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C.E.O.s Ponder a New Game, With Trump’s Rules - The New York Times | “If you were to look at our game board of all the possible outcomes of the election, this one wasn’t even on the sheet. ” That was how Mark T. Bertolini, chief executive of the large health insurer Aetna, described the election of Donald J. Trump as the next president. He was speaking with me last Thursday on stage at The New York Times’s annual conference, DealBook: Playing for the Long Term. “We started with a fresh piece of paper yesterday. We had no idea how to approach it,” Mr. Bertolini said. Business executives across the nation and the world have been whipping out fresh pieces of paper to map how Mr. Trump’s election and Republican control of the White House, Senate and House — which may make Washington’s notorious gridlock a memory — will reshape economic policy. The stock market has jumped, taking many prognosticators by surprise, in anticipation of the seismic changes Mr. Trump has promised: a repeal or refashioning of the Affordable Care Act, a dismantling of the regulations for Wall Street, a substantial haircut for corporate and personal income tax rates, and a major infrastructure spending program, among other things. While the new conventional wisdom may be that the nation is about to see comprehensive change, the truth is that it is likely to be more incremental than across the board. Take, for instance, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. While you would think much of the finance industry would salivate at the chance to rid itself of the law, its view is more nuanced. Most companies have made large investments and changes in their business practices to comply with the law. So it’s hard to see how even the law’s opponents in the industry would press for the full repeal that Mr. Trump said he would pursue. “That omelet has been made that toothpaste is out of the tube,” Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said at the conference. “I wouldn’t want regulation to be repealed in toto,” he added. “If you want to be good for bankers, you have to have policies that would be good for economic growth. ” More likely than a repeal, Mr. Trump’s administration will try to eliminate the components he has criticized most. A Trump administration could try to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency created by which Republicans loathe, for example. “The C. F. P. B. probably won’t be eliminated,” Ian Katz, a research analyst at Capital Alpha Partners in Washington, wrote in a note to clients. “It would be horrible politics and optics to get rid of an agency that was established to protect the little guy. ” Mr. Katz predicted that the Trump administration would be able to push through a switch that critics of the agency have long lobbied for: a shift in control of the consumer bureau from a single director to a bipartisan commission. Mr. Trump might also focus on changing a rule for small banks that grow to more than $10 billion in assets. Currently, such growth catapults a bank into a new regulatory category, one that comes with much stricter scrutiny and more elaborate reporting requirements. This rule has been criticized by the banking industry as an impediment to growth and competition. As for the return of — something Mr. Trump has talked about — don’t bet on it. “The Republican Party’s call for a return to a division of commercial and investment banking shouldn’t be taken seriously,” Mr. Katz wrote. “That was part of a campaign document. Big banks are useful as a populist scapegoat, and Trump may continue to use them in that way. But neither he or his top aides are interested in 2. 0. ” Piecemeal change may also be true of Mr. Trump’s pledge to undo Obamacare, which was one of his bedrock campaign promises. Mr. Bertolini of Aetna predicted: “There will be a repeal first, and I think the repeal will be at a minimum in name. ” It’s nearly impossible for the law to be replaced with the flip of a switch. “Because what’s going to happen in the next year?” he said. “We have people signed up we have to honor that through 2017. We’ll have to work quickly to have something for 2018. ” Mr. Bertolini said that whatever replacement plan might materialize, the government was not going to just stop insuring the 20 million or so people who are covered under the Affordable Care Act. “You can’t put them out on the street without insurance,” he said. His expectation is that Medicare Advantage will be expanded. The backpedaling on the “repeal” pledge has already begun: Mr. Trump has said in the past several days that he intends to make sure that health insurers will not be able to turn away people with conditions, and that people under the age of 26 will still be able to have coverage under their parents’ plans. About the latter provision, Mr. Trump said he would “very much try and keep that. ” In an interview with Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday night, the said that the measure “adds cost, but it’s very much something we’re going to try and keep. ” Of course, the biggest question is how Mr. Trump is going to create a new manufacturing class in America. He has suggested that he is going to renegotiate trade agreements, increase tariffs on goods and deport illegal immigrants — both for security reasons, he contends, and because they take jobs from Americans. How those ambitions ultimately play out is anyone’s guess. One issue that Mr. Trump has seemingly avoided is that of how new technologies are steadily taking American jobs. “The jobs that are routine are going to be replaced by technology,” Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, said at the conference. That’s a truth that may be at odds with Mr. Trump’s ambitions. Still, Mr. Schmidt had an optimistic outlook about how technology already provides unappreciated benefits. “Manufacturing jobs are infinitely safer today because robots do the dangerous work,” he said. “We take that for granted. ” Despite all of the among C. E. O.s surprised about the outcome of the election, there was a sense of optimism — or at least a sense of hope — that pervaded their words. “We all know a lot about Trump the campaigner — now we have to find out about the Trump who needs to get things done,” Mr. Blankfein said. “He will start to think not about getting elected but about what his legacy is going to be,” he continued. “I assume you go into that office and you think about your place in history and things change. ” Mr. Blankfein added, “I’m going to see how it goes before I become mournful. ” | 0fake |
Trump says he is not looking to phase in corporate tax cut | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was not looking for the corporate tax rate reduction that the White House is seeks to be phased in over time. “Hopefully not,” Trump told reporters when asked about the issue during a meeting on tax reform at the White House. Trump said he wanted lawmakers to pass a tax reform bill by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday in late November. | 0fake |
Bangladesh grants bail to two detained Myanmar journalists | DHAKA (Reuters) - Two journalists from Myanmar, who had been detained in Bangladesh while reporting on the influx of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, have been released on bail, a police official said on Saturday. The journalists, Minzayar Oo and Hkun Lat, were detained in early September in the Cox s Bazar border region of Bangladesh, where refugees are arriving from Myanmar to escape a military offensive against insurgents. A court granted them bail, but they can t go back to their country now, police official Ranajit Kumar Barua, told Reuters by telephone, adding that the court would decide whether the two could leave the country at a separate hearing which may take place sometime in the next week. The two were arrested for violating immigration laws, but no charge sheet against the two has been filed yet, said Barua, denying reports that the two had been charged with espionage activities. A lawyer for the two journalists also confirmed their release, but did not provide any further detail. Bangladesh police had said that the pair were detained for engaging in journalistic work for a German magazine, while on tourist visas. Some 429,000 refugees from Myanmar have poured into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts triggered a Myanmar army crackdown in response. Germany s GEO magazine, which had assigned Minzayar Oo to cover the Rohingya crisis, said he had traveled to Bangladesh on Sept. 6, and was detained the next day. Minzayar Oo is one of Myanmar s most prominent photographers and has worked for various media outlets, covering the country s emergence from military rule. He has previously worked as a contractor with Reuters. Hkun Lat is also a well-known photographer in Myanmar and has won prizes for his coverage of conflict in frontier regions. | 0fake |
Mideast needs two-state solution, Pope says in Christmas message | VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis used his Christmas message on Monday to call for a negotiated two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after U.S. President Donald Trump stoked regional tensions with his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Francis spoke of the Middle East conflict and other world flashpoints in his Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) address, four days after more than 120 countries backed a U.N. resolution urging the United States to reverse its decision on Jerusalem. Let us pray that the will to resume dialogue may prevail between the parties and that a negotiated solution can finally be reached, one that would allow the peaceful coexistence of two states within mutually agreed and internationally recognized borders, he said, referring to the Israelis and Palestinians. We see Jesus in the children of the Middle East who continue to suffer because of growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, he said in his address, delivered from the balcony of St. Peter s Basilica to tens of thousands of people. It was the second time that the pope has spoken out publicly about Jerusalem since Trump s decision on Dec. 6. On that day, Francis called for the city s status quo to be respected, lest new tensions in the Middle East further inflame world conflicts. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state, whereas Israel has declared the whole city to be its united and eternal capital. Francis, leader of the world s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, urged people to see the defenseless baby Jesus in the children who suffer the most from war, migration and natural calamities caused by man today. Today, as the winds of war are blowing in our world ... Christmas invites us to focus on the sign of the child and to recognize him in the faces of little children, especially those for whom, like Jesus, there is no place in the inn, he said. Francis, celebrating the fifth Christmas of his pontificate, said he had seen Jesus in the children he met during his recent trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, and he called for adequate protection of the dignity of minority groups in that region. More than 600,000 Muslim Rohingya people have fled mainly Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh in recent months. The pope had to tread a delicate diplomatic line during his visit, avoiding the word Rohingya while in Myanmar, which does not recognize them as a minority group, though he used the term when in Bangladesh. Jesus knows well the pain of not being welcomed and how hard it is not to have a place to lay one s head. May our hearts not be closed as they were in the homes of Bethlehem, he said. He also urged the world to see Jesus in the innocent children suffering from wars in Syria and Iraq and also in Yemen, complaining that its people had been largely forgotten, with serious humanitarian implications for its people, who suffer from hunger and the spread of diseases . He also listed conflicts affecting children in South Sudan, Somalia, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Ukraine and Venezuela. At his Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter s Basilica on Sunday, Francis strongly defended immigrants, comparing them to Mary and Joseph finding no place to stay in Bethlehem and saying faith demands that foreigners be welcomed. | 0fake |
Ken Thompson, Brooklyn District Attorney, Dies After Disclosing Cancer - The New York Times | Kenneth P. Thompson, the first black district attorney of Brooklyn and a voice for racial justice at a moment of tension between law enforcement and minority communities, died on Sunday from cancer, his family said. He was 50. Mr. Thompson was elected district attorney in 2013 after campaigning on a platform of reform and racial justice, and unseating Charles J. Hynes, a fellow Democrat and a troubled incumbent who had served more than 20 years. After being absent from his office for nearly two months, Mr. Thompson released a statement on Tuesday saying he had cancer. His office released a second statement on Sunday night, announcing his death and saying that his family had been by his side at Memorial Cancer Center in Manhattan when he died. A former federal prosecutor who went on to have a successful private law practice, Mr. Thompson earned a reputation in office as one of the country’s most progressive district attorneys, creating a robust internal unit that reviewed questionable convictions and establishing a policy of not prosecuting most marijuana arrests. At a moment of heightened racial tension over shootings, he chose to prosecute — and eventually won — the complicated case of Peter Liang, the former New York City police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man, Akai Gurley, in the stairwell of a housing project in 2014. After the trial was over, Mr. Thompson decided not to seek prison time for Mr. Liang, which enraged Mr. Gurley’s family and led to protests. “The thoughts and prayers of our entire city are with District Attorney Ken Thompson, his family and his loved ones tonight,” Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, said in a statement on Sunday. “With a life and promise cut far too short, our city was blessed with but a glimpse of Ken’s unwavering commitment to justice and his unrivaled pursuit of a more fair system for all those he served. ” Born and raised in New York City, Mr. Thompson was the son of a police officer and lived in public housing in Harlem before moving to City, a housing development in the Bronx. He attended the city’s public schools and applied to the Police Department, as his mother had, before choosing instead to attend the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. After his graduation, he obtained a law degree from the New York University School of Law. On the advice of one of his law professors, Ronald K. Noble, a onetime Treasury Department official and the secretary general of Interpol, Mr. Thompson sought and found a position as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn. In 1997, he was assigned the prestigious task of making the opening statement at the trial of Justin Volpe, a former police officer who eventually pleaded guilty to torturing a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, with a broken broomstick in the bathroom of a Brooklyn station house. After leaving government service, Mr. Thompson went into private practice. His most prominent case was representing an hotel housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, who accused the French politician Dominique of raping her in a Manhattan hotel room in 2011. Cyrus Vance Jr. the Manhattan district attorney, eventually dismissed the case, and Mr. Thompson was criticized for his incendiary personal attacks against Mr. Vance and members of his staff. Mr. Thompson had harbored ambitions for higher office, but, according to a friend who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mr. Thompson declined to disclose the type of his cancer, learned he had an aggressive form of the disease this year. By the time he received the diagnosis, the cancer had already metastasized and was incurable. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo may now name a replacement for Mr. Thompson, who would have faced next year. “A lifelong New Yorker, Ken was known as an effective, aggressive civil rights leader — and a national voice for criminal justice reform,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement on Sunday. Mr. Thompson is survived by his wife of 17 years, Thompson his children, Kennedy and Kenny his mother his father his brother and his sister. In his own statement, Eric Gonzalez, Mr. Thompson’s chief assistant, said that in his three years as Brooklyn’s district attorney, Mr. Thompson “transformed the office into a model urban prosecutor’s office with a mandate to do justice and treat everyone and every case fairly and with the utmost integrity. ” Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill said: “We are deeply saddened by the death of District Attorney Ken Thompson. He dedicated his life to the pursuit of justice and his legacy will live on through his contributions to the criminal justice system. ” | 0fake |
HYSTERICAL! TODDLERS HIJACK LIVE INTERVIEW With Freaked Out Dad [Video] | 1real | |
"Political identity is fair game for hatred": how Republicans and Democrats discriminate | In 1960, Americans were asked whether they would be pleased, displeased, or unmoved if their son or daughter married a member of the other political party.
Respondents reacted with a shrug. Only 5 percent of Republicans, and only 4 percent of Democrats, said they would be upset by the cross-party union. On the list of things you might care about in child's partner — are they kind, smart, successful, supportive? — which political party they voted for just didn't rate.
Fast forward to 2008. The polling firm YouGov asked Democrats and Republicans the same question — and got very different results. This time, 27 percent of Republicans, and 20 percent of Democrats, said they would be upset if their son or daughter married a member of the opposite party. In 2010, YouGov asked the question again; this time, 49 percent of Republicans, and 33 percent of Democrats, professed concern at interparty marriage.
For Shanto Iyengar, director of Stanford's political communications lab, the marriage polls were yet more evidence that something important was changing in American politics.
The big institutions and broad outlines of our political system have been so stable for so long that it makes it hard for people to see when the tectonic plates of American politics are actually shifting. There's been a Democratic Party and a Republican Party for most of the country's history, and they've always bickered, so it's easy to assume — particularly in a country with a short historical memory — that the partisanship we see now is simply how it's always been.
But Iyengar was coming to believe that today's political differences were fundamentally different from yesterday's political differences; the nature of American political partisanship, he worried, was mutating into something more fundamental, and more irreconcilable, than what it had been in the past.
Political scientists have mainly studied polarization as an ideological phenomenon — in this view, party polarization is really another term for political disagreement, and more polarization simply meant more severe disagreements. But it's hard to find the evidence that the disagreements among ordinary Americans have really become so much more intense.
"If you look at Americans' positions on the issues, they are much closer to the center than their elected representatives," Iyengar says. "The people who end up getting elected are super extreme, but the voters are not."
But even as American voters remained relatively centrist, they seemed to be getting angrier and more fearful of the other side.
After every election, researchers ask voters an almost endless series of questions, creating a rich record of why Americans vote the way they do. The result is called the American National Election Survey, and beginning in the 1980s it began to show something puzzling.
What caught Iyengar's eye was a section of the survey known as "the thermometer." The thermometer asks people to rate their feelings toward the two political parties on a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 is cold and negative and 100 is warm and positive. Iyengar noticed that since the 1980s, Republicans' feelings towards the Democratic Party, and Democrats' feelings towards the Republican Party, had dropped off a cliff.
In 1980, voters gave the opposite party a 45 on the thermometer — not as high as the 72 they gave their own party, but a pretty decent number all the same.
After 1980, though, the numbers began dropping. By 1992, the opposing party was down to 40; by 1998, it had fallen to 38; in 2012, it was down to 30. Meanwhile, partisans' views towards their own parties had remained pretty much unchanged — that 72 from 1980 had only fallen to 70 by 2012.
Iyengar's hypothesis was that rising political polarization was showing something more fundamental than political disagreement — it was tracking the transformation of party affiliation into a form of personal identity that reached into almost every aspect of our lives.
If he was right, then party affiliation wasn't simply an expression of our disagreements; it was also becoming the cause of them. If Democrats thought of other Democrats as their tribe and of Republicans as a hostile tribe, and vice versa, then the consequences would stretch far beyond politics — into things like, say, marriage.
And the data was everywhere. Polls looking at the difference between how Republicans viewed Democrats and how Democrats viewed Republicans now showed that partisans were less accepting of each other than white people were of black people or than black people were of white people.
But there was no way partisanship — an identity we choose, and that didn't matter much to us 50 years ago — could possibly have become a cleavage in American life as deep as race, right? That seemed crazy.
So Iyengar decided to test it.
The experiment was simple. Working with Dartmouth College political scientist Sean Westwood, Iyengar asked about 1,000 people to decide between the résumés of two high school seniors who were competing for a scholarship.
The resumes could differ in three ways: First, the senior could have either a 3.5 or 4.0 GPA; second, the senior could have been the president of the Young Democrats or Young Republicans club; third, the senior could have a stereotypically African-American name and have been president of the African-American Student Association or could have a stereotypically European-American name.
The point of the project was to see how political and cues affected a nonpolitical task — and to compare the effect with race. The results were startling.
When the résumé included a political identity cue, about 80 percent of Democrats and Republicans awarded the scholarship to their co-partisan. This held true whether or not the co-partisan had the highest GPA — when the Republican student was more qualified, Democrats only chose him 30 percent of the time, and when the Democrat was more qualified, Republicans only chose him 15 percent of the time.
Think about that for a moment: When awarding a college scholarship— a task that should be completely nonpolitical — Republicans and Democrats cared more about the political party of the student than the student's GPA. As Iyengar and Westwood wrote, "Partisanship simply trumped academic excellence."
It also trumped race. When the candidates were equally qualified, about 78 percent of African Americans chose the candidate of the same race, and 42 percent of European Americans did the same. When the candidate of the other race had a higher GPA, 45 percent of African Americans chose him, and 71 percent of European Americans chose him.
But Iyengar and Westwood wondered whether these results would really hold outside the laboratory setting. After all, the study's participants knew their answers were being judged by the researchers. Perhaps discriminating against members of the other party was socially acceptable in a way discriminating against people of the other race simply wasn't. In other words, perhaps people are willing to show their partisan bias whereas they hide their racial bias, and that was what was behind the results.
So Iyengar and Westwood came up with another test — a test that would be much harder to fool.
Taking an implicit-association test is a humbling experience. Your job, as the test taker, is to hit a letter on your keyboard when certain word and images flash together. The instructions are to go as fast as you can, but the fastest you can go is sluggish compared with the pace of the program. You get nervous, your finger stumbling over the keys, hitting the wrong ones. And the whole time you're doing it, you know you're being judged, and you realize, with a sickening certainty, that the verdict isn't going to be good.
The point of IATs is to measure the snap judgments your brain makes at speeds faster than conscious thought. Mountains of psychological research shows that these judgments are powerful — that much of what we consciously think is an after-the-fact rationalization for the instant judgment we made before we had time to think. IATs are meant to expose those judgments.
The test is grounded in studies of racism: Researchers will ask subjects to pair positive words with black and white faces, and see which they have more trouble doing. The underlying insight is that the task is easier to complete when it aligns with people's automatic, unconscious reaction than when it isn't — you're faster when you can go with instinct then when you have to suppress it. Study after study shows that IATs are at least somewhat predictive of real-world racial bias. They have since been extended to measure bias in gender, age, weight, and more.
Iyengar and Westwood's idea was simple: Why not use an IAT to measure partisan bias, too?
So they built one. And the results were fascinating. But before we run through them, Iyengar and Westwood kindly shared their code with us, and so you can take the test here, or at the top of this article, and see how strong your bias is.
The results showed, as you might expect, that Democrats exhibit an automatic bias against Republicans, and vice versa. What was surprising was that the bias partisans exhibited for their out-group exceeded the bias white participants showed for black people, or that black participants showed for white people. According to the test, Americans are more automatically partisan than they are automatically racist. (If you want to know your own results on the racism test, you can take a version meant to test racial bias here.)
This was, to Westwood, a bit of a shock. "To be honest, I didn't expect this to work at all," he says. "The common story is most Americans don’t care about politics, they don’t understand politics, they don’t understand policy. So you wouldn’t expect Americans to have strong preferences. That’s where I started."
Together, the two experiments suggest that partisanship now extends beyond politics — it's becoming a fundamental identity in American life, and may well lead to discrimination in completely apolitical contexts.
I asked two other political scientists — John Sides and Danny Hayes, both of George Washington University — whether they bought Iyengar and Westwood's data. Both said they did, though they noted that opportunities for partisan discrimination are less common than opportunities for racial or gender discrimination, if for no other reason than partisanship is less visible.
Still, the impulse to discriminate against the out-party is real. "The more partisanship becomes a social identity — and I think this is as true today as it's been in modern American politics — the more we should expect people to engage in in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination," Hayes said.
Iyengar's hypothesis is that partisan animosity is one of the few forms of discrimination that contemporary American society not only permits but actively encourages.
"Political identity is fair game for hatred," he says. "Racial identity is not. Gender identity is not. You cannot express negative sentiments about social groups in this day and age. But political identities are not protected by these constraints. A Republican is someone who chooses to be Republican, so I can say whatever I want about them."
You can see an example when you look at the media, Westwood observes. There are no major cable channels devoted to making people of other races look bad. But there are cable channels that seem devoted to making members of the other party look bad. "The media has become tribal leaders," he says. "They’re telling the tribe how to identify and behave, and we’re following along."
Iyengar and Westwood's research is a fundamental challenge to the way we like to believe American politics works. A world where we won't give an out-party high schooler with a better GPA a nonpolitical scholarship is not a world in which we're going to listen to politicians of the other side on emotional, controversial issues — even if they're making good arguments that are backed by the facts.
"[The media] is telling the tribe how to identify and behave, and we’re following along"
Iyengar's initial insight was that political polarization might be less about policy than it is about identity, and his research more than proves it. "The old theory was political parties came into existence to represent deep social cleavages," he says. "But now party politics has taken on a life of its own — now it is the cleavage."
That changes the playbook for cynical presidential candidates, policymakers, pundits, and so on.
"The major take-home here is it’s relatively easy to score points by attacking the opposition and touting the goodness of one’s own party," says Westwood. "If you’re trying to get the largest return from voters, it would make sense for politicians to try to activate social identity rather than focus on policy."
Winning an argument, at least when you're talking to co-partisans, is less about persuasion than about delegitimization — the savvy move isn't to try to build a better case than the other side, but to make clear that the other side is the other side.
Westwood is quick to note that the comparison to racism doesn't mean that partisanship is somehow worse than racism, more pervasive, or more damaging. It's easier to see — and thus discriminate — against people based on their skin color than their partisanship, for instance. And as Jenée Desmond-Harris has written, political beliefs are a choice with moral implications while race is not. Judging someone on whether they support gay marriage, universal healthcare, or gun laws is far different than judging someone on the color of their skin.
