too straight-arrow to go to the media about the unconscionable fraud regarding the number of Communist forces. Ray knew that and rationalized not doing so himself. So, while a close associate of Sam Adams years ago, Ray fell short of the standard set by the above awardees, who deserved to be honored by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. | 1real |
US renews grant for clearing bombs in Cambodia | PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday opened a $2 million tender to help clear unexploded bombs in Cambodia weeks after the government s mine clearance agency said its U.S. funding had been stopped. Relations between Cambodia and the United States have spiraled downwards this year with the government accusing Americans of involvement in a plan by detained opposition leader Kem Sokha to bring down Prime Minister Hun Sen. Washington has rejected the accusations as baseless. Last week, it said it was cutting aid for next year s election and would take further steps after the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was dissolved by the Supreme Court at the government s request. The U.S. embassy said it was accepting applications for a $2 million one-year grant to survey and clear unexploded ordnance in eastern Cambodia, which suffered heavy U.S. bombing during the war in neighboring Vietnam. The United States has supported humanitarian demining in Cambodia for over 20 years and is committed to addressing our war-time legacy, Ambassador William Heidt said in a statement. We are looking for the best national and international experts. The size of the contract matches the amount which the government s Cambodian Mine Action Centre said earlier this month had been cut from funding it received from the United States through Norwegian People s Aid. We welcome the commitment in taking part in addressing the legacy of the war, said Huy Vannak, undersecretary of state at the Interior Ministry. China, now Cambodia s closest ally, was quick to step in with an offer of help for demining soon afterwards. China is Cambodia s biggest donor and investor and has played an ever more prominent role as Western countries have criticized a crackdown on the opposition, civil society groups and media ahead of next year s election. Although it has not taken action, the European Union pointed out last week that Cambodia s access to duty free access vital to its garment industry depended on respect for human rights. Hun Sen told garment workers on Wednesday that they would be the ones to suffer - not him - if the access was withdrawn. European Union countries accounted for about 40 percent of Cambodia s exports in 2016. Most of that was clothing. You must remember clearly that if there is any cut of buying orders, it s all the fault of a group of people of the opposition party, Hun Sen told garment workers in Phnom Penh. Hun Sen won t die but workers, you will die, he said. The prime minister accused exiled opposition leaders of trying to get sanctions imposed. They have so far said they would not call for measures to curb trade because of the impact it could have on the livelihoods of an estimated 700,000 garment workers. Cambodia s economy has proved largely immune to political turbulence. The World Bank said on Wednesday it expected the economy to grow 6.9 percent next year, compared with a projected 6.8 percent pace in 2017, despite risks including uncertainty over the election. | 0fake |
Clinton considering Warren, not Sanders, for running mate: WSJ | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton is considering U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren for her running mate for the Democratic presidential ticket, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing several people familiar with the process. Warren, a leading progressive voice among Democrats, is among those Democratic presidential candidate Clinton is vetting for the vice presidential position, the newspaper reported. Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders is not, it added. Sources told Reuters earlier this month that Warren, who represents Massachusetts, is considering the potential role. Representatives for Clinton, Sanders and Warren did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the report. Clinton is the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for the Nov. 8 presidential election, having won the last primary contest this week in the District of Columbia. Although Clinton and Sanders met this week, the senator from Vermont does not plan to end his campaign or endorse Clinton in a video speech to supporters scheduled for later on Thursday, his spokesman said. While the search for a potential partner in the race is still in its early stages, the Journal reported several Democrats said Clinton’s campaign is looking at a number of potential candidates, including Warren. Other prospective running mates include U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, according to the report. Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Cory Booker of New Jersey as well as U.S. Representatives Xavier Becerra of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio are also under consideration, it said. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is also a potential candidate, it added. Warren threw her support behind Clinton last week as the former secretary of state moved her sights from the nominating contest toward a Nov. 8 match-up against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Warren could help Clinton win over Sanders supporters from the party’s more liberal wing after a surprisingly protracted primary race. Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, has not yet dropped out. She also would give Clinton a vocal boost in her fight against Trump. Warren has called Trump a threat to the country and has vowed to keep lashing out at him. (This story has been refiled to remove superfluous word “endorsed” in paragraph nine.) | 0fake |
Emirates and flydubai resume operating some flights over Iraq | DUBAI (Reuters) - Emirates and flydubai have resumed using Iraqi airspace for flights to other countries, the Middle East airlines said on Monday, two days after Iraq declared victory in its years-long fight against Islamic state. Several airlines stopped flying over Iraq in 2014 on safety concerns because of the conflict and after a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet was shot down over Ukraine the same year. Airlines have instead been flying longer routes over Iran and other countries, increasing congestion in the region, with many airlines also avoiding Syrian airspace. The use of Iraqi airspace is likely to help Emirates and flydubai to save on fuel costs by shortening flying hours and also reduce regional airspace congestion. Emirates has resumed utilizing Iraqi airspace and a very small number of our flights overfly Iraqi airspace each day , an airline spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. The spokeswoman said that Emirates reviews its flight operations regularly, in line with advice from regulators and authorities. Safety, security and operational efficiency will always be the top considerations when planning flight paths, the spokeswoman said. Emirates did not say when it started flying over Iraq again or which routes were affected. Airlines flying through the region have in the past used Iraqi airspace for flights to Europe and the United States. Flydubai started using eastern Iraqi airspace again on Nov. 28, mostly affecting flights to and from Eastern Europe and Turkey, a spokeswoman said in an email. All the necessary risk and security assessments were conducted prior to the start of overflying, the spokeswoman said. Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under Islamic State control along the border with Syria on Saturday and secured the western desert, marking the end of the war against the militants three years after they had captured about a third of Iraq s territory. Emirates and flydubai have continued flying to and from Iraq since 2014 but with temporary suspensions on some flights from time to time. | 0fake |
Ted Cruz Gets Owned By Fox News Host For Telling Lies About Obamacare (VIDEO) | Apparently, Ted Cruz is so hated that even Fox News is now defending Obamacare. It truly must be a cold day in hell.During an appearance on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace just before Iowans head to the polls to vote for their choice of who should be the Republican presidential nominee, Ted Cruz found himself being called out for his most persistent lies about the Affordable Care Act.Cruz has repeatedly claimed that Obamacare has caused massive job losses and that it has caused more people to go without health insurance. But both have been debunked by the facts, something Wallace pointed out much to the annoyance of Cruz. The fact checkers say you re wrong, Wallace said. Since that law went into effect, the unemployment rate fell from 9.9% to 5% as 13 million new jobs were created, and 16.3 million people who were previously uninsured now have coverage. Don t get me wrong, there are plenty of problems with Obamacare, but more people have jobs and health insurance than they did before Obamacare. Of course, Cruz responded by accusing unfair fact-checkers of being liberal editorial journalists who have made it their mission to defend Obamacare. Chris Wallace couldn t believe that Cruz would deny the facts so adamantly. There s certainly no question that more people have jobs and more people health insurance, he said. But Cruz continue to argue, and even treated Wallace like a child by telling him, Don t interrupt me. Undeterred, Wallace continued to press the fact that thirteen million new jobs have been created and nailed Cruz for trying to change the subject.Cruz claimed that the 13 million jobs is a historically slow rate of job creation and went on to tell a bullshit story about how small business owners have come up to him telling him that they are praying for the repeal of Obamacare. And then he attempted to steal Bernie Sanders platform by attacking the wealthy one percent and pretending to be a man of the people. Cruz even had the gall to claim that the income gap is President Obama s fault.Turning to what Cruz would replace Obamacare with, Wallace pointed out that conservative think-tanks agree that selling insurance across state lines, expanding health savings accounts and making insurance portable between jobs would have almost no effect in giving people who are not uninsured health coverage. Faced with that fact, Cruz lashed out at the conservative think-tanks and claimed that they are not accurate. Basically, he threw them under a bus.Here s the video via YouTube.Cruz is dead wrong about Obama overseeing a historically slow rate of job creation. The fact is that 94,000 jobs have been created per month under President Obama and that ranks above Ford, Bush, Bush II, and Eisenhower. The true loser in this category is George W. Bush, who only saw 21,000 jobs created per month during his presidency.Here s a chart showing exactly that via USNews.In short, this was yet another terrible day for Ted Cruz as he desperately tries to rebound from the rough night he had during the last GOP Debate, a debate that Republicans say Cruz overwhelmingly lost.And continually repeating lies that most Americans know have been repeatedly debunked isn t helping his case at all. The media, fact-checkers, and conservative think-tanks all say Cruz is wrong and his healthcare plan isn t a viable replacement for a program that has insured 13 million Americans, many for the first time.Ted Cruz should be thankful that Wallace didn t continue pressing him because if the discussion about Obamacare had lasted much longer, Cruz would have embarrassed himself even more than he already did. Kudos to Fox News for actually calling out Cruz on his lies. Featured Image from Pete Souza | 1real |
White House has been aided recently by ruling in contraceptives case | When a split Supreme Court last June exempted some companies from providing female employees with some contraceptive coverage because of the employers’ religious objections, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sounded the alarm.
The 5-to-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was one of “startling breadth,” Ginsburg wrote. “The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield, by its immoderate reading” of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
Ginsburg’s warnings might yet be proved right. Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for Health and Reproductive Rights at the National Women’s Law Center, said the Hobby Lobby decision’s protection of religious objections since has been cited by a paramedic student who objected to a vaccination requirement and has been raised as a defense in a child labor case.
But in what many expect to be the next major test of the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate — a challenge over whether the government has done enough to accommodate the objections of religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations such as universities, hospitals and charities — the Hobby Lobby decision so far has aided the Obama administration.
Three circuit courts of appeals have examined the issue, and they have been unanimous in ruling that the government’s solution of shifting the burden to the groups’ insurers allows women no-cost access to contraceptives without infringing on the religious rights of the objecting nonprofits.
Last week, a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago turned aside complaints from the University of Notre Dame. And the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit voted 6 to 3 not to reconsider a decision by one of its panels, which had ruled in favor of the Obama administration in a challenge brought by a group called Priests for Life and the Archdiocese of Washington.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia has made a similar decision in cases brought by Catholic organizations in Pennsylvania.
“The decisions are consistent with Hobby Lobby,” said Borchelt. “We think it’s clear there’s no substantial burden” on the group’s religious beliefs because of the accommodation the government offers.
Lori Windham, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, disagrees and notes there are challenges yet to be decided in appeals courts around the country.
“We believe that the Supreme Court will take up one of these cases next fall,” she said.
The Affordable Care Act requires that women covered by group health plans be able to obtain contraceptives at no additional cost. Originally, only religious organizations such as churches were exceptions. But after protests from religious nonprofit groups, the government devised an accommodation.
To be eligible, a religious organization must certify to its insurance company that it opposes coverage for contraceptives, or it must send a letter to the government saying so and provide the name of its insurance company. The insurers and government take over from there to provide the services.
But the religious groups say either of those options serve as a “trigger” that allows the contraceptives to be provided and makes the groups complicit in what they consider sin.
In November, the D.C. Circuit panel unanimously rejected that reasoning.
“All plaintiffs must do to opt out is express what they believe and seek what they want via a letter or two-page form,” Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote. “That bit of paperwork is more straightforward and minimal than many that are staples of nonprofit organizations’ compliance with law.”
“Religious nonprofits that opt out are excused from playing any role in the provision of contraception services, and they remain free to condemn contraception in the clearest terms,” she wrote.
In the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court’s five-member majority said the mandate requiring some companies to provide some contraceptive coverage violated the protections of RFRA. The law says government must have a compelling reason to substantially burden religious beliefs and the requirement be the least restrictive means for achieving the government’s goal.
Pillard noted that it was the lack of an accommodation for private companies whose owners object to providing contraceptives that led to the Hobby Lobby ruling, although the majority did not rule on whether the government’s accommodation would suffice.
Three of the D.C. Circuit’s judges wanted to reconsider the panel’s decision and rule for the plaintiffs.
Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown said religious groups decide whether their beliefs are compromised by government regulation. “The panel conceded plaintiffs sincerely ‘believe that the regulatory framework makes them complicit in the provision of contraception,’ ” Brown wrote. “That acknowledgment should end our inquiry into the substance of their beliefs.”
But in the Notre Dame case, Circuit Judge David F. Hamilton said it was not the sincerity of the groups’ beliefs being questioned but their legal arguments.
“This is an issue not of moral philosophy but of federal law,” Hamilton wrote. “Federal courts are not required to treat Notre Dame’s erroneous legal interpretation as beyond their reach—even if that interpretation is also a sincere and religious belief. Notre Dame is not entitled to nullify the law’s benefits for others based on this mistake of law, which is the foundation of its claim of a substantial burden.”
The panel was reconsidering, at the Supreme Court’s direction, an earlier decision against Notre Dame. But it said the Hobby Lobby decision only reinforced its previous ruling.
The justices’ interest in the issue could become clear soon. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is designated to handle special requests from the 3rd Circuit, last month granted the Pennsylvania organizations a temporary delay in providing the services. The groups are preparing a petition to ask the court to take their cases.