What Iyengar and Westwood's research shows, however, is that partisanship is no longer just a political phenomenon. Party and ideology have become powerful forms of personal identity, and the way they inform our lives — who we listen to, who we help, even who we love — now stretches far beyond the political realm. | 0fake |
BREAKING: OBAMA CAUGHT ON LIVE TV Telling Illegal Aliens It’s OK To Vote…Promises The Law Will Not Come After You! [Video] | 1real | |
STUNNING! FIRST LADY MELANIA TRUMP Wears Red To Greet Chinese Leader And Wife [Video] | President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump officially welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan to Mar-a-Lago. Melania wore a beautiful red dress and looked stunning! Talks will continue up to a working lunch on Friday, that are likely to turn to more serious issues.The summit has been somewhat overshadowed by renewed missile tests in North Korea and an apparent chemical attack in Syria that could prompt US military action.The UN Security Council where both China and the United States hold a veto is expected to meet later to discuss a response to Bashar al-Assad s Syrian regime.No one neither diplomats nor aides could be sure what would happen when the most powerful Chinese leader in a generation met a mercurial American president who has been in office less than 100 days and is capable of unraveling the most carefully-laid plans with a single 140-character tweet.For that reason Xi arrived with a gift-basket of tweetable deliverables , sources say, peace offerings on Trump s signature issues trade and jobs that he hopes will smooth over a relationship that began on shaky ground following disagreements over Taiwan.Top of the list, according to a source briefed on Xi s plans, will be a package of Chinese investments aimed at creating more than 700,000 American jobs the number pledged to Trump by China s regional rival Japan, during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s February Mar-a-Lago visit.There may also be offers to further open China s auto and agricultural markets, insiders say, and even some concessions on Chinese banks transactions with North Korea, a vital financial lifeline for the country.In return, Xi hopes to get assurances from Trump on punitive tariffs and that an American arms sale to Taiwan will be delayed, at least until after a major Communist Party meeting later this year.Trump s position on democratically-ruled Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province, has been a major irritant since the billionaire politician accepted a protocol-breaking phone call from the Taiwanese president after his election victory.The summit stakes, both domestic and international, are high.Disagreements over approaches to North Korea or bilateral trade could, if mishandled, destabilize North East Asia or tank the global economy.On the domestic political front, Xi is heading into a critical year. Ahead of a party congress that could cement his grip on power for years to come, he needs to show that he can deal with the US leader as an equal.He cannot afford to lose face while China aspires to be the new center of gravity for the world order, China political analyst Willy Lam told AFP.On the US side, however, North Korea will likely top the agenda following Wednesday s provocative missile launch.The Trump White House worries Pyongyang is just months away from marrying nuclear and long-range missile technology and putting the west coast of the United States within striking distance.While Beijing has condemned the missile tests, it has hesitated to take dramatic action against Pyongyang, fearing that the country s collapse would generate a flood of refugees across its borders and leave the US military on its doorstep.Read more: YahooRead more: Daily Mail | 1real |
Chinese court jails rights lawyer for two years for inciting subversion | BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court on Tuesday jailed a prominent rights lawyer for two years, saying he incited subversion of state power, the most recent such verdict in a sweeping crackdown on activism. Jiang Tianyong, 46, developed notions of overthrowing China s political system after being influenced by training workshops held by anti-China foreign forces overseas, the court in the central city of Changsha said. He used social media to attack or defame government departments and incited others to gather and demonstrate in public, the Changsha Intermediate People s Court said on its Twitter-like Weibo microblog. However, Jiang s wife, Jin Bianling, called the verdict unacceptable , adding that she believed he was being made an example of, in order to deter or repress other rights lawyers. I do not acknowledge or accept this verdict, she told Reuters in a telephone interview from the United States, where she lives. Jiang Tianyong is innocent. Jiang s family was unable to appoint their own lawyers, Jin said, and she had been unable to contact him in detention. In Geneva, the U.N. human rights office, which has denounced China s crackdown on defense lawyers since 2015, called for his release. We urge the Chinese authorities to release Jiang Tianyong as well as lawyer Wang Quanzhang and other lawyers and activists who have remained in detention since August 2015, U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told Reuters. The verdict came exactly a year after Jiang disappeared last November while visiting the family of another detained rights lawyer. He was held incommunicado for six months before being formally charged. There were serious concerns regarding the lawfulness of the legal proceedings , said Germany s ambassador to China, Michael Clauss, including the denial of access to lawyers of Jiang s choice. The circumstances and the lack of regard for the rights of the defendant certainly call into question the fairness of the verdict, Clauss said in a statement. Jiang, who was disbarred in 2009 after taking on sensitive cases such as defending practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, had been an outspoken critic of the government crackdown on dissent. Since mid-2015, hundreds of rights lawyers and activists have been sentenced or detained, drawing condemnation from foreign governments and international rights groups. Tuesday s ruling broadly followed the facts in Jiang s confession at his trial in August, when the court released video images of him reading parts of a written statement. China has videostreamed or liveblogged increasing numbers of court hearings in recent years, in a push for judicial transparency. But in sensitive cases, say rights activists, only selected portions are made available, when the defendant has agreed to go along with a pre-prepared outcome. Rights group Amnesty International called Jiang s conviction baseless and his trial a total sham . His so-called confession and apology, most likely extracted under duress, were nothing more than an act of political theater directed by the authorities, said William Nee, a China researcher at Amnesty. | 0fake |
Trump May Have Just Killed This Vile Conservative Anti-Woman Crusader’s Career | Supporting Donald Trump was a senile move too far.Back in the 1970s, conservative Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly became an enemy to women across the country by leading the charge to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment which would have enshrined gender equality in the Constitution.For decades since, Schlafly has made it her mission to degrade and reduce women to submissive household slaves who have no other duty than to take a husband, be an incubator for fetuses, and leave jobs, politics, and education to the men.All of that should have been enough to make Schlafly a national pariah banished to the extreme fringe of society where she would never be seen or heard from again, but it apparently wasn t.But now it appears her downfall is finally near.Say what you want about Donald Trump, but the one thing he seems to be doing best during this campaign season is splitting the Republican Party and causing political civil war within the conservative ranks.Even among the leadership of the Eagle Forum, Trump has created a divide that has resulted in a power struggle that could at long last rid America of one of the most hated conservative power players.As it turns out, Schlafly s own daughter and several members of the Eagle Forum board who support Ted Cruz are making an effort to oust the 91-year-old because she supports Donald Trump, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reports. It s disloyal and it s terribly shocking, and I m completely depressed about it, Schlafly whined before a meeting that resulted in the axing of Eagle Forum President Ed Martin, a longtime Phyllis Schlafly minion who believes the hostile takeover is due to Schlafly s endorsement of Trump. The attendees purported to pass several motions to wrest control of the organization from me, Schlafly claimed. They are attempting to seize access to our bank accounts, to terminate employees, and to control the bank accounts and all of Eagle Forum. Gee, you re being treated like shit and think it s unfair? Congratulations! You feel the same way that millions of women in this country have felt since you aided in cheating them out of a constitutional amendment that would have mandated equality and fairness. And it s about time karma came knocking at Schlafly s door to bite her in the ass.Here s the video of Schlafly endorsing Trump in St. Louis last month via YouTube.Donald Trump is an anti-women ignoramus who would be a complete disaster for our country if he were to become president. But now he can claim to have done at least one good thing for women and our nation as a whole by duping Phyllis Schlafly into supporting him and destroying her own power in the process. Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
VACATIONING LAME-DUCK OBAMA Ready To Announce Sanctions Against Russia | The Obama administration plans to announce on Thursday a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into U.S. political institutions and individuals and leaking information in an effort to help President-elect Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, two U.S. officials said on Wednesday.Both officials declined to specify what actions President Barack Obama has approved, but said targeted economic sanctions, indictments, leaking information to embarrass Russian officials or oligarchs, and restrictions on Russian diplomats in the United States are among steps that have been discussed.One decision that has been made, they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, is to avoid any moves that exceed the Russian election hacking and risk an escalating cyber conflict that could spiral out of control. One example of an excessive step might be interfering with Russian internet messaging.Russia has repeatedly denied hacking accusations. Trump has dismissed the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community.Obama, in an interview earlier this month with NPR, said, We need to take action and we will against Russia for interfering in the U.S. election.Trump seemed to suggest the United States should not impose sanctions on Russia. I think we ought to get on with our lives, Trump told reporters in Florida on Wednesday when asked about remarks by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said Russia and President Vladimir Putin should expect tough sanctions for the cyber attacks.Russia s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, promised retaliation on Wednesday against Washington in the event of new economic sanctions.Jim Lewis, a cyber security expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said further sanctions may be an effective U.S. tool in part because they would be difficult for Trump to roll back and because Russia hates dealing with them. For the rest of the world, it s like having scumball stamped on your forehead, Lewis said.How to respond to the growing problem of cyber attacks carried out or sponsored by foreign powers has bedeviled Obama, whose eight years in office witnessed a torrent of major hacks against the U.S. government and private organizations that were attributed to China, North Korea, Iran and Russia.In past cases, administration officials have decided to publicly blame North Korea and indict members of China s military for hacking because they decided the net benefit of public shaming and increased awareness brought to cyber security outweighed potential risks.But determining an appropriate response to Russia s actions has proven more complicated in part because Russia s cyber capabilities are more advanced and due to fears about disrupting other geopolitical issues, such as the civil war in Syria.Obama may choose to invoke an April 2015 executive order that empowered him to levy sanctions in response to cyber attacks perpetrated by foreign groups targeting infrastructure, such as transportation, or done for economic purposes.Another option would be further economic sanctions against Russia. Washington has already sanctioned Russia over the past two years to punish Moscow for its role in annexing Crimea. But former U.S. officials say the existing measures leave Washington plenty of room to slap new, tougher sanction on Russia in response to cyber intrusions. ReutersIn recent months, WikiLeaks and I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself. That pressure has come from the campaign s allies, including the Obama administration, and from liberals who are anxious about who will be elected US President.On the eve of the election, it is important to restate why we have published what we have.The right to receive and impart true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaks an organization that has a staff and organizational mission far beyond myself. Our organization defends the public s right to be informed.This is why, irrespective of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election, the real victor is the US public which is better informed as a result of our work.The US public has thoroughly engaged with WikiLeaks election related publications which number more than one hundred thousand documents. Millions of Americans have pored over the leaks and passed on their citations to each other and to us. It is an open model of journalism that gatekeepers are uncomfortable with, but which is perfectly harmonious with the First Amendment.We publish material given to us if it is of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical importance and which has not been published elsewhere. When we have material that fulfills this criteria, we publish. We had information that fit our editorial criteria which related to the Sanders and Clinton campaign (DNC Leaks) and the Clinton political campaign and Foundation (Podesta Emails). No-one disputes the public importance of these publications. It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to withhold such an archive from the public during an election.At the same time, we cannot publish what we do not have. To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump s campaign, or Jill Stein s campaign, or Gary Johnson s campaign or any of the other candidates that fufills our stated editorial criteria. As a result of publishing Clinton s cables and indexing her emails we are seen as domain experts on Clinton archives. So it is natural that Clinton sources come to us.We publish as fast as our resources will allow and as fast as the public can absorb it.That is our commitment to ourselves, to our sources, and to the public.This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election. The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers. I spoke at the launch of the campaign for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, because her platform addresses the need to protect them. This is an issue that is close to my heart because of the Obama administration s inhuman and degrading treatment of one of our alleged sources, Chelsea Manning. But WikiLeaks publications are not an attempt to get Jill Stein elected or to take revenge over Ms Manning s treatment either.Publishing is what we do. To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favour one of the candidates above the public s right to know.This is after all what happened when the New York Times withheld evidence of illegal mass surveillance of the US population for a year until after the 2004 election, denying the public a critical understanding of the incumbent president George W Bush, which probably secured his reelection. The current editor of the New York Times has distanced himself from that decision and rightly so.The US public defends free speech more passionately, but the First Amendment only truly lives through its repeated exercise. The First Amendment explicitly prevents the executive from attempting to restrict anyone s ability to speak and publish freely. The First Amendment does not privilege old media, with its corporate advertisers and dependencies on incumbent power factions, over WikiLeaks model of scientific journalism or an individual s decision to inform their friends on social media. The First Amendment unapologetically nurtures the democratization of knowledge. With the Internet, it has reached its full potential.Yet, some weeks ago, in a tactic reminiscent of Senator McCarthy and the red scare, Wikileaks, Green Party candidate Stein, Glenn Greenwald and Clinton s main opponent were painted with a broad, red brush. The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications because none exists.In the end, those who have attempted to malign our groundbreaking work over the past four months seek to inhibit public understanding perhaps because it is embarrassing to them a reason for censorship the First Amendment cannot tolerate. Only unsuccessfully do they try to claim that our publications are inaccurate.WikiLeaks decade-long pristine record for authentication remains. Our key publications this round have even been proven through the cryptographic signatures of the companies they passed through, such as Google. It is not every day you can mathematically prove that your publications are perfect but this day is one of them.We have endured intense criticism, primarily from Clinton supporters, for our publications. Many long-term supporters have been frustrated because we have not addressed this criticism in a systematic way or responded to a number of false narratives about Wikileaks motivation or sources. Ultimately, however, if WL reacted to every false claim, we would have to divert resources from our primary work.WikiLeaks, like all publishers, is ultimately accountable to its funders. Those funders are you. Our resources are entirely made up of contributions from the public and our book sales. This allows us to be principled, independent and free in a way no other influential media organization is. But it also means that we do not have the resources of CNN, MSNBC or the Clinton campaign to constantly rebuff criticism.Yet if the press obeys considerations above informing the public, we are no longer talking about a free press, and we are no longer talking about an informed public.Wikileaks remains committed to publishing information that informs the public, even if many, especially those in power, would prefer not to see it. WikiLeaks must publish. It must publish and be damned. | 1real |
10 Reasons to drink lemon water on an empty stomach | 10 Reasons to drink lemon water on an empty stomach
Wednesday, November 02, 2016 by: Amy Goodrich Tags: lemon water , detox , digestive health (NaturalNews) Fruit-infused water is extremely trendy right now. Celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, and Beyonce swear by lemon water first thing in the morning. There are even entire diets based on this fruit. According to some health advocates, drinking lemon water on an empty stomach takes you one step closer to optimal health.But does swapping your morning coffee for this fashionably healthy lifestyle choice offer any significant benefit? Or is this just another health fad? Let's take a closer look at ten incredible reasons why you should start your day with a glass of lemon water. 1. Nutrient powerhouse While low in calories, lemons are loaded with health-promoting essential nutrients, including vitamin C, B-complex vitamins, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, and fiber. 2. Boosts immune system Vitamin C plays a major role in our immune system, and lemons are loaded with it. A strong and healthy immune system will help you keep bacterial and viral infections at bay. 3. Digestion aid The citric acid in lemon interacts with enzymes and acids involved in digestion. It stimulates digestion and the secretion of gastric juice. Furthermore, lemon juice loosens toxins in the digestive tract and may help relieve symptoms of indigestion such as bloating, burping, and heartburn. 4. Detoxifies your body Every day, we are subjected to a wide variety of chemicals and toxins present in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. While our body has its own cleansing systems, it is a good idea to put less stress on your already overworked body and give these cleansing mechanisms a boost. Lemon juice stimulates the liver by enhancing its enzyme function, thus helping your body to flush out more waste materials and toxins . 5. Boosts heart and brain health Thanks to its high level of potassium, lemon juice aids in the proper functioning of the nervous system. Furthermore, it has been shown to lower blood pressure which is a major risk factor for a heart attack. 6. Promotes glowing skin Lemons are packed with antioxidants. These little free radical fighting substances help to decrease blemishes and wrinkles for a rejuvenated, radiant skin. When applied to the skin, lemons can also reduce the appearance of scar tissue and age spots. 7. Weight loss aid While lemon juice might not be a weight loss miracle on its own, its high levels of pectin fibers curb the appetite and will help you to eat less at main meals. 8. Fights inflammation Lemon water possesses strong anti-inflammatory properties to soothe a sore throat or inflamed tonsils. Additionally, it removes uric acid from the joints, which is one of the main contributors to chronic pain and inflammation. 9. Boosts energy levels Lemons energize the body and fight feelings of depression and anxiety. So instead of having a coffee in the morning why not try a glass of lemon juice instead? 10. Hydrates your body After a night of hard work, your body is dehydrated and in desperate need of water. Lemon juice provides your body with the much-needed water and electrolytes (potassium, calcium, and magnesium) to rehydrate body tissue and flush out more toxins and waste materials.While lemon water seems to be the perfect drink to prevent or cure a myriad of our daily aches and pains, not all that glitters is gold. Lemon juice can be hard on teeth enamel. Therefore, it's important to dilute it with water and rinse your mouth thoroughly with filtered water after drinking lemon juice. Sources for this article include: | 1real |
TRUMP EXPOSES OBAMA’S INCOMPETENCE: Cuts EPA Budget…Still Fixes Flint’s Water Crisis | Although Obama had 3 years to take action to fix the Flint water problem, President Donald Trump has managed to do it in 2 months. The EPA has just issued a $100 million grant to the city of Flint, Michigan to replace the city s corroded and lead-polluted pipes.Critics of President Trump have lambasted him for his proposed budget cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency, saying the cuts are proof that he doesn t care about the environment.EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt released a statement saying, The people of Flint and all Americans deserve a more responsive federal government EPA will especially focus on helping Michigan improve Flint s water infrastructure as part of our larger goal of improving America s water infrastructure. Under authority granted the agency by the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016, the EPA just issued a $100 million grant to the beleaguered city of Flint, Michigan, to help in the effort at replacing the city s badly corroded and lead-tainted system of water pipes. We are excited and very grateful to receive these much-needed funds, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said. The City of Flint being awarded a grant of this magnitude in such a critical time of need will be a huge benefit. The state of Michigan also contributed $20 million to match 20 percent of the grant. Meanwhile, CNN continues with their anti-Trump narrative and insists that President Trump had nothing to do with the grant and that it actually came from an action that former President Barack Obama and the prior Congress took in 2016. They are clearly blind to Trump s promise to fix the crumbling infrastructure of our country as soon as possible, something Obama never made a priority.CNN also obsessed over Trump s proposed 31 percent EPA budget cuts, failing to mention that the president had no intention of defunding programs to help improve the water system infrastructure.Despite the fact that Flint has been dealing with contaminated water for three years, Obama s EPA did not attempt to fix the problem. Now that Trump is in office, he is taking real action to make positive changes in the lives of Flint, MI citizens.Source: Conservative Tribune | 1real |
Big-money gamblers face new scrutiny at British Columbia casinos | VANCOUVER (Reuters) - High-rolling gamblers will face more stringent anti-money-laundering standards in British Columbia casinos, the Canadian province said on Tuesday, as it unveiled the first set of recommendations from a review of its casino sector. Gamblers wanting to deposit cash or bonds worth C$10,000 or more will now need to provide identification and proof of their source of funds, including details on their bank and the account from which the money is sourced, the province said. Two consecutive large transactions will trigger added scrutiny. Regulators will also be placed onsite to provide the increased vigilance needed to ensure anti-money laundering protocols are followed, it said. An internal government report, commissioned by the previous Liberal government and released in September by the current NDP government, found high-risk cash transactions taking place at a Vancouver-area casino popular with high roller Asian VIP clients. Media reports have noted similar issues at other Vancouver-area casinos, in many cases tying the suspicious funds to the West Coast city s runaway housing market. Our government has made clear the urgency around addressing issues of money-laundering at B.C. casinos, and we will ensure these first two recommendations are not only implemented as soon as possible, but enforced on the ground, British Columbia Attorney General David Eby said in a statement. He later told reporters that some details still need to be worked out and noted the regulator, the Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, will need to hire more staff to fill casino roles, particularly people with Mandarin language skills. The recommendations unveiled on Tuesday are the first from investigator Peter German, a former deputy commissioner with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who will provide his final report to the provincial government by the end of March 2018. Eby said it is possible that the recommendations could impact gaming revenues in the province, but that it was a price the government was willing to pay to ensure that British Columbians have confidence that the proceeds of crime are not flowing through B.C. casinos. The province s commercial gambling revenues, excluding horse racing, topped C$2.9 billion ($2.3 billion) in 2014-15, according to government data. | 0fake |
Kansas passes Medicaid expansion bill despite governor's objection | (Reuters) - The Kansas Senate gave final approval on Tuesday to a bill expanding eligibility for Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) even though the measure faces a likely veto by Republican Governor Sam Brownback. The 25-14 Senate vote followed the House’s 81-44 passage of the bill last month, with the vote totals falling short of veto-proof margins in both Republican-controlled chambers. In a tweet on Monday, Melika Willoughby, the governor’s spokeswoman, said instead of addressing the health care needs of vulnerable residents in a sustainable way, the legislature was choosing to expand “a failing entitlement program.” “To expand Obamacare when the program is in a death spiral is not responsible policy,” she tweeted. After legislation to replace and repeal the act championed by former President Barack Obama was pulled in the U.S. House last week, President Donald Trump warned Obamacare would collapse. The replacement bill pushed by House Speaker Paul Ryan would have ended the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid, the federal and state funded insurance program for the poor and disabled. Kansas was not among the 31 states as of 2016 that had opted to expand Medicaid with the federal government footing much of the cost under Obamacare. With the ACA’s enhanced federal funding, Kansas’ expansion effective Jan. 1, 2018 would cost the state an estimated $31 million in fiscal 2018, which begins July 1, and $67 million in fiscal 2019 with the addition of more than 180,000 recipients, according to estimates cited in a legislative report on the bill. Without enhanced federal matching funds, the state’s costs would balloon to $465 million by fiscal 2019. Kansas is already struggling with a structural budget deficit largely due to tax cuts enacted in 2012. In addition, the state supreme court ruled earlier this month that Kansas was underfunding public schools in violation of a state constitutional requirement for adequacy. | 0fake |
Kremlin says expects to agree date for Trump-Putin phone call soon | MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday it expected to soon agree a date for the first phone call between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, but that it had no information for now about when the two men might hold their first meeting. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with reporters that contacts between Moscow and Washington about the date of the first phone call were being handled by the Russian Foreign Ministry. It was too early to talk about the details of any possible cooperation between Russia and the United States in fighting Islamist militants, Peskov said. Trump has named defeating Islamic State as a priority for his administration. | 0fake |
Millennials Are More Racist Than They Think | News about race in America these days is almost universally negative. Longstanding wealth, income and employment gaps between whites and people of color are increasing, and tensions between police and minority communities around the country are on the rise. But many claim there’s a glimmer of hope: The next generation of Americans, they say, is “post-racial”—more tolerant, and therefore more capable of easing these race-based inequities. Unfortunately, closer examination of the data suggests that millennials aren’t racially tolerant, they’re racially apathetic: They simply ignore structural racism rather than try to fix it.
In 2010, a Pew Research report trumpeted that “the younger generation is more racially tolerant than their elders.” In the Chicago Tribune, Ted Gregory seized on this to declare millennials “the most tolerant generation in history.” These types of arguments typically cling to the fact that young people are more likely than their elders to favor interracial marriage. But while millennials are indeed less likely than baby boomers to say that more people of different races marrying each other is a change for the worse (6 percent compared to 14 percent), their opinions on that score are basically no different than those of the generation immediately before them, the Gen Xers, who come in at 5 percent. On interracial dating, the trend is similar, with 92 percent of Gen Xers saying it’s “all right for blacks and whites to date each other,” compared to 93 percent of millennials.
Furthermore, these questions don’t really say anything about racial justice: After all, interracial dating and marriage are unlikely to solve deep disparities in criminal justice, wealth, upward mobility, poverty and education—at least not in this century. (Black-white marriages currently make up just 2.2 percent of all marriages.) And when it comes to opinions on more structural issues, such as the role of government in solving social and economic inequality and the need for continued progress, millennials start to split along racial lines. When people are asked, for example, “How much needs to be done in order to achieve Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality?” the gap between white millennials and millennials of color (all those who don’t identify as white) are wide. And once again, millennials are shown to be no more progressive than older generations: Among millennials, 42 percent of whites answer that “a lot” must be done to achieve racial equality, compared to 41 percent of white Gen Xers and 44 percent of white boomers.
The most significant change has been among nonwhite millennials, who are more racially optimistic than their parents. (Fifty-four percent of nonwhite millennials say “a lot” must be done, compared with 60 percent of nonwhite Gen Xers.) And this racial optimism isn’t exactly warranted. The racial wealth gap has increased since the 2007 financial crisis, and blacks who graduate from college have less wealth than whites who haven’t completed high school. A new paper by poverty experts Thomas Hirschl and Mark Rank estimates that whites are 6.74 times more likely to enter the top 1 percent of the income distribution ladder than nonwhites. And Bhashkar Mazumder finds that 60 percent of blacks whose parents were in the top half of income distribution end up in the bottom, compared with 36 percent of whites.
As to how well whites and nonwhites get along, only 13 percent of white millennials say “not well at all,” compared with 31 percent of nonwhite millennials. (Thirteen percent of white Gen Xers and 32 percent of nonwhite Gen Xers agree.)
In a 2009 study using American National Election Studies—a survey of Americans before and after each presidential election—Vincent Hutchings finds, “younger cohorts of Whites are no more racially liberal in 2008 than they were in 1988.” My own analysis of the most recent data reveals a similar pattern: Gaps between young whites and old whites on support for programs that aim to further racial equality are very small compared to the gaps between young whites and young blacks.
And even though the gaps within the millennial generation are wide, as with the Pew data, there is also evidence that young blacks are more racially conservative than their parents, as they are less likely to support government aid to blacks.
Spencer Piston, professor at the Campbell Institute at Syracuse University, used ANES data and found a similar pattern on issues relating to economic inequality. He examined a tax on millionaires, affirmative action, a limit to campaign contributions and a battery of questions that measure egalitarianism. He says, “the racial divide (in particular the black/white divide) dwarfs other divides in policy opinion. Age differences in public opinion are small in comparison to racial differences.” This finding is, he adds, “consistent with a long-standing finding in political science.” Piston finds that young whites have the same level of racial stereotypes as their parents. | 0fake |
Top Democrat, in letter, blasts Valeant CEO for lack of cooperation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday called on Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc for more details on its relationship with Philidor RX services and chided the company for not providing Congress any documents or other requested information. “Your refusal to cooperate fully with Congress is extremely troubling and reflects a pattern of obstruction that impairs our ability to protect the American people against your company’s exorbitant price increases,” U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings wrote in a letter to Valeant Chief Executive Michael Pearson. | 0fake |
As World Trade Center Fell, Donald Trump Boasted His Tower Was Now The Biggest In Manhattan | September 11 was arguably the worst day in American history. All Americans were shell-shocked, fearful, and lost in grief and confusion.Well, almost all Americans were grief stricken, except of course Donald Trump. In his typical form, Trump used an unimaginable horror to prop himself up and pat himself on the back.As the World Trade Center collapsed to the ground, Trump, in a by-phone T.V. interview, boasted that his building, 40 Wall Street, was now the tallest building in lower Manhattan.Reporter: You have one of the landmark buildings down in the financial district there, 40 Wall Street uh did you have any damage? What s happened down there?Trump: Oh, it s an amazing phone call I made, 40 Wall Street actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan and it was actually before the World Trade Center was the tallest, and when they built the World Trade Center it became known as the second tallest. But now it s the tallest.Congratulations, Trump. As thousands of people lie dead in a mast of rubble and debris, you single handedly turn a national tragedy into praise for yourself and your buildings.Imagine if Hillary Clinton, who was Senator of New York at the time, had said something so incredibly offensive, so devoid of sympathy or empathy for New Yorkers.Of course his supporters Republicans who exploit 9/11 to draw out our fears will dismiss this as another liberal character assault. Coupled with his lies about Muslims, the theft of his charity for 9/11 survivors, it should come as no surprise that Donald Trump did not care on iota about what happened.Only a egomaniacal narcissist would take the opportunity to plug in his business as being the biggest (and thus the best) as an iconic hallmark of the world crumbles.Watch the exchange for yourself and share it with all your patriotic Trump-supporting friends and family. Show them how hereally felt on 9/11:There s audio of Trump patting himself on the back for having the tallest building in Manhattan after the WTC fell! pic.twitter.com/vQFFcAibQz Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) September 11, 2016Here s your candidate, Republicans, in all his glory.Featured image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images | 1real |
Parents Navigate Tears and Cheers as Kids React to Election - The New York Times | In the Roethle household in Leawood, Kan. the children woke up on Wednesday to a family celebration. Donald J. Trump was the new president. But the excitement came with an admonition “to be a good winner” and not to gloat about his win at school. “Kindness is the No. 1 thing in our house,” said Alana Roethle, 37, a mother of four children ranging in age from 4 to 9. “We were talking about this in the morning, that we love everybody, even if they don’t share our political views, even if they don’t love Jesus. ” The morning was different for Amber Karamat, 47, of Anaheim, Calif. Her son was devastated by the news. “Will Trump still let me be an American?” he asked his mom, who cried as she recounted the story. “I feel helpless. I said, ‘No one can take that away from you, sweetie. You were born an American. ’” Perhaps more than any other election in recent memory, the Trump versus Clinton campaign was a family affair. Girls donned “The Future is Female” and canvassed neighborhoods with their mothers to support Hillary. Parents supporting Trump imagined a better economic future for their children, and talked to them about gun rights and safe borders. Often, the election news cycle forced parents to navigate tricky topics like bullying, profanity and sexual harassment. A Clinton ad reminded us “Our children are watching. ” And now, in the days after the election, parents on both sides of the vote struggle to put the bitter election fight into perspective and find teachable moments in the sometimes unpleasant aftermath. Amber Deyle, 37, of Emmons, Minn. and her husband, Dan, watched the election results roll in with their two sons, ages 6 and 10. “We were really excited,” she said, noting gun rights as a critical issue. “Hunting is important to our family. Not only were we raised on it, but it helps us teach our children where food comes from. ” But she and her husband had some hard conversations with their boys about Mr. Trump, she added, “because of some of the things he had said about women and minorities and things like that. But at the same time, we also had to explain to our children what Benghazi was. ” Daniel Roberts, a father of two daughters in Montclair, N. J. and a Clinton supporter, took his younger daughter, 10, to vote with him. Mr. Roberts, a high school football coach and a patient navigator at a hospital, is black and his wife is white, and their daughters are biracial. After the results came in, his younger daughter was upset that a woman didn’t win and worried about the racist sentiments she’d been hearing. “My wife and I talked about it a lot and told her to keep aiming high, and reach for the stars. ” His older daughter, 14, was not so easily comforted. “My daughter wants to be a doctor. She’s a smart girl, and she knows it’s a tough field. She understands that she’s already starting one step behind as a woman. ” Mr. Roberts said he’d never seen her so dejected. “Seeing her mood after the election, the dad in me came out and I felt for her. It almost made me cry. ” Parents on both sides of the election say the result has triggered conversations at home that are equally focused on civics and history as well as values and acceptance. Carrie Chavis, a mother in Austin, Tex. voted for Mrs. Clinton, but most of her neighborhood voted for Mr. Trump. Her sons expressed disbelief when Ms. Chavis told them that Mr. Trump had won the election. Her oldest son was taunted at school when classmates learned he supported Mrs. Clinton. But even though Ms. Chavis is sad about the result, she used the moment to remind her sons about the value of democracy. “I told them that we are so lucky that we get to vote for who we want as president, and we should be so thankful,” she said. In Pelham, N. Y. Cherie Corso, a Trump supporter, had similar conversations with her daughter, Julia, who helped her volunteer for the Trump campaign and cried with happiness when he won. But she also struggled at school, where most of the other students supported Mrs. Clinton. “She’s been getting backlash,” Ms. Corso said. “My advice to her is, ‘He’s the winner, O. K.? He won, the people have spoken, you don’t have to defend Donald Trump, you don’t have to say anything. ’” Julia said most Trump supporters at her school don’t admit it. “Everybody whispers,” she said. “If I say something about how he’s not that bad, people yell at me. I don’t blame them because it’s something they feel passionately about. ” Jason Benedict, 46, a registered Republican and the father of a boy in elementary school in Scotch Plains, N. J. voted for a candidate. He reminded his son “to be kind to his friends who may be upset by this decision. ” “No matter who the president is, what’s really important is that he try his hardest every day to be nice to people, be helpful, and that everyone is entitled to their own life and opinions,” he said. Valerie Kummer, 32, a Republican from Watford City, N. D. watched her children leave for school on Tuesday morning chanting “Trump” because they were excited to cast their ballots in the school’s mock election. Ms. Kummer said she reminded them throughout the campaign “about loving other people and loving differences. ” For the first time in his life, Ben Goldstein, 39, a rabbi and father of three young children in Los Angeles, voted for a Democrat for president. The first thing his daughter asked him when she woke up on Wednesday was, who won the election? “I told her that Donald Trump won and explained that we live in an amazing country where people disagree and get to decide who is president. I told her that I hope he does such a great job that I end up voting for him in four years,” he said. His daughter seemed to accept that explanation, but Rabbi Goldstein is concerned about the damage the divisive campaign has already done. “Instead of vilifying him and all his followers, we can take this opportunity to look in the mirror and see how we contributed to the rhetoric of the past few years. How do we treat those with whom we disagree? What do we do with their arguments?” he said. In some families, children disagreed with their parents’ choice for president. Elise Breth, a mother of two in Orlando, Fla. is a Trump supporter, as is her son. But her daughter supported Mrs. Clinton. She “thought Hillary hung the moon because she’s female, and that’s who her friends at school were supporting,” Ms. Breth said. “Even though I support most of Trump’s policies, I am proud of my daughter for recognizing that a strong, independent woman can be anything she wants to be. ” | 0fake |
WATCH Trump Fans B*tch And Moan About How Hard Life Is For Trump Fans | Life is hard. We get it. Every one of us has had a tough time for one reason or another. However, Trump fans seem to want us to believe that the world is especially cruel to them just because they re Trump fans. While they make a point about how stereotyping is bad, they made the choice to support a racist, sexist, narcissistic prick, even if they don t see themselves that way.That s literally what they re saying in this video, posted to the New York Post s website. One woman says: I think that we are portrayed as the same things as Donald Trump: Racist we don t like people coming into this country who aren t the same race as us. That s not the case at all. And a man says: You always have to be fearful, like the Stasi is going to come and grab you because you re a Trump supporter. Oh, well, gee, pardon us. And really? The Stasi? Come on. It s kind of hard not to see Trumpkins this way when many of his biggest policy positions are blatantly racist, and will harm pretty much everyone who isn t straight, white, and cisgender.While one man said, Please, sit down, let s have a rational conversation, the problem there is not Trump s supporters, per se. It s Trump himself and his supporters by proxy. Trump is not rational, so having a rational conversation about him is useless. Yes, it s true that one can support a candidate without having to agree with every single position that candidate has. However, when something is a huge part of what they stand for, it s almost impossible to separate the supporters from their candidate.Watch the video below:When you look at the people who attend Trump s rallies, it likewise gets more difficult not to lump them all in together as racist, hateful bigots. So, to these particular supporters who don t want to be seen this way, how about you people start really pressing your candidate, and the Republican Party, a lot harder to get him to tone it down?Until you do, our hearts bleed pink carbonated peanut butter for a plight of your own choosing.Featured image via screen capture from embedded video | 1real |
Female Veterans Release Anti-Trump Ad | Female Veterans Release Anti-Trump Ad “The problem with Blue Falcons, like Donald Trump, is they get you killed.” | October 28, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! Donald Trump likes to boast about the endorsement he’s received from military personnel, but he’ll have to work a lot harder to win over those who serve if he is elected as the next Commander-in-Chief. As was recently reported, 55 generals denounced the Republican Presidential candidate in a historic rebuke last week. And now, a group of female veterans with the Common Defense PAC have released a compelling new ad called “Blue Falcon”.
The Common Defense PAC defines itself as “a diverse group of male and female veterans” who represent the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Army Reserves, and Air National Guard. In the ad below, women from various branches of the military explain their aspirations for serving, as well as their disgust with the business tycoon who is running for President. Said veteran Wendy Barranco: “As a migrant, I wanted to give something back to this country that had given me and my family so much. So I became an Army combat medic. When you’re fighting to save a fellow soldier’s life, things get real very quickly. You have to trust your team.”
It’s made clear, however, that Donald Trump is not the guy you’d want on your team. Barranco continued: “Guys like Donald Trump? We call them Blue Falcons.”
In case you’re not familiar with the term, it’s a derogatory euphemism for “buddy-fucker.” The women also explain that a Blue Falcon is the type of person who will step on their teammate to get ahead .
From his declaration that it should be “expected” for rape to take place in the military to his inappropriate and abrasive comments toward women, minorities, and disabled individuals, he is not the best candidate for President, the veterans assert. This work by Planet Free Will is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. | 1real |
NRA Finally Vomits Up Stupid, Hypocritical Non-Statement On Philandro Castile’s Death | Philandro Castile, the black man in Minnesota who was a licensed concealed carrier and carrying his weapon when he was pulled over and shot, must present quite a dilemma for the NRA. Castile did everything right he informed the officer he was licensed, he was carrying, and then told him he was reaching for his wallet as ordered, and he was murdered anyway. One might say he was murdered for daring to carry while black.As the nation s largest and oldest civil rights organization (oh, please), the NRA remained suspiciously silent for two days following Castile s murder, likely because they know how this makes them look, and it ain t good. Today, they finally broke their silence, obviously figuring out a way to comment on Castile s murder without actually giving validity to the Black Lives Matter movement and their many justified grievances:Investigation? Really? Do they want a thorough investigation into the deaths of the Dallas police officers before actually commenting there, too? No, of course not. The deaths of those officers feed their narrative and makes them look like allies of the police, which bolsters the racist beliefs of their primary base. The death of a black man exercising his 2nd Amendment right? Well, that should just be swept under the rug lest we continue to fuel racial tensions.Here s what they said about the tragedy in Dallas. Judge for yourself:They were very quick to issue a statement following the shooting of 12 police officers in Dallas. The NRA caters to white identity politics, and they love to whine about BLM s criticism of police. Thus, it s easy for them to talk about police officers being shot, and white people being shot, as though black people are the scourge of our society.But when it s a black person that s been shot because they dared to exercise their 2nd Amendment right to carry?Silence.Until they figure out exactly how to craft a response that still caters to white identity politics while pretending they aren t also implying that black people don t have a 2nd Amendment right to carry a gun.Racial resentment (read: white pride) is one of the main drivers of opposition to every form of gun legislation ever. The two are intimately linked, and the NRA fuels it because it ensures more gun sales. The more racist a white person is, the harder the NRA works to court them.Their statement is a non-statement, and it s shameful and disgusting, both in its tardiness and in what it says.Featured image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 1real |
Super PACs Escalate Air War Ahead of Iowa Caucuses | A new set of super PAC advertisements released Tuesday are intensifying the GOP primary battle ahead of the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus, while allies of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton are fighting back against recent Republican attacks. | 0fake |
They Said What?!: Find Out What Liam Neeson, Lorena Garcia, And Kyle Chandler Have To Say | Email Ever wonder what’s on the mind of today’s most notable people? Well, don’t miss our unbelievable roundup of the best and most talked about quotes of the day: “ Of course ‘Schindler’s List’ is one of the saddest movies of all time, but I’m not going to brag about it every chance I get. ” —Liam Neeson On humility “ When I put something in the microwave, I like to whisper to it that I’m ‘sending it to solitary.’ It’s a fun little joke, and the food and I can both laugh, knowing that it’s coming back out very soon. ” —Lorena Garcia “ Some good stuff going on there. Love them. ” —Kyle Chandler | 1real |
Lebanon finds soldiers' bodies after retaking Islamic State-held area | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon has identified the bodies of six of its soldiers found along the Syrian border in an area held by Islamic State until three days ago, sources in the president s office said. The Lebanese army launched an offensive this month which ended with Islamic State militants leaving their last foothold along the border on Sunday. Since then the army has found 10 bodies in the area. DNA tests confirmed that six of those belonged to Lebanese soldiers, the sources and local media reported on Wednesday. Islamic State militants had for years held territory along the border, and captured 10 Lebanese soldiers in 2014 when they briefly overran the town of Arsal, one of the worst spillovers of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon. The militants and their families left the border area on Sunday under a ceasefire deal. The agreement included IS militants identifying where they had buried the soldiers bodies, Lebanese army chief General Joseph Aoun said on Wednesday. I had two choices: either I continue the battle and not know the soldiers fate, or I submit to the situation and find out. Their souls are my responsibility, he told reporters. It was not immediately clear if all six belonged to those captured in 2014, however - one of the bodies discovered is believed to belong to a soldier killed in the recent fighting. Of the 10 captured in 2014, one was killed shortly after and footage of his execution was published by the militants. Another is believed to have joined Islamic State. His whereabouts is unknown. | 0fake |
Republican Thune says bipartisan U.S. health bill stalled | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John Thune, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said on Wednesday that a bipartisan deal by two U.S. senators to stabilize Obamacare by restoring subsidies to health insurers was “stalled out.” President Donald Trump opposes payments going to insurance companies and the bill has to go through the House of Representatives as well, Thune said. “So at this point it’s just kind of, like I said, an open question,” he added. | 0fake |
Turkish President Accuses Germany of ’Nazi Practices’ | AMSTERDAM (AP) — A diplomatic rift between Turkey and key European nations deepened Sunday as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Germany of “Nazi practices,” days after a local authority prevented a Turkish minister from addressing a rally. [Meanwhile, at an election campaign event in Amsterdam, Dutch populist Geert Wilders also resorted to comparisons, calling Erdogan an “ leader. ” The diplomatic tension has been rising in recent days amid Turkish plans to have government ministers to address rallies in Germany and the Netherlands in support of an upcoming constitutional referendum that would give Erdogan new powers. Speaking in Istanbul, the Turkish president fanned the flames with a stinging verbal attack. “In Germany they are not allowing our friends to speak. Let them do so. Do you think that by not allowing them to speak the votes in Germany will come out ‘no’ instead of ‘yes? ’” Erdogan said. “Germany, you don’t have anything to do with democracy. These current practices of yours are no different than the Nazi practices of the past. ” On Thursday, Turkey’s justice minister canceled a meeting with his German counterpart after local authorities in southwest Germany withdrew permission for him to use a venue to hold a rally near the French border that was part of a campaign to get Turks in Germany to vote “yes” in the referendum. Turkey’s economy minister, Nihat Zeybekci, was due to speak at two events in western Germany on Sunday. There are about 1. 4 million people in Germany who are eligible to vote in the Turkish referendum, Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, in an interview with German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag, said it is time to pull the plug on moves to bring Turkey into the EU. “We shouldn’t just temporarily suspend the accession talks with Turkey but end them,” Kern said. “We can’t continue to negotiate about membership with a country that has been steadily distancing itself for years, during ongoing access talks, from democratic standards and principles of the rule of law. ” The Dutch government is investigating whether it can halt a rally being planned for later in the week at which Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is reportedly due to speak. Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Dutch broadcaster NOS on Saturday that his government “is looking at all legal avenues to prevent such a visit. ” Rutte said the proposed constitutional changes take Turkey, an aspirant European Union member state, “in a less democratic direction. ” “We believe that Dutch public space is not the place for political campaigns of other countries,” Rutte wrote earlier in a post on his Facebook page. Kern said, “A concerted approach by the EU to prevent such campaign appearances would make sense. So that individual countries such as Germany, where appearances have been banned, don’t come under pressure from Turkey. ” Wilders, whose Party for Freedom is lagging only slightly behind Rutte’s VVD party in polls before March 15 elections for Parliament’s lower house, said he would go further if he were in power. “I think that coming here to advocate a change of the Turkish constitution that will only strengthen the leader Erdogan of Turkey more than Parliament, Turkish parliament, is the worst thing that could happen to us,” Wilders told reporters at a campaign event. Wilders said that if he were Dutch prime minister, “”I would call the whole Cabinet of Turkey ‘persona non grata’ for a month or two, not allowing them to come here. ” Kern, however, pointed out that totally cutting ties with Ankara wouldn’t be in EU interests. An EU deal with Turkey, which also is a NATO member, has significantly cut the number of migrants crossing into Europe. “We should realign the relationship, without the illusion of EU membership,” Kern said. “Turkey is an important partner in security matters, on migration and on economic cooperation. Turkey has stuck to all of its commitments resulting from the refugee deal in any case. We should build upon that. ” | 0fake |
Israel: Ancient Papyrus Proves Jerusalem Belongs to Israel | Fragment of Old Tax Bill Meant to Undercut Muslims' Claim to Important Mosque by Jason Ditz, October 26, 2016 Share This
While the UNESCO resolution which recognized the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as a “Muslim holy site of worship” was barely reported around the world, and considered fairly non-controversial, Israeli officials have been expressing fury over the matter for two solid weeks.
And the Muslims may have a huge, ancient mosque that has been a key part of Islam for 1,300 years, but Israel has a small strip of papyrus they found in a cave, which they’re pretty sure is a far more conclusive document, since it mentioned the word Jerusalem and was written in Hebrew.
Israeli officials have claimed that the UNESCO resolution, in recognizing the mosque as important to Islam, was tantamount to denying Israel’s absolute and eternal control over the entire city of Jerusalem. Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said the papyrus strip proved Jerusalem “was and will remain the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”
The al-Aqsa mosque was built on a site which is believed to have previously housed an important Jewish temple, and some Israelis advocate the eventual destruction of the mosque and the construction of a new temple, though the details of such a construction would be hugely religiously complicated, and since the destruction of the mosque would undoubtedly start a massive war, it is considered unlikely. Still, the far-right government wants to ensure that they have some international precedent for their claim to the territory. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1real |
NEW WH COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I’ll Bring CNN a Box of Kleenex When Trump Wins in 2020 [VIDEO] | Jake Tapper and the new White House Communications Director went at it this morning. Anthony Scaramucci had the line of the day: I ll Bring CNN a Box of Kleenex When Trump Wins in 2020Anthony Scaramucci: If I said some things about him, when I was working for another candidate, Mr. Trump, Mr. President, I apologize for that. Can we move on off of that. I know you and I have moved on off of that. Jake hasn t moved on off of that, obviously and that s okay Jake, I don t care. But, I m going to be working for you and we re going to serve the American people and we re going to get your agenda out into the heartland where it belongs and we re going to turn this thing into a movement, a bigger movement than we have already.Jake Tapper: I love how you re talking to one specific viewer right now, the most important audience that there is.Anthony Scaramucci: I like talking to him, but you know who else I m talking to? The people I grew up with. They get me and get him.Jake Tapper: I get it. I grew up in a very similar neighborhood in Philadelphia.Anthony Scaramucci: He s gonna win again, Jake. He s gonna win again and I ll bring a box of Kleenex over here to CNN in 2020.Jake Tapper: We don t need Kleenex.Anthony Scaramucci: He s gonna win again Jake. We re going to get this agenda prosecuted. He s gonna win again. | 1real |
E-pasaportes: consultora estrella justificó de todo en Cancillería III, por Herbert Mujica Rojas | Señal de Alerta
E-pasaportes: consultora estrella justificó de todo en Cancillería III por Herbert Mujica Rojas Socios | 31 de octubre de 2016 E-pasaportes: consultora estrella justificó de todo en Cancillería III Las actividades de Carina Estrada Villegas merecieron, semanas atrás, un email muy cuestionador y enviado a Indecopi y que transcribimos literalmente:
“---- Mensaje original ----
Asunto: ALERTA Firma Digital Perú INDECOPI
Enviado: 26/9/2016 14:21
De: firma digital
Para: [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected]
Cc:
COMUNICADO INDECOPI
Sr. Ivo Gagliuffi Piercechi
Presidente del Consejo Directivo del Instituto Nacional de Defensa de la Competencia y de la Protección de la Propiedad Intelectual (Indecopi)
Es grato dirigirme a su institución que viene a ser la autoridad administrativa competente a cargo de la Infraestructura Oficial de Firma Electrónica (IOFE) de conformidad con el Reglamento de la Ley de Firmas y Certificados Digitales, siendo que dicho rol es ejercido por la Comisión Transitoria para la Gestión de la IOFE.
Al respecto debemos precisar que la mencionada comisión tiene asignado un equipo de profesionales que cumplen el rol de auditores, quienes tienen como objetivo principal validar y verificar las soluciones y/o procedimientos solicitados por las empresas privadas y estatales para proceder a la acreditación y estar en la lista de servicios de confianza (TSL).
En esa circunstancia, los auditores juegan un papel fundamental para el logro de las acreditaciones, es por ello que se debe exigir que dichos profesionales (por una mínima cuestión de ética y de imagen institucional) tengan una actitud imparcial, independientemente de las empresas que soliciten acreditarse.
En base a lo expuesto, estimamos indispensable informar a su digna institución que la Ing. Carina Estrada Villegas con CIP 137894, validándose inescrupulosamente de su posición de auditora oficial del INDECOPI viene realizando diversos tipos de lobbies empresariales, toda vez que trabaja como consultora en entidades públicas para la elaboración de TDRs y al mismo tiempo viene ofreciendo a las empresas privadas la acreditación del INDECOPI y por ende el direccionamiento de los TDR. Para con ello asegurar el éxito de las licitaciones públicas con las empresas privadas que decidan contratarla, siendo que las contrataciones con las empresas privadas o estatales las hace por medio de su empresa INNOVATE DC con RUC 20557140965 o a través de terceros que manejan su negocio de manera irregular y por decirlo menos poco ético.
Ahora bien, las empresas públicas donde tiene participación activa dicha actividad irregular de la mencionada ingeniera son entidades que solicitan soluciones con valor legal acreditadas por el INDECOPI, siendo que tiene una lista grande de empresas privadas, requiriéndoles una comisión por éxito por hacerlas ganar las licitaciones. La empresa que la contrata es la que ofrece mejor comisión para cada oportunidad específica, configurándose un acto corruptivo y de vulneración a la libre competencia que paradójicamente el INDECOPI cautela que no suceda. Las negociaciones antes mencionadas se logran por que la ING. Estrada maneja contactos en el sector público para armar los TDRs y en el INDECOPI para poder acreditar a la empresa interesada.
En base a todo lo anteriormente expuesto, solicitamos a su digna institución, quien es el encargado de promocionar la leal y honesta competencia entre las empresas nacionales y extranjeras, que realice las acciones pertinentes para evitar e investigar este tipo de competencia desleal, poco ético y sin ningún profesionalismo, siendo que la citada ingeniera debe ser retirada como auditora del INDECOPI, para evitar estos actos irregulares y las empresas puedan tener igualdad de trato y puedan acceder de manera equilibrada y justa a los contratos con el Estado.
Finalmente, señalamos y de no tomar acciones su institución, nos reservamos el derecho de poner en conocimiento de la contraloría y la opinión pública estos hechos, a través de los medios de comunicación masiva, para que se investigue estos actos corruptivos en salvaguarda de una libre competencia entre las empresas y de esta manera se cautele el dinero de todos los peruanos, ya que una contratación pública debe buscar una oferta optima en el mercado sin direccionamientos que ocasionen un perjuicio a las Entidades públicas.”
Como se recuerda, la buena pro otorgada al consorcio Imprimerie Nationale-Gemalto en Cancillería y para el pasaporte electrónico en diciembre del 2015, contó con la participación asesora, consultora y técnica de Carina Estrada Villegas. El email es de setiembre del 2016.
Más aún, como hemos contado en entregas precedentes, Estrada representó al MRE Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Perú en Francia en el presente año -aunque en esa ocasión pagada por el MRE y el Estado- sin ser funcionaria.
En junio del 2014 asumió la representación del Perú, en esta ocasión de Indecopi, ante el Ayuntamiento de Torrent, quedando aún por dilucidar qué entidad corrió con dichos “gastos de representación”, tal como puede leerse en https://torrentaldia.com/el-gobiern... y en un segundo artículo: http://elmeridiano.es/wp-content/up... del informativo español El meridiano, entre otros.
Volveremos con más datos en próxima entrega.
Herbert Mujica Rojas Fuente
Senal de Alerta (Peru) | 1real |
VIDEO: Cartel Gunmen Hold Up Border City Currency Exchange Store | REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — A team of cartel gunmen wielding machine guns and wearing body armor carried out a brazen daytime heist in this border city. The act highlights the raging violence that continues to take place in this city. Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A. C. Del Angel” from Reynosa, Tamaulipas. | 0fake |
Repealing Obamacare to be first on Senate agenda in 2017 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Repealing Obamacare will be the first order of business in the U.S. Senate in January, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said on Tuesday. Republicans will replace President Barack Obama’s signature health insurance program that provides coverage to millions of Americans “step by step,” said Senator John Thune, another member of the Republican leadership. McConnell did not say when the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, as it is officially known, would go into effect. Senator John Barrasso said it might be effective in two or three years, and that the timeframe was still being debated. Democrats scoffed at the Republican plans, saying they do not even know what they want to replace Obamacare with. “Bring it on,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, who will be the Democrats’ leader in the Senate next year. Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president last month means Republicans will control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives in 2017. The new Congress opens on Jan. 3; Trump will be sworn in on Jan. 20. The Affordable Care Act has provided 25 million previously uninsured Americans with health coverage by expanding Medicaid and through online exchanges where consumers can receive income-based subsidies. Republicans have launched repeated legal and legislative efforts to dismantle the law, which they call a government overreach. The average Obamacare premium is set to rise 25 percent in 2017. Large national insurers including Aetna Inc, UnitedHealth Group Inc and Anthem Inc have said they are losing money on the exchanges because patient costs are higher than anticipated and enrollment is lower than forecast. Both UnitedHealth and Aetna have pulled out of the exchanges for 2017. To repeal Obamacare, congressional Republicans are expected to resort to a special procedure known as budget reconciliation to get around Democrats in the Senate, where rules protect the rights of the minority party. Thune said Republicans hoped Democrats would work with them to replace Obamacare in a way that will give states, rather than the federal government, more control over healthcare issues and create more flexibility for small businesses in the way they offer healthcare benefits. But Senator Harry Reid, the outgoing Senate Democratic leader, dismissed the idea that Democrats would join in. “I think that any hope that we’re going to buy into ruining healthcare in America, there’s not a chance of it,” he said. | 0fake |
Hundreds of rescued refugees arrive at Italian port of Catania | Support Us Hundreds of rescued refugees arrive at Italian port of Catania | 1real |
States discussing lawsuit over Trump immigration order | (Reuters) - A group of state attorneys general are discussing whether to file their own court challenge against President Donald Trump’s order to restrict people from seven Muslim-majority countries entering the United States, officials in three states told Reuters. Democrat attorneys general are expected to be a source of fierce resistance to Trump, much as Republican AGs opposed former President Barack Obama. A lawsuit brought by states would heighten the legal stakes surrounding the president’s executive order, signed late on Friday, as courtroom challenges to the ban have so far mostly been filed by individuals. Officials in the offices of attorneys general in Pennsylvania, Washington and Hawaii said on Saturday they were evaluating what specific claims could be filed, and in which court. “We do believe the executive order is unconstitutional,” Hawaii attorney general Douglas Chin told Reuters on Saturday. He declined to give further detail. The states could decide not to file, and it is unclear how many states would ultimately sign on for such an effort. “There certainly are conversations underway,” said Joe Grace, a spokesman for Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro. A Trump representative could not be reached immediately for comment. Trump, a businessman who successfully tapped into American fears about terror 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 to be high risk. He told reporters in the Oval Office on Saturday that his order was “not a Muslim ban” and said the measures were long overdue. However, his order hit a roadblock late on Saturday when a federal judge in New York said stranded travelers could stay in the country. The American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the emergency court order, said it would help 100 to 200 people with valid visas or refugee status who found themselves detained in transit or at U.S. airports after Trump signed the order. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement it would comply with judicial orders but that Trump’s immigration restrictions remained in effect. | 0fake |
China Assails U.S. Pledge to Defend Disputed Islands Controlled by Japan - The New York Times | BEIJING — China reacted with strong displeasure on Saturday to a promise by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that the United States would defend two uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that Japan controls but China also claims as its own. Mr. Mattis, the first member of President Trump’s cabinet to visit East Asia, had told Japanese officials earlier Saturday that America’s defense obligations to Japan extended to the disputed rocky outposts, known in China as the Diaoyu and in Japan as the Senkaku. The chief spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, accused Mr. Mattis of putting regional stability at risk and urged him to forgo what he called a Cold War mentality. “We urge the U. S. side to take a responsible attitude, stop making wrong remarks on the issue involving the Diaoyu islands’ sovereignty, and avoid making the issue more complicated and bringing instability to the regional situation,” Mr. Lu said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website. He described the 1960 defense treaty between the United States and Japan, which Mr. Mattis cited in pledging to defend the islands, as a “product of the Cold War, which should not impair China’s territorial sovereignty and legitimate rights. ” Mr. Mattis was not staking out a new American position while in office, President Barack Obama said that the United States would defend the islands. But the defense secretary’s words were reassuring to Japanese officials, who had been unnerved by Mr. Trump’s remarks as a presidential candidate suggesting that he might reduce America’s military commitments to its Asian allies. The disputed islands have been among a number of potential points of contention as China builds up its presence in the East and South China Seas. Chinese and Japanese vessels regularly maneuver at close quarters in the waters as China tries to challenge Japan’s control of the islands. Last year, China sent a warship to within 24 miles of the islands. President Xi Jinping of China declared much of the East China Sea to be a Chinese air defense zone in 2013, and since then China has regularly sent fighter jets to patrol the area. At a news conference in Tokyo, Mr. Mattis cited Article 5 of the United treaty, which commits the United States to defend Japan or territories that it administers against attack. “I made clear that our longstanding policy on the Senkaku Islands stands — the U. S. will continue to recognize Japanese administration of the islands,” Mr. Mattis said. “And as such, Article 5 of the U. S. security treaty applies. ” Before going to Japan, Mr. Mattis went to South Korea to offer assurances to that ally about defense commitments, and China’s reaction was similar. Mr. Lu struck a strident tone on Friday in expressing China’s opposition to American plans to deploy a missile defense system in South Korea, one that Mr. Mattis said was intended to protect the country from North Korea’s nuclear threat. “We firmly oppose” the deployment, Mr. Lu said at a regular news briefing. “This will not change and has not changed. ” The system, which China says is an American attempt to interfere with China’s nuclear deterrent, “will undermine the strategic balance,” he said. China has threatened South Korea with economic consequences if it agrees to the deployment of the system, known as Thaad, which stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. With the South Korean government in disarray and a presidential election coming there, the Chinese government has been wooing the opposition Minjoo Party, which opposes the Thaad deployment. Officials of that party have visited Beijing twice in recent months, offering reassurances that they oppose the system. While Mr. Mattis was in Tokyo on Friday, China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, spoke by telephone with Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday. The conversation, which the ministry said was initiated by the White House, appeared to be a preparatory step for a call between Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump. The ministry’s account of the conversation was upbeat. Mr. Flynn said the United States was committed to “developing strong and powerful U. S. relations” and “properly managing the sensitive issues,” the ministry said. For his part, Mr. Yang emphasized the two countries’ “broad common interests and great cooperation potential,” according to the ministry. Mr. Trump criticized China on a variety of fronts during the presidential transition, but the White House has had little to say about the country during the president’s first two weeks in office. And although Mr. Trump has held phone conversations from the Oval Office, several of them stormy, with a variety of world leaders, Mr. Xi has not been among them. There has been speculation among diplomats in Beijing and among American business groups in Washington that the two leaders would talk by phone in the coming days. Mr. Yang and Mr. Flynn last spoke in New York, a month after the presidential election, and from Mr. Yang’s point of view the meeting was not helpful. Just two days later, Mr. Trump astounded the Chinese government by asserting that the One China policy, under which the United States recognizes the government of Beijing and not Taiwan, was far from sacrosanct. “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News. Although there was no indication that Mr. Trump was reacting to anything Mr. Yang had said to Mr. Flynn, the episode was embarrassing for the Chinese official so soon after their meeting. Earlier in December, Mr. Trump upended decades of American diplomatic practice by speaking with Taiwan’s president by telephone. The Chinese have since stressed on several occasions that the One China policy is not negotiable. The Foreign Ministry’s statement on the conversation on Friday between Mr. Yang and Mr. Flynn did not say whether the two had discussed Taiwan, only that they had discussed regional affairs. | 0fake |
Commerce's Ross to lead trade mission on Trump's China visit | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will lead a trade mission to China in mid-November as part of President Donald Trump’s first visit there, the Commerce Department said in a notice posted on its website. The Department said the multi-sector mission “will advance the bilateral commercial relationship by promoting business deals between U.S. and Chinese firms, as well as addressing market access barriers faced by U.S. companies,” the Commerce Department said in a statement. The department said it was taking applications from trade associations and companies large and small through Sept 29. It said the mission would promote new sales and investments between U.S. businesses and Chinese entities and provide them with access to senior decision makers in the Chinese government. Reuters on Tuesday quoted a U.S. official as saying that Trump would likely stop in China as part of a trip that will take him to an ASEAN summit in the Philippines and an APEC summit in Vietnam. The trade mission comes at a time of heightened trade tensions between the United States and China following Trump’s decision on Wednesday to block a Chinese-backed private equity firm from buying a U.S.-based chipmaker. In July, a high-level U.S.-China economic dialogue meeting did not produce an agreement the Trump administration’s demands of reducing the U.S. trade deficit with China. | 0fake |
Grammar fail, or do Texas Republicans believe most Texans are gay? | AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas-based LGBT advocacy helped spark a grammar debate this week over whether an errant comma in the stridently anti-homosexual Republican Party of Texas platform can be read as saying the majority of Texans are gay. The plank that was approved by delegates at the party’s convention this month reads: “Homosexuality is a chosen behavior that is contrary to the fundamental unchanging truths that has been ordained by God in the Bible, recognized by our nations founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.” Lone Star Q, which describes itself as the state’s No. 1 source for LGBT news, asked on Twitter on Wednesday to have a “grammar debate” over the wording. In response, grammarians pointed out that placement of the final comma in the plank could lead to understanding it to mean that homosexuality is a chosen behavior shared by the majority of Texans. They also noted that “nations” should have an apostrophe and that by using “has been,” the plank gives the impression that homosexuality has been ordained by God. Party officials did not respond to requests to comment. The party, which dominates Texas politics, has been hostile toward homosexuality for years. Its platform has said homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable lifestyle and gays should not be allowed to marry. Over the years, the party’s platforms have favored a number of hard-right positions, such as cutting off funding for about a dozen U.S. government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, abolishing the Federal Reserve, a return to the gold standard for the U.S. dollar and U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations. | 0fake |
Tribute to the Last Honorable US Senator: The Story of Paul Wellstone’s Suspected Assassination | 14th Anniversary of His Passing By Joachim Hagopian
On October 25th, 2002 the last great hero of the common people in the US Senate was very likely murdered by agents of the shadow US crime cabal government otherwise known as the Bush-Cheney regime. His wife and daughter and two pilots also died in the air crash. Paul Wellstone’s story deserves to be retold and Americans need to be reminded that criminals in and out of our government still need to be punished for their unindicted crimes. This article was written as both a tribute to an outstanding American patriot and a reexamination of his probable assassination by criminals still on the loose.
Minnesota Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone was a man of integrity who was among the few politicians openly and adamantly opposing the Iraq invasion as well as the creation of the US version of Gestapo-land Security. As a fearless populist leader he’d been a constant thorn in the side ever since then President George H. W. Bush responding to the junior senator’s uncomfortable questions at a reception asked, “Who is this chickenshit?”
Years later as the only senator up for reelection who voted against the Iraq War when Democrats held just a one seat edge over the Republicans in the Senate (with one independent caucusing with Democrats), his thorny side made him the #1 GOP target . With the Karl Rove led Republican Party just one seat away from gaining Republican control over the US Senate, Wellstone’s death gave his Republican challenger Norm Coleman the 49-49 split and, as the President of the Senate, Cheney’s tie breaking vote would deliver the GOP 50-49 advantage needed to steamroll yet more tax cuts through for the rich, unending bankers’ wars and a never seen before boom for the military-security industrial complex. Again, motive and means tilt heavily towards assassination. The facts make it more than probable.
A month prior to the November 2002 election Vice President Cheney had arranged a meeting with Wellstone, threatening him with grave consequences should he vote against the preplanned Iraq invasion. A few days later speaking to a group of war veterans, Wellstone publicly recalled Cheney’s threatening words :
“If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.”
Then just days after that, 11 days prior to the midterm election and a year to the exact day after the deadly anthrax pushed Patriot Act victory , on October 25th Paul Wellstone, his wife and daughter along with three staffers and two pilots all died in an extremely suspicious plane crash.
The FBI was at the crash site within 90 minutes , indicating they’d left their Minneapolis office before the “accident” at about the same time Wellstone’s plane was just taking off that morning, indicating the possibility of pre-knowledge.
“The authors note that it would’ve taken agents at least three hours to reach the swampy and remote crash site. How they got there from the Twin Cities so quickly remains a mystery”.
Additionally, the NTSB as the national agency that normally takes the lead role investigating all US plane crashes suddenly wasn’t. The FBI moved in ahead immediately proclaiming just another bad weather accident. Yet all on the ground witnesses and reports disagree, from pilots landing at the destination airport just two hours prior to the Wellstone flight to the airport manager who less than an hour after the crash was himself flying over the crash site. The plane considered a Rolls Royce among small planes was in tiptop shape and the two pilots steeped in skilled experience.
As the feds’ rogue cops for go-to cover-ups, as in 9/11 and the anthrax attacks the year before, and the 1993 World Trade Center and 1995 Oklahoma City bombing s, the FBI has a long shady history of leaving its corrupt dirty fingerprints all over these well documented false flag, history changing events.
A couple of brave Democratic House members anonymously stated that they believe Wellstone was murdered. In one Congressman’s words :
I don’t think there’s anyone on the Hill who doesn’t suspect it. It’s too convenient, too coincidental, too damned obvious. My guess is that some of the less courageous members of the party are thinking about becoming Republicans right now.
An unnamed CIA source admitted :
Having played ball (and still playing in some respects) with this current crop of reinvigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that.
A number of other Democratic politicians at a 2 to 1 margin to Republicans have also incurred mysterious deaths holding “unpopular” views just ahead of hotly contested elections. Two years earlier while traveling in Colombia Senator Wellstone had already experienced one known attempt on his life when a bomb planted enroute from the airport was discovered. Since that plot failed, he was then sprayed with the highly toxic poison glyphosate.
As a longtime critic of the CIA and covert operations, Wellstone was targeted for assassination in both Colombia and in Minnesota by the masters of mayhem, murder and deceitful cover-ups – the FBI/CIA Criminals-In-Action at the behest of mastermind Cheney.
So far in our two-tiered justice system, murder pays off for those high up on the psychopath food chain like Cheney, the Bushes and Clintons . Renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh exposed Cheney’s “executive assassination ring.” Cheney used the CIA as well as the military Joint Special Operations Command as his personal army of hitmen reporting directly to him. (see video below)
If the neocons can live with themselves for murdering 3000 Americans on 9/11, they certainly never lose sleep over a few more targeted eliminations that include the genocidal 4 million Muslim bloodbath caused by the Bush crime family wars.
The heavy-handed Bush-Cheney push for Iraq War and a DHS congressional vote prior to their 2003 invasion cast enormous high stakes in the Senate. Then add the known history of contempt from former CIA director Bush, the Cheney threat just days prior to Wellstone’s death, a slew of brazenly contradictory crash site anomalies , and the exposed murderous means used to pass the Patriot Act and the 9/11 false flag tragedy the year prior, all of this circumstantial evidence taken together strongly points to yet more diabolical skullduggery perpetrated by Skull & Bones criminals against humanity.
The neocons grabbed the Hegelian solution they needed for waging unlimited war in the name of terrorism anywhere in the world while simultaneously at home merging FEMA into their newly created Homeland Security tasked with stripping away the rest of America’s constitutional liberties in the name of “national security.” In its first dozen years alone, deep state’s gluttonously monolithic DHS cancer has metastasized into the third largest federal department boasting near a quarter million fulltime employees. By hook, crook and murder the Cheney-Bush gang in 2003 got what they’d been wanting and plotting for years, two concurrent never-ending wars in the Middle East and the monstrous apparatus Homeland Security whose purpose is making war against the American people. Sadly the rest of the Western vassal nations play follow the leader.
If examined according to the Hegelian Dialectic of 1) problem, 2) reaction and 3) solution, a draconian formula used by deep state to manufacture increased authoritarian control over the US populace, Paul Wellstone’s death can easily be explained.
More than any other single member of Congress, the Minnesota senator posed a serious threat as the major opposition leader standing in the way of war criminals Bush and Cheney’s Iraq invasion as well as their formation of the Department of Homeland Security, two preplanned agendas rooted in the neocon think tank the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Prior to their stealing the 2000 election and their PNAC’s “Pearl Harbor” event they created called 9/11, their regime had already called for attacking Iraq for regime change and erection of the DHS cancer. The Bush-Cheney reaction to their problem Paul Wellstone was to assassinate him making it appear as an accident.
By murder once Wellstone was out of the way, the neocons’ solution sent a loud and clear message of intimidation and a death threat in order to effectively silence any other potential Congressional opponents to the war in Iraq. Wellstone’s elimination paved the way for the war criminals’ successful campaign to win national support for the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. That said, the month before the invasion on February 15th, 10-15 million people around the world in over 600 cities assembled in massive protest against the US intervention, the biggest one day antiwar demonstration in history. But unfortunately once the US military occupation began, the antiwar movement gradually fizzled out.