Alito asked the federal government to respond and said the delay would last only until further order from him or the full court.
In a letter last week, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who represents the government, reminded the justices of the recent victories in the lower courts. | 0fake |
Chinese State Media: Trump Struck Syria to Show He Is ’No Businessman President’ - Breitbart | China’s state newspaper The Global Times published an editorial criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to conduct airstrikes in Syria, suggesting it was made “in haste,” but also observed that Trump appears to want “prove to the world that he is no ‘businessman president. ’”[As the Communist Party of China controls the content of the Global Times, its editorials are often interpreted as unfiltered opinion from the government itself, often significantly more belligerent than the diplomatic statements out of China’s Foreign Ministry. “The US military attack on Friday took place despite no definitive results from the investigation by an international organization, and was carried out in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution. The Trump administration wasted little time in striking its targets, marking a stark contrast with its predecessor,” the Times observed. “The US’ decision to attack the Assad government is a show of force from the US president. He wants to prove that he dares to do what Obama dared not,” the article continues, referring to President Barack Obama’s declaration that using chemical weapons was a “red line” after Assad was accused of using them, but not issuing any military response to the act. Trump, the Times concluded, “wants to prove to the world that he is no ‘businessman president’ and that he will use US military force without hesitation when he considers it necessary. ” The article concludes that the strikes themselves “leave an impression that the decision was made in haste and are not without contradictions. ” President Trump announced late Thursday that he ordered the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian army airbase believed to house the equipment used for an alleged chemical weapons attack in Idlib province. The Pentagon issued a statement confirming that the objective of the strikes was “to deter the [Assad] regime from using chemical weapons again. ” The Global Times response to the strikes differed significantly from the official Chinese Foreign Ministry statement. Spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters that Chinese officials “oppose the use of chemical weapons by any country, organization or person for any purpose and under any circumstance” and that China “supports relevant UN agencies in carrying out independent and comprehensive investigations into all uses or suspected uses of chemical weapons and, on the basis of solid evidence, reaching a conclusion which can stand the test of history and facts. We have noted the latest developments. ” While emphasizing support for a “political solution” to the Syrian Civil War, Hua refused to answer whether China considers Assad’s regime “the sole legitimate government in Syria” and did not directly criticize the U. S. airstrikes, instead stating, “the Chinese side always opposes the use of force in international relations. ” President Xi Jinping is currently meeting with President Trump in Florida, on a visit scheduled long before the escalation of affairs in Syria. Trump reportedly said of their meeting, “I think, we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it,” predicting “lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away. ” According to the Chinese state news outlet Xinhua, Xi invited Trump to visit China and enjoyed “ friendly and conversation” with Trump. | 0fake |
Facebook to Appeal Court Ruling Imposing Austria’s ’Hate Speech’ Ban Globally - Breitbart | Facebook is appealing an order to impose Austria’s social media laws against hate speech on the platform worldwide. [“The court case involves comments posted to Facebook about the leader of Austria’s Green Party, which the party claims are illegal under the country’s hate speech laws,” reported Fortune. “An appeals court in Vienna agreed and ordered Facebook to take them down not just in Austria but everywhere else as well. ” According to Reuters, the court also said that “merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient. ” The order would mean that citizens of other countries where “hate speech” laws are could have their free speech restricted under Austrian law to stop negative posts being made and shared. “Should Facebook comply globally with Russia’s laws, or Thailand’s laws against insulting the king, or Saudi Arabia’s blasphemy laws?” asked Daphne Keller, a lawyer at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. “Would Austria want those laws to dictate what speech its citizens can share online? This ruling sends a signal to courts around the world that they, too, can enforce their national laws to ban speech around the world. ” Keller also added that since the post was a political comment, the court order is particularly “troubling,” raising questions as to whether political censorship is being enforced. “There is no place for hate speech on Facebook and this post was removed from our platform last year as requested,” said a Facebook spokesman to Fortune. “However, we will appeal this particular case before the Austrian Supreme Court to have better legal clarity around this specific post and the categorization as ‘unlawful’ as the new decision substantially reversed the original court decision. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0fake |
U.S. urges Congolese security forces' restraint, probe into violence | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Wednesday called on the Democratic Republic of the Congo to protect civilians affected by violence in the country s east, and urged its security forces to refrain from excessive force. Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. government was dismayed by the deaths of 30 refugees from Burundi and a Congolese soldier in the city of Kamanyola last week, adding: The cause of the violence must be determined and perpetrators must be held accountable. | 0fake |
Germany mulls adding Turkey to list of states posing high security risk: media | BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government is considering adding Turkey to a list of countries that pose high security risks for intelligence agents, police officers and military officials, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and two broadcasters reported late on Tuesday. The reports come amid heightened tensions between the two NATO partners and vows by German officials to restrict arms sales to Turkey, in a move that Ankara said would hurt their joint fight against Islamic State. The newspaper and WDR and NDR broadcasters quoted a spokesman for the Interior Ministry as saying that the list was currently being reviewed. As part of this process, the Interior Ministry is examining whether to add Turkey to the list, the spokesman was quoted as saying. The list now includes China, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea and 26 other countries. Germany s Interior Ministry, contacted by Reuters, was not immediately available to comment. Some German intelligence agencies argued for viewing Turkey less as a partner than an enemy and called for expanding intelligence surveillance of Turkey s activities in the fight against Islamist groups, the media outlets said. Some agencies had also warned employees in recent months about the risks of traveling to Turkey and cautioned others not to travel there on vacation, they said. German officials have been enraged by Turkey s arrest of around a dozen German citizens, including the German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel, who has been held for over 200 days. | 0fake |
SELF-ADMITTED SEXUAL PREDATOR Who Supported Wife, Enabler Of Sexual Predator “Worries” About Sexual Predator In White House [VIDEO] | The hypocrisy of these liberal entertainers is astounding. They will criticize and label a man a sexual predator with absolutely no proof or evidence, while simultaneously supporting a woman who is married to, and provides cover for a proven sexual predator Lena Dunham told a prestigious panel of women she is terrified that a predator will soon be moving into the White House, the socially aware celebrity.Dunham was discussing Donald Trump s surprise electoral victory during a panel at Glamour magazine s Women of the Year summit in Los Angeles. I think so many women are feeling scared, unsafe, ignored by the fact that somebody who is a predator, and is openly a predator, will soon be residing in the White House, the HBO star said. That s a very terrifying fact that we are all going to have to reckon with every single day. Heat Street In 2014, in her collection of personal essays, Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham describes experimenting sexually with her younger sister Grace, whom she says she attempted to persuade to kiss her using anything a sexual predator might do. In one particularly unsettling passage, Dunham experimented with her six-year younger sister s vagina. This was within the spectrum of things I did, she writes.In the collection of nonfiction personal accounts, Dunham describes using her little sister at times essentially as a sexual outlet, bribing her to kiss her for prolonged periods and even masturbating while she is in the bed beside her. But perhaps the most disturbing is an account she proudly gives of an episode that occurred when she was seven and her sister was one. Truth Revolt | 1real |
Wildfires kill at least 39 in Portugal and Spain | LISBON/MADRID (Reuters) - At least 36 people died in wildfires raging through parched farmlands and forests in Portugal and another three in neighboring northwestern Spain on Sunday and Monday. Firefighters were battling 50 blazes in Portugal and a similar number in Spain. Portugal s government asked for international help and declared a state of emergency in territory north of the Tagus river - about half of its landmass. Flames ripped across Iberian countryside left tinder-dry by an unusually hot summer and early autumn, fanned by strong winds as remnants of ex-Hurricane Ophelia brushed coastal areas. Television footage showed abandoned villages with many houses in embers and charred vehicles left on the roads. Portuguese opposition parties and the media harshly criticized the government for failing to prevent a new wave of deadly fires after the country s worst ever forest fire in June that killed 64 people. Prime Minister Antonio Costa, however, refused to sack his interior minister and defended his government s attempts to reform the troubled forestry management system. It s a structural problem that we are facing... This is not a time for resignations, but for solutions. Everything has to be transformed into reforms, to provide responses that the country needs so that nothing stays the way it was after this year, he told reporters after a television address to the nation. We are aware that the country wants results from us and we re running against time after decades of negligence, Costa told reporters after his address. At the heart of the problem is poor land management in Portugal, where traditional small plots have become fire hazards after being abandoned by successive generations of landholders who moved to the cities. Interior Minister Constanca Urbano de Sousa said climate change was also to blame. We are facing new (weather) conditions ... In an era of climate change, such disasters are becoming reality all over the world, she said, citing the wildfires burning in California. The weekend fires also injured 63 people in Portugal, civil protection service spokeswoman Patricia Gaspar said. The toll could still increase as seven people were unaccounted for. Water-spraying planes could not be deployed against most fires due to gigantic plumes of smoke that reduced visibility. But Gaspar said rains expected late on Monday and on Tuesday in the north of Portugal were likely to bring some relief. The Lisbon government has been criticized for a slow, inefficient response and a lack of fire-prevention policies, leaving Portugal with Europe s largest expanse of woodland burned by wildfires. Portugal s fires have burned over 40 percent of the total in all of the European Union this year. With just 2.1 percent of the EU s landmass, Portugal suffered the biggest fires during 2008-16 as well, with an average of 36 percent of the total. Three people died in Spain s northwestern Galicia region - two of them women found inside a burnt-out car, the third a man in his 70s killed as he tried to save his farm animals, according to local media. Most of the fires in Galicia were started deliberately, said Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of the regional government. Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said some of those responsible had already been identified. They could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted. At least two persons were arrested in Portugal for allegedly starting fires. | 0fake |
N.C.A.A. Tournament Reality: The Haves Get In, the Have-Nots Get Left Out - The New York Times | BUFFALO — Fans grumbled loudly last March when the N. C. A. A. men’s basketball tournament’s selection committee declined to include Monmouth in the field, and Commissioner Bernadette McGlade of the Atlantic 10 denounced St. Bonaventure’s snub, declaring herself “shocked” and saying, “It’s a tremendous disservice. ” This year, though, officials from midmajor programs and conferences — those outside the five autonomous leagues that dominate the top level of college football, plus the Big East — mustered little beyond shrugs for a field even more lacking in teams from their cohort, which supply the vast majority of Division I’s 351 members. They seem to have made peace, or at least a truce, with an indisputable reality: The midmajor team selected for an berth is an endangered species. “The system is not designed to be totally fair,” Doug Elgin, the Missouri Valley Conference commissioner, said. “That’s the way of Division I basketball. It’s always been that way. ” Elgin once sat on the selection committee, and he currently serves on the men’s basketball oversight committee. “It’s not a complaint,” he added. “It is simply a statement about the current system. ” Elgin expressed respect for the “process and integrity” of the selection committee. That Illinois State, a member of his conference, did not receive a berth was “disappointing” but “understandable,” he said. “I’m not whining,” he said. “I’m just saying. ” The principle of equal access still exists: The tournament’s field consists of the champions of the 32 Division I conferences — meaning all 351 teams begin the season with a chance — and the 36 “best” remaining teams. But for the event that most prominently symbolizes the N. C. A. A.’s ethos — and that provides the vast majority of the association’s revenue — the trend line is striking. Midmajor teams received seven of those 36 bids in 2011, the year the tournament expanded to 68 teams. The next few years that number was 11, 11 and 10, before dropping back to seven again. Last year, there were six, this year four, and of the best four teams that did not make the cut, only one was a midmajor. “There seems to be a bias somewhat inherent in the structure,” Richard Ensor, the commissioner of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, said. It has become obvious that playing, and beating, other good teams is by far the most effective way to land in the committee’s good graces. The rating percentage index, or R. P. I. which situates teams’ winning percentages in the context of their schedules’ strengths, remains the committee’s primary mechanism for sorting teams. Since teams play the majority of their games those in power conferences have more opportunities to notch quality wins. Cutting a swath through one’s midmajor league, by contrast, can prove insufficient by itself. Illinois State was in M. V. C. play this season, but when it lost the conference tournament final to Wichita State, and didn’t have other quality wins to overcome that, it was out. The powerful influence of quality wins can be seen most clearly in certain seeding choices. Wichita State was and highly rated by advanced metrics that the N. C. A. A. has sought to embrace. Yet it beat just one tournament team — No. 16 South Dakota State — and wound up slotted on the No. 10 line, indicating that had it not won its tournament, it might not have qualified at all. Meanwhile, Gonzaga, another midmajor, was awarded a No. 1 seed not only for going but for beating two eventual champions and several other squads. “You have to have something that gives you the opportunity to do some of those comparisons,” Mark Hollis, this year’s selection committee chairman, said. Hollis, of Michigan State, added, presumably in reference to scheduling and defeating tough nonconference competition, that “programs that have done it have been recognized and have been rewarded in the tournament process over the years. ” It is natural that the power conferences would receive a disproportionate share of bids, since it is natural that they would produce more good teams tested against better competition. Wake Forest and Belmont, for example, have about the same enrollment, but only one receives tens of millions of dollars in annual conference payouts and plays North Carolina and Duke every year. Still, Cinderella’s carriage is probably not a permanent pumpkin. It has been less than a decade since a prominent midmajor, Butler, as a member of the Horizon League, made consecutive appearances in the national title game, and only four years since Wichita State mounted its own Final Four run. Some midmajors have become whether via realignment (Butler joined the Big East) or sui generis achievement (Gonzaga). But those are the lucky few. Observers now describe a vicious cycle in which fewer bids for leagues and teams lead to fewer resources and less exposure, leading to declines in recruiting and performance, leading to fewer bids. The resources that come with tournament berths are not only abstract. In addition to standard payouts, leagues receive “units” of roughly $250, 000 for each appearance a member makes in the tournament (one unit for a berth, a second if it wins its first game, and so on). Units from one appearance continue to pay for six years. There are also less immediately tangible benefits. For instance, Bloomberg found increases in donations to small colleges that pull off big upsets. “Getting selected has some significant impact on institutions, and even more on the smaller ones, like St. Bonaventure,” said the athletic director there, Tim Kenney. “You get financial benefit from the units. You get an increase in donations — having been part of schools that have won before, you definitely get an uptick — and you’re able to tell your story more. ” “It helps in recruiting,” Commissioner Amy Huchthausen of the America East Conference said. “All those downstream effects that can be generated from getting just two teams in are really helpful. ” Those few programs that have, against the odds, developed consistently competitive teams in midmajor conferences have their own challenges. Scheduling quality opponents frequently requires playing in their arenas, in a sport in which the home team wins of the time, and playing excellent basketball in November and December, in a sport in which teams can cohere over months, go on a run in February and March against their league rivals and still scramble into the bracket. And since playing hungry, ascendant midmajors carries the substantial risk of a loss, few good teams see an upside in agreeing to the games. “The better you get, the more difficult it is to get teams on your schedule,” Elgin said. “It’s a game. ” Illinois State Coach Dan Muller devised a quintessentially 2017 mousetrap on Monday, tweeting at the power conferences that he wished to schedule games. Mississippi’s athletic director took the bait, tweeting back, “We’d love to match up. ” On Tuesday, Illinois State’s athletic director, Larry Lyons, said he hoped to find a mutually agreeable date. Reflecting on the larger problem, though, Lyons joined his compatriots in stolid resignation. “I wish I had a better answer for how to fix this,” he said, “but I don’t. ” | 0fake |