And the PNAC (members of PNAC project, image left) calling for regime change in seven sovereign nations including Iraq within five years was underway. The predatory rape and pillaging of Iraq as the world’s second largest oil producer was justified by lies of Saddam’s non-existent WMD’s and ties to terrorism. Sadly the neocons who are still at the helm wreaking havoc in 2016 were able to implement an enormous new Department of Homeland Security monstrosity masquerading as public “safeguard” against terrorism. So without Wellstone and virtually no further opposition in Congress, the neocons created their multibillion dollar security state apparatchik promoting and enforcing draconian counterterrorism laws leading to increasing centralized authoritarian government control that is ushering in their New World Order.
This tried and true Hegelian strategy has also been regularly utilized to further identify deep state obstacles as problems based on perceived neocons’ threats to US global unipolar hegemony.
American Empire’s relentless efforts to isolate, weaken and target for global war designated international enemies Russia, China and Iran through propagandized demonization and orchestrating fake crises illustrate yet more examples of the Hegelian Dialectic in action. And just as the US crime cabal was successful in eliminating Wellstone as their New World Order threat, for decades the crime cabal government has been planning its war against identified American dissenters as enemies of the state who object to its heavy-handed tyranny.
Paul Wellstone’s courageous opposition to the powerful Washington establishment’s evil cost him and his family’s life. Since we Americans are now in the same crosshairs of the same still entrenched shadow assassins, it’s time to make their arrests for treason and mass murder prior to our own death and destruction.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/ .
Source: Global Research
| 1real |
Georgia Trump Supporter Preparing For Civil War If Hillary Clinton Wins Election (AUDIO) | Donald Trump supporters are so desperate to be in power that they are threatening America at gunpoint to vote for him or be killed.That s what Georgia Trump fan Jimmy Arno is preparing for after the election votes are tallied in November because he expects a bloody civil war to break out in order to overthrow the government before Hillary Clinton is inaugurated.Arno is even considering joining a right-wing militia, whom he collectively refers to as patriots, because he seriously believes only they can defend the Constitution. Should martial law, civil war whatever break out in this country, they will uphold the Constitution and rebuild our loss, he said. The war that s going to break out if Hillary Clinton s elected, if that happens. Your patriots are going to overthrow the government. And of course, Arno is a fan of the Confederacy, loves the Confederate flag, and has a portrait of Robert E. Lee hanging in his living room.So basically, what Arno is saying is that he believes the South will rise again and a civil war sequel will turn out differently. This time a rebellion will somehow succeed even though the United States military, including a navy and air force, would be standing in their way.Nevertheless, threats of civil war and violent rebellion are frightening but they also prove that conservatives are unfit to govern because apparently the only way they can do so is with a gun pressed against the heads of the people.Arno went on to blame President Obama directly for the high racial tensions. I know that we were a whole lot further along racially eight years ago than we are today, he claims.But the fact is that Republicans raised those racial tensions themselves by vowing to make President Obama fail from the start simply because of the color of his skin and their claim that he is an illegitimate president. The birther movement, of which Trump is a prominent leader, contends that President Obama is not one of us and that he wasn t born here. The election of President Obama made racists, including Arno, mad so they started publicly throwing a hissy fit and their tantrums have only gotten worse in the last eight years.Here s the audio via NPR.Trump supporters are deplorable people who want to shoot and kill anyone who disagrees with them just so they can watch the world burn. If Hillary Clinton is elected president as she should be, conservatives need to accept that they lost instead of resorting to taking up arms against the country. Such an action is treason and would only demonstrate that they are nothing more than sore losers who should never be allowed to get close to political power ever again.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
'So-called judge' derided by Trump known for fairness, work with youth | (Corrects first paragraph to make it “jurist” instead of “justice” as Robart is not a justice) By Mica Rosenberg and Nathan Layne (Reuters) - U.S. Judge James Robart emerged from relative obscurity on Saturday as the first jurist to come under fire from the president since he took office after his temporary order to lift Donald Trump’s immigration ban. In a reaction that went viral on Twitter, Trump called the 69-year-old Robart a “so-called judge” whose “ridiculous” opinion “essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country.” To those who know Robart, who has been on the federal bench in Seattle for more than a decade after his appointment by another Republican, President George W. Bush, the ensuing drama surrounding the move was a far cry from the judge’s standard. “He is relatively apolitical,” said Douglas Adkins, a private equity investor and former investment banker who has known Robart since childhood. “He’s not a conservative or a liberal. He’s a man interested in the law and fairness.” Late on Friday, Robart grabbed national headlines with his decision to temporarily lift Trump’s week-old travel ban for citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries and refugees. His ruling was just a first step in considering the merits of the case challenging the ban. The Justice Department on Saturday filed a formal notice that it intends to appeal the ruling. As a candidate, Trump had criticized federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was overseeing a case against his Trump University - arguing Curiel could not be impartial because of his Mexican heritage and Trump’s vow to crack down on Mexican immigrants. But by lashing out at Robart as president, Trump’s anti-judiciary stance takes on new importance: it hits at the very heart of the checks and balances system meant to protect the country from government abuse of power. Coincidentally, in his wide-reaching ruling on Friday, Robart emphasized that the three branches of government - the executive branch, Congress and the judiciary - should function as equals. “The work of the Judiciary, and this court, is limited to ensuring that the actions taken by the other two branches comport with our country’s laws, and more importantly, our constitution,” Robart wrote. Reached by email, Robart declined to comment on Trump’s tweets. A graduate of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and Georgetown University Law Center, Robart spent 30 years in private practice at the law firm now known as Lane Powell, before being appointed to the bench by Bush in 2004. Adkins said Robart and his wife have no children but have been foster parents to several immigrant children over the years, primarily from Southeast Asia. Robart could not be reached for comment. The judge served in the past as the president of the Seattle Children’s Home and was a former trustee of the Children’s Home Society of Washington, according to his official biography on the federal court website. Those organizations provide mental health services for at-risk youth and help troubled families. “His involvement with children may have helped contribute to his understanding of the people impacted by this ruling but would not have shaped his interpretation of the rule of law,” said Paul Lawrence, who was one of the attorneys who filed an amicus brief backing Washington State in the immigration case. During his confirmation hearing, Robart recalled providing pro-bono legal services early in his career to “people who in many times felt that the legal system was stacked against them.” He said he learned that the law “could be, if properly used, an opportunity for them to seek redress if they had been wronged,” according to a transcript of the testimony. Often sporting bow-ties with his black robes, Robart is known for saying from the bench in 2016 that “black lives matter.” He cited the statement popularized by protesters during a hearing about a 2012 consent decree with the federal government that required the Seattle police department to address allegations of bias and excessive force. In 2011, Robart put a temporary hold on a state rule change that would have cut government funding for disabled children and families in Washington. “When faced with a conflict between the financial and budgetary concerns ... and the preventable human suffering,” Robart wrote in that opinion, “the balance of hardships tips in the favor of preventing human suffering.” Adkins said he thought his friend would be able to take Trump’s attacks in stride. “His view is that criticism is important,” said Adkins. | 0fake |
‘Veteran Loving’ Trump Fires Veterans Because Their Service Inconveniences Him | Finally, the media is giving Donald Trump the critical eye they should. The stories about the Trump University lawsuits and his refusal to release his tax returns are proving to be troublesome to the GOP frontrunner s campaign, but one of the most damaging might be the missing money that was supposedly pegged for veterans.Things are about to get a whole lot worse on the veteran front. The Huffington Post reported that Trump actually discriminates against veterans because they spend too much time serving their country.In at least three cases, Trump s companies have either fired, or refused to hire, military reservists because of the time commitments demanded of them by their service in the armed forces. The veterans involved have sued Trump for violating the laws meant to protect them from precisely these types of penalties. And in all three cases, Trump and his companies have settled the suits.The Huffington Post already reported on the first two of these cases one involving an Air Force senior master sergeant fired from the Trump Institute in 2007, and one an Army staff sergeant fired from her job at Trump University that same year.These two cases, however, have a predecessor. On May 27, 1988, United States Air Force Col. Charles Beattie submitted orders to his bosses at Eastern Airlines, where he worked as a pilot.For Trump, it seems, it s cheaper to pay fines for this clear violation of the law than to follow the law. Trump is an egomaniac. The fact that he doesn t like to employ people whose priority is our country should be all the proof we need that Trump has no desire to serve our country. He never has, beginning with the fact that Trump avoided the draft.It s doubtful that Trump actively dislikes veterans, but it s clear he doesn t care about them. He would happily and haphazardly send them into war zones, perhaps because a world leader hurt his feelings.The fact that he doesn t like vets working for him is only the tip of the iceberg. For a man who has planned on running for president for at least a few years, he s done little to beef up his image as a patriot. The Republican party is supposedly the party of veterans (of course, we wouldn t know it by how they vote, but they think they love the veterans), but Trump gave zero of his personal money to veterans groups, and his foundation donated a paltry $57,000. As Forbes Magazine notes, Trump once demanded that CNN give veterans $5 million for Trump to appear at a debate. They didn t, but that would be $494,000,000 than his foundation has given.As I said, the media is finally beginning to look critically at Trump, but it s time they start calling these things what they are: scandals. They might even qualify for a gate. Featured image via Christopher Furlong with Getty Images. | 1real |
Maine voters passed measure legalizing marijuana use: official | BOSTON (Reuters) - Maine voters have made the state the eighth in the United States to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, state officials said on Wednesday, following a recount of votes on a ballot initiative. The measure passed by 3,995 votes with the support of 381,768 people, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said in a statement. That was a slightly narrower margin of victory than the 4,073 vote gap reported following the Nov. 8 election. The measure now goes to Governor Paul LePage, who has 10 days under Maine law to issue a proclamation of the vote results. It would take effect 30 days later, setting the stage for the drug to become legal for adults over 21 beginning late next month. The result makes Maine the second state in the northeast to legalize recreational use of the drug, as voters in nearby Massachusetts approved a similar measure last month. Marijuana became legal to use and posses in limited quantities, but not yet to buy, in that state last week. LePage, a Republican, said earlier this week during a radio interview that he intended to seek legal advice before signing the proclamation, since the drug remains illegal under federal law. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has sent mixed signals about his views on it. During the campaign, Trump, a Republican, said that marijuana legalization was best left to the states. His pick for attorney general, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, has criticized Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration for not enforcing the federal ban aggressively enough. An October opinion poll by Gallup showed that 60 percent of Americans now support the legalization of recreational use of marijuana. Even more approve of the idea of legalizing marijuana for medical use, a step that 28 states have taken. In addition to Maine and Massachusetts, voters in Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, California, Nevada and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational use of the drug. | 0fake |
ADMINISTRATORS FACE BACKLASH After Florida Middle School Organizes Segregated Field Trip For Blacks Only | We didn t mean to send a negative message. We wanted to be positive. Yeah because telling Asians, Whites and Hispanics to stay back and do school work while their black friends go on a field trip is a pretty positive experience for everyone Administrators at a Florida middle school faced a severe backlash from parents and students after they organized a field trip only for black students.Heron Creek Middle School scheduled a trip to Black Violin, a performance by black musicians, WSTP reports. I think it should be the whole school not just blacks, says black seventh-grader Richard Service.Instead, administrators were caught segregating students based on race.The school received 50 tickets and decided to give them only to black students. They said it was for blacks to be motivated to improve their grades, according to Service. I did think it was kind of racist that Latinos, Chinese couldn t go, says Jennifer Bender, another student at the school. No matter what race it s wrong all the way around, according to parent Steve Moreno.Other parents were harshly critical of the move on a community Facebook page. Linda Prince wrote:Just wanted to let the community be aware of what is happening at Heron Creek Middle School. Yesterday they called an assemble for ONLY African American students. The assembly was to tell them that they could earn a field trip for good behavior. After writing a email to the school board last night letting them know I was upset, I received a call from the vice principle this afternoon. He told me it was because there was an upcoming performance from a group called Two Black Musicians and they thought it would be a good motivational tool for their African American students. I thought segregation ended a long time ago. I completely do not agree with this. Basically I was told we just have to agree to disagree.After the backlash, administrators decided to allow all students to attend. We care about every child on this campus. We celebrate diversity all the time, Principal Matthew Gruhl says. We didn t mean to send a negative message. We wanted to be positive, according to Gruhl. We learned from this, he says, adding a bit sarcastically, We are sorry if we hurt people s feelings. Gruhl had told students they were changing the rules not because they were caught segregating students based on race, but because, We learned there s a demand for all our students to have an opportunity to see this great performance. They re now trying to raise $3,500 to purchase 500 tickets so more students can go, based on grades and behavior and not race. There s no word on who will go if they don t raise that amount of money. They had some parents upset this opportunity was not extended to more students, Sarasota County schools spokesman Scott Ferguson tells the Herald-Tribune. They decided today to open it up to all students who met the same criteria. That involves grades and behavior and other criteria. That s how should have been in the beginning, parent Steve Moreno tells the news station. Via: EAG News | 1real |
Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow Interviews Rep. Kevin Brady at CPAC: We’re Going to End the Tax on ’Made in America’ - Breitbart | Breitbart’s Alex Marlow interviewed House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady on reforming the tax code, the proposed border adjustment tax, and abolishing the death tax. [Brady highlighted congressional Republicans’ proposal to tax foreign imports and end taxes on products. “We’re going to end the tax on ‘Made in America,’” Brady said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. The “Made in America” tax gained its nickname from supporters of products because products in the U. S. are taxed at a lower rate than products made in the U. S. Brady and House Republicans have proposed a border adjustment tax that would impose a 20 percent tax on imports and is estimated to raise over a trillion dollars in a decade. President Trump has said that the border tax could boost U. S. jobs, but Marlow wondered whether the tax will have any consequences for small businesses that rely on imports, such as job losses. Marlow said that 97 percent of importers are small business and asked Brady whether the tax would make it harder for small businesses to conduct business. Brady said that foreign products receive a lot of special tax breaks, and “competition is best for consumers when everyone is taxed the same. ” Brady also advocated for a “fairer, simpler tax code” and said Americans will soon be able to file taxes with less paperwork. “The tax code will be so fair and so simple, nine out of 10 Americans will be able to file on a system,” Brady said. Marlow brought up the topic of media bias — which, as the of Breitbart News, was his “favorite topic. ” He asked Brady what he thought of the current “media environment” surrounding the issue of taxation. “It’s a challenge, ” Brady said. Marlow also highlighted how taxation can be viewed as a moral issue, citing “the confiscation of wealth from the American people,” and asked Brady whether the issue of taxation should be considered through a “moral lens. ” Brady replied that it should be, citing the “work, innovation, and value” American workers bring to the economy. Marlow closed the interview by asking Brady what would happen to the death tax in the future. “For the first time since the death tax was created in 1916, House Republicans propose to permanently kill the death tax,” Brady said. | 0fake |
This Trump Supporter May Literally Be The Dumbest Person On Earth (VIDEO) | When trying to figure out who these people are who are actually considering voting for Trump, or have already, two things come to mind they re either racist or just dumber than a bag of bricks.Trump has been so vague on policy and his supporters simply don t seem to care. They hear about his hatred of Muslims and Mexicans and come running in droves. His plans: a wall, the best wall; healthcare, the best healthcare; military, the best military; education, the best education; guns. He literally offers no specifics. He just says what comes to mind and these imbecilic supporters cheer. Watch any rally and you ll soon realize that he s not running for the nation, he s running for himself. Count how many times he mentions polls. Notice how few times he mentions legitimate policy ideas. Keep track of how many times he uses me, my or I. This vagueness is working though, because while at a diner in Nashville, Tennessee, Anna Kooiman of Fox News spoke with a Trump supporter by the name of Austin who said Trump is a proven businessman who has employed tens of thousands of people, he s a man that knows how to get the job done right. Austin is basically just repeating, verbatim, what Trump says at every single one of his rallies and events. Trump proclaims over and over that he is a great businessman who has employed tens of thousands of people and knows how to get the job done right. It s pretty much guaranteed that he ll say this at the next debate as well.When Kooiman pressed this Trump supporter on why he thinks Trump isn t specific on any policy, he replied: I am not concerned about that. I think he is not being specific so he does not give his competition everything that he s doing so they copy him. And Fox News being Fox News, Kooiman said, There s a great theory there and he s a dealmaker. So, let s get this straight, Trump isn t being specific because he doesn t want people to copy him? That s his grand plan to lure voters. That s like a salesman saying, I have this thing, and you re gonna love it, I just can t tell you what it is until you buy it. Who in their right mind would buy something they know nothing about? Apparently, this guy Austin in Nashville.Trump really wasn t kidding when he said he loves the poorly educated. Here s the video from Huffington Post: Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
FURIOUS FBI Agents Speak Out On Clinton Email Case: “We didn’t search their house. We always search the house.” | FBI Agents are coming forward now to voice their frustrations and concerns about FBI Director James Comey s inept policing of the FBI. Specifically, the Clinton email investigation was held up by Comey standing in the way. One of the specifics of the investigation that hindered it was that the Clinton house was never searched. The FBI always does a search of a household in an investigation. The New York FBI agents working the case were livid at the stonewalling in the Clinton case. FBI agents are now lawyering up and speaking up to tell what they know This is a textbook case where a grand jury should have convened but was not. That is appalling, an FBI special agent who has worked public corruption and criminal cases said of the decision. We talk about it in the office and don t know how Comey can keep going. DID ANYONE ELSE THINK THIS EXACT SAME THING:The agent was also surprised that the bureau did not bother to search Clinton s house during the investigation. We didn t search their house. We always search the house. The search should not just have been for private electronics, which contained classified material, but even for printouts of such material, he said. There should have been a complete search of their residence, the agent pointed out. That the FBI did not seize devices is unbelievable. The FBI even seizes devices that have been set on fire. Another special agent for the bureau that worked counter-terrorism and criminal cases said he is offended by Comey s saying: we and I ve been an investigator. The idea that the Clinton/e-mail case didn t go to a grand jury is ridiculous. According to Washington D.C. attorney Joe DiGenova, more FBI agents will be talking about the problems at bureau and specifically the handling of the Clinton case by Comey when Congress comes back into session and decides to force them to testify by subpoena. People are starting to talk. They re calling their former friends outside the bureau asking for help. We were asked to day to provide legal representation to people inside the bureau and agreed to do so and to former agents who want to come forward and talk. Comey thought this was going to go away. The most important thing of all is that the agents have decided that they are going to talk. Read more: Daily Caller | 1real |
The Overwhelming Stress of Being Denied a Bathroom | A recent viral video showed a woman wielding a Bible overhead and marching through a Target, ringing out her message through the brightly lit aisles. “I’m a mother of 12 and I’m disgusted by this wicked practice,” she cried. “Mothers, get your children out of this store … it’s a dangerous place!”
The woman, who has not been identified, is not the only one incensed by Target’s announcement that it would allow transgender customers to use the restroom that matches their gender identity. More than 700,000 people have pledged to boycott the store. Target’s move, meanwhile, was seen as a response to a new North Carolina law that requires people in government buildings to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex on their birth certificate—in effect forcing post-transition transgender people to use the bathroom of the opposite sex.
The idea that children, especially girls, will somehow be hurt by relieving themselves alongside transgender women has been one of the main arguments of the law’s proponents. In the words of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, “Men should not be going to the bathroom with little girls.”
There’s no evidence that municipalities that have protected trans people’s restroom access have seen a spike in public-safety issues. But according to some studies, not having protected restroom access can be harmful for trans people.
According to a study by Georgia State University’s Kristie L. Seelman, being denied bathroom access is correlated with an increased risk of suicide attempts among trans people.
Transgender people have said bathroom access is one of their “most pressing challenges,” Seelman writes in the study, which was published in February in the Journal of Homosexuality. Trans people have reported getting stared at or being asked to leave, something that causes them “great stress,” according to researchers. Seelman highlights an earlier study of 93 trans people that found 68 percent had been verbally harassed in bathrooms, and 9 percent were physically assaulted. | 0fake |
Kenya not at risk of constitutional crisis ahead of election re-run: top legal official | NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya will not face a constitutional or political crisis even if a planned re-run of its presidential election, now set for Oct. 26, is delayed beyond the end of October, the attorney general said on Friday. The Supreme Court this month annulled President Uhuru Kenyatta s August 8 election win, citing irregularities, and ordered the election board to organize a new poll by the end of October. Kenyatta is expected to face off again with opposition leader Raila Odinga. Odinga s lead lawyer in a petition that led to the invalidation of Kenyatta s re-election, James Orengo, said on Wednesday that if the election were not held by the end of October, Kenyatta s term in office would cease, thrusting the country into a deep constitutional crisis. The government now in office legitimately remains in office by full force of the constitution until the fresh election is complete and the new leader sworn in , Githu Muigai, the attorney general, told a news conference. (Any delay in poll) does not delegitimize the constitutional order of the day... There is absolutely no chance of a crisis around the date because the election did take place and... we are again inside the election cycle, he added. Odinga s NASA coalition said it believed Kenyatta s term would end 60 days after the Supreme Court ruling on Sept. 1 that nullified the August election. Odinga has said he will not take part in the election if certain conditions are not met, including the removal of some election board officials. Moses Wetangula, one of NASA s leaders, accused Muigai of misreading the constitution. He s simply being mischievous, Wetangula told a news conference also addressed by Odinga on Friday. Kenya has the region s richest economy and is a key Western ally in a region often shaken by violence. The repeat election is being closely watched for signs of tension that could spark violence as in 2007 when more than 1,000 Kenyans were killed. This week Kenyatta accused the Supreme Court of staging a coup against the will of the people when it annulled his win, in a sign that the political rhetoric is heating up ahead of the new poll. Odinga accused Kenyatta of dragging Kenya down the path of other African states that have suffered upheaval over elections, including Gambia. He added the opposition had lost hope that Kenyatta would sober up, mature and see the need to stop . On Thursday the election board pushed back the date of the election re-run to Oct. 26 after a French firm whose technology is being used in the polls said it was nearly impossible to be ready for the originally scheduled date of Oct. 17. | 0fake |
Trump floats ban on defense firms hiring military procurement officials | BATON ROUGE, La./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he was considering imposing a lifetime ban on U.S. military procurement officials going to work for defense contractors, a move that could dramatically reshape the defense industry. Three days after publicly rebuking Boeing Co over the cost of the next-generation Air Force One presidential aircraft, Trump floated the idea of such a ban at a rally for Republican supporters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “I think anybody that gives out these big contracts should never ever, during their lifetime, be allowed to work for a defense company, for a company that makes that product,” Trump said. “I don’t know, it makes sense to me.” He added that he “got the idea yesterday” as he thought about “massive” cost overruns for military equipment but needed to “check this out” first before making any decisions. Trump said such a ban would make “a big, big difference because the purchasing in this country is out of control, for everything, not only military.” The president-elect’s idea was met with deep skepticism within the U.S. defense establishment Procurement and weapons program management jobs have long been a good alternative career path within the Pentagon for military officers who did not win coveted command jobs. A U.S. defense official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said such a ban would likely discourage people from taking procurement jobs in the Pentagon and cause more attrition. “The reason a lot of people go in and stay in is because it makes for a nice transition later to a civilian job. It could make people want to avoid that,” the official said after being asked about Trump’s announcement. Current rules prohibit Pentagon employees from working on the same acquisition matter in the private sector, said Andrew Hunter, a former Pentagon official now at the Center of Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. But an industry-wide ban on hiring former Pentagon officials could backfire badly, he said. “No one is going to want to take those jobs. You’re going to have the worst of the worst, because no one with any particular talent is going to want a career where they are going to be banned for life for doing what they were trained to do,” said Hunter, who is director of the center’s Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group. Congressional aides also told Reuters they were skeptical that such a ban could be enacted. Trump singled out Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter jet program for criticism at the Louisiana rally, saying it was “totally, totally, like, uncontrollably over budget.” The F-35 is the Pentagon’s costliest arms program. The Defense Department expects to spend $391 billion to develop the plane and buy 2,443 of the supersonic, stealthy new warplanes in the coming decades. Costs per plane are expected to fall below $100 million as production ramps up. | 0fake |
Hillary Just Secured The Most Important GOP #NeverTrump Endorsement YET | Colin Powell is a Republican, but he voted for our beloved President Obama twice, and now he is again angering the nutty wing of his party by refusing to stand by the disgraceful 2016 GOP nominee that is Donald Trump. He s gone even further than that, though, and has endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.Now, considering Powell s voting habits of the last eight years, one could argue that he is just a RINO at this point (Republican In Name Only). But, we must remember he was Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. You don t get much more traditionally Republican than that. On the other hand, he is a smart, reasonable human being who loves his country and has served it proudly in a prestigious and celebrated military career, rising all the way up the ranks to become a General in the United States Army.Powell s revelation comes after leaked emails revealed that he views Donald Trump as a national disgrace. To that end, one would expect that General Powell would want nothing to do with today s version of the party he has been a proud member of for so long.This is the biggest blow yet to Donald Trump and the GOP writ large, considering how respected Colin Powell is in this great nation, regardless of party affiliations or political leanings. This is especially powerful considering that we are now exactly two weeks from Election Day. This is a great sign that Americans will do the right thing, and to reject the bigotry, misogyny, and demagoguery that is Donald Trump.As for the Republican-elected officials that continue to stand behind Trump shame on you. You know in your heart of hearts that the last place that orange buffoon belongs is anywhere near the Oval Office, and yet you continue to do all you can to put him there.Featured image via Hillary Clinton s Instagram | 1real |
Hypocrite Conservative ‘Christian’ Leaders STILL Support Trump After His ‘P*ssy’ Comments | Just when you thought support of Donald Trump would drop to zero it turns out there is still one group that backs him 100 percent. Despite claiming to be all about family values and biblical principles, conservative evangelical leaders still refuse to revoke their endorsement of the Republican nominee.In 1995, Trump made vulgar comments about women while bragging to Access Hollywood reporter Billy Bush that he can grope any woman he wants because he is famous. You know I m automatically attracted to beautiful I just start kissing them, Trump said. It s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don t even wait. And when you re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p*ssy. The offensive remarks were finally enough to cause many Republicans to condemn Trump and call for him to drop out of the race.But conservative Christian leaders like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and Faith and Freedom Coalition president Ralph Reed say they both still support and want Trump to be President of the United States. My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values, it is based upon shared concerns about issues such as: justices on the Supreme Court that ignore the constitution, America s continued vulnerability to Islamic terrorists and the systematic attack on religious liberty that we ve seen in the last 7 1/2 years, Perkins said. Voters of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, create jobs, and oppose the Iran nuclear deal, added Reed. Ten-year-old tapes of private conversation with a television talk show host rank very low on their hierarchy of concerns. Wow.These two so-called men of God are literally still supporting Donald Trump and think his remarks aren t a big deal at all. And they have the nerve to call themselves Christians. It makes one wonder what it will take to make these assholes change their minds about Trump?Because sexually assaulting women certainly doesn t bother them at all. And frankly, they should be ousted from their positions and ostracized by the Christian community they claim to represent.Featured image via Wikimedia | 1real |
Texas Elector Expects Massive Corruption Related to the Electoral College Vote |
I recently interviewed Ken Clark, a Texas elector for the Republican Party in the Electoral College. Ken detailed the intense pressure he received from the Gore people to change his vote to Gore in the Gore v. Bush election.
Mr. Clark expects the Democrats to pull out all the stops in the upcoming election and he expects to see corruption on a massive scale.
Here is the interview.
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Police have thwarted seven attacks since March: London mayor | BRIGHTON, England (Reuters) - London Mayor Sadiq Khan said police had thwarted seven attacks by militants since March this year, describing the increase in the number as a shift rather than a spike. Speaking at the annual conference of his opposition Labour Party, Khan also said the police needed more spending to help them counter such attacks and that Internet companies must do more to crackdown on extremist content. Between March this year and now, there have been four attacks but seven have been thwarted, he told a Guardian Live event. Earlier this month, the head of the city s police force said six militant plots had been foiled over the last several months. | 0fake |
How this WWII airman is helping veterans heal with the help of 4-legged friends | ‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. How this WWII airman is helping veterans heal with the help of 4-legged friends By Arnaldo Rodgers on November 10, 2016 veterans heal
By Alexandra Zaslow
Irwin Stovroff has received hundreds of thank-you cards since starting a nonprofit that pairs service dogs with veterans in need, but there’s one letter in particular that stands out to him.
An Army veteran named Tyson (who prefers to keep his last name private), had severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and wasn’t paying much attention to his wife, Adrienne, or his children. He then welcomed a service dog named Argon into his home, and it had a profound impact.
“When the days were so dark for Tyson, I wasn’t sure if I could get through to him,” his wife wrote in a recent letter addressed to Argon. “I am so glad you are here with us. You have brought life back into Tyson.”
Read the Full Article at www.today.com >>>> Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VNN, VNN authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or and its assigns. Notices Posted by Arnaldo Rodgers on November 10, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Health , Veterans . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can leave a response or trackback to this entry FaceBook Comments
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null | by having it be about climate and not about the general planetary destruction of nature, land, and lifestyle we are doomed to fail
ecosystem destroying solar plants in pristine desert valleys and buying Teslas are not the answer | 1real |
British reaction to Calais Jungle ‘wise move’, say scholars. | October 26, 2016
Economists and eminent human rights lawyers alike have this week applauded the British stance on re-settling refugees from the Calais ‘jungle’. Professor Donald Rosarch from the Denver School for Human Rights Law mused ‘We admire the wisdom of western nations with aging populations angrily rejecting cohorts of fit young men and boys, none of whom are likely to be a burden to health services for some thirty or forty years. After their ordeal traveling thousands of miles on foot, sometimes after weeks at sea watching their friends die needlessly, these people somehow retain a remarkable humility and willingness to work. It is a dangerous situation.’
Ethel Brantingham from Kettering who eats kippers for breakfast in line with her political beliefs who named her terrier pup ‘Nigel’ reflected the views of the British electorate: ‘We simply cannot tolerate an influx of this sort of attitude, these people have learned nothing about entitlement and the values that made Britain great. Some of them even want to train as teachers or doctors. Imagine them in five years time, raising children and paying taxes in their droves, just as the majority of us were planning a neglected death in an underfunded state nursing home. Boris Johnson was right. Fuck everybody, its all about me.’ Share this story...