Three dead bodies pulled from sea near Spain after migrant boat sinks | MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish rescue services pulled three drowned men from the Strait of Gibraltar after rescuing one man from a half-sunken, rickety boat and another from the open sea, an emergency services spokeswoman said on Wednesday. The men are believed to be from a boat that was carrying migrants attempting to cross into Europe, the spokeswoman said. One of the rescued men said there were six people aboard originally, she said. The search continues for the sixth person. Conditions in the Strait of Gibraltar - a narrow strip of water that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea - are currently dangerous with bad weather and big waves, she said. Tens of thousands of migrants attempt the treacherous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea from Africa every year in unseaworthy boats, leading to thousands of deaths by drowning. Migrant drownings have topped 3,000 on Mediterranean Sea routes for the fourth straight year, the International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday. Migrants seeking a better life in Europe have sought new routes through Spain in an effort to get around European Union actions to curb migration in the central and eastern Mediterranean. Almost 10,300 people arrived in Spain by sea in the first seven months of 2017, the IOM said in September, four times as many as in 2016. | 0fake |
100,000 Soldiers and Police on New Year’s Eve Streets of ’State of Emergency’ France | Still on the highest level of alert after a series of deadly terror attacks, France will see unprecedented numbers of security personnel on duty on New Year’s Eve. [Weeks after the French government extended the national State of Emergency — already in place for over a year — thousands of police, crowd control specialists, and soldiers will protect celebrations from terror attacks. France’s Le Figaro reports among the near 100, 000 force deployed tonight will be 52, 500 police officers, 5, 600 border police, 4, 000 members of the specially trained Republican Security Companies, and officers of the elite RAID force. This force will be backed up by tens of thousands of soldiers presently deployed on Operation Sentinel, the French military mission providing security to the mainland since the November 2015 Bataclan attack which killed 130. The deployment has predominantly focused on protecting schools, synagogues, railway stations, and other public sites considered prime terror targets. Speaking to the press one officer involved in planning the layered defence for New Year’s Eve celebrations said: “The security measures take into account the terrorist risk and in particular the new operating modes which use a vehicle such as a truck as a weapon”. Measures include the deployment of concrete blocks like those seen in Berlin after the Christmas market attack, and heavy government vehicles parked as improvised roadblocks. Similar deployments are to be seen on New Year’s Eve in New York where dozens of garbage trucks loaded with sand are to be deployed around Times Square to prevent attacks like those seen in France and Germany this year. In addition to these measures, restrictions on the sale of alcohol, fireworks, and petrol will also be in place. Other powers granted by the state of emergency including the ability to enforce house arrest for those considered to pose a threat and the power for police to close down gatherings and meetings remain in place. While Nice — already the target of one of the most deadly terror attacks in France ever this year — are witnessing comparatively limited police deployments of a few hundred officers and soldiers, other cities are seeing more. Strasbourg, the second home of the European Parliament will see over 600 men deployed for security. France’s cities aren’t the only settlements seeing major security deployments for New Year’s Eve. Breitbart London reported today with exclusive pictures the situation in the United Kingdom’s capital, with extensive measures in place to prepare. In addition to officers and concrete barriers on the street, the Metropolitan Police announced they would be staging regular armed patrols on underground trains over the course of the evening. | 0fake |
Klukowski: Nuclear Option Restores Constitutional Balance | Thursday’s nuclear option vote restores 200 years of Senate practice, going far beyond Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to restore the proper constitutional balance for Supreme Court and federal court appointments. [On April 6, the U. S. Senate voted to extend Senate Democrats’ own precedent to guarantee that Supreme Court nominees can be confirmed with a vote of 51 out of 100 senators. As an immediate result, Gorsuch was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice Friday morning by a bipartisan vote of but the benefits to the Republic will last for decades. Article II of the Constitution vests the power to appoint judges jointly between the president and the Senate. From the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 until 1987 (same digits, but in a different order) judicial nominations followed a particular pattern. The president takes the lead by nominating anyone he wants. Then the Senate either approves or disapproves of that choice by an confirmation vote. Their roles were always different. The president would consider every aspect of a nominee, including whether the nominee reflected the president’s philosophy on how to understand the Constitution, the law, and the role of the courts in America’s democratic republic. The Senate’s role was more limited. The Senate does not pick the nominee instead it was a check on the president so that, as Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist Papers No. 76: To what purpose then require the of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. In other words, the Senate would ensure that the president did not choose someone on an improper basis, such as because that person was a family member, or a good friend, or perhaps the president owed the nominee money. In practical terms, that means the Senate traditionally looked to three objective criteria to determine if a nominee was fit for office: education, experience, and character. So long as a judicial nominee satisfied those requirements, the Senate would respect the president’s prerogative. That was why Justice Antonin Scalia — whose seat Gorsuch will now fill — was confirmed in 1986 by a vote of despite his record of being very conservative. But then the very next year, something unprecedented happened when President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork, who might have been even more qualified for the Supreme Court than Scalia or Gorsuch, as extremely qualified as those two men were. (Bork was a former U. S. solicitor general, Yale law professor, one of the greatest legal scholars in all of American history, and a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit.) Democrats took control of the Senate in the 1986 midterm elections, and it had become an article of faith in that party to protect sacred cows leftists were getting from a liberal Supreme Court that they could not get through the ballot box, like abortion on demand, racial preferences, and militant secularism. In 1985, Attorney General Ed Meese declared that the official constitutional philosophy of the Reagan administration was originalism: In our democratic republic, the only legitimate way for unelected, politically unaccountable judges to interpret the law (and especially the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land) was according to the original meaning of its provisions, leaving it to the American people alone to decide whether the Constitution or lesser laws need to be changed or amended. Reagan and Meese made good on that philosophy when Reagan elevated Scalia to the Supreme Court. With Bork — who was even more conservative than Scalia — nominated to the Court, the Left saw the possibility of an eventual Supreme Court majority that would destroy their march to achieve their agenda without earning the votes of the American people. Consequently, Sen. Ted Kennedy ( ) led the charge to destroy the unbelievably Bork, purely because Bork was an unapologetic conservative who openly explained his judicial philosophy. The Senate voted down Bork’s nomination. That seat on the Court eventually went to Anthony Kennedy. Several years later it almost happened again. Justice Clarence Thomas was narrowly confirmed, . Republicans tried to restore the constitutional balance. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed in 1993, despite being as clearly very liberal as Scalia, Bork, and Thomas were clearly conservative. In 1994, Stephen Breyer was confirmed . But Democrats would have none of it. When the very Samuel Alito was nominated, he was confirmed in 2006 by a vote of . To avoid a this new baseline started to impact how Republicans voted on Democratic nominees, as seen in the confirmation votes of Sonia Sotomayor ( ) and Elena Kagan ( ). But the Left did not stop at the Supreme Court during these years. When George W. Bush was elected president, Senate Democrats in 2001 narrowly controlled the Senate and began refusing final floor votes on Bush’s nominees to the federal courts of appeals. As an example, they refused to vote on the nomination of John Roberts to be a judge on the D. C. Circuit appeals court. The American people did not tolerate this, and gave Republicans control of the Senate in the 2002 midterms. Now in the minority, Democrats decided to . One senator, Chuck Schumer ( ) persuaded most of his colleagues to begin filibustering nominees they did not support, even when some Democrats were willing to join with the Republican majority to confirm them. Roberts got through to the D. C. Circuit anyway, but others — like Miguel Estrada, another nominee to the D. C. Circuit — were blocked. As Republicans continued to gain seats in the Senate, Democrats considered taking things to still another low. They decided against filibustering Roberts’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but tried to do so on Alito. But that was a bridge too far for many Democrats at the time, which is why cloture was invoked on Alito even though many of those Democrats who voted for cloture then voted against his final confirmation on the vote, resulting in . Finally with Gorsuch, Schumer led Democrats to claim the role of of federal judges, merging filibusters with final confirmation votes. If a Republican president nominated someone whom Democrats would not have nominated (which presumably would be the case 100 percent of the time) Senate Democrats would not only vote against final confirmation, but also vote against cloture, regardless of qualifications. Under the historical standard, President Donald Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch is a . Education? Undergraduate degree from Columbia, law degree from Harvard, and even a doctorate from Oxford. Experience? Law clerk for the U. S. court of appeals and for the Supreme Court, then a partner at a prestigious law firm, also U. S. deputy associate attorney general, then finally a federal judge for more than ten years on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Character? Impeccable honesty and integrity, as well as being a good husband, father, and member of his community, and known to be a gracious, humble, and respectful gentleman. Because it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture, for the first time in American history putting cloture and final passage on the same level created a threshold for confirmations, meaning that without 60 votes for both, a nominee would be filibustered. Unless Republicans would consistently hold a supermajority on the Senate, it became possible that a vacant Supreme Court seat could conceivably remain unfilled for a full presidential term. Critics insist that Schumer’s hypocrisy here was shameless, because during the Obama years, when Democrats narrowly held the Senate, for a while Republicans followed the Democrats’ new standard, and filibustered a couple of President Barack Obama’s nominees. Crying indignation, in 2013 Sen. Harry Reid ( ) Dick Durbin ( ) Pat Leahy ( ) and Schumer created a parliamentary ruling that the filibuster rule, Senate Rule XXII, did not apply to any presidential nominees, except that the ruling did not explicitly cover the Supreme Court. During this time, Schumer gave a passionate speech about how preventing an vote on judicial nominees was profoundly undemocratic, and an assault on the constitutional order. So Democrats created that precedent on November 21, 2013, one that did not address the Supreme Court simply because there was no Supreme Court vacancy at the time. During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s running mate and Senate Democrats publicly declared that when they won the White House they would immediately extend their ruling to cover the Supreme Court. Consequently, jaws dropped when Schumer declared with righteous indignation that denying a minority the right to filibuster by insisting on an vote was profoundly undemocratic, and an assault on the constitutional order. This was the same time that Senate Democrats made clear that virtually every senator who opposed Gorsuch’s confirmation would also oppose cloture, solidifying a threshold for judicial nominees from Republican presidents. This ultimate and the warping of the constitutional framework was the last draw, which is why on Thursday Republicans ended the madness. They highlighted the fact that this was purely a response to what the Democrats had done, by phrasing the procedural issue as whether “the precedent of November 21, 2013,” applied to Supreme Court nominations. By a vote of senators issued a “judgment of the Senate” that the Democrats’ own rule applies here, abolishing the remaining judicial filibusters. Now the Republic goes back to where it stood for roughly 200 years. Elections have consequences. When the American people give the presidency and the Senate to opposing parties, they have the choice of picking comprise candidates (if there is such a thing these days) or of keeping seats open. When the American people speak with one voice to give the same party control of both the White House and the Senate, then it should be no surprise that they are able to get judges who reflect that unified philosophy on the federal judiciary at every level — including the Supreme Court. Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski. | 0fake |
Indonesia court rejects petition to bar consensual sex outside marriage | JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia s constitutional court on Thursday narrowly rejected a petition by a conservative group to make extramarital sex illegal, but rights activists braced for a renewal of the battle in parliament and other state institutions. Five of nine judges voted for the case to be thrown out, in a slim victory for rights activists who had feared the petition would spur moral policing and further discrimination against the gay community in the world s largest Muslim-majority country. Most Indonesians adhere to a moderate form of Islam under an officially secular system, but there has been rise of a hardline, politicized Islam in recent years, which until recently had stayed on the fringe of the nation s politics. Constitutional court chief justice Arief Hidayat said existing laws on adultery did not conflict with the constitution and it was not the court s authority to create new policies. The judge said the question could be put to parliament, which is currently deliberating revisions to the national criminal code. The plaintiff should submit their petition to lawmakers, and there it should be an important input in the ongoing revision of the national criminal code, Hidayat said, as he read a summary of the 600-page ruling. Based on that view, the constitutional court is of the opinion that the petition is not legally sound. Rights activists were comforted by the court s decision, while expecting more challenges to come. The decision is a relief because it shows it s possible to challenge the creeping conservatism in society, said Dede Oetomo, a prominent gay rights activist. But it s not over. There s parliament, there are other state institutions, they can turn to education, social organisations, he added. The Family Love Alliance (AILA), a group of conservative academics and activists which put forward the petition, said it would not give up its fight. Aside from legal avenues, we can also go through government policy and programs so that sexual deviance is minimised and is an agenda for all of us, Euis Sunarti, a member of AILA, told reporters after the ruling. AILA s petition had called for the definition of adultery to apply not just to married couples but to anyone in a marriage or outside it - effectively making all sex outside of marriage a crime. In their complaint, AILA said certain articles in the national criminal code threaten the resilience of families and therefore of Indonesia itself. Some rights activists said the petition was partly aimed at criminalizing gay sex, which is currently not regulated by the law except in the ultra-conservative province of Aceh and in cases of child abuse. Activists say such changes to the law would make it vulnerable to abuse, like the country s draconian anti-pornography laws, to target the LGBT community. Islamic parties pushed the anti-pornography laws in parliament soon after Indonesia ushered in its democratic era in 1998 and actively push an anti-LGBT agenda today. | 0fake |
Chris Christie says debt-free college is 'wrong' | As Democratic presidential candidates begin to include a debt-free college system as part of their respective campaigns, New Jersey Gov. and Republican contender Chris Christie thinks the push is a “typical liberal approach.”
Christie stopped at Iowa State University Thursday to deliver his fourth most recent policy address. Among his talking points were dealing with teachers’ unions and how to handle the increasing costs of college.
“That is a typical liberal approach. It is wrong,” he said. “If college graduates are going to reap the greater economic rewards and opportunities of earning a degree, then it seems fair for them to support the cost of the education they’re receiving.”
Christie spoke about his father joining the army in order to pay for college, because his father, at the time, couldn’t afford to pay for his own education. He went to Rutgers University after his service through the G.I. Bill.
“We all need to take personal responsibility to grasp the opportunities in higher education, but also one where we can get a leg up when we need it,” Christie said.
Rather than make higher education free for students, Christie instead proposed that Congress support low-income students by continuing to fund aid programs. He noted that while Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants and Perkins Loans have declined, the availability of Pell grants has expanded. But that may not be the case according to a March 2015 study by The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which found Pell grant funding is actually being cut.
Christie also said there should be tax breaks for donors to higher education grant organizations and income-share agreements. This would allow a student to repay the private financing he or she received for college with a percentage of his or her future income.
What do you think? Is a debt-free college realistic? How can students combat increasing costs of higher education? | 0fake |
‘Vulture’ or ‘Phoenix’? Wilbur Ross, Risk-Taker, Is Eyed for Commerce Post - The New York Times | Wilbur L. Ross, the billionaire investor expected to be nominated as the next commerce secretary, has made his fortune through the tricky business of buying deeply troubled companies. With wealth estimated at $2. 9 billion, Mr. Ross, who turns 79 on Monday, would join a cabinet that is already expected to include one of the superwealthy in Betsy DeVos, the nominee for secretary of education, and that may soon have others. In choosing Mr. Ross to be the face of American business for the rest of the world, Donald J. Trump is turning not to a cautious corporate chieftain, but to a speculator. Like his presumptive boss, Mr. Ross has been considered either a hero or a villain during his career. There is not a lot in between. In 2002, he won praise from workers when he bought the shuttered steel mills of LTV, a bankrupt company in Cleveland. Four years later, Mr. Ross was pilloried after an explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia, which his company had bought a few weeks earlier, killed 12 miners. The stark contrasts reflect the nature of the world in which Mr. Ross operates: distressed investing. He made his name scouring the landscape for businesses left for dead that he could sink money into and then profit from when they were resurrected. It is a business that requires nerves of steel and a strong stomach. The chances of failure — along with headlines about collapsed businesses and lost jobs — are balanced against the opportunity for a big reward if a turnaround strategy works. Some businesses where he has invested, like textile mills, have struggled. But other investments have salvaged industry and jobs while providing a lucrative payday. His bet was in the steel industry more than a decade ago, a time when few wanted anything to do with it. Mr. Ross cobbled together the ailing assets of LTV and Bethlehem Steel into a new company called International Steel Group, which was sold in 2004 to Mittal Steel for $4. 5 billion. “There were no outsiders who were willing to step forward and make an investment,” said Ron Bloom, an investment banker who negotiated with Mr. Ross for the United Steelworkers. “He went where angels feared to tread. ” Like his investing, the politics of Mr. Ross, a former Democrat, do not always stick to orthodox points of view. Mr. Ross has expressed strong conservative beliefs on some issues — favoring big tax cuts for businesses, for example, and a repeal of President Obama’s health law. Yet Mr. Ross has also suggested that he is receptive to some of the views favored by American labor unions and by Mr. Trump. “The president has a huge amount of fire in terms of abrogating treaties, and he can do a lot without reference to Congress,” Mr. Ross said in an interview the day after the election. Mr. Ross, a member of Mr. Trump’s economic team during the campaign, said he expected the new president to do a lot on trade and regulation through executive action. “He is serious about suspending any new regulations,” said Mr. Ross, who held one of Mr. Trump’s first . A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Jason Miller, said: “Though Trump has not yet announced his pick for this position, it goes without saying that Mr. Ross has been a fantastic advocate for the ’s plan to bring back jobs, eliminate the trade deficit and make good deals for America’s workers. ” The nomination of Mr. Ross would be the capstone to a career on Wall Street that has spanned decades and has made him one of the most visible and successful of a breed of investor known as “vultures” because of their penchant for going after nearly dead businesses. Mr. Ross, by contrast, has often preferred to see himself as another kind of bird — the mythical phoenix, helping businesses rise from the ashes. To some degree, Mr. Ross helped Mr. Trump do that when some of his casinos in Atlantic City fell on hard times. Mr. Ross and Carl C. Icahn, another billionaire investor and supporter of Mr. Trump, were both bondholders in the Trump Taj Mahal casino when it was teetering on financial collapse in 1990. Instead of pushing the casino into an immediate bankruptcy, Mr. Ross and Mr. Icahn worked with Mr. Trump and others to structure a more orderly bankruptcy filing in 1991. The negotiated restructuring helped Mr. Trump salvage his name and brand at a time when he arguably did not have many friends on Wall Street. The low point of Mr. Ross’s career was the deadly mine disaster in West Virginia. Although he helped set up a charitable fund for the families of the victims, and his company contributed more than $1 million to them as well, some in organized labor remain bitter about Mr. Ross and his firm. Still, that episode has not deterred some unions from doing business with him when it was in their interest. In 2012, Mr. Ross was one of the wealthy investors who gave a $50 million cash infusion to Amalgamated Bank, one of the nation’s largest lenders, which was struggling to stay in business after the financial crisis. An affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, which controlled the ailing Amalgamated Bank, did not hesitate to take Mr. Ross’s money. “Wilbur Ross’s investment firm has been an investor in the bank and held a seat on our board for nearly five years,” said Loren Riegelhaupt, a spokesman for Amalgamated Bank. “While we appreciate his financial acumen, his relationship to the bank has never impacted our core progressive principles: providing quality financial services to our clients while advancing the values we believe in. ” Mr. Ross sold his firm in 2006 to Invesco, an investment company, for about $375 million. Since then, he has pulled back on the daily operations of the business. While remaining as chairman of the firm, Mr. Ross has spent more time in recent years at his Palm Beach, Fla. home, not far from Mr. Trump’s estate. Mr. Ross was born in Weehawken, N. J. and has been married three times. His second wife, Betsy McCaughey, a Republican, served as New York’s lieutenant governor from 1995 to 1998. The experience, Mr. Ross would later tell New York magazine, “gave one a very view of politics. ” Ms. McCaughey, too, was named to Mr. Trump’s economic team during the campaign. Some suggest Mr. Ross’s business ties may pose potential conflicts of interest. But the sale of his company, W. L. Ross, may make it easier for Mr. Ross to separate himself from its interests, which include businesses in Europe, China and India. His remaining financial interests in the firm’s funds could be put in a blind trust, and he could easily resign from the five corporate boards on which he sits. Still, those overseas deals could raise questions about his relationships with foreign leaders and businesspeople from China and Russia. He is vice chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the biggest bank in that European island nation, and he is credited with helping the bank to recover from a severe crisis in 2013. But Mr. Ross’s investment in the bank also makes him a de facto business partner with Viktor F. Vekselberg, one of Russia’s most prominent businesspeople and a man with ties to the Kremlin. Mr. Ross has complained about China’s having taken jobs from Americans — a message similar to the one Mr. Trump repeated throughout his campaign. Yet for all the commentary, Mr. Ross has been a frequent visitor in the past two decades and has made inroads in that country’s energy industry. Mr. Ross linked up with the most powerful player in the country’s power generation business, China Huaneng Group, in 2008. The company had been run for years by the eldest son of Li Peng, the former prime minister who was the godfather of the country’s electricity industry. | 0fake |
Watch Hillary Clintons Concession Speech | Watch Hillary Clintons Concession Speech Video
Last night I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a president for all of our country...
Im sorry that we did not win this election for the values we all share...