Posted: Oct 26th, 2016 by Squudge Click for more article by Squudge .. More Stories about: News In Brief 0 | 1real |
VIETNAM RELEASES Catholic Priest Just Days Before Obama Lifts Arms Ban… Just One Prisoner? | Vietnam has supposedly made modest gains in reducing human rights abuses BUT a Catholic priest was just released after TWO DECADES in a Vietnam prison. What on earth did this priest do? Well, he fought for religious freedom Yes, Vietnam is still holding others in situations just like this. Soooo Vietnam throws us a bone and releases just one prisoner as a gesture so Obama will lift the arms ban? WHY NOT HOLD OUT FOR ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS?Vietnam has freed one of its longest-serving political prisoners, just a few days before a visit by Barack Obama in which human rights is expected to be a key talking point.Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest who has spent most of the past two decades in detention due to his relentless pursuit of democracy and religious freedom, was released from a prison in central Hue province after his fourth stint behind bars. They released him in a special amnesty by Vietnam s president before the Obama trip, Catholic priest Phan Van Loi told Reuters by phone.The communist country s state-controlled media has made no mention of Ly s release, which comes as Obama weighs whether to lift an arms embargo on Vietnam, a decision Washington has long said would hinge on human rights progress.Loi said that he met Ly after his release and that although he appeared weak, he was in high spirits.The US embassy in Hanoi welcomed the release of Ly but said other dissidents should be freed too. We call on the government to release unconditionally all prisoners of conscience and allow all Vietnamese to express their political views peacefully without fear of retribution, an embassy spokesman said.During Ly s long periods of incarceration, sometimes in solitary confinement, he suffered numerous health problems, including strokes and partial paralysis.Ly s release on Friday was three months before the end of an eight-year prison sentence for anti-state propaganda , which comes under a section of the criminal code that rights groups say is vaguely worded and used to punish outspoken critics.The priest has been on the receiving end of some of the country s harshest verdicts, stemming from his opposition to the political monopoly of the Communist party. He set up a pro-democracy movement and was behind several banned publications.Human rights is a thorny issue for Vietnam that has created dilemmas for western governments keen to engage with one of Asia s fastest-growing economies but alarmed by the arrests, harassment and jailing of its detractors.Via: The Guardian | 1real |
Saudis support Turkey’s hidden agenda to destroy Iraq | Ian Greenhalgh is a photographer and historian with a particular interest in military history and the real causes of conflicts. His studies in history and background in the media industry have given him a keen insight into the use of mass media as a creator of conflict in the modern world. His favored areas of study include state sponsored terrorism, media manufactured reality and the role of intelligence services in manipulation of populations and the perception of events. Saudis support Turkey’s hidden agenda to destroy Iraq By Ian Greenhalgh on November 4, 2016 [Editor’s note: As I have written previously, Asharq Al-Awsat is a Saudi government propaganda mouthpiece, which makes it useful for determining the Saudi opinion on various events. In this case, we have an article that tells us what the Saudis think about the situation in Iraq, in particular Turkey’s intent to seize Mosul and the northern half of the country for itself. It is important to realise that the Saudis are bitter enemies of both Iran and Iraq, furthermore, it is Saudi financial backing that created IS in Iraq, a cynical attempt at destroying the nation. One thing this article plainly tells us is that the Saudis are supportive of Turkey’s intentions towards Iraq, this is clear from the way that the author repeats the false narrative that both IS and the Kurds are enemies of Turkey and therefore it is legitimate for the Turkish army to move into Iraq in order to combat them. The truth is that IS in Iraq and Syria is largely the creation of the Turks, that much of the personnel fighting under the IS banner is Turkish, or rather was, most of those men have withdrawn back into Turkey where they removed their IS disguises and once again donned their Turkish army uniforms. When the author writes that they have not fought against Assad’s forces, Iranian forces, Russian forces or Hezbollah, he is inverting reality as that is precisely what the Turks have been doing, however they have been doing it while disguised as IS. The author goes on to repeat the Turkish propaganda line that they are trying to protect Turkey and ethnic Turkmen inside Iraq, another blatant lie; as I have written before, Turkey’s real intention is to seize the city of Mosul and large tracts of Iraqi territory for itself – how can it defend Turkey from groups that are in reality, Turks dressed up as terrorists? Mixed in with the support of the Turkish lies is a constant anti-Iranian thread, the author claims Iran wants to take over parts of northern Iraq, in reality, as I have explained, that is Turkey’s intention, not Iran’s. So what are we to conclude about Saudi intentions from this neat little package of propaganda and disinfo? I think it is clear that the Saudis are fully supportive of Turkey and it’s agenda to expand it’s borders at the expense of Syria and Iraq, in particular to seize the cities of Mosul and Aleppo, which Turkey still considers to be rightfully theirs. This is a continuation of the partnership that created IS in Iraq – Turkey recruited and trained them inside Turkey while the Saudis financed the whole thing. What we are seeing now is the Turkish army attempting to achieve what IS has failed to do – seize and hold northern Iraq while at the same time bringing down the Iraqi government and it’s army, leaving a power vacuum in the south which can be exploited by the Saudis. Ian] The map of Turkey according to the Ottoman Parliament-sealed, 1920 National Oath that designates today’s Kurdistan Region, Mosul, Syrian Kurdistan, Aleppo, parts of the Balkans and Caucasus as Turkish soil. Opinion: Will There be a Turkey – Iraq War?
The political situation between Turkey and Iraq is at its worst. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reiterated that his forces “will strongly participate in liberating Mosul” from ISIS.
The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi responded by saying “We will not allow Turkey to participate in the battle to liberate Mosul”. Disputes between the countries are not limited to the issue of Mosul and reflect the conflict and threats facing the region.
Iraqi media is portraying the role of Turkey in Mosul as sectarian and anti-Shia. This is a false portrayal that exploits the statements of Arab journalists who translate Turkish statements according to their whims. The truth is that Turkish military activity was never sectarian. The Turkish army has not fought a single battle against Shiites or Alawites. Neither have they fought against Assad’s forces, Iranian forces, Russian forces or Hezbollah.
All the battles that Turkish forces have waged have been against ISIS, Turkish-Kurdish separatists and Syrian Kurds allied with them. All of these groups are Sunni and not Shiite. The reason why Turkish forces are fighting them is because they pose a threat to the unity of Turkey and its stability. Turkish military operations are unrelated to the sectarian conflict as Iraqi leaders claim or as Arabs who naively think that Turkey is ready to engage in foolish sectarian wars are professing. Turkey itself is a multi-ethnic and multicultural country!
In my opinion, the Turks are now paying the price for not intervening in areas close to their borders at the beginning of the Syrian uprising and not indicating the areas that they consider threats to their national security and that they will defend by force.
For example, Aleppo represents their geographic and historic extension. As a result, Iran exerted its influence inside Syria and is bargaining with the west and Arabs over it.
Ankara wants to fight ISIS in Mosul and prevent the fighting from targeting the Turkmen and others. However, Iran is leading the political and military confrontation in Mosul and against Turkey also. We all know that the Iraqi government is helpless.
The Iranians succeeded in filling the void in the years that followed the US President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of all his forces. They founded sectarian militias that rival the government and they named them Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi. Their aim was to weaken the central authority as they did in Lebanon, and these militias are now preparing to cross into Syria as well.
The Turks have tried diplomatic channels and sent a delegation to Baghdad. The Iraqis responded and sent a delegation to Ankara but their endeavours did not succeed. Will the Turks defend the residents of those areas that their forces surround? Will they confront Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi that is bound to occupy Tal Afar? Will they do something if Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi militias cross towards Al-Hasakah in Syria as preliminary information suggests they will?
The Iranians are acting quickly before the results of the US elections, and they want to take advantage of the slogan “Fighting terrorism”. They want to launch multiple wars aimed at tightening control over strategic border crossings between Syria, Iraq and oil rich areas.
Despite the risks to their interests, I do not think that the Turkish leadership wants confrontation despite knowing that its army is much stronger than Iran and Iraq and is better equipped. Iranian forces and the militias that it brought from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon are moving towards the Turkish border and are chasing Syrian opposition forces that are loyal to Turkey. They have also encouraged the creation of a buffer zone for the Kurds that will act like a scarecrow to the Turkish government.
At the same time, the Turks are paying the price on the economic and security levels; they are hosting more than two million Syrian refugees and are facing an Iranian-Russian plan to bring the fighting to their territory. This plan is supported by Turkey’s Kurds. Iraqis loyal to Tehran have explicitly declared that they will work to break up Turkey should it dare to challenge them in Mosul.
The situation is very difficult and the Turks will be mistaken again if they think that the war will end at the Ba’shiqah camp in Iraq where their forces are stationed. The Iranians want to control the political decision making centres in Baghdad, Damascus and oil rich areas in Mosul and Deir ez-Zor. They also want to restrain Turkey in the region.
Despite this, I do not believe that threats exchanged by the Iraqi and Turkish leaderships will lead to the two armies clashing. Rather, they aim to intimidate the Turks and force them to leave so that Iran can expand its influence over Ninevah, neighbouring provinces, trade routes, southern Syria and passages. Turkey is in a difficult situation that requires it to form an opposing camp that proves its credibility on the ground. Related Posts: | 1real |
Major Corporate Sponsors Are Scaling Back Support for GOP Convention | From Coca-Cola to Microsoft, companies that gave big bucks to the 2012 convention that nominated Mitt Romney are slashing this year’s budgets for the July coronation of Donald Trump.
Some of America’s largest corporations, which backed the Republican National Convention that nominated Mitt Romney in 2012, are lurching away from sponsoring the 2016 confab. Under pressure from anti-Trump advocacy groups, corporations that have traditionally not hesitated to drop millions on national conventions are limiting their contributions and scaling back their activities.
Coca-Cola, for example, contributed $660,000 to the convention in 2012 but is dramatically drawing down the amount it is giving this year. The corporation gave $75,000 to both parties’ conventions this time around, a company spokesman told The Daily Beast, stressing that the contribution took place in 2015. Coca-Cola has indicated to anti-Trump groups that it will not give any more.
And Microsoft, which contributed $1.5 million in cash and services to the Republican National Convention in 2012, said in a press release just days ago that it “decided last fall to provide a variety of Microsoft technology products and services instead of making a cash donation.” If it did indeed make that decision last fall, it put off the announcement until just last week, after an anti-Trump coalition had began pounding its drums.
“Both Coca-Cola and Microsoft have agreed to end cash donations to political conventions that promote hate and bigotry, and we applaud their decision to do so,” said Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, which is part of the coalition. “We hope that other companies will take their lead and send a strong message against hate.”
Still, some of America’s largest technology companies are charging full steam ahead. AT&T, which provided $3 million in 2012, will be an official communications provider for the July convention. Google will serve as the official livestream provider in Cleveland. And Facebook will support both Republican and Democratic conventions.
Many of the 2012 Republican convention’s biggest sponsors didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast, including the American Petroleum Institute, Florida Power and Light, and Lockheed Martin, which were responsible for combined millions in contributions last cycle.
Sheldon Adelson contributed $5 million to the 2012 convention, making him the largest individual donor, but a spokesman didn’t respond to a question about this year’s convention. Marketing Solution Publications, run by financier William Edwards, gave the largest corporate donation last cycle at $4 million. But Edwards had nothing to say after The Daily Beast called his office asking if he would re-up this year.
Or, as in the case of Walmart, companies said they had not yet made up their mind about whether they would sponsor the convention, less than three months before the event.
In off-the-record asides, corporation spokespersons insisted to The Daily Beast that the convention is really about supporting the city of Cleveland, or the democratic process, or open political dialogue. The contributions aren’t an endorsement, they said, and in any case the corporations donate the same amount to both parties.
“They are sponsoring a party for Trump,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, another group urging corporations not to contribute to the event. “Muslim kids being bullied, Latino kids being yelled at with threats of deportation at sporting events…these corporations are closing their eyes, closing their ears, closing their mouths, and handing over their wallets.”
Corporations could be forgiven for seeking to distance themselves from the Cleveland convention. Even leading Republicans are going skip the event: four of the past five GOP presidential nominees—Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush—are declining to attend.
The Cleveland 2016 Host Committee, which aims to raise $64 million for the Republican convention, had a relatively slow month of fundraising—coinciding with a period of intense uncertainty over who the Republican nominee might be, or whether the nominee would even be decided by July. | 0fake |
The Trump Election Will Spark More Individual & Collective Healing | The Trump Election Will Spark More Individual & Collective Healing Nov 9, 2016 1 0
This article will not be a pro-Trump or a pro-Hillary piece. It will have little to do with politics and more to do with a much bigger picture. As everyone knows, many people are celebrating the Trump victory and many people are mourning it. What is needed right now is a wider perspective at what is occurring. Donald Trump will become the next U.S. President.
With Donald Trump set to take over the Oval Office in late January of 2017, there are many unknowns, just as it would be if Hillary would have won.
What is going to happen with health insurance? What is going to happen with immigration laws? What is going to happen with foreign policy in relation to other nations? More importantly, what is going to happen to us as individuals and humanity as a whole?
Individual Healing
While these questions need to be asked and will in time be answered, we must remember that we cannot give up our personal power to shape our individual lives. Right now, many people are worried and many people are thrilled. Regardless of our feelings on this election, we must remember that we alone are responsible for our individual lives as we make countless choices each day. How will I choose to treat others today? How will I choose to treat myself today? Am I taking care of my physical body well by eating well and exercising enough? Am I ensuring to get enough sleep throughout the week? What is it I can do today to become a better person? By either believing that one person is going to save or change your entire life or by believing that one person is going to ruin your entire life gives away your own personal power. The great philosopher Epictetus once said , “It is not what happens to you, it is how you respond.” We always have a choice in our response to any situation.
By either being saddened or thrilled at the perception that one man is going to either ruin or save your life is extremely dis-empowering. Though each person has every right to feel how they want, it must be remembered where true power comes from: within . Every person has the choice how they wish to respond to this election. Are you going to wither away in frustration, anger and despair or are you going to make choices that help you to become the best person you can be? On the opposite side, are you going to sit back and believe your personal challenges are going to be fixed with a new president or are you also going to take action to become the best person you can be? Regardless of who you did or didn’t support, we all need to reclaim our personal power and continue the trek towards bettering and healing ourselves, even if it is in the smallest of ways.
Collective Healing
On a wider scale, this election will give us the collective choice to where we wish to travel. Do we wish to seek peace with other people and other countries? Do we wish to have dialogue with nations previous administrations demonized? Do we wish to communicate with and try to understand other people’s viewpoints or are we going to remain closed off to such opportunities for personal and collective healing and growth?
Additionally, are we going to continue to allow group-think to dominate our society by letting the media tell us what to believe, or are we going to begin gathering information from several sources to arrive at our own conclusions? Are we going to question our leaders more and demand answers that are truthful and unbiased towards any specific agenda? Will we do this both on a local and mass level? Are we going to work towards cooperation or continue to live in a dying paradigm of competition?
As physicist and author Gregg Braden says , “A growing body of scientific evidence, gathered from more than 400 peer-reviewed studies, is leading to an undeniable truth: violent competition and war directly contradict our deepest instincts of cooperation and nurturing. Scientific studies show conclusively that nature is based upon a model of cooperation and mutual aid, not violent competition and war. We live in a world where everything is connected. We can no longer think in terms of us and them when it comes to the consequences of the way we live. Today it’s all about WE .” Science has disproved Darwin’s theory and shows us we must act in unison to transcend our collective challenges.
I see this election as many other do: a massive turning point in our world’s evolution. I personally have full trust that we will look back at this time and see this as a positive, yet challenging event in that it empowered more people to begin taking action to create the kind of world they wish to live in. This turning point is allowing us all to shift our perception of the world and to initiate action towards creating a more peaceful, happy and abundant world for all.
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and practices health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information on how to receive health coaching for yourself, a family member or a friend as well as view other inspiring articles. | 1real |
The YMCA Just Offered Free Election Day Childcare So Everyone Can Vote | Comments
In exactly one week from today, millions of Americans will join a mass exodus to various polling places around the nation to select new city and state officials, mayors, judges, sheriffs, congressional representatives, and of course the next President of the United States.
However, some find themselves locked out of the process not from a lack of desire to participate, but because they have responsibilities as parents and can not find the time, or the resources, to leave their offspring alone so that they may go to the ballot box.
With lines at some polling stations reaching up to 5 to 8 hours during the primary a few months ago, in Arizona for example, voting can be rightly seen as out of reach for those who have more to do than stand around chewing the fat with their neighbors while they wait for their turn to pull a lever.
The YMCA has offered to do their part to help alleviate some of this inconvenience by offering free child car services on election day. The USA President and CEO of the YMCA, Kevin Washington, issued this decree :
“Election Day is arguably one of the most important days in the U.S. this year — the ultimate opportunity for Americans to make their voices heard through the democratic process. Unfortunately, many people who want to vote find it challenging because they have to take children with them. The Y’s hope is that Zoe’s Kids Day Out initiative enables those parents and caregivers to exercise their right to vote, and ensures children can spend their time in a safe, nurturing environment.
Now not every single YMCA location across the nation is offering this fantastic service, so please be sure to check with your local chapter beforehand.
While the YMCA deserves applause and recognition for their commitment to furthering American democracy through inclusion, what they are offering is a band-aid to a systemic problem.
To correct this issue entirely the American people deserve election day to be a national holiday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) proposed a bill to create “Democracy Day” which would codify into law the right for all Americans to have a day off to vote. Presently there are no legal requirements for employers to give their employees time off to vote, although hundreds of large corporations have voluntarily allowed their workers time to vote without fear of penalty or repercussion, but this is not enough.
Only around 54% of eligible voters turned out to polling places in 2012, and that cannot be entirely blamed on voter apathy, but also on the reality that many do not have the time or resources to cast a ballot despite their deep desire to do participate in the democratic process. The American people deserve better, and our government must do more to ensure that everyone who wishes to vote has the ability to do exactly that. | 1real |
OBAMA CRITICIZES SEPARATION OF POWERS: Republicans Imagine I Would Turn The U.S. Into Cuba | Yes, it s really hard to be a dictator in America Obama obviously doesn t like power to be given to anyone but him. | 1real |
Notorious RBG Throws AMAZING Shade At Trump From SCOTUS Bench (VIDEO) | We love Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She s the sweet but also sharp liberal justice who sits on the Supreme Court. She s also no fan of Donald Trump. One tradition that Ginsburg AKA The Notorious RBG has is wearing a special dissent collar when she is going against major rulings presented the land s highest court. No such ruling was upon the justices today, but Ginsburg wore the collar anyway. It seemed to be her way of showing the nation and world that she disapproves of a Donald Trump presidency.Now, this fact is no secret; after all, America s favorite SCOTUS justice came under fire during the heated presidential campaign for remarks she made about the bombastic then-GOP presidential nominee. She said: He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that. Ginsburg then went on to lament the idea of what a Trump presidency will do to our American reality, saying: For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be I don t even want to contemplate that. Well, unfortunately, that is now our reality. I have to wonder what is going through Justice Ginsburg s head right about now. If her dissent collar is any indication, it s nothing good regarding President-elect Trump.Watch the video below:Featured image via Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images | 1real |
PAY 2 PLAY: Democratic Convention Ends Amid Controversy, Empty Seats & White Noise | Shawn Helton 21st Century WireThe 2016 Democratic National Convention was the latest in a long line of sordid political productions It was a tough week for the Clinton change makers as Bernie Sanders delegates staged a mass walkout after a series of email leaks disclosed that a Clinton lawyer gave the DNC strategy advice on how to sideline the Sanders campaign.There were also claims of white noise machines used to quell any anti-Clinton dissent inside the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Help Wanted: Actors Needed Putting aside the fact that today s US presidential conventions have turned into celebrity show business promotional events (pop star Katie Perry, Ted Danson, and even British actor Orlando Bloom et all), there s another more disturbing controversy emerging this time over a Craigslist ad stating that, actors were needed for a national convention prompting critics to suggest empty seats had to be filled prior to the end of the convention and that the July 27th ad was at the behest of the DNC.Whether or not all or some of the claims above are fully accurate, 2016 s DNC was unquestionably a contentious affair filled with a heavy dose of identity politics.In fact, the star-studded event conjured the bizarre Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting from just over a month ago by having Christine Leinonen speak at the convention, a former Michigan State Police trooper/Florida Attorney turned Wheel of Fortune hopeful, and mother of Christopher (Drew) Leinonen, an apparent victim of America s largest mass shooting. Here s Australia s Peekay Truth on YouTube examining the phenomena surrounding Christine Leinonen Interestingly, Chris Leinonen s pro gun father Mark Bando, a former patrol officer for the city of Detroit PD from 1974-99, did not speak at the convention on behalf of his son.Additionally at Leinonen s speech at the DNC, she was accompanied by Pulse nightclub shooting survivor Brandon Wolf, who just happens to be a former runner-up on Bravo TV s The Kandi Factory. We ve noted before, the many strange Hollywood links to the Pulse shooting, including the apparent actor-cum-shooter Omar Mateen.Below is a YouTube video from the user Run2Christ HD, which investigates the many casting connections linked to Brandon Wolf, while also disclosing that one of the Pulse nightclub founders, Ron Legler, is the president of the Florida Theatrical Association and a booking agent for national touring broadway productions. Some of FTA s productions include The Lion King, Chicago and The Phantom of the Opera.Here s Brandon Wolf ready for his close-up Here s a screen shot of Ron Legler s professional background Here at 21WIRE, we examined much of the anomalies associated with the Orlando shooting, an event that failed to account for any shootings said to have taken place within the nightclub, as the FBI s own transcript made no mention of individuals being shot inside the club.If you remember, according to FOX analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano plainly states that all of the Pulse nightclub victims met their fate when Orlando police entered the building Here s a You Tube video montage from Educate Yourself, that displays some of the strange behaviour exhibited by Christine Leinonen More DNC discussion from Zero Hedge below DNC NIGHTMARE? Empty seats observed during roll call at the DNC. (Image Source: fellowshipofminds)Zero HedgeDid The DNC Hire Actors (At Below Minimum Wage) To Work At The Convention?Following the exposure of a fake Trump job advertisement designed by The DNC to embarrass Trump, it is interesting that a Craigslist ad calling for Actors Needed for National Convention has surfaced Whether the ad is real or fake is unclear, but the text suggests below minimum wage compensation (7-plus hours work for $50) and the number of walkouts from the Convention indicates perhaps a need for cheering happy seat-fillers SNOOZEFEST Bill Clinton nods off during Hillary s vacuous speech. (Image Source: YouTube)Actors Needed For National Convention (Philadelphia) compensation: $50.00 Looking for 700 people to be utilized as actors during the National Convention. We currently have a number of empty seats that will need to be filled as we are currently removing a number of people and need to refill their seats for the remainder of the conference. You will be paid $50.00 each night for the remainder of the convention. You will be required to cheer at all times and will be asked to dress properly and possibly wear some promotional material.Which makes sense if one looks at the following shocking video from film director, Josh Fox, best known for his Oscar-nominated anti-fracking documentary Gasland, captured inside the DNC As DailyWire.com reports, Fox tells the camera This is amazing, this place is empty. There is nobody left in here. I mean this whole stadium, look at this, as he pans his cellphone to show the lack of cheering Dems.He continues in disbelief, adding, This is not voter enthusiasm . I can t believe my eyes. I ve never seen anything like this. This is the primetime of the Democratic National Convention right after the nomination of Hillary Clinton and this place is emptied out like crazy. I m stunned. This is insane. The whole California delegation is pretty much gone, he adds. I mean this has got to be something very worrisome for the Democrats. Voter enthusiasm wins elections. More from Zero Hedge .READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSEE ALSO: CASTING CRISIS: Orlando s Actors, Agents and Casualty Role PlayersREAD MORE ORLANDO SHOOTING NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Orlando FilesHelp support us by becoming a 21WIRE Member at: 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
With Echoes of the ’30s, Trump Resurrects a Hard-Line Vision of ‘America First’ - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — America, and the world, just found out what “America First” means. President Trump could have used his inaugural address to define one of the touchstone phrases of his campaign in the most inclusive way, arguing, as did many of his predecessors, that as the world’s greatest superpower rises, its partners will also prosper. Instead, he chose a dark, alternative, one that appeared to herald the end of a American experiment to shape a world that would be eager to follow its lead. In Mr. Trump’s vision, America’s new strategy is to win every transaction and confrontation. Gone are the days, he said, when America extended its defensive umbrella without compensation, or spent billions to try to lift the fortune of foreign nations, with no strategic benefits for the United States. “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first,” he said, in a line that resonated around the world as soon as he uttered it from the steps of the Capitol. “We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs. ” The United States, he said, will no longer subsidize “the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military. ” While all American presidents pledge to defend America’s interests first — that is the core of the presidential oath — presidents of both parties since the end of World War II have wrapped that effort in an expansion of the liberal democratic order. Until today, American policy has been a complete rejection of the America First rallying cry that the famed flier Charles Lindbergh championed when, in the late 1930s, he became one of the most prominent voices to keep the United States out of Europe’s wars, even if it meant abandoning the country’s closest allies. Mr. Trump has rejected comparisons with the earlier movement, with its taint of Nazism and . After World War II, the United States buried the Lindbergh vision of America First. The United Nations was born in San Francisco and raised on the East River of Manhattan, an ambitious, if still unfulfilled, experiment in shaping a liberal order. Lifting the vanquished nations of World War II into democratic allies was the idea behind the Marshall Plan, the creation of the World Bank and institutions to spread American aid, technology and expertise around the world. And NATO was created to instill a commitment to common defense, though Mr. Trump has accurately observed that nearly seven decades later, many of its member nations do not pull their weight. Mr. Trump’s defiant address made abundantly clear that his threat to pull out of those institutions, if they continue to take advantage of the United States’ willingness to subsidize them, could soon be translated into policy. All those decades of generosity, he said, punching the air for emphasis, had turned America into a loser. “We’ve made other countries rich,” he said, “while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon. ” The American middle class has suffered the most, he said, finding its slice of the American dream “redistributed across the entire world. ” To those who helped build that global order, Mr. Trump’s vow was at best shortsighted. “Truman and Acheson, and everyone who followed, based our policy on a ‘’ not an ‘’ basis,” said Richard N. Haass, whose new book, “A World in Disarray,” argues that a more granular, view of American interests will ultimately fail. “A narrow America First posture will prompt other countries to pursue an equally narrow, independent foreign policy,” he said after Mr. Trump’s speech, “which will diminish U. S. influence and detract from global prosperity. ” To Mr. Trump and his supporters, it is just that view that put America on the slippery slope to obsolescence. As a builder of buildings, Mr. Trump’s return on investment has been easily measurable. So it is unsurprising that he would grade America’s performance on a scorecard in which he totals up wins and losses. Curiously, among the skeptics are his own appointees. His nominee for defense secretary, Gen. James N. Mattis, strongly defended the importance of NATO during his confirmation hearing. Both Rex W. Tillerson, the nominee for secretary of state, and Nikki R. Haley, the choice for ambassador to the United Nations, offered up paeans to the need for robust American alliances, though Mr. Tillerson periodically tacked back to concepts echoing Mr. Trump’s. And there is a question about whether the exact meaning of America First will continue to evolve in Mr. Trump’s mind. He first talked about it in a March interview with The New York Times, when asked whether that phrase was a good summation of his views. He thought for a moment. Then he agreed with this reporter’s summation of Mr. Trump’s message that the world had been “freeloading off of us for many years” and that he fundamentally mistrusted many foreigners, both adversaries and some allies. “Correct,” he responded. Then he added, in his staccato style: “Not isolationist. I’m not isolationist, but I am ‘America First.’ So I like the expression. ” He soon began using it at almost every rally. In another interview with The Times, on the eve of the Republican National Convention, he offered a refinement. He said he did not mean for the slogan to be taken the way Lindbergh meant it. “It was used as a very modern term,” he said. “Meaning we are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everybody else in the world. ” As Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College and a scholar at the conservative Hudson Institute, put it the other day, “The fact that he doesn’t have a grounding in the prior use of the term is liberating. ” “If you said to the average American voter, ‘Do you think it’s the job of the president to put America first,’ they say, ‘Yes, that’s the job. ’” But Mr. Mead said that formulation disregarded the reality that “sometimes to achieve American interests, you have to work cooperatively with other countries. ” And any such acknowledgment was missing from Mr. Trump’s speech on Friday. Mr. Trump cast America’s new role in the world as one of an aggrieved superpower, not a power intent on changing the globe. There was no condemnation of authoritarianism or fascism, no clarion call to defend human rights around the world — one of the commitments that John F. Kennedy made in his famed address, delivered 56 years ago to the day, to protect human rights “at home and around the world. ” That was, of course, the prelude to Kennedy’s most famous line: that America would “bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. ” But the America that elected Mr. Trump had concluded that it was no longer willing to bear that burden — or even to make the spread of democracy the mission of the nation, as George W. Bush, who was sitting behind Mr. Trump, vowed 12 years ago. Mr. Trump views American democracy as a fine import for those who like it. “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone,” he said, “but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow. ” | 0fake |
Andy Murray Beats Milos Raonic to Win Second Wimbledon Title - The New York Times | WIMBLEDON, England — A drought can surely not generate the same sort of anxiety as a drought. But Andy Murray’s second Wimbledon victory — (3) (2) over Milos Raonic on Sunday — evinced great emotion just the same as Murray sat in his chair on Centre Court sobbing into his towel with the customary pomp and circumstance of the awards ceremony getting underway all around him. Murray, now 29, is no Downton Abbey Briton, raised to handle the vagaries of the game of life with a stiff upper lip in the public eye. He is a rawboned, sometimes rumpled Scotsman with gravel in his voice. He is from a modest background and a childhood colored by the tragic Dunblane school shootings, and he has always worn his ambitions and perfectionist streak on his short sleeves, shouting, cursing and hungering for more from himself at a tournament better accustomed to subtler local heroes (see Tim Henman). But Murray’s deep and undisguised internal drive has been as important to his success as his foot speed and phenomenal talent. Seeded No. 2 this year, he already was the most successful British men’s tennis player since Fred Perry. He is now the first British man since Perry to win Wimbledon more than once. Perry, whose statue is on the grounds here at the All England Club, won three straight singles titles from 1934 to 1936. Murray won his first in 2013 but was also reduced to tears of a different provenance during the ceremony after losing the final to Roger Federer in 2012. “I’ve had some great moments here and also some tough losses,” Murray said Sunday, holding the trophy close. “And obviously the wins feel extra special because of the tough losses. ” The tough losses have not come only at Wimbledon. Murray has had the rotten timing to come of age in one of the most eras at the top in men’s tennis history. For all his achievement, he has yet to reach No. 1, and his record in Grand Slam finals coming into Sunday was an unprecedented with all of those finals being played against either Novak Djokovic or Federer. Djokovic, the world’s dominant player, beat Murray in the first two major finals of the season, at the Australian Open and the French Open. Djokovic had won four straight Grand Slam tournaments and was a favorite to defend his title here as well until he was upset in the third round by the American Sam Querrey. For Murray, that meant a final against Raonic, who upset Federer in a semifinal to become the first Canadian man to reach a Grand Slam singles final. It also meant that for the first time in his career, Murray was a clear favorite to win a major title. He did not crack, making just 12 unforced errors over the three sets, limiting Raonic to just eight aces with his returning and routinely producing decisive passing shot combinations — particularly off the backhand wing — as Raonic rightly tried to force the issue, knowing he had little chance of winning from the baseline. Murray also took surprisingly quick command of the two tiebreakers, normally Raonic’s domain. “I think it’s phenomenal for him, to back up his win from three years ago,” said Raonic, the No. 6 seed. “He’s been in many finals since then that he wasn’t able to make the most of. So for him it’s a big step forward. The next move is up to him. He’s got to go for it. There’s many other guys who will be trying to go for it as well. I know I will. ” Since Wimbledon in 2013, Murray has gone through back surgery and two different coaches before reuniting with his mentor Ivan Lendl last month. Murray was married to his longtime girlfriend, Kim Sears, last year, and she gave birth to their daughter, Sophia, in February. Murray’s life changes were clearly on his mind in the moments after victory. “I’m playing for something a bit different now,” he said of Sophia in a postmatch interview with ESPN. “Hopefully she’ll be proud of this one day. ” But he also clearly viewed this as a more personal achievement than his 2013 victory. “I’m not suggesting this was only for me,” he said Sunday after showing off his trophy from the Centre Court balcony to thousands of fans gathered below. “I know it’s something bigger than that. But the last time it was such a big thing for a British man to win Wimbledon. It had been so long. I was so relieved that I’d done that. ” This time, he intends to truly savor the moment. “I’m going to make sure I enjoy this one more than the others,” he said. There may not be much time, however, with the Davis Cup still a possibility next week followed by the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and the United States Open in August. It is a grueling, global game, and Raonic is determined to keep climbing. Born in the former Yugoslavia in what is now Montenegro, Raonic immigrated to Canada with his family in 1994 and has long had his sights on the sort of success he achieved here. To maximize his chances at Wimbledon this year, he even hired John McEnroe, the Wimbledon champion, to offer coaching advice. But Murray, more experienced and very adept at absorbing power, was too much to handle in the end. He has now beaten Raonic in their last six matches, four of which have come this season. “With a server like Milos, you can’t let up for one second,” Lendl said. “Just imagine if Milos breaks early in the third and wins the tiebreak in the fourth. We’re still out there. There was just one break of serve the entire match. The focus Andy had today was fantastic. ” Murray now has three Grand Slam singles titles, still quite a contrast with the other members of the Big Four. Federer has a career men’s record of 17. Rafael Nadal has won 14, Djokovic 12. Murray, at 29, is unlikely to catch them, but he can certainly close the gap, and it will be intriguing to see what he can achieve going forward with Lendl back in his corner. “Everyone’s time comes at different stages,” he said. “Some come in their early 20s, some . Hopefully mine is still to come. ” Murray has now won both tournaments he has played since Lendl, the former world No. 1, rejoined him. Murray also beat Raonic to win at the Queen’s Club last month. The last time they teamed up, Murray won the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics, which was staged at the All England Club, along with the 2012 United States Open and that first Wimbledon title. “He’s just lucky,” Murray said in his postmatch remarks of Lendl as the crowd laughed along. Murray got more laughs when he came to the rescue of the departing British prime minister, David Cameron, who was sitting in the Royal Box on Sunday near the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and who received a mixture of boos and cheers. “I think playing a Wimbledon final is tough, but I certainly wouldn’t like to be the prime minister,” Murray said. “It’s an impossible job. ” Getting the ball past the great wall of Murray seemed well nigh impossible, too, on Sunday, but for all the good cheer in victory, this was hardly a lighthearted afternoon in general on Centre Court. Murray had made that clear only a few moments before as he sat in his chair with his face buried in his towel and then buried in his hands. Three years is a long time to wait for a player with his kind of talent, his kind of desire. | 0fake |
BEST EXPLANATION EVER Of Why NFL Chose “Pop-Stars” Lady Gaga And Beyonce As America’s #Superbowl Half-Time Acts [VIDEO] | Our moral fabric is irreparably damaged Watch: | 1real |
PRESIDENT TRUMP Receives Patriots Jersey From Close Friend In White House Ceremony [VIDEO] | In an outdoor ceremony to celebrate the super Bowl champ New england patriots, president Trump received a football jersey with the number 45 on it. It s no secret that Trump is close with Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots (see below). This was a special moment!Patriots owner Robert Kraft tells Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends about the special friend that Trump was to him and how he went out of his way to help him after his beloved wife died, I m loyal to my friends, I remember who the people are there when the tough times are there and he did that for me. "I remember who the people are there when the tough times are there and he did that for me." -Robert Kraft on his friendship with Pres Trump pic.twitter.com/pQiBWDYCtF FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) February 3, 2017 | 1real |
South Carolina Defeats Mississippi State to Win Women’s Title - The New York Times | DALLAS — In the final seconds on Sunday, Dawn Staley gave a group hug to her assistant coaches. As confetti showered South Carolina’s first women’s basketball title winners, she put on a championship cap she had waited a career to wear. Later, she wore a net like a necklace. The win over Mississippi State, a fellow member of the Southeastern Conference, was a victory that represented a diversity of opportunity, both for coaches and for teams playing for a championship. Staley became the second coach to win a title since the N. C. A. A. began sponsoring a women’s basketball tournament in 1982. (Carolyn Peck coached Purdue to the 1999 championship.) And for the first time in five years, a program not named Connecticut won a national title. After Peck won her championship, she gave Staley a piece of the net that Purdue cut down in celebration that night, telling her to return it when she won her own title. For years, Staley kept the strand of net in her wallet. “I’m going to have to pass a piece of my net on to somebody else, so they can share it and hopefully accomplish something as big as this,” Staley said. Staley was a fierce point guard from Philadelphia and one of the most renowned players in the history of women’s basketball as a collegian, professional and Olympian. She became a coach only reluctantly. But now, as an N. C. A. A. champion and the recently named Olympic coach for the 2020 Tokyo Games, Staley has a chance to become a for women’s basketball as Geno Auriemma of UConn and Tara VanDerveer of Stanford move closer to retirement. “Basketball is an incredible gift that keeps on giving,” Staley, 46, said Sunday. Earlier, at the Final Four, she said, “I’m one that thinks basketball is a place of utopia and fairness. ” For the third time this season, the Gamecocks beat the Bulldogs. Mississippi State ( ) appeared to be somewhat tired, or anxious, after Friday night’s epic overtime upset of UConn. South Carolina attacked from the opening tip, then sputtered after building a lead in the third quarter. But the Gamecocks were settled by their post player A’ja Wilson (23 points, 10 rebounds) and guard Allisha Gray (18 points, 10 rebounds). of South Carolina’s points were scored in the lane. Three times, Staley had reached the Final Four as a player at Virginia. And this was her second appearance in the past three seasons as South Carolina’s coach. She had not won until Sunday, but a championship that had remained elusive finally became inexorable. “She was the best leader I ever coached,” said Nell Fortner, who led Staley and the United States to an Olympic gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. “It isn’t overbearing, just a natural aura she has about her. Players follow her. ” Yet opportunities for minority women to become head coaches at the top levels of women’s college basketball have been rare. Excluding historically black colleges and universities, among 320 Division I women’s teams, only 35 (10. 9 percent) have women as head coaches, while 45 percent of the players are black, according to a report to be released this week by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. (Nineteen men also coach women’s teams.) After John Thompson became the first black men’s coach to win an N. C. A. A. basketball title at Georgetown in 1984, “more athletic directors were open to putting an in charge,” said Richard Lapchick, the director of the diversity institute. “Hopefully, that will be the case here” after Staley’s triumph, Lapchick added. Staley said: “I don’t know what athletic directors will think about. I’m not one that looks at race. Basketball has been faceless and colorless and genderless when I approached it. I think athletic directors need to hire what’s best for them. ” She added: “If it’s an male or female, then that’s who they should hire. If it’s somebody else who they feel can take their program to the next level, it has to be the best fit for them, and not necessarily . ” The daughter of parents who moved from South Carolina, Staley grew up in public housing in Philadelphia. She played baseball, football and basketball with her three brothers and other boys and sometimes shot baskets until 2 a. m. She developed a robustness that allowed her to win three Olympic gold medals as a player and be named one of the top 15 players in the formative years of the W. N. B. A. “She’s basically a gym rat, and definitely ball is life for her,” said Gray, the guard. With Sunday’s title, Staley joined Pat Summitt of Tennessee, Kim Mulkey of Baylor and Marianne Stanley of Old Dominion as former star women’s college players who went into coaching and won N. C. A. A. championships. “I have always respected Dawn’s competitiveness, her work ethic, her absolute passion for the game of basketball,” said VanDerveer, who coached Staley to a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. “But if she tells you she beat me in chess, she’s a liar. ” While still playing in the W. N. B. A. Staley was somehow persuaded in 2000 by Dave O’Brien, then Temple University’s athletic director, to coach the university’s women’s basketball team. Perhaps more out of hometown devotion than enthusiasm, Staley agreed, though she has said, “Not one ounce of me wanted to coach. ” In eight seasons at Temple, Staley guided the Owls to six appearances in the N. C. A. A. tournament. But she grew weary of a sobering realization: She could not recruit the caliber of players needed to get Temple beyond the second round of the tournament. “At tournament time, we always got ” Staley said. “We outplayed people, but they us. ” In 2008, she left for South Carolina, a team that was underachieving but seemed to have great possibility, with the financial resources available to a school in a major football conference. Staley expected the same kind of dedication that she played with, and some of her players transferred early on. But the Gamecocks soon grew into a national power and, as of Sunday, into a national champion. Referring to her fellow semifinalists Auriemma (11 N. C. A. A. titles) and VanDerveer (two) Staley said, “I want to be among greatness. ” With Sunday’s championship, she moved into rarefied company. “It means I can check off one of the things that has been a void in my career,” she said. | 0fake |
U.S. would like nuclear deal with India to go forward: official | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s administration would like to see a Westinghouse nuclear reactor deal with India move forward, a senior White House official said on Friday ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meetings with Trump on Monday. The deal, years in the making, has been slow to complete due to concerns about liability in the event of a nuclear accident. “We’re still very much interested in seeing this deal move forward,” the official told reporters. “Westinghouse stands by the viability of the project ... We very much support continued negotiations between Westinghouse and its Indian partners.” | 0fake |
Turkish court orders release of pro-Kurdish party's former spokesman: party official | ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish court has ordered the release of a parliamentarian who was the former spokesman for Turkey s pro-Kurdish opposition party, a party official said on Friday. The court ruled that Ayhan Bilgen be released after a monthly review of his detention since he was arrested in the southern city of Diyarbakir over accusations that he was a member of an armed terrorist group, the official told Reuters. Bilgen had served as spokesman and head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party s (HDP) parliamentary group. The ruling comes amid growing concern among opposition parties, human rights groups and Turkey s Western allies that President Tayyip Erdogan is using a crackdown on suspected supporters of last year s failed coup to muzzle dissent. Since the failed coup, some 50,000 people have been arrested and more than 150,000 sacked or suspended from the military, civil service and private sector. Nine HDP deputies are jailed pending trial, more than 70 elected mayors from the HDP s southeastern affiliate have been remanded in custody in terrorism-related investigations, and their municipalities taken over by state officials. Thousands of party members have also been arrested. The Turkish government says the HDP is an affiliate of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. The HDP denies direct links. Turkey s parliament has also stripped four HDP lawmakers, including the party s co-chairwoman Figen Yuksekdag, of their parliamentary status, reducing the presence of the country s third-largest party in the 550-seat assembly. The HDP had 59 lawmakers elected to parliament in the November 2015 general election. The party s co-leader Selahattin Demirtas has also been in jail since November 2016. (This story corrects number of jailed deputies in paragraph 6) | 0fake |
Echo Chamber: Senators Ask Jeff Sessions Same Question About Russians 12 Times - Breitbart | Despite the fact that Attorney General Jeff Sessions repeatedly outlined the conversations he said he had with Russian diplomats during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign, Senators at Tuesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee repeatedly peppered Sessions with various forms of the same question — whether he had met with Russian officials during the course of the campaign. [It was not clear whether those inquiring senators — mostly Democrats and some Republicans — expected a different answer to the same question. Sessions previously acknowledged that he met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in his capacity as a senator and chairman of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. In his opening remarks, Sessions stated unequivocally that he had never had any conversations with Russian officials about interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Sessions declared: “Let me state this clearly: I have never met with or had any conversations with Russians or any foreign officials concerning any interference with any campaign or election. Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign. ” “I was your colleague in this body for 20 years, and the suggestion that I participated in any collusion or that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country, which I have served with honor over 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process is an appalling and detestable lie,” he said. “I recused myself from any investigation into the campaigns for President, but I did not recuse myself from defending my honor against scurrilous and false allegations. ” In his remarks Tuesday, Sessions again addressed a third possible brief encounter with Kislyak, who was a guest in the audience at an April foreign policy speech delivered by Trump at the Mayflower hotel. Sessions reportedly attended a reception with dozens of other guests, including Kislyak. He says he did not meet privately with Kislyak and does not recall greeting him, but allows that the two may have exchanged a passing interaction — one that would have taken place in a room full of attendees. “I attended a reception with my staff, that included at least two dozen people and President Trump, though I do recall several conversations I had during that reception, and I do not have recollection of meeting or talking to the Russian ambassador or any other Russian officials. If any brief interaction occurred in passing with the Russian ambassador in that reception, I do not remember it. ” Despite Sessions’ accounting of his meetings with Russian diplomats during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign, senators repeatedly peppered Sessions with the same general question about whether he had met with Russian officials during the course of the campaign. Here are 12 times from Tuesday’s hearing that senators asked Sessions whether he met with Russian officials: 1 — Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr ( ) asked, “One, did you have any meetings with Russian officials or their proxies on behalf of the Trump campaign or during your time as attorney general?” 2 — Burr asked, “From your testimony, you said you don’t remember whether the ambassador from Russia was there?” 3 — Burr: “You never remember having a conversation or meeting with the ambassador?” 4 — Burr: “You reported two other meetings with the ambassador, one in July on the sidelines of the Republican convention, I believe and one in September in your senate office. Have you had any other interactions with government officials over the year in a campaign capacity?” 5 — Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, asked: “And again, echoing what the chairman said, again for the record, there was no other meeting with any other officials of the Russian government in the campaign season?” 6 — Sen. Roy Blunt ( ): “So when you said you possibly had a meeting with Mr. Kislyak, did you mean you possibly met him?” 7 — Sen. Joe Manchin ( ): “If I could, sir, did you have any meetings, any other meetings with Russian officials that have not previously been disclosed?” 8 — Manchin: “I’m going to go quick through this. Are there any other meetings between Russian government officials and any other Trump campaign associates that have not been previously disclosed that you know of?” 9 — Sen. Kamala Harris ( ): “Did you have any communications with Russian officials for any reason during the campaign that have not been disclosed in public or to this committee?” 10 — Harris: “Did you have any communication with any Russian businessman or any Russian nationals?” 11 — Harris: “Are you aware of any communications (with Russians)?” 12 — Harris: “Are you aware of any communications with any Trump officials or did you have any communications with any officials about Russia or Russian interests in the United States before January 20?” Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With research by Joshua Klein. | 0fake |
COWARDLY “CBS, YAHOO Writer” Who Wished Trump Would DIE Before Inauguration, Makes Disgusting “Joke” About Dead Kids At Ariana Grande Concert | Just before Donald Trump s inauguration, David Leavitt who claims he writes for CBS and Yahoo said he wished Trump would die before his inauguration. CBS denies he works for them or has ever worked for them. Well, that was back in November and Levitt s profile on Twitter still says he s a contributor to CBS:Comedian and political commentator Mark Dice actually made a video exposing Daniel Leavitt, who claims to be a member of the press and the vile remarks he made about our President:Here is Leavitt s response to the outrage over his disgusting comments:If I knew that I'd gain over 500 followers within 12 hours of angering sexist racist #trump supporters, I'd have done it sooner #ImWithHer David Leavitt (@David_Leavitt) November 30, 2016Because what could possibly be funnier than a terrorist attack in a stadium packed with young innocent children right David? Apparently Leavitt who has no obvious conscience, doubled down on his sick joke and instead of deleting it after realizing that he was receiving quite a bit of backlash, he attempted to make another joke asking, too soon? Leavitt is no stranger to making sick jokes about dead people. Just last week he made another sick joke about the death of Roger Ailes:Every day liberals confirm to independent and Democrat voters who have two brain cells to rub together, why the majority of Americans truly believe liberalism is a mental disorder.Here are a few more tweets by a guy who gets paid to write for major publications that every day Americans accept as actual news. ***WARNING*** Some of the tweets contain strong language:And lastly, from a guy who was bashing Comey on Twitter, there s this post from a stereotypical liberal: | 1real |
Watch Donald Trump Go Full Fascist With This Weird Pledge (VIDEO) | Donald Trump, the Republican presidential primary front-runner and likely nominee, is under fire for making his supporters raise their right hands and pledge to vote for him. The pageantry of the pledge has led people to draw comparisons between Trump and Hitler.The pledge became known to the larger public after a campaign rally in Orlando, Florida. The language that Trump used during the event is worthy of analysis. During the campaign event, Trump asks his supporters to raise their right hand. Trump then tells them to pledge to vote for Donald J. Trump for president. Trump concludes the pledge, saying: Don t forget you all raised your hand. You swore. Bad things happen if you don t live up to what you just did. You can watch video footage of the event below:"Raise your right hand " Donald Trump makes FL crowd swear they'll show up to vote for him pic.twitter.com/9M2QRzrbpW Michael C. Bender (@MichaelCBender) March 5, 2016So once again, it appears that Trump is using intimidation tactics, to crystallize support among his followers. Trump has previously used similar vague threats while speaking of those who are working against his campaign.After finding out that Marlene Ricketts had donated money to a Super PAC that is working against his campaign, Trump went to Twitter where he called the out the Ricketts family (misspelling their name), where he said: They better be careful. They have a lot to hide. Former federal prosecutor Arthur Ferguson has some thoughts on the legality of the matter which you can read here.Trump s campaign has prompted many think pieces on the rise of authoritarianism in the United States. While Trump s campaign may be the one of the loudest examples of right-winger s recent zeal for authoritarian figures and policies, it is by no means the only or even best example.Let s look at what has been going on in Michigan under the administration of Rick Snyder. Snyder and Trump could not be farther apart in terms of how they present themselves to public. Though they are both extreme authoritarian figures. The heart of the Flint water crisis is Michigan s emergency financial manager law. The law allows for the Snyder administration to erode a local government s ability to do anything. Enough voters gleefully cast their ballot in Snyder s name believe in his cause elect him twice. The results of this erosion of democracy are now known internationally.Given the fact that Trump is polling very well in Michigan, Trump will likely win Michigan s primary in a landslide. That also means we can assume that Snyder and Trump have a substantial overlap in their fan base. So what we are seeing right now is the rise of a right-wing that is both willing to respond positively to a presidential candidate who is happy to make vague threats towards them at a campaign rally, while willing to suspend their voice in local political affairs.This should lend more credence to the idea that Trump s supporters are supporting a fascist candidate, more than any endorsement from a has been hate preacher should. There are many interpretations of what a fascist and fascism are. I prefer the interpretation that a fascist society is one where the means of production have been seized and perverted into a means of destruction. Or in other words, it is when a society s economy commits suicide. In Flint, and elsewhere across the U.S. we have seen that the right-wing is willing to destroy entire populations in the name of trickle-down economics while handing over their political agency to an authoritarian figure.Featured image from video screen capture via Twitter | 1real |
Trump’s ‘Major Meeting’ On Veterans Affairs Never Took Place, But He Did Play Golf | A major meeting on veterans affairs didn t happen yesterday evening despite Trump s announcement earlier in the day.Watch:Trump asks VA @SecShulkin if he's going to Mar-a-Lago. Shulkin shakes his head. pic.twitter.com/aZyiBC9Gnj POLITICO (@politico) March 17, 2017The White House hasn t given any reason for the change in plans, but it must not have been Trump s bad feet, which prevented him from serving his country in Vietnam because he did manage to get some golf in.The most likely reason is that Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin wasn t planning to attend, as he indicated with a shake of his head in the above video something Trump didn t seem to be aware of or care about. This didn t stop other veteran advocates like Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter from going. Why was Shulkin such a schtick in the mud? Maybe it s because the meeting was due to be held at Mar-a-Lago, Trump s West Palm Beach golf castle, and Shulkin didn t have his shots.Speaking of Mar-a-Lago, this is Trump s fifth weekend there since his inauguration five weekends ago. Check this out:The diagram shows how much time Trump spends playing hooky from the northern White House. Good work if you can get it.Trump has spent nearly a quarter of his time at Mar-a-Lago since taking office. A lot of elderly people like to go to the Sunshine state when they need a break.By the way, who s paying for the $3M a pop to the southern White House? Not veterans programs, at least, not yet. The Department of Veterans Affairs is penciled in for a 6% bump in Trump s budget proposal, which is currently facing a rocky road in the ongoing Federal budget process. As far as fiscal 2017 goes, most departments have been operating on a continuing budget resolution good through the end of April. If things aren t ironed out by then, the resulting partial government shutdown shouldn t affect most veterans services significantly, since VA funding has already been approved.Featured image via Mario Tama/Getty Images | 1real |
U.S. judge to consider objection to Trump University settlement | NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge will hear arguments on Thursday over whether to grant final approval to a $25 million settlement of fraud lawsuits against President Donald Trump over his Trump University real estate investment seminars, with at least one former student objecting to the deal. Sherri Simpson of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who paid $19,000 to learn Trump’s investing “secrets,” filed court papers earlier this month arguing the class action settlement should not have contained a provision barring her and other students from opting out and suing Trump on their own. The objection raises the possibility the litigation could continue to dog Trump’s presidency. During the campaign, Trump vowed to fight the fraud claims but agreed to the settlement soon after the election. Under the deal, Trump admitted no wrongdoing. Lawyers for Trump and those representing thousands of other students in two class actions will urge U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego to overrule the objection and approve the deal. The students, who paid as much as $35,000 for the seminars, are expected to recover more than 80 percent of the money they paid. Though Simpson’s lawyer, Gary Friedman, called the settlement “laudable,” he said his client wanted to press for a full recovery, as well as punitive damages and other relief. He is planning to argue the deal should be rejected unless she is allowed to do so. “What Ms. Simpson seeks is her day in court,” Friedman said in court papers. Simpson and other students claim they were lured into the seminars by false promises that they would learn Trump’s investment strategies from his “hand-picked” instructors. Trump admitted he did not personally select the instructors but said the claim was sales “puffery.” Rachel Jensen, a class action lawyer for the students, said in a court filing that some 3,730 students submitted claim forms. Two filed objections but only Simpson’s lawyers are expected at the hearing. In court papers, both Jensen and Daniel Petrocelli, a lawyer for Trump, suggested Simpson’s objection might be politically motivated. They noted she appeared in an anti-Trump political ad in February 2016. “Defendants paid $25 million to avoid the uncertainty that political opponents might solicit opt-outs to force a high-profile trial,” Jensen said. Friedman denied any political motive and said he would appeal if the judge overruled the objection. Trump accused Curiel of bias last year based on the Indiana-born judge’s Mexican ancestry. | 0fake |
WATCH Trevor Noah’s Takedown Of Iowa GOP’s Chilling Proposal To Let Kids Have Guns | The Daily Show, be it under the hosting of Jon Stewart or Trevor Noah, has never been subtle about its disdain for the GOP s idiocy. However, Tuesday night s episode was more chilling than almost any we ve ever seen, since it addressed a terrifying bill that is being proposed by House Republicans in Iowa a bill that would let children have guns. Host Trevor Noah was understandably incredulous at the fact that this is even a thing. First, Noah addressed the fact that kids can already use hunting rifles, but not handguns, with adult supervision. He began by comparing this lunacy to the notorious hatred between Justin Beiber fans ( Beliebers ) and New Direction fans ( Directioners ): Beliebers vs. Directoners just got a whole lot more interesting. Noah then turned his attentions to kids who like to hunt: Some kids do like hunting. It s those kids who only like the first five minutes of Bambi. But then, things got downright scary, when Noah played a clip from a news station that detailed the intentions of Nathan Gibson, a gun nut who has been letting his kids use handguns since they were 5, even though it is illegal. He s now trying to make his illegal and dangerous actions with his own children the law of the land in the state of Iowa. Just to get this straight: Some guy picked up the phone and called a lawmaker and said Hey, uh, my kids need guns. And they were like, Done! And every day in America there s parents calling lawmakers saying, Hey, my kids died because of guns. And they re like, Uhh, can you hold? Noah went on to described the absurdity of all of this in terms even a fool could understand (though I doubt the fools falling in line behind this dangerous nonsense will care). He began by asking, Do you know what children are? and showed clips of crying, tantrum-throwing kids. Who watches that and says, Uh, I like that, but it s missing something. After that, the clip was repeated, this time with gunfire. He ended on a chilling note: Oh, and by the way, that was under adult supervision. You do realize that. That kid was doing that under adult supervision. I love that the adult was like, I m just gonna video this. Watch the video below:And this is why we should not allow gun nuts to make laws. They truly are insane. Thank you, Trevor Noah, for telling it like it is. Featured image via video screen capture from Raw Story | 1real |
5.0 Quake Near Oklahoma Oil Hub Causes Substantial Damage | 5.0 Quake Near Oklahoma Oil Hub Causes Substantial Damage 11/07/2016
CBS
A magnitude 5.0 earthquake centered near one of the world’s key oil hubs brought down building facades and shattered windows in a central Oklahoma city, rendering century-old buildings unsafe and raising concerns about key infrastructure.
As the sun rose Monday, television news footage showed widespread, substantial damage to buildings, with piles of bricks and other debris littering the ground following the earthquake the previous evening. Cushing Assistant City Manager Jeremy Frazier told a news conference late Sunday that a few minor injuries had been reported. He said the damage appeared to be contained downtown.
Oklahoma has had thousands of earthquakes in recent years, with nearly all traced to the underground injection of wastewater left over from oil and gas production. Sunday’s quake was centered 1 mile west of Cushing and about 25 miles south of where a magnitude 4.3 quake forced a shutdown of several wells last week.
Fearing aftershocks, police cordoned off older parts of the city to keep gawkers away late Sunday, and geologists confirmed that several small quakes have rumbled the area. Frazier said an assisted living community had been evacuated after damage was reported. The Cushing Public School District canceled Monday classes.
“Stay out of the area,” said City Manager Steve Spears, who noted that while some damage was superficial, compromised foundations and other potential problems would be difficult to assess until daylight in the city of 7,900 about 50 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.
The Oklahoma Department of Transportation reported Sunday night that no highway or bridge damage was found within a 15-mile radius of the earthquake’s epicenter.
The quake struck at 7:44 p.m. Sunday and was felt as far away as Iowa, Illinois and Texas. The U.S. Geological Survey initially said Sunday’s quake was of magnitude 5.3 but later lowered the reading to 5.0.
“I thought my whole trailer was going to tip over, it was shaking it so bad,” said Cushing resident Cindy Roe, 50. “It was loud and all the lights went out and you could hear things falling on the ground.
“It was awful and I don’t want to have another one.”
Cushing’s oil storage terminal is one of the world’s largest. As of Oct. 28, tank farms in the countryside around Cushing held 58.5 million barrels of crude oil, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The community bills itself as the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World.”
Frazier said two pipeline companies had reported no trouble as of late Sunday but that the community hadn’t heard from all companies. Gov. Mary Fallin tweeted that no damage was reported at the storage tanks at Cushing’s oil storage terminal
Megan Gustafson and Jonathan Gillespie were working at a Cushing McDonald’s when the quake hit.
“It felt like a train was going right through the building, actually,” Gustafson, 17, said Sunday night as she and her co-workers stood behind a police barricade downtown, looking for damage. “I kind of freaked out and was hyperventilating a bit.”
Gillespie said the building shook for about 10 seconds, but that he wasn’t as alarmed as Gustafson because he lives in an area that has experienced multiple earthquakes, especially in recent years.
“I didn’t think it was anything new,” he said.
According to USGS data, there have been about two dozen earthquakes in Oklahoma in the past week. When particularly strong quakes hit, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission directs well operators to cease wastewater injections or reduce volume.
A 5.8 earthquake — a record for Oklahoma — hit Pawnee on Sept. 3. Shortly afterward, geologists speculated on whether the temblor occurred on a previously unknown fault.