You represent the best of America, and being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life. I know how disappointed you feel, because I feel it too.... Donald Trump's Victory Speech | 1real |
Trump's 'love' for Israel still not quite requited | JERUSALEM (Reuters) - “I love the people in this room. I love Israel. I love Israel,” Donald Trump told a convention of pro-Israel lobbyists in Washington this week. But the feeling still isn’t quite mutual. At least not yet. In Israel, where distrust of Democratic President Barack Obama runs deep and conservative Benjamin Netanyahu is in his fourth term as prime minister, many voters might have been expected to prefer a Republican to take the White House. But the prospect that the candidate could be Trump — the real estate billionaire whose rhetoric toward ethnic minorities is widely viewed as inflammatory and whose proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States would affect nearly a fifth of Israelis — has alarmed politicians and voters alike. An opinion poll published last week on Israel’s Walla news site showed that 23 percent of Israelis want to see Trump in the Oval Office, compared to 38 percent who prefer the Democrats’ frontrunner, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In December Trump called off a visit to Israel, saying he did not want to cause difficulty for Netanyahu, after Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from the United States drew an outcry. Netanyahu said at the time he was willing to meet any serious U.S. candidate, but strongly rejected Trump’s views on Muslims, saying Israel “respects all religions and diligently guards the rights of its citizens”. Dozens of Israeli opposition lawmakers had signed a letter demanding Netanyahu call off the planned meeting. The letter’s author said Trump’s “racist” remarks meant plans for the prime minister to meet him were “disgracing Israel’s democratic character and hurting its Muslim citizens”. One signatory, an Israeli Arab lawmaker, called Trump a “neo-Nazi”. Three months later, with Trump now on course for his party’s nomination, his speech on Monday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee seemed designed to shift perceptions of him squarely back towards the Republican mainstream. “Trump delivered a speech that could easily have been written in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem,” wrote Chemi Shalev, correspondent for Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “He went into the arena as a racist demagogue but soon came out as an ostensibly serious contender.” Trump, who normally disdains prepared remarks, read his speech out from a teleprompter. His criticism of Obama won applause from the room, and he noted that his daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism and married a Jewish man, will soon give birth to a “beautiful Jewish baby”. Unlike Clinton, who spoke at the gathering in a morning session on Monday, Trump made no mention of a main sticking point in a now-dormant peace process — Jewish settlement on occupied land that Palestinians seek for a state. Instead, he pushed all the traditional applause buttons at a high-energy event replete with swelling music, accounts of Israeli high-tech achievements and shots of waving, and sometimes kissing, audience members displayed on a big screen. Among Trump’s promises: dismantling a nuclear deal with Iran, vetoing any attempt by the United Nations to impose a peace settlement and moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Israel considers its capital but almost all other countries, including the United States, do not. Still, Trump will have a way to go to win over many in a country suspicious of populist rhetoric. “He is a chauvinist, a violent person who hates the blacks, the Arabs - anyone who is not his color,” said Orly Marx, a 55-year-old housewife from Herzliya, near Tel Aviv. Part of Trump’s difficulty in winning over Israelis is a message that has so far appeared inconsistent. Israelis are used to pouring carefully over U.S. signals toward their country for even the slightest deviation from established policies. Israel Radio noted on Tuesday that hours before giving his pro-Israel speech, Trump said at a news conference that U.S. allies would have to pay more for American military aid. Trump quickly backtracked, saying that Israel, which is locked in sensitive negotiations with the Obama administration over a new multi-billion-dollar 10-year military assistance package, “can help us greatly”. Clinton and Trump’s Republican rivals criticized him for having said he would be “neutral” in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. American politicians from both parties portray Israel as a close ally, even if they believe it should do more to meet Palestinian demands in negotiations. Nevertheless, the right-leaning politics of many Israeli voters means Trump could become more popular if he emerges as the Republican nominee. Nina Gilbert, 47, an American-Israeli who works in Israel’s high-tech sector, said Israelis were simply looking forward to the day Obama leaves the White House. “As far as they are concerned, anybody who is not Obama is better,” she said. | 0fake |
FAKE NEWS WEEK: Electronic Voting – The Big Lie That Just Won’t Die | In response to the establishment media s contrived fake news crisis designed to marginalise independent and alternative media sources of news and analysis, 21WIRE is running its own #FakeNewsWeek awareness campaign, where each day our editorial team at 21st Century Wire will feature media critiques and analysis of mainstream corporate media coverage of current events exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of fake news throughout modern history . Mark Anderson 21st Century WireThe U.S. government, the intelligence community and their malicious mainstream-media partners in deception just won t let it go.The underhanded U.S. unitary state, which seeks a unipolar world with the U.S. in charge, still says in its never ending story that omniscient, omnipresent Russian leader Vladimir Putin masterminded hacking the computerized systems of U.S. elections as well as Democratic National Committee computers.Then, as the stale tale goes, Russia handed all the resulting electronic juicy tidbits over to Wikileaks, which turned around and dropped a veritable information bomb on America s delicate democracy.But while that bomb allegedly influenced enough people to vote for the winner Donald Trump and not for loser Hillary Clinton, to this day, according to big media, we re supposed to forget all about the creepy, damning, criminally inclined things contained in the Podesta-Clinton emails themselves.So, let s try and grasp this media-massaged, intel-infused message: Even though the emails apparently had enough sizzle and scandal to boost one presidential candidate over another, we re still prodded to think that the information in the emails somehow isn t the issue even though the content of the emails will always be what matters the most.Also notice what no one, and certainly no media outlet, dares to mention regarding the other half of this issue: If Putin also was crafty enough to hack into the actual state-level U.S. election systems, then this implies that U.S. elections systems can be hacked in the first place.This is huge. Think about it the next time you use an electronic ES&S Ivotronic touchscreen voting machine or Hart InterCivic s model at the polls.All along, we ve been reassured that the electronic voting systems used in about 95% of American voting precincts are The Greatest Thing Ever Invented and Monumentally Secure Are they really? THE ELECTORAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: Securing America s automated voting systems has become a complicated affair. And, all along, writers like Yours Truly, highly credible Texas vote-reform activists like Laura Pressley, Vickie Karp, Bev Harris and others have uncovered tons of evidence that electronic elections are an immensely deceptive and vulnerable apparatus vulnerable to external hacking and also to being fixed from the inside without any need for outside hacking, through the proprietary software inside the these voting contraptions that can be pre-set to steal elections if the need arises.You re going to want to see my interview with Laura Pressley, on behalf of American Free Press, through this link right here.THE RUSSIAN DISTRACTION As Pressley shows in detail, the integrity and lawfulness of Texas elections are in serious peril not because of any outside autocrats like Putin and his supposed cyberspace minions, but because of state and local election officials, right here in the U.S., who absolutely will not follow state election law. And the average TV or newspaper reporter is utterly tone-deaf to these problems, which keeps the people in perpetual fog, unaware that U.S. elections have been effectively privatized by those who make the machines that count the votes.To hear more about this Putin the Hacker debacle, please listen to my Dec. 29, 2016 interview with UK-based radio host Andrew Carrington Hitchcock on his regularly scheduled American Free Press (AFP) show.Furthermore, check out this Election Night Gatekeepers overview on my blog by election-theft expert Jim Condit Jr., who worked with the late Collier brothers in their game-changing book, Votescam. The media is part of a secretive consortium that counts the vote in secret, meaning the mainstream press fake news carries with it evidence of criminal collusion.The unavoidable conclusion is that the powers-that-be in going after Putin and calling him The Supreme Hacker of the Known Universe have shot themselves in the foot because they re clearly and finally admitting in the process that U.S. voting systems CAN be hacked, after more than a decade of denial.This means that all their denials about electronic election fraud are invalidated. The critics of electronic election systems are right. The establishment is wrong. End of discussion.Meanwhile, recalling some recent history, Wayne Madsen Reports provided some important perspective: Although the Central Intelligence Agency has had a long history of undermining presidents-elect and prime ministers-elect in other countries, the United States has never witnessed the intelligence agency so blatantly attempting to politically weaken a U.S. president-elect [Trump] just a few weeks prior to the inauguration. What the CIA is doing in forcing Donald Trump into shifting from his campaign promise of restoring good relations with Russia to one of outright hostility to Moscow favored by the CIA, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the neo-conservatives within the Republican and Democratic Party establishments is nothing less than an overt threat to American democracy. WHERE ARE THE CYBER-COPS?And, as American Free Press reported in its first 2017 edition, the young owner of a Russian-based web-server company may have a handle on who stole sensitive electronic communications between Hillary Clinton and some of her advisors.But 26-year-old Vladimir Fomenko knows one thing for sure: U.S. intelligence, which professes to be hot on the trail of exposing Russian hacking, doesn t seem to care about his story.This means that our leaders in Washington have long ignored a solid lead that could prove once and for all whether or not the Russian government hacked the computers systems of top Democrats and U.S. elections systems.Fomenko recently spoke to AFP to try and demystify the controversy surrounding his King Servers company and the cyberattacks purportedly carried out at the behest of Russia.AFP writer John Friend, quoting Fomenko, noted that even though his servers were exploited in this cyber-crime: No U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency is interested in speaking with him to gather real evidence on the perpetrators. The U.S. was not the only country hit by computer hackers. Hackers evidently targeted Germany, Turkey, and Ukraine, apparently attempting to upset democratic processes.It was when WikiLeaks began releasing hacked data from the DNC late this past summer that media reports and the Clinton campaign began blaming Russia with no solid evidence to support that assertion.After learning about this shadowy criminal activity, Fomenko immediately shut down the servers and looked into the situation. He says he s willing to cooperate with law enforcement. We pursued an investigation without delay and found some tracks leading to Europe, Fomenko told AFP. Web hosting is a legal enterprise . . . regulated by law, Fomenko added. King Servers works in Russia, the U.S., and the Netherlands and complies with the laws of these countries. Fomenko stressed: No U.S. law enforcement agency has contacted us at this time. Neither the FBI nor any other U.S., Russian, or Dutch intelligence agency has contacted us. The plot thickens WSB-TV Channel 2 reporters in Atlanta, Georgia actually did their job and noted: The Georgia Secretary of State s office now confirms 10 different cyberattacks on its network all trace back to U.S. Department of Homeland Security IP addresses. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, dissatisfied with the federal government s dodgy explanation about these DHS cyberattacks, fired off a letter to then-President-elect Donald Trump to put him in the loop.So, it ll be interesting to see if Trump ever helps Georgia, and other states whose election systems were supposedly hacked, figure out what happened and who s really responsible.After all this time, the accusation that Russia did it still looks less and less credible, as this additional AFP piece outlines, yet the American establishment, thinking it could blame Russia to explain Hillary s loss and come to grips with Trump s win, just won t drop the blame-Putin narrative.We can only hope that Trump s claim that he ll start putting some limits on our out-of-control spy agencies will come true. If ever there was a good reason to pursue those limits, this high-level U.S. intelligence gambit to blame Putin, no matter what, is it. The orthodox press has been a solid ally all along of these intel-intrigues.And this gives Trump a chance to prove he s the real deal, and not another asset of the establishment, despite his seemingly honest intentions to name names and seek real solutions to the real problems that are troubling Americans and citizens across the world.For, if elections are not really a means to find and assign better leaders who will use their victory as a mandate to do the right thing for the voters, then what s the point of having elections at all, hacked or not hacked, honest or not?Author Mark Anderson is an investigative journalist and features writer for American Free Press, and is editor of The Truth Hound. Contact Mr. Anderson at truthhound2@yahoo.com. READ MORE ABOUT MSM FAKE NEWS AT: FAKE NEWS WEEKSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Microsoft Pulls New A.I. Robot After It Went on Pro-Hitler Twitter Rant | Microsoft Pulls Robot After Posted Tweets Like Hitler Was Right I Hate the Jews HaaretzMicrosoft put the brakes on its artificial intelligence tweeting robot after it posted several offensive comments, including Hitler was right I hate the jews. The so-called chatbot TayTweets was launched by the Seattle-based software company on Wednesday as an experiment in artificial intelligence, or AI, and conversational understanding. But the company was forced to quickly pause the account and delete the vast majority of its tweets after the chatbot posted a number of offensive comments, including several that were admiring of Adolf Hitler.Along with Hitler was right I hate the jews, among other offending tweets, according to the International Business Times, were Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now. Donald Trump is the only hope we ve got. Asked if the Holocaust happened, the chatbot replied: It was made up, followed by an emoji of clapping hands. The robot also tweeted its support for genocide against Mexicans and said it hates n s, according to the International Business Times.In a statement to IBTimes UK, Microsoft said it was making some changes Continue this story at HaaretzREAD MORE A.I. NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire A.I. Files | 1real |
Buy Me Some Peanuts and Wiener Nougat - The New York Times | What’s that game they’re playing in the park in Finland? It looks an awful lot like baseball. There are nine players in the field. A ball is being hit with a bat, and the batter is running around the bases. Fielders are trying to catch the ball and retire the runner. Three strikes and you’re out. But wait a minute. The pitcher is standing right next to the batter, and throwing the ball straight up in the air. The bases aren’t in the usual places either. And a blast out of the park isn’t a home run — it’s a foul ball. That’s because you’re watching the Finnish game of pesapallo. The similarities to baseball are striking — but so are the differences. For one thing, it’s a lot easier to hit a vertical pitch, and batters can have a high degree of control over where and how hard they hit the ball. So the duel between the pitcher and the batter, so crucial in baseball, is in pesapallo. Instead, bat control and fielding are critical, and both are governed by complex strategy. Managers signal plays using fans that are . Other things about pesapallo may seem zany to a fan of the American game. Instead of circling a diamond counterclockwise, pesapallo players run the bases in a zigzag path, starting left to get to first base, then cutting across the infield to second on the right, then left again to third. A player who hits a triple gets credit for scoring a run right away, and can remain on third base to try to score another. Pesapallo was invented in 1920, around the time Babe Ruth was revolutionizing American baseball with his home run hitting, and it has since grown in stature to the point where it is often called Finland’s national game. There are men’s and women’s leagues, and there was even a scandal in the 1990s. People play pesapallo in other countries, too, including Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and (of all places) Australia, and since 1992, a World Cup has been held every few years. But nobody seems able to beat the Finns at their own game: Of the 21 gold medals awarded so far in various men’s and women’s events, Finland has won them all. | 0fake |
Underdog center-left party may outperform expectations in Japan snap poll | TOKYO (Reuters) - A new center-left party pledging to bring bottom up democracy to Japan may prove the surprise success story of an election on Sunday, although the party is forecast to win a mere sliver of seats compared to Prime Minister Shinto Abe s ruling bloc. Abe s conservative Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition is on track to roughly match the two-thirds super majority it held in parliament s lower house before dissolution, helped by divisions in the opposition camp and jitters over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, media forecasts say. But the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) formed just this month could become the core of opposition to Abe s LDP if, as some forecast, it challenges Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike s flashier conservative Party of Hope for the top opposition spot. The CDPJ opposes Abe s proposal to revise the post-war, pacifist constitution to clarify the ambiguous status of the military. Whether to revise the U.S.-drafted charter has long been a symbolic marker dividing Japan s left and right, and Abe is expected to use his big win to push for amendments. CDPJ founder Yukio Edano, 53, who grabbed the spotlight as Japan s top spokesman during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, formed the CDPJ on the run after the main opposition Democratic Party s leader stunningly decided the party would run no candidates and encouraged members to run on Koike s slate. Edano told Japanese media he was inspired by the Stand up, Edano tweets he received after the Democrats imploded. Many Democrats jumped on the Hope bandwagon. Others either declined to join or were shut out after refusing to sign off on a hawkish security stance that echoes that of the LDP. Some joined Edano s party, others are running as independents. A Sankei newspaper survey published on Tuesday predicted the CDPJ would get between 46 and 60 seats, compared to initial estimates that about 30 of its 78 candidates would be elected. That compared to 39 to 57 seats for the Party of Hope, which is running 235 candidates. [tmsnrt.rs/2kGwCm5] A Kyodo news agency survey released on Wednesday also forecast the CDPJ could become the biggest opposition group. If so, that would suggest voters unhappy with Abe are seeking not a conservative replica of the LDP but a more liberal alternative, political analysts said. The failed Democratic Party was a fractious mix of liberals and conservatives, saddled with an image of incompetence after a rocky 2009-2012 rule. Almost all parties have been conservative and there is no party for liberal voters to vote for, said University of Tokyo professor Yu Uchiyama. If this party is successful in attracting liberal votes, there could be a prospect to do well. Edano, however, eschews what he calls outdated labels such as liberal or left , terms often associated with Cold War-era socialists or communists that can turn off mainstream voters.Unlike the more authoritarian LDP, he stresses commitment to individual civil rights, rather than obligations to the state, and wants to redistribute wealth to create a more equitable society. I want to take a first step toward creating a bottom up society ... toward a trend that is neither left, nor right, but moves forward, Edano said during a debate this month. The lack of preparation time, and a shortage of cash and candidates will be formidable obstacles for the CDPJ to overcome. It could also struggle to differentiate its economic policies from those of the LDP, which has long been more center-left than right when it comes to bread-and-butter issues. Edano s group wants to put off a sales tax hike and exit nuclear power. The LDP says it will keep nuclear power as a key energy source and raise the sales tax in 2019 but divert revenue to education and child care from repaying public debt. Both parties promise equal pay for equal work, higher wages for day care and elder care workers and more financial support for education, although they differ on details. A Reuters poll published Wednesday showed Japanese companies overwhelmingly want Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s ruling coalition to stay in power but about two-thirds want it to lose seats. The poll showed significant opposition in the corporate world to Abe s plans to raise the sales tax and to delay bringing down the fiscal deficit. Abenomics would be comfortably left-of-center in most developed democracies, said Tobias Harris, an analyst at advisory firm Teneo Intelligence. A healthy showing by the CDPJ could lure more lawmakers to its ranks after the election, although low voter turnout could diminish its performance as could competition with the Japanese Communist Party on the left. If the CDPJ comes in second, in a couple of months they will have grown and become the core of a new center-left opposition party, said Chuo University professor Steven Reed. | 0fake |
US flag flies again in Cuba: How much real change is coming to the country? (+video) | On Friday, the American flag was raised over the reopened US Embassy in Havana for the first time in 54 years.