“I was at home doing some work in my office and, basically, you could feel the whole house sway some,” Spears, the Cushing city manager, said Sunday night. “It’s beginning to become normal.” | 1real |
Überall grässliche Pop-Videos: Erste YouTube-Nutzer wünschen sich GEMA-Hinweis zurück | Dienstag, 1. November 2016 Überall grässliche Pop-Videos: Erste YouTube-Nutzer wünschen sich GEMA-Hinweis zurück Freiburg (dpo) - Max Keuchel (25) ist schockiert: Weil sich YouTube und die Verwertungsgesellschaft GEMA nach langem Rechtsstreit endlich geeinigt haben, kann er nun erstmals seit 2009 auf alle YouTube-Videos zurückgreifen. Nachdem er eine Stunde lang mit "grässlichem Pop-Schrott" beschallt wurde, wünscht er sich nichts sehnlicher zurück als die gute alte GEMA-Hinweistafel. "Jahrelang dachte ich, die GEMA enthält uns deutschen YouTube-Usern wahre Schätze der Popkultur vor", sagt der Abiturient und schüttelt den Kopf. "Dabei haben sie uns nur vor diesem entsetzlichen Mainstream-Müll geschützt." Max klickt sich panisch durch mehrere Justin-Bieber-Videos, hört drei Sekunden in ein Kesha-Video rein "Argh! Wo ist dieser rote Smiley mit seinem gutmütig enttäuschten Gesichtsausdruck, wenn man ihn braucht?" Wird bereits schmerzlich vermisst: automatischer Schutz vor grässlicher Musik Auch Selina Becker (19) aus Hamburg ist empört. "Ich habe mir friedlich ein Video angeschaut, wie sich einer mit seinem Skateboard voll auf die Fresse legt und am Ende des Videos nicht richtig aufgepasst. Keine fünf Sekunden später startet ein Video von Ariana Grande ft. Nicki Minaj." Zwar konnte sie im letzten Moment ihren Laptop zuklappen, doch nun hat sie Angst, ihn wieder zu öffnen. "Der ist auf Standby. Das könnte also einfach weiterlaufen. Ich muss mir wohl einen neuen kaufen und den hier vernichten." Max Keuchel und Selina Becker müssen aber voraussichtlich nicht lange unter der Einigung leiden. Für Pop-Musik-Geplagte gibt es nun bereits die ersten Plugins, die dem Browser vorgaukeln, dass die Einigung zwischen YouTube und GEMA nie erzielt wurde. ssi, dan; Foto oben: Shutterstock Artikel teilen: | 1real |
Trump’s Latest Campaign Promise May Be His Most Horrible One Yet | Donald Trump is, well, deplorable. He s suggested building a wall to keep invading hordes of brown-skinned rapists and drug dealers from charging into the country, gotten on board with creating a national registry for Muslims like Hitler did with the Jews, forcing said Muslims to wear special identification badges, and even rounding them up into modern-day concentration camps as a temporary measure. He s even suggested outright murdering the families of terrorists abroad: The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don t kid yourself. When they say they don t care about their lives, you have to take out their families. But he s not satisfied with slaughtering innocents to get to terrorists overseas, He also wants to bring that idea home. In a statement on the bombings in New York and New Jersey over the weekend, The Donald s Senior Communications Advisor explained that Trump is not fighting terrorism he s fighting the narratives of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And Trump s narrative is kill them all :Last weekend s attacks, which are just the latest to be carried out on U.S. soil on President Obama s watch, should be a wakeup call for every American. It is highly disturbing and entirely unacceptable that 858 immigrants from dangerous countries have slipped into our country and been granted full U.S. citizenship because of the failed policies supported by President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Even worse, Clinton must explain her reckless support for a 550% increase in Syrian refugees and her push for an all-out open border policy, which will put even more Americans at risk. The threat from radical Islamic terrorism has only grown under Obama and Clinton, and ISIS has greatly expanded the number of countries where it is fully operational. Our enemies neither fear nor respect Hillary Clinton, and as a nation, that is dangerous, and it is disgraceful. Mr. Trump will bring an end to these attacks, because unlike Obama and Clinton, he believes we re in more than a fight about narratives these terrorists pose an existential threat to our country and our values and they must be destroyed before they can harm any more of our citizens.Pay attention to that last bit: They must be destroyed before they can harm any more of our citizens. Now, we already know that the problem according to the GOP presidential nominee is radical Islamic terrorism, and that Trump has (numerous times) blamed Muslims in general for any attacks he could. Exactly how selective do you think he will be in eliminating terrorists? They re protecting each other, but they re really doing very bad damage they have to open up to society and report the bad ones, Trump said in March. When they see trouble, they have to report it. They are absolutely not reporting it, and that s a big problem. If Muslims are protecting terrorists, are they not terrorists in Trump s eyes? How many days in his presidency would pass before anyone who follows Islam was rounded up? Would there be mass exterminations? Trump has already suggested slaughtering terrorists families. How would he define terrorism?These are all questions it is unlikely that Mr. Trump will answer for himself but remember he is exactly the sort of person who, with a wink and a nod, suggests disarming his political opponents security to see what happens to them (shortly after suggesting that Second Amendment People could deal with them. We re dealing with an unstable, constantly suspicious person whose first instinct in conflict is to push the little red button that launches our nuclear arsenal.It s also important to remember that the attacks in New York and New Jersey were committed by an American citizen one with Constitutional rights, no matter how much someone wants to call for blood. This, of course, matters not to The Donald.Normally, suggesting that a candidate will bring back concentration camps and murder civilians is hyperbole. But not with Trump. He s said it himself. Many times.If we allow this alleged human, this Oompa Loompa who has escaped from the chocolate factory to wreak havoc on our nation to assume office, it will not end well. Be sure to vote in November if it s the last thing you do. If Trump wins, it may be.Featured image via Getty Images/Joe Raedle | 1real |
ALERT – New Bill Clinton Mistress Confirmed, Hillary Camp Panics… | ALERT – New Bill Clinton Mistress Confirmed, Hillary Camp Panics… Oct 28, 2016 Previous post The identity of one of Bill Clinton’s long-time mistresses was just revealed. The former president’s Secret Service detail nicknamed the mistress “Energizer” because of the way Bill always “perked up” and seemed revitalized after her visits. Julie McMahon has been outed by the press as Bill Clinton’s “Energizer,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Energizer Bunny. This mother of three and socialite has publicly denied being one of Clinton’s lovers, but a plethora of purported evidence is now unfolding online in an effort to refute McMahon’s claims of innocence, as per Bizpac Review . McMahon reportedly lives just a few minutes away from Bill and Hillary Clinton’s home in New York, which is called Whitehaven. If the Clintons were Republicans, the liberal mainstream media would be calling them racists over the chosen name of their luxurious estate. Always, Julia McMahon would arrive at Whitehaven via SUV. She would only stay a few hours sometimes, but other times she would spend an entire week at the Clinton residence. Julia McMahon reportedly met both Bill and Hillary in 1998 when he was president. Although the Clinton campaign has tried to label McMahon a friend to both of the Clintons, she only visited or spent the night at the house when Hillary wasn’t home, the Daily Mail reports. Sometimes, McMahon allegedly arrived just mere minutes after the departure of the former first lady. The Secret Service agents on the Clinton Whitehaven detail were reportedly not ever privy to the woman’s name, but they were allegedly under strict orders not to approach or stop her when she arrived. Every member of a president’s family is protected by a Secret Service detail. The Secret Service reportedly uses the same letter to assign a codename to protectees. Bill Clinton’s Secret Service name is reportedly “Eagle” and Hillary’s is “Evergreen.” The Secret Service may have run out of “E” codenames over the years thanks to all of Bill’s lady friends. Author Ron Kessler revealed the name of the Energizer mistress in his new book, The First Family Detail: Secret | 1real |
The godfather of whistleblowers: Remembering Phillip Agee, ex-CIA | The godfather of whistleblowers: Remembering Phillip Agee, ex-CIA By Thomas C. Mountain Posted on November 2, 2016 by Thomas C. Mountain
Before Edward Snowden and Julian Assange there lived the godfather of whistleblowers, Phillip Agee, Ex-CIA. Phil named names, exposed CIA agents and brought down whole agency operations back when he published his book “Inside the Company” in 1975.
The difference with back then and today’s whistleblowers is that Phil Agee actually exposed CIA undercover agents, some of whom, being involved in covert wars, were killed as a result, something Snowden and Assange differ with Agee over.
From a Third World perspective, Phil Agee did us a lot of good by helping us kick the criminals working for the CIA out of our countries. The undercover agents who were killed were not the good guys Hollywood would have you believe. Kidnapping, torture, disappearances and assassinations is what the CIA does, or oversees.
If you are a political activist in the Third World, you want to know your enemy so you can protect yourself from these criminals secretly draped in the red, white and blue of Yanqui Imperialism.
Here is Africa we have learned from bitter experience that the CIA’s preferred fronts are aid workers, journalists and clergy.
Now if Snowden or Assange would publish the names of the clergy, journalists and aid workers working for the CIA, then maybe we could prevent them from committing their malicious crimes of espionage, you know, save lives and protect our loved ones and fellow countrymen and women.
If people living in the Western countries were shocked by Snowden’s exposé then they were pretty naive. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI never respected anyone’s privacy, least of all the president of the USA. And if you were deemed a threat, like over 200 Black Panthers and American Indian activists, no compunctions about gunning you down.
Exposure of US government spying doesn’t really help us here in the Third World because we are being kidnapped, tortured, disappeared and assassinated. Spying on our mobile phones is quite a way down on the list of our worries.
Hopefully the next generation of whistleblowers will remember Phillip Agee and not just expose crimes but actively prevent any future damage by naming names, exposing agents and destroying operations of the international criminal cartel known as the CIA.
Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist in Eritrea, living and reporting from here since 2006. His speeches, interviews and articles can be seen on Facebook at thomascmountain and he can best be reached at thomascmountain at g mail dot com. This entry was posted in Commentary . Bookmark the permalink . | 1real |
One Family. Six Decades. Myriad Views of Fidel Castro’s Revolution. - The New York Times | HAVANA — When Fidel Castro rode victoriously into Havana on Jan. 8, 1959, Juan Montes Torre rushed into the streets to cheer. A poor, uneducated laborer from the eastern countryside of Cuba, he had arrived in the capital a few years earlier and, like most of his neighbors, could hardly believe what was happening. “It was an emotional shock,” Mr. Montes said. “These bearded men, poorly dressed — they won! And on behalf of the lower classes!” Mr. Montes, who was 25 at the time, stayed loyal to Mr. Castro, who died on Friday, from that moment. The Castro revolution gave him an education, a home, and a job as a police officer who sometimes guarded the comandante himself. But that allegiance slipped from generation to generation in Mr. Montes’s family, and in Cuba as a whole. His son’s views darkened decades ago, during tussles with the Castro government’s restrictions. His teenage granddaughter, Rocio, has spent most of her youth feeling glum about the conditions in her country. “There are too many Cubans who get up every day and struggle and struggle, and that’s it,” she said in an interview. “My dream is to leave. ” The Montes family’s story of faith and disillusion is common. Cuban families have been arguing about Mr. Castro since he came to power. His death has again produced an intense clash of emotions for many Cubans who recognize that he was more than just a political figure. He was also a brother, a father and a grandfather to various Cuban generations — a familiar presence whose ideals, whims and ego shaped everyone’s identity and daily life. Whether they wanted him around or not, Fidel was there, with his speeches, his billboards and the grandiose absolutes — “Socialismo o muerte!” (“Socialism or death! ”) — that helped produce early triumphs in education and health care, along with restrictions on speech and assembly and, later on, persistent economic failures. His relationship to the country was remarkably personal. Robert A. Pastor, a former Latin America adviser to President Jimmy Carter, used to say that Mr. Castro was one of the few world leaders referred to by just their first names. Many Cubans have grown comfortable with calling him a complicated relative. “You have to look at this in a very cool way — this is like the father who has been there all the time that has taken the family through thick and thin,” Carlos Alzugaray Treto, a former Cuban diplomat, said in an interview on Saturday. “Maybe at times you don’t agree with him, but most of the time you agree with what he has done. ” Yet Mr. Castro was not exactly a common loved one. He was also the maximum leader — charismatic but quick to anger, a guerrilla whose name Cubans were often afraid to utter. Because he ruled for decades, Mr. Castro’s impact — and the perception of it — changed over time. Cubans born before the revolution saw him as a transformative force for good or ill. Those born later, especially after the Soviet Union started collapsing in 1989, tend to view him as an obdurate barrier to economic opportunity and to integration with the rest of the world. In life, he was often an enigma in death, for Cuban families like the Monteses, he is a collage of competing images, from the inspiring young rebel to the old man. Mr. Montes first heard of the barbudos, or bearded rebels, when he was picking coffee and fruit in the fields in Cuba’s eastern province of Guantánamo. It was the early 1950s, and poor farmers in the area had started banding together, revolting against wealthy landowners. Mr. Castro was among many leaders said to be demanding better working conditions. On July 26, 1953, Mr. Castro staged his first major attack, raiding the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, now the country’s city. Mr. Castro was caught, and he defended himself in court three months later with a lengthy speech that included the line “History will absolve me. ” Mr. Montes had decided by then to move to Havana — and to root for Mr. Castro and his guerrillas. “There was a lot of injustice back then,” Mr. Montes said. “Coups, crime. The government didn’t care at all for the people. ” Compared with its neighbors, Cuba was well off, with a income in 1958 that was exceeded in Latin America by only Argentina and Venezuela, according to United Nations statistics. But the Cuban economy was essentially stuck in place, with yawning inequality. In rural areas like those where Mr. Montes grew up, more than 90 percent of the homes lacked electricity. In Havana, the streets were clogged with a mix of Cadillacs and ragtag beggars. After taking power in 1959, Mr. Castro promised radical change. “We have fought to give democracy and liberty to our people,” he said days after his triumphant arrival in Havana. He delivered, Mr. Montes said. Over the next few months, the Castro government announced plans for land reform to grant property to the poor, taxes of 80 percent on expensive cars and additional government spending to decrease unemployment. In December that year, Mr. Montes was hired as a police officer. It was his first steady job since his arrival in Havana and came with free schooling, leading him from a education to a high school diploma. The pride he felt at his rise into the middle class can be seen in family pictures from that era, with his wife wearing new necklaces beside her smiling husband. Even in his 80s, he speaks of his first few years on the police force with the excitement of a new cadet. “When someone committed a crime, we arrested them, but always with a sense of justice,” he said. “We didn’t abuse anyone. It was a process for everyone. It wasn’t just for the upper classes. ” From the outside, especially in Washington, Mr. Castro seemed to be upending Cuba’s justice system, summarily executing opponents and filling Cuban jails. Mr. Montes, however, said he had seen a police force once viewed as a collection of corrupt thugs becoming professional. From 1959 to 1962, Mr. Montes said, Cubans all over the country were eager to serve Mr. Castro. But there were enemies close by — mostly wealthier Cuban exiles who had fled when Mr. Castro began nationalizing property. They had the support of the United States, and when their attack came at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, Mr. Montes was guarding the home of Celia Sánchez, a famous guerrilla fighter and Mr. Castro’s longtime lover and confidante. Around 4 a. m. Mr. Montes said, there was a flurry of activity inside. Moments later Mr. Castro emerged, surrounded by armed escorts. “He looked calm,” Mr. Montes said. “No one knew what was happening. No one knew they attacked us. ” The Cuban missile crisis and the American trade embargo only strengthened the siege mentality that Mr. Castro relied on for decades, as he argued repeatedly that Cuba must remain under tight control lest the northern imperialists invade and turn the island into an American fief. In an interview in late 2012, Mr. Montes said he had never questioned that assessment, even when he was with critics of Mr. Castro’s authoritarian ways. In 1970, during the government’s effort to harvest a record 10 million tons of sugar, Mr. Montes helped guard 300 political prisoners forced to cut sugar cane. Mr. Montes said they had not seemed to be bad people. “But,” he said, with what sounded like a touch of disappointment, “they were wrong. ” He said he had often felt the same way about relatives who at times were critical of Mr. Castro, including some who had moved to the United States. “The revolution is a process,” he said. Shifting in his seat, on a flowered couch at his home in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, he looked toward his son’s house next door. “They don’t see things very clearly,” he said. “They don’t realize that they have the greatest opportunity in the world they have the opportunity to study. ” He said he wished younger Cubans in his family could see the broader context. “We were a poor, uneducated, humble family before the revolution,” he said. “Then there was a change. It’s a radical change that’s still maturing. ” The entrance to Juan Carlos’s home is covered in green vines with bunches of bitter grapes. More than a decade ago, he ran a private restaurant, or paladar, beneath the greenery. He also used to rent rooms to tourists until he developed a new business in which he uses his newly acquired Spanish passport to travel to Panama to buy clothes and other items to sell in Havana. He is a member of what might be called the “resolver” generation — those who learned to resolve or negotiate their way around the shortages, regulations and inefficiencies of Cuban socialism in its later stages. If his father’s image of Mr. Castro and the revolution was shaped by the changes of the 1950s or ’60s, his views have been sculpted by the transition from the flush 1980s to the scavenging ’90s. The shift was significant. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba lost a patron that had provided around $4 billion a year in credits and subsidies. The economy contracted by 34 percent from 1990 to 1993, with chronic shortages of fuel, soap, food — just about everything. Cuban officials acknowledged in 1990 that the country had entered a “special period. ” The implication was that Cuba would need to make some exceptions to the norm. In 1993, Mr. Castro legalized the American dollar and allowed Cubans to become in dozens of industries, especially those serving tourists. Scholars still debate the degree to which Cuba adopted capitalism in that period, but Juan Carlos was one of many who took advantage. He was 31 at the time and had already become frustrated with the way the Castro government worked. In his 20s, he worked at Cuba’s customs agency, as his father had after his tenure on the police force. What Juan Carlos saw, he said, was an antidemocratic system that rewarded silence instead of initiative. He said his frustration peaked in the late 1980s when he was rebuffed by Communist Party officials for gathering recommendations from colleagues for improving the agency. He believed he was doing what socialism revered: organizing workers. “But the party guys,” he said, “they just told me: ‘That’s not right. Here are the things we are going to talk about, and you, don’t stand up and talk. ’” Juan Carlos shook his head and laughed as if expressing a sentiment that Cubans have long relied on to describe with the government: “No es fácil” — it’s not easy. He left his job just before the Soviet Union’s collapse. Over the next few years, he found work in hotels. When Mr. Castro legalized small restaurants, Juan Carlos decided to open one with his wife, but there was a problem: He needed permission from the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, the neighborhood party watchdog, and the group had not met in years. So he nominated himself to lead the group and got his neighbors to support his candidacy. “I became the president so I could open the restaurant,” he said. The Castro government was never far away, however. The 1990s led to relative economic openness, but in fits and starts as Mr. Castro and his brother Raúl, who took over presidential powers in 2006, limited change. Businesses must stay small under laws that restrict how many employees can be hired. Supplies must be bought from the government, and crackdowns are common. Even as relations with the United States have improved, peaking with reopened embassies and President Obama’s visit this year, the economic life of the island remains constricted by Cuba’s loyalty to central control. “It’s like an accordion — they open a little, they close,” Juan Carlos said. “But they never open it up all the way. ” Success, then, has tended to play favorites. Economic and racial inequality, after improving in the early years of the revolution, has gotten worse since the 1990s. Cubans with small businesses and more lucrative jobs in tourism are typically with advantages built up over time. Some have relatives in Miami. Others have connections in government or, in the case of Juan Carlos, Spanish ancestry and a home in Vedado with extra space. He acknowledged that he had done relatively well through much hard work. During one winter visit, he popped a tape into a VCR, showing his daughter’s quinceañera — her 15th birthday party — at the Hotel Nacional. The girl, Rocio, wore a light gown and thanked her parents as the guests drank and danced. It looked like a small prom. But for Juan Carlos, and especially for his daughter, one night of fun is nowhere near enough to create contentment. Rocio dreams of becoming an art historian. Tall and thin, she described Cuba with the nuanced sophistication that comes from a good education and plenty of time to think things through. In her eyes, Cuba is purgatory, and even before he died, Mr. Castro was a specter of the past, studied in textbooks more than seen. “Fidel had an enormous vision,” she said. And, yes, there a lot of things she said she loved about Mr. Castro’s Cuba: the breezy liberty of the streets, and rarely snagged with traffic the emphasis on education and culture. She said she sometimes feared that violence would return once Fidel and Raúl Castro were gone. But mostly, as she has grown from adolescence to adulthood, she has wanted to leave. Her older sister already lives in Spain. Her best friend went to Miami for a vacation one summer and stayed, telling Rocio about the crowded shopping malls and the impressive facilities at her new school. Most of Rocio’s friends, she said, hope to get out of Cuba as soon as they can. “My generation, we’re not worried about politics or ideals,” she said. “We just want to get out. Abroad you can achieve so much more. You can be recognized for your work, internationally, by the world. ” Fidel Castro’s era of speeches, ideology and Cold War standoffs is not what today’s ambitious young people want. Like many young Cubans, Rocio mostly wants Cuba to catch up. Why is there no open and affordable access to the internet? Why can’t she easily get on Facebook to say hi to her sister in Barcelona? Why is it so hard to visit the Louvre, in person or virtually? “I think everyone has a right to get the information they want to think and study,” she said. She said that the American trade embargo clearly did not help, but that most young people considered their own government responsible for creating a society of limits. “Fidel and Raúl started out with a good idea,” she said. “They just didn’t achieve what they said they would achieve. ” She wants the same thing her grandfather and Fidel Castro wanted when they were young: radical change and a fair shot at making a life for herself on her terms. The changes of the past few years under Raúl Castro, allowing more private enterprise and travel, offer some hope, she said, “but it’s not changing at the pace it needs to. ” Fidel Castro is gone — “He was a man of the 20th century,” Mr. Montes said in an interview on Saturday night — and his granddaughter has long been ready to move on. “We don’t have time to wait,” she said. | 0fake |
Some Lawmakers Now Look to Bipartisanship on Health Care - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The sudden death of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act has created an opening for voices from both parties to press for fixes to the acknowledged problems in President Barack Obama’s signature health law, as lawmakers and some senior White House officials appealed for bipartisanship. But the White House, still smarting from a disastrous defeat on Friday, appeared uncertain on the path forward. President Trump predicted that “Obamacare will explode” and offered no plan to stop it, but his was not the only voice from the White House. The president “wants to make sure that people don’t get left behind” in the search for affordable, quality health care, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said on “Fox News Sunday. ” “I think it’s time for our folks to come together,” Mr. Priebus said, adding that it is time to “potentially get a few moderate Democrats on board, as well” as they try to bring down premiums and stabilize insurance markets. That appeal was echoed by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who opposed the House Republicans’ health bill and has also worked with Democrats to explore changes to the Affordable Care Act without repealing it. “With the demise of the House bill, there’s a real window of opportunity for a bipartisan approach to health care,” she said. In the wake of the Republican failure to make good on the promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders find themselves at a political crossroads. They could sabotage the Affordable Care Act’s insurance markets, betting that Democrats would be blamed for collapsing coverage choices and spikes in insurance premiums and would then come to the negotiating table ready to toss the law and start fresh. Or they could work with Democratic lawmakers and moderate Republicans, who for years have discussed improvements to the Affordable Care Act, which, unlike many social welfare programs, has not been significantly updated or revised. Speaker Paul D. Ryan has said he wants to move on to other issues, and indicated that Democrats would have to come to him if they want to cooperate on health care. After insisting that the health law had to be eradicated “root and branch,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has been remarkably quiet since Friday’s debacle. The messages from the White House, so far, have been mixed. “You cannot fix a broken system,” the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press. ” “You are never going to fix that. This system must be removed. ” Mr. Trump appeared to endorse the strategy on Saturday morning, saying on Twitter: “ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great health care plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!” But Mr. Priebus’s softer vision gave some in Congress hope that a bipartisan approach could be found — possibly to alleviate the health law’s burdens on small business, repeal some of its more unpopular taxes, give employers more leeway on which employees they have to offer insurance to, and foster more competition among insurance companies. “I believe that there is a group of centrist Democrats who recognize that the Affordable Care Act has flaws that must be fixed,” Ms. Collins said. “Until there was a repudiation of the House bill, they felt constrained from negotiating. Now that the House bill has died, I hope they will feel free to come to the table. ” Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, also called for bipartisanship. His state has benefited from its expansion of Medicaid under the health law, and would have been punished under the House Republican bill because its high premium costs would not have been offset by larger tax credits, as they are under current law. “The reason why Obamacare failed was because it wasn’t a bipartisan bill,” Mr. Young said. Republicans, he said, made the same mistake, writing their bill without Democrats. “We were very frankly guilty of that,” he said. Democrats also sounded more conciliatory. “Until now, we haven’t talked at all about compromise on the Affordable Care Act,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado. “From the moment it passed, Republicans started their mantra of ‘repeal and replace.’ Now that repeal seems to be off the table, I think it’s in everybody’s interest to make the law work better for our constituents. ” Representative Jim Cooper, a centrist Democrat from Tennessee who has often worked with Republicans, said: “We need to fix the flaws in Obamacare. I hope Republicans are willing to do that, instead of just destroying Obamacare. ” But, he added, “before we can work with them, the Republicans have to bargain in good faith and stop sabotaging Obamacare. ” Mr. Obama’s health care law may not be imploding, as President Trump says. But in states as diverse as Alaska, Arizona, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, the public insurance marketplaces — a central innovation of the Affordable Care Act — are in trouble. Consumers have seen big premium increases for health plans sold by a shrinking number of insurers. “People will have to come to the bargaining table sooner rather than later,” said Chris Jacobs, a health policy analyst. Within a few weeks, insurers must decide whether they will participate in the marketplaces in 2018. Insurance markets could quickly unravel if the House wins a court case challenging the legality of subsidies paid by the government to insurers on behalf of people. “The comments by President Trump and Speaker Ryan predicting the collapse of the A. C. A. and health insurance exchanges could become a prophecy,” said Kevin J. Counihan, who was the chief executive of the federal insurance marketplace, HealthCare. gov, under Mr. Obama. Mr. Counihan said he saw a risk that some counties might not have any insurers on the exchange next year as major insurers like Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth pull back from the program. Republicans in Congress, especially those from rural areas, share that concern. The Obama administration worked hard to keep insurers in the market, and to promote during open enrollment season. Whether the Trump administration will do so is unclear. Mr. Counihan suggested several areas where Republicans and Democrats in Congress could work together. They could, he said, give insurers more discretion to charge higher premiums for older adults, reflecting their medical costs. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers can charge older adults no more than three times the rates for young adults. The House Republican bill would have allowed them to charge five times as much, or more if states wanted. A ceiling somewhere between those numbers might be appropriate, Mr. Counihan said. In addition, he said, Congress could shorten the length of “grace periods” during which insurers must provide coverage to consumers who fail to pay their premiums. Lawmakers from both parties have also expressed a desire to give states more freedom to pursue their own ideas for expanding coverage, controlling health costs, reducing premiums and stabilizing insurance markets. Giving states more flexibility is consistent with Republicans’ federalism philosophy. It also has potential appeal to Democrats because many states, including some with Republican governors, are to the left of the Trump administration on health policy. One section of the Affordable Care Act, added at the behest of Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, already allows waivers for innovations in state health policy. But states say the requirements are so stringent that the waivers are of limited use. “As Republicans, we know that works for no one and certainly did not work for the individual markets,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess of Texas, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health. Lawmakers of both parties also support legislation to help small businesses get insurance. As a possible model for bipartisan cooperation, they point to a bill signed by Mr. Obama in 2015 that changed the definition of “small employer” to protect such companies against increases in health insurance premiums. The possibility of bipartisan cooperation may not last long. Some conservative Republicans like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative Sean P. Duffy of Wisconsin said they would redouble their efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act. “Rip it all out by the roots!” Representative Steve King of Iowa said Friday in a Twitter post. But other Republicans said that Democrats should be involved in efforts to rewrite the law. Representative Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina, opposed the House bill and said its demise could “prove to be a catalyst” for forging a consensus. “Seeming stopping points can ultimately prove to be beginning points in life,” he said. | 0fake |
Olympics History Rewritten: New Doping Tests Topple the Podium - The New York Times | After disclosures of an extensive, doping program in Russia, sports officials have been retesting urine samples from the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics, in Beijing and London. Their findings have resulted in a rewriting of Olympics history. More than 75 athletes from those two Olympics have been found, upon further scrutiny, to be guilty of doping violations. A majority are from Russia and other Eastern European countries. At least 40 of them won medals. Disciplinary proceedings are continuing against other athletes, and the numbers are expected to climb. Anyone looking at the record books for the Beijing and London Games might think them an illusion. Medals are being stripped from dozens of athletes and redistributed to those who were deprived a spot on the podium. “The numbers are just impossible, incredible,” said Kasper, an executive board member of the International Olympic Committee. “We lose credibility. Credibility is a major concern. ” The results of the retests are coming at a time of intense international scrutiny on Russian athletes. The country’s longtime antidoping lab chief in May described an elaborate doping program and cheating scheme, and nearly a third of Russia’s Olympic team was barred from the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. The Olympic committee announced penalties for 16 athletes last week and another 12 on Monday. Suddenly — and unceremoniously — some undecorated Olympians are inheriting medals for their performances eight years ago. Even some finishers are discovering that they are bronze medalists. “This completely rewrote my Olympics story,” said Chaunté Lowe, an American high jumper who participated in four Summer Games but had never won a medal. Sitting at home last week, Ms. Lowe received a curious Facebook message from a German athlete against whom she competed in 2008: “Congratulations, bronze medalist,” it read. After three women who finished ahead of Ms. Lowe were disqualified for doping — Anna Chicherova and Yelena Slesarenko of Russia, and Vita Palamar of Ukraine — she moved up to third place, newly successful in a jump she took when her daughter was an infant. “I kept doing the math,” said Ms. Lowe, who originally finished sixth. “Wait: 6, 5, 4. … Oh my gosh — they’re right. I started crying. ” Accompanying the joy of her belated recognition, she said, was an awareness of the opportunity costs she suffered. In 2008, her husband was laid off. The couple’s house in Georgia was foreclosed on that year, something Ms. Lowe said would not have happened had she distinguished herself in Beijing. “I was really young and promising at that point, and sponsors were interested in me,” said Ms. Lowe, now 32. “A lot of interest goes away when you don’t get on that podium. ” Edwin Moses, the American Olympic hurdler and chairman of the board of the United States Agency, said it was difficult to measure the “agony of winning and losing, of having medals ripped away. ” “I don’t know how you recover those damages,” he said. The Olympic committee generally coordinates with the federations that govern each sport, along with the national Olympic committees of the affected countries, to collect medals from penalized athletes and redistribute them. Of the athletes so far implicated in the retests, a vast majority competed in track and field events and weight lifting. It is standard practice for Olympic officials to store urine samples for up to a decade so they may conduct additional tests if they obtain new information. While the first wave of retests began last year, the longtime director of Russia’s antidoping laboratory told The New York Times in May about a cocktail of banned substances that he used to improve the performance of scores of Russian athletes over the past several years. Dr. Olivier Rabin of the World Agency, who has been collaborating with the Olympic committee on the retests, confirmed that officials had been informed by disclosures regarding specific drugs Russian athletes used. “Clearly when you look at the findings, they correlate with the intelligence about Russia,” Dr. Rabin said. Nearly all of the violations, across nationalities, were for the anabolic steroids Stanozolol or Turinabol, the very substances that notoriously fueled East Germany to global dominance in the 1970s and 80s. A rash of Turinabol violations have also recently cropped up in major and minor league baseball in the United States. “The good drugs work very well for strength,” Dr. Rabin said. “There’s a reason they’re still around. ” The drugs were not detected by the Olympic committee’s lab years ago, during the Games, because the science at the time was not sensitive enough to detect such small residual concentrations, according to Dr. Richard Budgett, medical and scientific director of the I. O. C. New testing methods have increased the period of time during which drugs can be detected in the body. “Science progresses every day,” Dr. Rabin said. “Just over the past probably five years, the sensitivity of the equipment progressed by a factor of about 100. You see what was impossible to see before.” Rarely are doping violations found during the Games. At the London Games, the Olympic lab found only eight possible violations, a fraction of the dozens more exposed this year. “It’s sad to say,” Ms. Lowe said, “but a lot of times when you go to these competitions, you’re like: Just get close enough to top three because you never know who’s going to test positive. ” As the I. O. C. ’s retests continue, the standings of the past Winter Games may be upended, too. Officials have focused on samples from past Summer Games this year, seeking to ensure they caught possible cheaters who were eligible to compete in Rio de Janeiro in August. Ahead of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the I. O. C. is expected to turn its attention to samples from the 2010 Games in Vancouver. Officials have already scrutinized some 500 samples from the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, but the I. O. C. has not provided details on how many violations were discovered. “The I. O. C. cannot and will not issue further comments with regard to this process, nor will it answer questions, at this point in time,” a spokeswoman wrote by email on Monday regarding the tests from the Turin Games. As fallout from the Russian doping scandal continues, medals from the 2014 Sochi Olympics are also likely to be called into question, particularly after the World Agency publishes the results of an investigation into Russian athletes who doped in Sochi and had their violations concealed by a operation. That group includes at least 15 Russian medalists, the nation’s former antidoping chief told The Times. Such a sizable number of violations by one country’s delegation at a single Olympics could prompt sports officials to consider penalties ahead of the next Games. “To say that justice is being served is very pretentious,” said Francesco Ricci Bitti, chairman of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations and former president of the International Tennis Federation. “But we’re on a path forward. ” Mr. Kasper, the Swiss I. O. C. executive who also oversees the sport of skiing, had a more pragmatic perspective. “We need to stop pretending sport is clean,” he said. “It’s a noble principle, but in practice? It’s entertainment. It’s drama. ” | 0fake |