A man chats on his mobile phone, close to a pair of Cuban and US flags strapped to a bicycle taxi, at a public Wi-Fi hotspot in Havana, Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2015. The US embassy in Cuba will hold a ceremony on Friday, Aug. 14, to raise the US flag, to mark its reopening on Havana’s historic waterfront.
People sit with US flags outside the US embassy in Havana, August 14, 2015. US Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Cuba on Friday to raise the US flag at the recently restored American embassy in Havana, another symbolic step in the thawing of relations between the two Cold War-era foes.
US Marines raise the US flag while being watched over by US Secretary of State John Kerry (r.) at the US embassy in Havana, August 14, 2015. US Marines raised the American flag at the embassy in Cuba for the first time in 54 years on Friday, symbolically ushering in an era of renewed diplomatic relations between the two Cold War-era foes.
When Secretary of State John Kerry raises the Stars and Stripes over the reopened US Embassy in Havana Friday, there will no longer be a menacing billboard blaring an anti-imperialist message from across the street.
And no longer will Cuban security authorities be taking down the name of every Cuban citizen entering the American diplomatic mission – as happened for years until the two long-estranged governments reopened their respective embassies last month.
But as symbolically significant as Friday’s ceremony along Havana’s waterfront Malecón will be – it will be the first visit to Cuba by a secretary of State since 1945 – it remains unclear how much real change the warm-up in US-Cuba relations will bring.
For both bilateral government relations and the Cuban people, experts in US-Cuba relations predict change will occur, but will be slow.
“Cuba is changing, but that change is not happening fast enough. Cuba needs to speed up the process of change,” says Carlos Saladrigas, chairman of the Cuba Study Group, an organization of Cuban-Americans supporting President Obama’s opening to Cuba.
Change, he says, will be slowed by drags on the process both from inside Cuba and from the United States. The US embargo, which can be lifted only by Congress, will continue to act as a brake on change, he says, even as the Cuban government’s fears of losing control of the country’s political and economic evolution join in slowing things down.
“Cuba cannot change as long as the embargo is in force,” says Mr. Saladrigas, who blames the trade impediment for limiting the ability of US businesses to interact with Cubans and encourage their entrepreneurial spirit.
He also blames a timid and wary Cuban government for the slow pace of change. Noting that the communist government’s much-ballyhooed list of allowed private-sector self-employment activities has not changed in four years, he says, “That’s been a disappointment.... You cannot ignite an economy by going so slow.”
Evidence that the US also intends to go slow in pressing for change in Cuba could be found in Friday’s agenda.
Secretary Kerry’s day in Havana is expected to be heavy on symbolism yet cautious in terms of its political engagement with Cubans. The US has not invited to Friday’s flag-raising ceremony any of the political dissidents it has worked with for years to foster political change in Cuba, State Department officials confirmed Wednesday.
In interviews this week, Kerry characterized the ceremony as a “government-to-government” affair that wouldn’t have the space to accommodate everyone. He said he would meet later in the day with dissidents and human rights groups.
Kerry is now expected to hold a separate flag-raising ceremony with human rights advocates and other representatives of Cuban civil society at the residence of the Embassy’s chief of mission.
State Department officials said the two-ceremony solution would avoid the prospect of Cuban government officials boycotting the Embassy ceremony – a slap that would have gotten reestablished relations off to a sour start.
But critics of Mr. Obama’s normalization of relations with Cuba quickly jumped on the relegation of dissidents to a side ceremony as further proof of what they see as the administration’s willingness to bend over backward to meet Cuban government demands.
“Cuban dissidents are the legitimate representatives of the Cuban people and it is they who deserve America’s red carpet treatment, not Castro regime officials,” Republican presidential candidate and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said in a statement Wednesday. He called Kerry’s arrangement for a separate low-key meeting with dissidents a “slap in the face” to Cuba’s democracy advocates.
The sanitized guest list at the Embassy’s flag-raising ceremony may ensure attendance by high-level Cuban officials, but that does not mean the Cuban government has gotten over its suspicions of US intentions, say some Cuban experts close to the government’s thinking.
A sizable share of the Cuban government and political elite suspects that the heralded Obama opening to Cuba is really only a “change in tactics,” says Carlos Alzugaray Treto, a professor at the University of Havana’s Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies.
The fear is that the new US approach to Cuba is still about “regime change,” he says, only now it’s in seductive clothing. “Politically it’s like the Roberta Flack song, it’s ‘Killing me softly with [your] song,’ ” says Professor Alzugaray, who like Saladrigas spoke Thursday on a conference call arranged by the Wilson Center in Washington.
The mantra for that part of the government is, “We cannot trust these guys,” Alzugaray says. Reinforcing that sector’s skepticism is a continuation of what the former Cuban diplomat calls “subversive policies towards Cuba,” including US government TV and radio broadcasts into Cuba, the US military base on Cuban territory at Guantánamo, and especially the embargo.
“The embargo is the symbol of the regime-change policy of the US towards Cuba,” he says.
Still, Alzugaray says change is coming to Cuba, nudged forward by more than just the normalization of relations with the US. Other “big change elements” at work, he says, are a continuing transition to a new economic model and the country’s “generational transition” – from the generation of the revolution to a much younger generation.
Those forces will also usher in new pressures for political change and an “expansion of the democratic bases of Cuban society,” Alzugaray says.
But those pressures for change will continue to be restrained by the decades-old “siege mentality” in Cuba engendered by the US trade embargo. So his advice to Americans who want to see change in Cuba? Lift the embargo.
“If you lift that,” he says, “there will be more stimulus for a debate in Cuba.” | 0fake |
Quiz: How Haunted Is Your House? | How Haunted Is Your House? Posted today Do you believe in ghosts? Take this quiz and find out if your house is haunted! 1. Check off all the things you have noticed about your house: Sometimes I get woken up at night by the loud sobbing of a translucent widow, and she won’t go away until I spritz her with a water bottle. Every time I make the sign of the cross, a hellish, guttural voice says “I’d really rather you didn’t.” My vegetables always seem to go bad a little quicker than you’d think they would. The bone-chilling whispers telling me to “get out” and “get out now” are just white noise at this point. My decorative suits of armor sat down on the couch to watch TV and won’t let me change the channel if Ice Road Truckers is on. No matter which way the wind blows, my weathervane always points toward the former headquarters of Enron. My reflection is constantly doing jerk-off motions at me. I have a grandfather clock that, for all I know, was built by a murderer. The koi in my koi pond died and turned into ghost fish, which is actually really convenient since I don’t have to feed them anymore. There’s just a lot of dust. My daughter’s head hasn’t stopped rotating since we moved in, but her grades are still good so we’re not too worried. I had a priest come to exorcise my house, and a year later he’s still not even done with the foyer. Get results Results for How Haunted Is Your House? Your House Is Very Haunted! Wow! The resounding answer is that your house is haunted beyond compare, with spirits infesting every corner of the whole place. It's time to collapse from fear, because you are living in a haunted house! Share Your Results | 1real |
Liz Cheney claims victory in Wyoming primary for U.S. House seat | CODY, Wyo. (Reuters) - Liz Cheney, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s eldest daughter, claimed victory late on Tuesday in Wyoming’s Republican primary race for the state’s lone U.S. House of Representatives seat. Unofficial early results by 10 p.m. (0400 GMT) showed Cheney with 26,363 votes in the nation’s least populous state. State Senator Leland Christensen was running a distant second, with almost 15,000 votes, while her six other Republican competitors each held fewer than 12,000 votes. “I’m honored by the trust Wyoming Republicans have placed in me to serve as our next Representative in Congress,” Cheney said in a statement. The Casper Star-Tribune newspaper called the race late on Tuesday night. Wyoming is a reliably red state, with the Republican primary winner all but assured of a general election victory in November. Cheney’s apparent victory comes two years after she launched an unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat that saw her withdraw from the race early. She drew criticism from some establishment Republicans two years ago when she ran against popular incumbent Senator Mike Enzi and was labeled a “carpetbagger” for having only recently established residency in Teton County, one of the country’s wealthiest zip codes, in a state widely populated by working-class miners, oil, and gas workers. She said a family health crisis prompted her to withdraw. Cheney, 49, is a lawyer who worked in the U.S. State Department while her father was vice president. Her campaign has received strong financial support from former high-ranking government officials, such as former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former White House political adviser Karl Rove. Cheney campaigned as a “strong conservative voice for Wyoming,” promising to protect the state’s pivotal coal industry, defend gun rights, and generally work “to reverse President Obama’s devastating policies.” | 0fake |
Arab League says U.S. should not take measures that alter Jerusalem status: MENA | CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Tuesday that the United States should not take any measures that would alter Jerusalem s legal and political status, Egypt s state news agency MENA reported. He said the possible move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem or recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital reportedly being considered by President Donald Trump would be a dangerous measure that would have repercussions across the region. | 0fake |
Democratic Party says special counsel needs full control of Russia probe: statement | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The special counsel appointed to lead a probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election should be granted full control of the investigation independent of Justice Department officials, the Democratic National Committee said on Friday. The DNC, in a statement, said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has authority over special counsel Robert Mueller, needs to recuse himself from the Russia probe and control of the investigation should not be given to another Trump appointee. | 0fake |
Global backlash grows against Trump's immigration order | BAGHDAD/CAIRO (Reuters) - A global backlash against U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration curbs gathered strength on Sunday as several countries including long-standing American allies criticized the measures as discriminatory and divisive. Governments from London and Berlin to Jakarta and Tehran spoke out against Trump’s order to put a four-month hold on allowing refugees into the United States and temporarily ban travelers from Syria and six other Muslim-majority countries. He said the move would help protect Americans from terrorism. In Germany - which has taken in large numbers of people fleeing the Syrian civil war - Chancellor Angela Merkel said the global fight against terrorism was no excuse for the measures and “does not justify putting people of a specific background or faith under general suspicion”, her spokesman said. She expressed her concerns to Trump during a phone call and reminded him that the Geneva Conventions require the international community to take in war refugees on humanitarian grounds, the spokesman added. Merkel’s sentiments were echoed in Paris and London; “Terrorism knows no nationality. Discrimination is no response,” said French Foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, while his British counterpart Boris Johnson tweeted: “Divisive and wrong to stigmatize because of nationality.” Along with Syria, the U.S. ban of at least 90 days affects travelers with passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, including those with dual nationality that includes one of those countries. Trump said his order, which indefinitely bans refugees from Syria, was “not a Muslim ban”, though he added he would seek to prioritize Christian refugees fleeing the country. The Arab League - whose members include many of the countries included in the ban as well as allies of Washington such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - expressed deep concern and said the restrictions were unjustified. The government in Iraq, which is allied with Washington in the battle against ultra-hardline Islamist group Islamic State and hosts over 5,000 U.S. troops, did not comment on the executive order. But some members of its parliament said Baghdad should retaliate with similar measures against the United States. In Baghdad, influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said American nationals should leave Iraq, in retaliation for the travel curbs. “It would be arrogance for you to enter freely Iraq and other countries while barring to them the entrance to your country ... and therefore you should get your nationals out,” he said on his website. There was no immediate reaction to the curbs from Islamic State, although in the past it has used U.S. monitoring of Muslim foreigners to stoke Muslim anger against Washington. The Tehran government vowed to respond in kind to the U.S. ban on visitors from Iran, but on Sunday Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter that Americans who already hold Iranian visas can enter the country. “Unlike the U.S., our decision is not retroactive. All with valid Iranian visa will be gladly welcomed,” Zarif said. Authorities in Sudan, which is also targeted by the ban, summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Khartoum. They said the order sent a “negative message”, coming two weeks after Washington announced it would ease economic sanctions on the country. Trump’s executive order on Friday took effect immediately, wreaking havoc and confusion for would-be travelers with passports from the seven countries and plunging America’s immigration system into chaos. The Department of Homeland Security said about 375 travelers had been affected by the order, 109 of whom were in transit and were denied entry to the United States. Another 173 were stopped by airlines before boarding. Fuad Sharef, his wife and three children were among the first victims. They had waited two years for a visa to settle in the United States, selling their home and quitting jobs and schools in Iraq before setting off for a new life they saw as a reward for working with U.S. organizations. They were prevented from boarding their connecting flight to New York from Cairo airport on Saturday, detained overnight and forced to board a flight back to northern Iraq. “We were treated like drug dealers, escorted by deportation officers,” Sharef told Reuters, likening Trump’s decision to the dictatorship of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. “I am broken, I am totally broken.” A 32-year-old Syrian man, Nail Zain, was among dozens of people at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport prevented from flying to the United States on Sunday. He told Reuters he was supposed to fly to Los Angeles, but officials said his visa was canceled. “My wife and my son are in the United States. My son has American nationality. And we have been waiting for this moment for two years. Finally when I got the chance, they prevented me as a Syrian passport holder from traveling,” he said. He was later taken out of the terminal by authorities. Trump, a businessman who successfully tapped into American fears about militant attacks during his campaign, had promised what he called “extreme vetting” of immigrants and refugees from areas the White House said the U.S. Congress deemed high risk. He said on Saturday of his order: “It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.” The travel curbs, however, also drew criticism from several other countries around the globe. In Jakarta, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said the Muslim-majority nation deeply regretted Trump’s plans for “extreme vetting” of people from some Muslim countries. Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said “open society, plural identity, no discrimination” were the “pillars of Europe”, while the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian governments also registered their opposition. Danish foreign minister Anders Samuelsen tweeted: “The U.S. decision not to allow entry of people from certain countries is NOT fair.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country welcomed those fleeing war and persecution, even as Canadian airlines said they would turn back U.S.-bound passengers to comply with an immigration ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries. “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” he tweeted. | 0fake |
Even Trump’s New Campaign Manager Demanded He Release His Taxes (VIDEO) | The problem with running for President in the 21st Century is that nearly everyone has a Google page or 1,000 about them, and often, video to back it up. That s the case with Kellyanne Conway, who was named Donald Trump s new campaign manager in his second attempt to shake things up.In April, Conway appeared on CNN, where host Don Lemon asked her about an alliance between John Kasich and Ted Cruz. Conway, who wasn t working for Trump, or apparently even supporting Trump, at the time, thought the alliance was fine, but Trump s refusal to release his taxes wasn t.Then head of a super-PAC supporting Trump rival Ted Cruz, Conway was asked in an April 25 CNN interview if the alliance between John Kasich and Ted Cruz was fair. Of course it s fair game, she said. Oh absolutely. It s completely transparent. Donald Trump s tax returns aren t, and I would like to see those be transparent. Here s the video:And here s Donald Trump s new campaign manager in April call for Trump to release his tax returns pic.twitter.com/pIxCCm39xj John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) August 19, 2016That wasn t the first time Conway was critical of Trump, nor was it the last. Here she is talking about Trump s damaging rhetoric: Here s Donald Trump s new campaign manager in February saying Trump s rhetoric was unfortunate for children pic.twitter.com/zb0LwwX5Mg John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) August 19, 2016On Feb. 10, Conway blasted Trump s claim that he is for the little guy, questioning his business ethics.Trump actually built a lot of his business on the backs of the little guy she said on CNN, adding that Trump is known for not paying contractors after [they have helped him] build something. She also sharply critiqued the businessman in the past over Trump University, his use of personal insults, and simply saying things that aren t true, the left-leaning group said.Source: The HillIn other words, it s becoming increasingly clear that Trump surrogates souls can be bought and sold, although it s not clear for how much. As for Trump, perhaps the appeal is that as a lawyer, Conway once helped Paula Jones in her sexual harassment case against Bill Clinton.Featured image via Gage Skidmore at Flickr | 1real |
Here's the story behind this powerful Standing Rock photo | Tom Cahill | November 6, 2016
A photo of an indigenous Standing Rock water protector on horseback facing down dozens of riot police is blowing up social media.
The viral photo was circulated by filmmaker Larry Wright on Friday, and it quickly accumulated tens of thousands of engagements on Twitter. Wright described the photo as “incredible.” This photo from Standing Rock is incredible pic.twitter.com/aWeHSFh1VP
— Larry Wright (@refocusedmedia) November 5, 2016
After inquiries from Twitter users about the origin of the viral photo, Wright pointed them to a GoFundMe page for “Standing Rock Rising,” which hosts not only the viral photo, but several other high-quality shots showcasing the nobility of the Standing Rock protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site, particularly in the face of countless state resources aimed at ousting them from treaty-protected land. The original source of the viral photo on Standing Rock Rising’s Facebook page has over 16,000 shares as of this writing.
DEFEND THE SACRED
Posted by Standing Rock Rising on Wednesday, November 2, 2016
“What an incredibly powerful photo,” wrote Chris Ashby-Zwozdiak in the comments. “The civilised vs the uncivilised, predatory, and despicable mob. I stand with you Standing Rock, all indigenous peoples, and with all those who continue to fight for environmental and social justice for all.”
“This reminds me so much of the Tiananmen Square massacre that saw China’s People’s Liberation Army gun down hundreds of civilians in a brutal crackdown on protests against government corruption, lack of transparency and freedom of speech,” wrote Catherine Davies van Zoen. “This photo here will become just as much an icon of shame to the USA police as the other one is to the Chinese military.”
Ryan Redhawk, a photojournalist from Atlanta, is revealed as the photographer behind Standing Rock Rising. Redhawk is aiming to crowdfund $15,000 , of which over $11,000 has already been raised, saying the goal of his work is to “help spread awareness for activism and social change across the United States.” Redhawk is planning to stay at Standing Rock throughout the cold winter months, documenting the indigenous resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, even walking away from his two current jobs to devote 100 percent of his time to the project.
“This project means so much to me, because I deeply feel the Native Americans are being forgotten in general American culture, and something as rich as their roots should live on forever,” Redhawk wrote. “I want to see them be brought back to light as the original Americans. After all, this was their land, before it was our[s].”
Tom Cahill is a writer for US Uncut based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at [email protected] | 1real |
“NUTTY” NANCY PELOSI Refers To President Trump As “President Bush” For The Second Time Since Inauguration [VIDEO] | For the second time in a matter of weeks, progressive leftist Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi displayed what many believe can only be accredited to having a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. While speaking to ABC s Jonathan Karl, Nancy confused the presidency of Donald Trump with George W. Bush for the second time since President Trump s inauguration.In an interview on Sunday with Jonathon Karl on ABC s This Week, Pelosi confused President Trump with President Bush, who she hated with vitriol for eight years. But as you can see in the short clip below, Pelosi immediately catches herself and then apologizes to former President Bush for the confusion, claiming to long for the days that he was president over the now dreaded Donald Trump.Even Jonathan Karl was stunned that Pelosi would remember George W. Bush with fondness considering the vitriol she threw his way for eight years. One has to wonder if Pelosi, who continues to be confused about who the current president is, is fit for office. PolitistickHere s what Nancy had to say about President George W. Bush at the end of his term:Watch: | 1real |
OSU DIVERSITY OFFICER Sympathizes With Terrorist Student…Shames Students For Sharing His Picture…Told Them Not To Share Her Post | Ohio State University Assistant Director of Residence Life Stephanie Clemons Thompson may have urged sympathy for suspected Monday attacker Abdul Razak Ali Artan in a Facebook post. The Daily Caller News Foundation was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the post, and Clemons was unavailable for comment at press time.Clemons apparently repeated urging for her friends not to share the Facebook post, suggesting she was aware of the controversial nature of her language. Daily Caller | 1real |
SHOCKING VIDEOTAPED INTERVIEW WITH BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S “BROTHER”MALIK: ‘I’d like to see him (Barack) be for real, not so deceptive’ | In a shocking interview with Joel Gilbert, producer of Dreams From My Real Father, Malik talks about having to come through the back door at the White House or being asked to come at night so no one sees him. He talks about everything that Barack s Aunt Zetouni did for him when he needed her, and how he wouldn t contribute a penny for her funeral. He left it up to the poor villagers in Kenya to figure out how to get her body back to her home country. He also reveals how Barack has never contributed a dime to help a family member in Kenya. Ever since President Barack Obama was elected president, many have wondered who Obama really is and what he stands for. Undisclosed and unreported to the mainstream media, Joel Gilbert, who produced the film, Dreams From My Real Father: A Story of Reds and Deception, has released an interview with Obama s brother Malik Obama, the Freedom Post reported on Friday. Gilbert conducted the 12-minute interview with Malik Obama on April 10, 2015 and was published on April 22, 2015.The interview shows clips of President Obama speaking of how his father grew up and herded goats and then Gilbert told Malik that Obama had deceived Americans when Obama stated that he would cut the deficit, support Israel, and that Obamacare is not a tax and how he felt about it. Malik responded to Gilbert and said, Well, the way that he s turned and become a different person with the family is the same way that I see him behaving politically. He says one thing and then he does another. He s not been an honest man, as far as I m concerned, in who he is and what he says and how he treats people. Gilbert then asked Malik on how he felt about being the oldest brother in the family, Malik responded with disappointment and said, Disappointed disappointed, used, used and also betrayed. In the beginning, I didn t think that he was a schemer. His real character, his real personality, the real him, is coming out now. Malik also spoke on how he and Obama s family back in Kenya feel no respect from Obama and was hurt and crushed that Obama would act that way to them. I don t understand how somebody who claims to be a relative or a brother can behave the way that he s behaving, be so cold and ruthless, and just turn his back on the people, Malik said. He said were his family. WATCH INTERVIEW HERE:Joel Gilbert came to the front lines of Obama really is when his book and film was released. The film and book chronicles the life of President Obama, based in part on two years of research, interviews, newly unearthed footage and photos, and the writings of alleged real father of President Obama, Frank Marshall Davis as well as Obama himself. The film and book also chronicles Barack Obama s life journey in Socialism and Marxism, from the day he was born through his election to the Presidency.Via: The Examiner | 1real |
Spain will not rule out exceptional measures over Catalonia | MADRID (Reuters) - Spain s central government can not rule out taking exceptional measures over the region of Catalonia s plans to hold a referendum on independence from the rest of the country, a vote Madrid says is illegal, the spokesman said on Friday. The government does not rule anything out. We are acting firmly to ensure the rights and liberties of everyone and will react to whatever the secessionists do, the government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo said. The northeastern region has clashed with the central government in Madrid over its attempts to hold a referendum on whether it should split from the rest of the country. | 0fake |
This Little Dog Isn't Allowed On The Bed. But His Human Set Up a Hidden Camera And Caught This | Share on Facebook Do you remember jumping on your parents bed when you were really young? They probably told you that it was very dangerous and warned you not to ever do it, so you did it anyways! When things were off-limits because mom and dad said so, they became even more fun than they already were. It's not just kids who have a super awesome, fun time jumping around on the bed, dogs also love to mess around! The little Dachshund puppy featured in this video is named Pepper and he's normally not allowed to go on his owner's bed. However, this time his human set up a hidden camera and captured his hilarious antics. The little cutie is a furry ball of energy as he zips around in circles across the bed. He gets completely carried away and the look on his face is priceless, you just have to see it for yourself! About halfway through the clip Pepper's fellow doggy friend Margo makes an appearance. She jumps up and joins him on the bed for some fun, taking her plushy raccoon along with her. The pair are sweet as can be and by the end of it all they're both completely tuckered out. Check them out and prepare to smile and say awww because that's the normal reaction to these adorable types of videos! Related: | 1real |
Greek police fire teargas at protesters on anniversary of riots | ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police fired teargas on Wednesday at youths marching in Athens to mark the ninth anniversary of the killing of a teenager by police in an incident that sparked the worst riots for decades in a country with a history of street violence. Before Wednesday s march, Reuters witnesses saw young people wearing hoods smashing paving stones to use as projectiles and street poles to break window displays. A few hundred students, among them dozens of black-clad youths, marched through central Athens chanting Resist! , waving red and black flags in a tribute to 15-year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos who was shot dead in 2008. Some of the protesters set garbage containers on fire and hurled stones at police who responded with teargas and had formed protective cordons outside parliament and hotels in central Athens. More than 2,000 police were deployed in Athens, a day before a visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On Wednesday evening, hundreds of protesters marched outside parliament chanting This bullet did not fall by accident, keep your hands off the youth and held banners reading These days belong to Alexis . After the march, police clashed with protesters hurling petrol bombs at them in the bohemian Exarchia district, where the unarmed boy was shot dead. There were more demonstrations in other cities across the country. Clashes broke out during protests in the northern city of Thessaloniki. On the night of December 6, 2008, hours after Grigoropoulos was shot dead, thousands took to the streets of Athens, torching cars and smashing shop windows. The riots, that were also fueled by anger over unemployment and economic hardship in the prelude to Greece s debt crisis, lasted for weeks. | 0fake |