EU states agree caps on wholesale roaming charges | EU states agree caps on wholesale roaming charges
26 October 2016 , by Julia Fioretti - Brussels (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-telecoms-roaming-idUSKCN12Q1HV
EU states agreed a preliminary compromise on Wednesday on lowering the caps for how much mobile telecoms operators can charge each other to keep their customers connected while abroad, easing concerns that a flagship EU policy to end retail roaming fees could backfire. | 1real |
Caddell: Anti-Trump Resistance Rhetoric Fueling ’Raging Fever’ in Unbalanced People | Pat Caddell talked all things media and President Trump with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Monday. [Caddell said, “I think they are united in a narrative. And that narrative is, somebody did something wrong. It was Donald Trump and therefore, at the end of the day, he must not be president. ” “They’re still fighting the campaign that they lost,” he added, meaning the media. “They will not put out things that disagree with their narrative,” said Caddell. “That’s when they stop being a press. They’ve become propagandists and this is really dangerous stuff. It is really scary because for many voters, they don’t know where to turn, necessarily, to get a view that gives them both sides. ” Caddell said it started the day after the election when Democrats declared, “we’re not going to be a loyal opposition, we’re going to be a resistance, as though we were being occupied. When rational voices take that stand, when the heat becomes so great in the kitchen, let me tell you something, if the rest of us are getting a temperature, the people who are unbalanced are getting a raging fever. ” Caddell was linking both Democrat rhetoric and the bias present in media related to the recent shooting in D. C.. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 0fake |
Honduran presidential candidate to review U.S. troops presence | TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Honduran presidential candidate leading after a partial count of votes said he would review whether to keep a base stationed with U.S. troops if he wins the election, but also promised to deepen security co-operation. Honduras has been slow to release the results of Sunday s election. Although U.S.-friendly President Juan Orlando Hernandez had been tipped to win, partial results show an upset, with gregarious television star Salvador Nasralla leading. One of the poorest nations in the Americas with one of the world s highest murder rates, Honduras has been blighted with years of gang violence. Nasralla has tapped into widespread disillusionment about the country s future, particularly among young voters. But his win is not yet certain. As results started flowing on Tuesday evening, Nasralla s original five-point lead had narrowed to just over 1.5 percentage points, with about 72 percent of ballot boxes counted. In a television interview on Tuesday evening, an angry Nasralla said the election was being stolen from him and urged his supporters to flock to the capital, Tegucigalpa, to protest. In an earlier interview with Reuters on Tuesday, the 64-year-old Nasralla said, if he did triumph, he would talk to the United States about 500 U.S. troops stationed at the Soto Cano air base, also known as Palmerola, two hours drive from Tegucigalpa. I need to see what benefit there is for Honduras from having a base like Palmerola, Nasralla said. The U.S. presence was established in the 1980s to help the United States in its fight against left-wing insurgencies in Central America. In 2008, former President Manuel Zelaya said he would turn the base into a civilian airport to serve the coffee-exporting country of 9 million people. A year later, Zelaya was ousted in a coup that his ally, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said was orchestrated from the base. U.S. officials denied any involvement in the coup. Nasralla, a self-described centrist, said he would deepen security ties with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, and that Honduras would remain the United States best ally in Central America. When the United States passes me its list of people it wants to extradite ... I m not even going to look at it. I m simply going to sign it and give the order, he said. I m willing to extradite ex-presidents, lawmakers, ministers. Honduras is riddled with corruption that breeds on rampant impunity, drug trafficking and gang violence. U.S. officials were aware of his economic and social policy positions, he added. I m certain that I won t have any problems with the United States, he said. The United States has longstanding military ties to Honduras and few ideological allies among the current crop of Central American presidents. In Mexico, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador leads opinion polls for next year s presidential election. Nasralla said that Zelaya would be an influential person in his government and that the former president s wife, Xiomara Castro, would serve as his vice-president. Zelaya, widely viewed as a traditional Latin American leftist due to his previous friendship with Chavez, commands considerable concern in Washington. Many observers believe him to be the true power behind Nasralla s coalition. Nasralla said the concerns were unfounded, and that he would not pursue a close relationship with Venezuela. But he also hinted that Zelaya could return to the presidency in the future. He said he did not want to change new rules allowing presidential re-election, apparently contradicting his previous opposition. His alliance was formed specifically to block Hernandez s bid for a second term. Nasralla said that he would not run for a second term, but that Zelaya could choose to run in 2022 and benefit from the lack of term limits. Ironically, Zelaya was ousted in 2009 after he proposed a referendum on those re-election rules. Earlier on Tuesday, Hernandez told supporters he still expected to win the election, but urged people to wait for the official results to come through. Given the nearly two-day lag in releasing results, a Hernandez victory would be certain to enrage the opposition, and could spark tensions. They re doing everything they can to take away our triumph, Nasralla wrote on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, as the lead started narrowing. | 0fake |
GOP Rep. Babin: Concealed Carry for Me but Not for Thee - Breitbart | On June 20, Rep. Brian Babin ( ) put forward legislation that will allow members of Congress to carry gun for “in nearly every conceivable scenario. ”[Meanwhile, average Americans have been waiting since January 3, 2017, for Congress to get behind Rep. Richard Hudson’s ( ) national reciprocity legislation so concealed carry permit holders from one state can legally possess carry their guns in every state for . Babin’s office announced the legislation, titled “Bill to Enhance Safety and Protection of Members of Congress. ” The bill would: Babin’s legislation would even open “areas under the director jurisdiction … . [of] commercial airliners” to Congressional members. Yet under the current patchwork of concealed carry laws, average Americans with a concealed carry permit from Arizona or Idaho commit a criminal act if they carry a gun for in California. If they have a permit from Arkansas, Florida, or Kentucky, they commit a crime by carrying a gun for in Illinois. UPDATE: After publication of this story Babin’s office reached out with this quote: Rep. Babin is a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment who fully supports reciprocity rights for every American. He is a proud cosponsor of Rep. Hudson’s national reciprocity legislation and believes all law abiding American citizens should be able to conceal carry across state lines. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
Singapore's prime minister to visit White House on Aug. 2 | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will host Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the White House for an official visit and state dinner on Aug. 2, the White House said on Wednesday. | 0fake |
WOW! OBAMA MEDIA ALLY EXPOSES HUGE LIE: Why Obama Regime “Cooked” Intel On ISIS [VIDEO] | President Obama on ISIS: They re a bunch of killers with good social media. They are dangerous and they ve caused great hardship to an overwhelming majority of people. Really Barry? They ve caused a great hardship? When someone you love has their head chopped off, or they re burned alive, or nailed to a cross and tortured, or when one of your young daughters is raped repeatedly and then taken away in a cage to be sold to the highest bidding Muslim pedophile as a sex slave do you call that a hardship? Because the rest of America calls it an evil that needs to be exterminated. And guess what Barry? We hired you to protect and defend the citizens of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. We didn t hire you to start a war within our own country by manipulating our young sons and daughters in colleges and universities across America. Where did you get the idea that your top priority as our Commander in Chief was to divide our nation down lines of race and social class? Even the mainstream media is not going to sit back and allow you to lie about our enemies or skew intelligence to hide the fact you are a weak and incompetent leader. The idea that the NYT s would actually expose your lies makes us fear that the situation is even worse than what is being reported.Richard Haas, an American diplomat and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said on Monday there are serious implications if a recent New York Times report suggesting the Obama administration cooked intel on the Islamic State turns out to be true. I hope it s not true. I hope it s not true, Haas said. The principle requirement of intelligence analysts is to speak truth to power. It s not to make them comfortable, it s to make them smart and aware. He continued, If it is true, it d be very interesting to know exactly where the pressure is coming from because it s corrosive. It means you can t then trust what policy is based on. So it is truly, truly a bad thing if, again, it is true. Via: The BlazeMore from the New York Times report:The Pentagon s inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry.The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.Fuller details of the claims were not available, including when the assessments were said to have been altered and who at Central Command, or Centcom, the analyst said was responsible. The officials, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about classified matters, said that the recently opened investigation focused on whether military officials had changed the conclusions of draft intelligence assessments during a review process and then passed them on.Haas also criticized the White House for downplaying the challenge of defeating the Islamic State in the face of the deadly Paris terrorist attacks. | 1real |
N.C. governor signs bill repealing Charlotte transgender bathroom law | WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - North Carolina’s governor on Wednesday signed into law a measure that blocks local governments in the state from enacting ordinances to allow transgender people to use public bathrooms that match their gender identities. The legislation came in response to such a provision approved last month in Charlotte, the state’s largest city, as part of an expanded nondiscrimination ordinance that also added protections for marital and familial status, sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity. The bill passed both chambers of the legislature during a one-day special session convened in Raleigh to address the Charlotte law. Republican Governor Pat McCrory, who signed the bill late on Wednesday, said the Charlotte measure “defies common sense.” “The basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings, a restroom or locker room, for each gender was violated by government overreach and intrusion by the mayor and city council of Charlotte,” McCrory said in a statement. Controversy over the bathroom component echoed similar fights across the country as transgender advocates push for the right to choose restrooms and locker rooms, including in schools, based on gender identity rather than birth gender. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina warned that the “radical” Charlotte measure would create a public safety issue by giving men, including sex offenders, access to women’s bathrooms if allowed to take effect on April 1. “This is a common sense bill that protects the privacy expectations of our citizens while clarifying local authority,” said Republican Representative Paul Stam. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy groups condemned the law’s passage and said they were exploring legal challenges. They say no public safety risks had resulted in the more than 200 U.S. cities that have enacted protections similar to those passed in Charlotte. “We are disappointed that Governor McCrory did not do right by North Carolina’s families, communities, and businesses by vetoing this horribly discriminatory bill,” said Chris Brook, legal director of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union. The bill requires multiple-occupancy bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools and government buildings to be used by people only according to their biological sex. The measure also creates North Carolina’s first statewide nondiscrimination policy for public places, including restaurants, hotels and taxis. But it limits the protections against discrimination to race, religion, color, national origin and biological sex. Local governments would be prohibited from passing anti-discrimination ordinances that extended the protections to include gender identity and sexual orientation. | 0fake |
The Face of Miscarriage - The New York Times | The first time I’d miscarried I was a newlywed and, because of a scheduling I’d had to wait two days for a D C. While I mourned the loss, I found it macabre and scary to be carrying death. Afterward, I was sad but mostly relieved. Since then I’d had several very early onset miscarriages between two live births, but nothing so traumatic. Now I was pregnant again. After an uneventful first trimester, my husband and I announced that we were expecting our third child. Our son wanted a brother and our daughter wanted a sister. They named their new sibling Lil’ Mo I have no idea why. They purchased infant socks from the Gap, months crimson with white rubber on the soles, and placed them on the mantel like Christmas stockings. Lil’ Mo’s first ultrasound photo, a dimpled knot, was pinned to the fridge with a pastel magnet that spelled . A few days later, I dropped my kids at their elementary school and headed to the gym. We had recently moved to Georgia for my husband’s job and, in the absence of family or friends, exercise classes were my lifeline. After class, I headed home only to discover that I was bleeding. I arrived at the ’s and readied myself for the inevitable devastation. But there was the of a beating heart and the beaming proclaiming, “The baby is fine!” Still, in the following weeks heavier spells of bleeding would send me back several times. Each time I was assured that half of all women bleed throughout their pregnancies it was normal and the baby was going to make it. I also drew solace from first person accounts on the internet. I picked out names: Sahara for a girl and Khyber for a boy. One evening when the bleeding sent me to the emergency room, a compassionate nurse, sorry I was having such a miserable pregnancy, whispered that I was going to have a boy. The doctor added that he was moving so fast, he was going to come out playing soccer. The next morning, after another bad night, I checked in with my regular . As she ran an ultrasound wand over my tummy, she became silent. I knew already. My baby — Khyber — was gone. Overnight. The told me that since the pregnancy was close to 16 weeks, only specially qualified doctors could perform a late stage D C. Since both the qualified doctors in our area happened to be Jewish and because I’d miscarried on the Jewish New Year, they wouldn’t be available until four days later. She assured me that my progesterone was too high for anything to happen over the weekend, and sent me home. The last time I’d had a dead baby inside of me, I’d been distressed. This time, I treasured a final weekend to hold in my baby. Friday and Saturday were a teary blur. I was unsure of how to tell my kids. I kissed the tiny crimson socks and thought of the story: “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn. ” By Sunday evening, I started to have cramps and realized I was in labor. I wish the had warned me that I might very well deliver my baby’s face into my hands. His face was no bigger than a kitchen cabinet knob. The outlines of his eyes, ears, nose and mouth were clear. He looked like an alien out of the “ ” TV show. Should I kiss him? Finally I held him to my heart before putting him in a sandwich bag as the E. R. instructed so he could be sent for an autopsy. When I got to the hospital, a Christian chaplain held my hand and prayed with me. I told him I was Muslim but that prayers are prayers. I couldn’t stop sharing the story of my miscarriage with everyone. It was as if I had opened the gates to a taboo subject. Family, friends, strangers — everyone would share either their own miscarriage story or else someone else’s. It turned out that even my mother had miscarried before me. And yet too many, including my husband, could not quite understand why I was so gutted. After all, I was told over and over again, I already had two kids. That I’d barely been 16 weeks. I could have another one, as if babies are replaceable. I was told, “It wasn’t a stillbirth. You weren’t full term. It was just a fetus. Stop being so sad!” It left me upset and alone to have conditions put on grief. That afternoon, as my kids cleaned out their Spiderman and Dora the Explorer backpacks, I blurted out: “Lil’ Mo is gone. ” “Gone?” said my son. “He died. ” My son’s best friend’s father had passed away and so my son had an inkling of life after death: Darren’s father was in heaven and heaven was a good place. “So Lil’ Mo’s in heaven?” he said as his eyes filled up. “Like Darren’s father?” “Yes,” I said and I knew that whether heaven really existed or not, it certainly belonged to little children confronted with mortality. Over the next month, we began to recover — if recovery is the correct sum of time plus healing. My son put the ultrasound pictures in a photo album with pictures of his beloved dead guinea pigs. I took the crimson socks off the mantel and tucked them in the back of a drawer. Around the same time, I lost the contract for my debut novel but never again would I equate the loss of a book with the loss of a baby these creations were not of equal magnitude. One day, I received a call from the hospital: What did I want to do with the remains? As Muslims, we bury our dead, so my husband called the local mosque to make arrangements. But he was informed that there could be no burial. In Islam it is believed a soul enters the body at 120 days of gestation (about 16 weeks) and since my miscarriage took place right around that time with no proof that a soul had indeed entered, Khyber could be considered only a soulless fetus. Fresh grief engulfed me. I called the hospital’s perinatal loss clinic: Please don’t throw him in the trash. The kind woman told me that she’d seen the remains and she could tell he’d been a beautiful baby. I managed a thank you. She said the hospital would take him, with the remains of other such babies, for a collective cremation. At first, thinking of a trip to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, I recoiled at the thought of my baby being one of many. But eventually I found comfort in the idea of a collective. That way, I told myself, Khyber would, at least, never be alone. We printed out directions to the cemetery in Stone Mountain, Ga. where the ashes were buried in an urn in a plot shaded by an oak tree. It was marked by a small marble bench with a carved dove on it. My son had brought as an offering a miniature teddy bear I’d given him for Valentine’s Day and my daughter a rose from our garden. I sat on the bench with the carved dove. I recited a prayer for my baby. I recited a prayer for all the babies. | 0fake |
TEMPERS FLARE IN DC: BIKERS FOR TRUMP Break Through Protester Line…Rioters Trap Wife Of Trump Supporter…Trump Bikers Brawl With Masked Protesters [VIDEO] | https://youtu.be/ZfRYj2ZX3dE#Trump supporter gets past #DisruptJ20 barricade but couldn't get back to his wife #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/JFHOcgcT9c Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) January 20, 2017Finally, these bikers are caught in a brawl with a DisruptJ20 protester:Bikers For Trump guy fights with #DisruptJ20 protester pic.twitter.com/JVUpuDBsQZ Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) January 20, 2017 | 1real |
Monkeyball BTFO by The Walking Dead [NO SPOILERS] | Monkeyball is on the steep decline.
People would rather watch a super-violent show about a masculine White man destroying his enemies.
Deadline :
Even after one of the bloodiest and darkest episodes in the AMC seriesâ history, The Walking Dead really does have something to celebrate about its Season 7 debut â and weâre not talking a fantasy sequence. With 17 million watching the October 23 premiere to discover who Negan would kill and 10.7 million among adults 18-49 for an 8.4 rating, the zombie apocalypse blockbuster had a very good night as the No. 1 show on broadcast and cable.
How good?
Well, TWD knocked the stuffing out of the often-dominating Sunday Night Football demo-wise this weekend , left the Season 3 debut of Big 4 heavy hitter Empire Season 3 in the dust, and solidly bested its own Season 6 premiere last year. Add to that, the show based on the Robert Kirkman comics basically matched its all-time series highs of the Season 5 opener of October 12, 2014 in both viewers and the demo. And, with maybe a slightly aging fanbase after all these years, pile on that the Season 7 opener set a series high among adults 25- 54 (10.5 million), making it clear that The Walking Dead is alive and kicking at this point deep into its run, when most other shows are DOA.
NFL ratings are collapsing completely.
Awful Announcing :
The NFLâs downturn in ratings has been the dominant sports media storyline of the fall of 2016. And unfortunately for the league, itâs not getting any better, especially when it comes to the primetime windows. And while there are a number of factors at play in whatâs ailing the NFL right now, the quality of the primetime games isnât helping.
In spite of featuring the gameâs most storied rivalry in Bears-Packers, Thursday Night Football was down 17% versus last year. The abysmal 6-6 tie between the Cardinals and Seahawks was unsurprisingly down 15% from last year, proving that not all close games are guaranteed to drive viewership. The Monday Night Football matchup between Houston and Denver was also uninspiring and down 13% from last year .
Fox Sports exec Michael Mulvihill has been tweeting out numbers throughout the season and through seven weeks now, itâs obvious that Fox and CBS coverage on Sunday afternoons are being affected much less by the NFLâs ratings challenges than in primetime. With all three primetime windows dropping this week, TNF, SNF, and MNF are all down AT LEAST 18% in viewership from this time a year ago.
This is a massive drop.
Massive.
Though the kike media is coming up with all sorts of excuses (you see the above quoted article blaming the quality of the games, lel – others are blaming the election ), none of them are looking at the most obvious thing that has changed in America over the last couple of years, and that is race relations.
Sportball Americans AKA “The Blacks” have become insanely hostile toward the White population of this country, so it makes absolute sense that people are now less interested in watching these vicious apes throw balls at one another. Nigga ah be botta frow dis ball over der, dat oder nigga botta be catch dis ball, din he gunna run ober der. nigga nigga nigga fugg wite ppl muffugguh ah keel u nigga fu shii t.
The Colin Kaepernick hate-protest against America itself – which many of his fellow apes have joined in – certainly isn’t helping the situation any. Yes, Mr. Grossman, please, please take it to the next level . I simply cannot express to you how much I want you to do exactly that.
As I have always said, racial tension is good for the White movement. Polarization is always good for revolutionaries. Black Lives Matter is doing our work for us. When White people see Blacks rioting and attacking Whites, when they witness this hateful rage against them (for something they never did), it triggers an instinctive, tribalist reaction.
Hence, collapsing monkeyball ratings.
For their part, Jews are totally incapable of understanding the concept of “going too far.” As long as there is room to push it further, they will keep pushing it further, and they are oblivious to potential backlash. We see this with the sexual liberation. Some people would have chilled out once gay marriage was solidified, but they moved on to trannies and now they’re headed for pedophilia .
Because we are the underdogs in this race war against the kikes, it is necessary to always understand and exploit their weaknesses. They biggest weakness is this incapacity to stop pushing everything as far as it can be pushed. This is why they were kicked out of over 100 European nations/territories, and why they will eventually be rounded-up and expelled from the United States of America.
Look for rap music sales to drop next. You can take that prediction to the bank.
The Walking Dead as Implicit Fascist Propaganda
Okay, so nobody liked seeing Rick f that n last season. I get that.
At the end of season 5, I was working on a very long essay about the show, and then ended up canning it because I knew there would be outrage over the season six sex act.
But even with that element, The Walking Dead remains a type of implicit fascist propaganda, due to the themes themselves. It is almost like they have to include these multicultural elements in order to avoid open accusations of fascism.
The setting is one of survivalism, during a zombie apocalypse, where the only way to survive and protect your people is to be ruthless. And the hero, who began the show as a bright-faced golden boy trying to help everyone is now an unrepentant mass-murderer, who will kill anyone who messes with his people. If you ignore the racial element, the show is utterly fascist, as it denies the concept that Jews have pushed in their media since they founded Hollywood that “the ends never justify the means” and unrepentantly shows its hero – a masculine blue-eyed White male – justifying the most violent of means to the end of protecting his people.
This is, I believe, why the show has been so overwhelmingly popular. It touches the same longing for primal masculinity that Fight Club touched. It justifies the thing that all men, at the heart of their being, know to be true: that every aspect of the basic order of nature will ultimately be reduced to physical violence.
This season opened with the enemy tribe engaging in extreme acts of physical violence against the heroes of the show ( so brutal that television watchdog groups are complaining ), and the only possible response to this is going to be physical violence. There will be no Jewy “overcoming adversity by being the better man.” Our hero Rick will hunt down and slaughter his enemies, and he will feel no guilt. Because this is the way you take care of your people: by destroying your enemies.
There is also an implicit theme relating to immigration and Black revolt, with the zombies themselves representing the non-White hordes overrunning our countries. I have written about that before . Zombies in TWD Migrants in Slovenia
Just for the record, I believe there is approximately zero chance that any of the shows creators are consciously promoting these themes (conversely, I have argued that the creator of Breaking Bad was probably at least partially aware that he was promoting fascist themes). However, though the show’s creator Robert Kirkman is probably something of a cuck, given that he has put all of this multiculturalism in the show (though there are no gays or trannies), he isn’t a Jew, meaning his Aryan racial soul is capable of expressing itself subconsciously. Robert Kirkman: definitely looks a bit cucky, I must say.
You can also check the show’s Wikipedia page and see that there are apparently no Jews involved in production at all (I only see Jew names in the editors column, and only two of them) – which is something of a miracle just based on statistics, given the number of Jews that work in television.
Anyway, maybe you hate the show, maybe you like it, maybe you don’t know anything at all about it. I personally watch it, as well as a few other popular shows (always while doing other things, usually answering email or commenting on the bbs – I ain’t got time to just sit around and watch shows, fam), because it’s important to me to understand what is going on with popular culture – TWD is the most popular of popular culture. And I have to say that I think that overall, this shows popularity among young White men says something very good about the current state of the collective unconscious of our people, in the same way that the dropping popularity of monkeyball says something good about the collective unconscious of our people. | 1real |
Trump acknowledges Russia role in U.S. election hacking: aide | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump accepts the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia engaged in cyber attacks during the U.S. presidential election and may take action in response, his incoming chief of staff said on Sunday. Reince Priebus said Trump believed Russia was behind the intrusions into the Democratic Party organizations, although Priebus did not clarify whether the president-elect agreed that the hacks were directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He accepts the fact that this particular case was entities in Russia, so that’s not the issue,” Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.” It was the first acknowledgment from a senior member of the Republican president-elect’s team that Trump had accepted that Russia directed the hacking and subsequent disclosure of Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential election. Trump had rebuffed allegations that Russia was behind the hacks or was trying to help him win, saying the intrusions could have been carried out by China or a 400-pound hacker on his bed. With less than two weeks until his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump has come under increasing pressure from fellow Republicans to accept intelligence community findings on Russian hacking and other attempts by Moscow to influence the Nov. 8 election. A crucial test of Republican support for Trump comes this week with the first confirmation hearings for his Cabinet picks. A U.S. intelligence report last week said Putin directed a sophisticated influence campaign including cyber attacks to denigrate Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and support Trump. The report, commissioned by Democratic President Barack Obama in December, concluded vote tallies were not affected by Russian interference, but did not assess whether it influenced the outcome of the vote in other ways. After receiving a briefing on Friday from leaders of the U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump did not refer specifically to Russia’s role in the presidential campaign. In a statement, he acknowledged that “Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat(ic) National Committee.” Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told Reuters the president-elect’s conclusions remained the same and that Priebus’ comments were in line with Friday’s statement. Priebus’ wording did not appear to foreshadow the dramatic reversal of Trump’s apparent Russia policy that experts say would be required to deter further cyber attacks. “It will take a lot more than what we heard on television today to make Putin cool it,” the expert added. “In fact, there may not be anything that can deter Putin from pursuing a course he’s bet his future and Russia’s on,” said a U.S. intelligence expert on Russia, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss domestic political positions. The expert added that Putin’s “multifaceted campaign of cyber attacks and espionage, propaganda, financial leverage, fake news and traditional espionage” had expanded in the United States since the election, “and it will be a shock if it does not escalate in France, Germany and elsewhere this year.” Priebus, the former Republican National Committee chairman Trump tapped as White House chief of staff, said Trump planned to order the intelligence community to make recommendations as to what should be done. “Action may be taken,” he said, adding there was nothing wrong with trying to have a good relationship with Russia and other countries. Two senior Republican senators urged Trump to punish Russia in response to U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Putin personally directed efforts aimed at influencing the election. Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain said evidence was conclusive that Putin sought to influence the election - a point that Trump has refuted. “In a couple weeks, Donald Trump will be the defender of the free world and democracy,” Graham said. “You should let everybody know in America, Republicans and Democrats, that you’re going to make Russia pay a price for trying to interfere.” On Saturday, Trump wrote on Twitter that having a better relationship with Russia was a “good thing.” U.S. Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said three U.S. presidents had tried and failed to be friends with Putin. “I’m just not sure it’s possible,” Nunes said on the “Fox News Sunday” program. “I’ve cautioned his administration to be careful with Putin, as he remains a bad actor.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed it was not unusual for a new president to want to get along with the Russians. He added on CBS, however, that the Russians remained a “big adversary, and they demonstrated it by trying to mess around in our election.” Obama, who himself tried to “reset” relations with Russia after he took office in 2009, told NBC he did not think he had underestimated the Russian president. “But I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating,” he said in an interview with “Meet the Press” broadcast on Sunday. | 0fake |
Стала известна возможная причина взрыва дома в Рязани | Фото: © Пресс-служба МЧС по Рязанской области
Об этом сообщила официальный представитель регионального управления СК РФ Анжелика Евдокимова, передают РИА Новости.
"На месте происшествия обнаружены и изъяты фрагменты газового оборудования, которые находились в квартире, являющейся эпицентром взрыва. Результаты осмотра фрагментов газового оборудования показали, что была отвернута гайка на выходе газового счетчика", - сказала собеседница агентства.
Евдокимова отметила, что это, по версии следствия, может быть предварительной причиной взрыва.
Следствием назначены взрыво-техническая, судебно-медицинские, строительно-технические судебные экспертизы, устанавливаются обстоятельства произошедшего и виновники ЧП. По информации СК, осмотр места происшествия и фрагментов газового оборудования предварительно подтвердил версию следствия о том, что ЧП произошло "в результате действий лица, проживающего в квартире, где произошел взрыв газа".
Напомним, как сообщала Правда.Ру, ранним утром воскресенья, 23 октября на верхних этажах 10-этажного дома в 1-м Осеннем переулке произошел взрыв , в результате которого были разрушены семь квартир, а перекрытия между двумя верхними этажами повреждены.
Как сообщали в региональном управлении МЧС, Всего для ликвидации последствий происшествия было задействовано 279 человек и 61 единица техники, из них от МЧС России - 162 человека и 31 единица техники. В целях авиаразведки применялся беспилотный летательный аппарат.
Было проведено обследование здания аппаратно-программным диагностическим комплексом «Стрела-П», предназначенным для оперативной оценки технического состояния зданий и сооружений, опасности их обрушения и возможного риска для людей, находящихся внутри и поблизости объектов. Использование "Струны" позволяет ускоренно обрабатывать данные, получаемые при динамических испытаниях на устойчивость зданий и сооружений.
Следственные органы возбудили уголовное дело по статье "производство, хранение, перевозка либо сбыт товаров и продукции, выполнение работ или оказание услуг, не отвечающих требованиям безопасности, повлекшие по неосторожности смерть двух или более лиц". Наказание, предусмотренное этой статьей - до десяти лет лишения свободы.
Читайте последние новости Pravda. Ru на сегодня | 1real |
After ruling, Virginia legislature's majority to be chosen by lot | (Reuters) - Republicans could hold onto control of Virginia’s legislature after a race that had appeared to change the balance of power was ruled a tie on Wednesday, setting the stage for the winner of the district to be chosen by lot. The results of a recount on Tuesday showed Democrat Shelly Simonds beating Republican incumbent David Yancey by one vote, enough to shift the 100-member House of Delegates to an even 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans. However, on Wednesday a three-judge panel ruled that a disputed ballot should be counted for Yancey, the Virginian-Pilot newspaper reported and Yancey confirmed. The two candidates in the 94th District, which includes Newport News in southeastern Virginia, are now tied at 11,608 votes. Under Virginia law, a tie in a House race should be decided by drawing lots, the equivalent of a coin toss or drawing straws, the Conference of State Legislatures said. “I am happy that every vote in Newport News was counted and that the judges took time to deliberate before rendering a decision,” Yancey said in an emailed statement. “This certainly is a historic election in our Commonwealth.” But Democrats slammed the decision, calling it erroneous and saying they were considering legal action to challenge it. Just Tuesday, Republicans conceded the seat, and Simonds, who made international news with what had appeared to be a narrow win, spent the morning Wednesday discussing the race on a variety of news shows. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment following Wednesday’s decision, but an attorney for the Virginia House Democratic Caucus criticized the judges’ move in a news release. “Today’s decision by the court was wrong, and Delegate-elect Shelly Simonds should have been certified the winner,” he said. “We are currently assessing all legal options before us as we fight for a just result.” Democrats claimed historic gains in Virginia’s statehouse last month, part of the party’s first big wave of victories since Republican Donald Trump won the White House last year. Before the Nov. 7 general election, Virginia Republicans held 66 seats to the Democrats’ 34 in the House of Delegates, along with a majority in the state Senate. | 0fake |
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