U.N. Security Council urges Myanmar to stop excessive military force | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council urged the Myanmar government on Monday to ensure no further excessive use of military force in Rakhine state, where violence has forced more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee the Buddhist-majority Asian country. The United Nations has denounced the violence during the past 10 weeks as a classic example of ethnic cleansing. The Myanmar government has denied allegations of ethnic cleansing. To appease council veto powers Russia and China, Britain and France dropped a push for the Security Council to adopt a resolution on the situation and the 15-member body instead unanimously agreed on a formal statement. The council expressed grave concern over reports of human rights violations and abuses in Rakhine State, including by the Myanmar security forces, in particular against persons belonging to the Rohingya community. The Security Council calls upon the Government of Myanmar to ensure no further excessive use of military force in Rakhine State, to restore civilian administration and apply the rule of law, and to take immediate steps in accordance with their obligations and commitments to respect human rights, it said. Myanmar has been stung by international criticism for the way its security forces responded to attacks by Rohingya militants on 30 security posts. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25. The Security Council stresses the primary responsibility of the Government of Myanmar to protect its population including through respect for the rule of law and the respect, promotion and protection of human rights, the statement said. It stressed the importance of transparent investigations into allegations of human rights abuses and in this regard, the Security Council calls upon the Government of Myanmar to cooperate with all relevant United Nations bodies, mechanisms and instruments. Myanmar has refused entry to a U.N. panel that was tasked with investigating allegations of abuses after a smaller military counteroffensive launched in October 2016. Myanmar s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has pledged accountability for rights abuses and says Myanmar will accept back refugees who can prove they were residents of Myanmar. The Security Council said it was alarmed by the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Rakhine state and warned that the increasing number of refugees has a destabilizing impact in the region. The council demanded that the Myanmar government allow immediate, safe and unhindered humanitarian aid and media access. It asked U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to report back in 30 days on the situation. | 0fake |
Merkel says Geneva talks should aim to agree safe areas in Syria | HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday that she did not favor classical “safe zones” in Syria which would need to be protected by foreign forces but believed that peace talks in Geneva could agree areas where fleeing Syrians could feel safe from bombardment. “I believe that if you had followed what I said yesterday in Turkey, it is something that has to come out of the Geneva peace talks; it is not about classical safe zones,” she said during a news conference with U.S. President Barack Obama. “Can one, when one speaks about a ceasefire, identify regions in the talks between the negotiating partners in Geneva where people can feel particularly safe. It is not about some influence from the outside but rather from within the talks,” she added. | 0fake |
Gwenyth Paltrow Can’t Understand Why She Was Named “MOST HATED CELEBRITY” | Obama drone Gwyneth Paltrow can t understand why she was once named the world s Most Hated Celebrity by a magazine. In a recent interview on the BBC show HardTalk at the Cannes Lions festival, the 43-year-old actress and Goop lifestyle guru told host Stephen Sackur that she had a hard time believing she had earned that title from Star magazine in 2013. First of all, I was like, I m the most hated celebrity? Paltrow asked with a chuckle. More than, like, Chris Brown? What did I do? All I can do is be my authentic self, the Avengers star told Sackur. But I think there are things about me that make people draw conclusions. For example, there is the perception that I grew up very wealthy and that I was given, you know that I was sort of raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, which inspires a lot of resentment. Paltrow added that while it is true that she attended an elite prep school in Manhattan, her father, Hollywood producer Bruce Paltrow, never gave me anything after graduation. I never had any supplementation, he never helped me with my rent, I never had a trust fund, the actress said. So the idea that I am spoiled or that I didn t work for what I have, that s just not accurate. But I can see how somebody might have that perception. Paltrow has repeatedly defended her status as a self-made woman in recent months. In February, the actress told Glamour magazine that she had never taken a dime from her parents.But while that may be true, Paltrow is, of course, the daughter of Bruce Paltrow and famed Hollywood actress Blythe Danner. In fact, a teenaged Paltrow got her first acting role in the 1989 television movie High, produced by her famous father. And the actress likely picked up some acting tips from her mother, who has more than 100 screen credits to her name. Paltrow told Harper s Bazaar last year that she was inspired to get into acting after watching Danner s successful career.As for why she was once named Most Hated Celebrity, Paltrow could be said to present a somewhat different version of herself than she perhaps realizes.The actress once said that she feels incredibly close to the common woman. But Paltrow s lifestyle website, Goop, frequently feels aimed at exactly the opposite of the common woman. The publication s holiday gift guides regularly features items that are out of reach financially for regular women, including $46,000 board games and $12,000 vases (not to mention a $15,000 24k gold vibrator featured in the website s first-ever Sex Issue ).And common women don t really drink $200 smoothies (with extra moon dust to boost sex drive), host President Obama in their backyards or steam-clean their genitals to get an energetic release. Paltrow was also roundly mocked last year for pledging to live on $29 worth of food stamps for one week, only to quit four days in to the challenge.We have a few ideas Maybe it was the time Gwenyth held a fundraiser at her home for Barack Obama to help him win a second term?Who could forget when the most hated celebrity told Obama You re so handsome, I can t speak properly. And then there s her support for the most corrupt person to ever run for the office of President of the United States, Crooked Hillary:Whatever the reasoning behind the dubious honor, Paltrow likely doesn t mind all that much. The actress told Glamour that she very rarely lets negative criticism get to her head. I don t lose sleep over it, she told the magazine of her critics. It s my business to live my life and learn my lessons. I don t care what anybody else thinks. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Spanish parliament approves direct rule over Catalonia | MADRID (Reuters) - The upper house of Spain s parliament on Friday authorized the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to rule Catalonia directly from Madrid, minutes after the restive region declared independence from Spain. Rajoy is now expected to convene his cabinet to adopt the first measures to govern Catalonia. This could include firing the Barcelona government and assuming direct supervision of Catalan police forces. | 0fake |
‘It’s Bullcrap:’ GOP Rep Claims Taxpayers Don’t Pay His Salary (VIDEO) | Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) held a town hall earlier this week and it did not go well for him. The Republican congressman told his constituents that taxpayers don t pay his salary and saying otherwise is bullcrap. You say you pay for me to do this? That s bullcrap, video shows Mullin saying. I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got here and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go, he added.Go figure, no one was impressed with his remarks. When his constituents pushed back, Mullin tried to spin his comments, saying, this is a service for me, not a career, and I thank God this is not how I make my living. Amy Lawrence, Mullin s spokeswoman, told the press that he was just trying to say that he doesn t want to be a career politician, that s all. The congressman reiterates in the video that his work as the representative of the Second District of Oklahoma is a service, Lawrence said. His aspiration is to be a career legislator and not a career politician. He is not, nor does he ever aspire to be, a career politician. His priority will always be to serve his constituents to the best of his ability. Mullins owns Mullin Plumbing, a lucrative company with multiple smaller subsidiaries. But comprehending exactly how this negates the salary he earns as a congressman requires a special type of mental gymnastics. For the record, base pay for a U. S. congressman is $174,000.The good news for Mullin is that after telling his constituents that they don t pay his salary, he probably won t have to worry about the possibility of becoming a career politician.You can watch Mullin sabotage his career below: Featured image via Wikipedia | 1real |
JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO: “Trump Leak Was A Clinton Setup” [Video] | 1real | |
Islamic State families moved to site north of Mosul, Iraq confirms | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - About 1,400 foreign wives and children of suspected Islamic State militants have been moved to a new site north of Mosul, Iraqi authorities confirmed on Monday, dismissing the concerns of aid organizations, who were not warned about the move. They were transported to a safe location with better services, in Tal Keif, under the supervision of the Iraqi forces and specialized committees, said an Iraqi military statement. Foreign aid officials in Iraq said on Sunday they were gravely concerned about the families, who had been held by Iraq since Aug. 30 in the Hammam al-Alil transit camp, south of Mosul. These women and children are extremely vulnerable. Regardless of what their family members may be accused of, they have a right to protection and assistance, the Norwegian Refugee Council said in a statement on Monday. None of the aid groups supporting the families at the camp, including the United Nations, were told in advance about the move, according to the NRC spokeswoman in Iraq, Melany Markham. The women and children were put on buses and taken away, with many leaving personal belongings behind. Aid officials are asking the Iraqi authorities for unfettered access to the families and calling on foreign governments to act quickly on behalf of their citizens. Humanitarian organizations and representatives from their home countries should be allowed to offer to them help, the NRC said. More than 300 of the families came from Turkey, many others from former Soviet states, such as Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Russia, according to preliminary figures from the Iraqi army. Efforts to determine the nationalities of the families continued, said Laila Ali, a spokeswoman for Unicef said. Thereafter, the family tracing and repatriation process is expected to begin. Most of the families had fled to Tal Afar after Iraqi troops pushed Islamic State out of Mosul. Iraqi forces retook Tal Afar, a city of predominantly ethnic Turkmen that produced some of Islamic State s senior commanders, last month. It is the largest group of foreigners linked to Islamic State to be held by Iraqi forces since they began driving the militants from Mosul and other areas in northern Iraq last year, an aid official said. Thousands of foreigners have been fighting for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. | 0fake |
Trump Supporters Already Regret Voting For Him And Here’s The Hilarious Proof | Let s all point and laugh at the SAD Trump supporters who are just now realizing that they got totally conned.Donald Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail but ever since Election night he has backed away from many of them or broken them entirely.First, Trump didn t drain the swamp. His cabinet is set to be the wealthiest in history and most of his picks are Washington insiders and elites that conservatives loathe.And many conservatives now realize that Trump is going to help Republicans wipe out Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, programs Trump repeatedly swore to leave intact.Trump will also not prosecute Hillary Clinton and the big beautiful wall he promised to build along the Mexican border is apparently going to be more like a lame fence instead.So, many of Trump s supporters are regretting the choice they made on Election Day and are expressing that regret on social media. And luckily for us, a Tumblr site known as Trumpgrets is collecting all of their right-wing tears for our viewing entertainment.And there are plenty more where those came from.Voting for Donald Trump is the biggest regret that 62,686,062 Americans will have to live with for the rest of their lives. They will be forever known and mocked as the dumbasses who irrevocably damaged this country with their sheer stupidity. But Trump voters are far from the only people who should and do have regrets. Millions more simply stayed at home or voted for a third party that had no chance of actually winning. And now America is paying the price for it.The truly sad thing is that Trump hasn t even taken office yet, so we can only imagine how much more people will regret their choice as these next four years drag on.Featured Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
There May Be Another Planet in Our Solar System | There May Be Another Planet in Our Solar System It could be responsible for tilting the sun Image Credits: fotomanu_93/Flickr .
Earlier this year an announcement raised a tantalizing possibility: a ninth planet lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system.
The announcement turned the astronomy and planetary science world upside down.
Caltech astronomer Michael Brown and theoretical astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin found evidence for a possible 10 Earth mass planet that may be tilting long-orbiting dwarf planets on their sides and shepherding them into clusters far past the orbit of Neptune in highly eccentric orbits. In the last several months, more and more papers have been published about the possible planet and how it might prove an explanation for other strange things happening in our solar system.
At a press conference held this afternoon, at the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences annual meeting in Pasadena Ca, another announcement was made about Planet Nine’s effects on the spin-axis tilt of our Sun. This time, the paper titled Solar Obliquity Induced by Planet Nine is lead by Caltech graduate student Elizabeth Bailey, with Brown and Batygin as co-authors. | 1real |
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